ARTICLE

MEMORY FOR TEXT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FORM AND MEANING

  1. HOME
  2. ARTICLE

03 Pages : 24-29

http://dx.doi.org/10.31703/glr.2021(VI-II).03      10.31703/glr.2021(VI-II).03      Published : Jun 2021

Memory for Text: The Relationship between Form and Meaning

Abstract

    A linguistic sign, according to Saussure (1966), is a combination of a signifier (form) and a signified (meaning). Form without meaning is just half of the sign. Although in some situations surface forms are excellently retained in memory over time, in most circumstances, explicit long term memory for the surface details or memory for forms of long-past linguistic events is poor or non-existent. Taylor (2012) and Port (2007), however, have proposed that there may be implicitly accumulated memory traces for all aspects of the language- nothing is thrown away. In the present study, 'form refers to physical properties or surface features such as the orthographic, phonological and acoustic representations of a text, while 'meaning' refers to semantic properties, including contextual and pragmatic information. There are some curiosities about their relationship, which this paper will tease apart. The curiosities relate to how language is processed, represented and retained in different circumstances.

    Form, Meaning, Memory, Memorization, Text, Processing

    (1) Amjad Saleem
    Assistant Professor, Department of English & Applied Linguistics, University of Peshawar, Peshawar, KP, Pakistan.
    (2) Muhammad Umer
    Assistant Professor, Department of English, Islamia College University Peshawar, KP, Pakistan.
Fulltext PDF

References

  • Baddeley, A. (2010). Short-term memory. In Baddeley, A., Eysenck, M., and Anderson, M. (eds.) Memory (pp. 19- 40). Hove: Psychology Press.
  • Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. London: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bransford, J. D., & Frank, J. J. (1971). The abstraction of linguistic ideas. Cognitive Psychology, 2, 331-50.
  • Bransford, J. D., Barcklay, R. J., & Frank, J. J. (1972). Sentence memory: a constructive versus interpretative approach. Cognitive Psychology, 3, 193-209
  • Brewer, W. F. (1975). Memory for ideas: synonym substitution. Memory and Cognition, 3, 465- 64
  • Cohen, M., Horowitz, T., & Wolfe, J. (2009). Auditory recognition memory is inferior to visual recognition memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106 (14), 6008-6010.
  • Ebbinghaus, H. (1964). Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. (Translated by Ruger, H. and Bussenius, C.). New York: Dover. (Original work published in 1885)
  • Ellis, N. (2001). Constructions, chunking, and connectionism: The emergence of second language structure. In Doughty, J. and Long, H. (eds.) Handbook of Second Language Acquisition (pp. 05-66). Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Gathercole, S. (1995). Is nonword repetition a test of phonological memory or long term knowledge? It all depends on the nonwords. Memory and Cognition, 23, 83-94.
  • Gernsbacher, M. A. (1985). Surface information loss in comprehension. Cognitive Psychology, 17, 324-63
  • Jacoby, L. L. (1975). Physical features vs. meaning: a difference in decay. Memory and Cognition, 3 (3), 247-51.
  • Kintsch, W., Welsch, D., Schmalhofer, F., & Zimny, S. (1990). Sentence memory: a theoretical analysis. Journal of Memory and Language, 29, 133-159.
  • Noice, H. & Noice, T. (1993). The effects of segmentation on the recall of theatrical material. Poetics, 22, 51-67.
  • Noice, H. & Noice, T. (1996). Two approaches to learning theatrical script. Memory, 4, 1-7.
  • Port, R. Lord, A. B. (2000). The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. F. (2007). How are words stored in memory? Beyond phones and phonemes. New Ideas in Psychology, 25, 143-70.
  • Radvansky, G. A. (2008). Situation models in memory: text and stories. In Cohen, G., and Conway, A. (eds.) Memory in the Real World (pp. 229-47). Hove and New York: Psychology Press.
  • Radvansky, G. A., & Zacks, R. T. (1991). Mental models and the fan effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 17, 940-53.
  • Sachs, J. (1967). Recognition memory for syntactic and semantic aspects of connected discourse. Perception and Psychophysics, 2 (9), 437-42.
  • Sachs, J. (1974). Memory in reading and listening to discourse. Memory and Cognition, 2, 95-101.
  • Saleem, A. (2015). Does memorization without comprehension result in language learning? PhD thesis, Cardiff University, UK
  • Saleem, A. (2018a). Formulaic memorization as barrier to language learning. Kashmir Journal of Language and Research, 21 (1), 11-27.
  • Saleem, A. (2018b). Memorization without comprehension: a window onto the 'Extremities' of the capability of human brain. Al-Idah, 36 (1), 25-40.
  • Saussure, F. De (1966). Course in General Linguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill
  • Taylor, J. R. (2012). The Mental Corpus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Van Dijk, & Kintsch, W. (1983). Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. New York: Academic Press.
  • Wray, A. (2008). Formulaic language: Pushing the Boundaries. Oxford: Oxford University Press
  • Wyer, R. S., & Radvansky, G, A. (1999). The comprehension and validation of social information. Psychological Review, 106 (1), 89- 118.

Cite this article

APA

CHICAGO

    CHICAGO : Saleem, Amjad, and Muhammad Umer. 2021. "Memory for Text: The Relationship between Form and Meaning." Global Language Review, VI (II): 24-29 doi: 10.31703/glr.2021(VI-II).03

HARVARD

    HARVARD : SALEEM, A. & UMER, M. 2021. Memory for Text: The Relationship between Form and Meaning. Global Language Review, VI, 24-29.

MHRA

    MHRA : Saleem, Amjad, and Muhammad Umer. 2021. "Memory for Text: The Relationship between Form and Meaning." Global Language Review, VI: 24-29

MLA

    MLA : Saleem, Amjad, and Muhammad Umer. "Memory for Text: The Relationship between Form and Meaning." Global Language Review, VI.II (2021): 24-29 Print.

OXFORD

    OXFORD : Saleem, Amjad and Umer, Muhammad (2021), "Memory for Text: The Relationship between Form and Meaning", Global Language Review, VI (II), 24-29

TURABIAN