The Place of Language in a Scientific Psychology

Abstract

One of the psychologists’ great methodological difficulties is how they can make the events they wish to study publicly observable, countable, measurable. It is significant to note that the device most often used for conversion from private to public is language. Thus speech is a crucial problem for psychology. None of their other activities gives the same sort of insight into another person as does their language. Since people spend so many of their waking hours generating and responding to words, and since speech is such a typically human mode of adjustment, no general theory of psychology will be adequate if it does not take account of language.