The importance of psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics in everyday human interactions: language, thought and cognition

Abstract

This article arose from the need to present purely sociolinguistic descriptions, as well as to highlight the relevance of this socially oriented discipline within the school environment, encompassing aspects related to both students and teachers in their social practices. It considers that when students arrive at school, they already bring prior knowledge along with a rich range of psycholinguistic, interactional, and sociolinguistic experiences. This article addresses the linguistic variations that should be accepted in the classroom as part of everyday human interaction. It also examines the role of the school in developing students’ sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic competencies, as well as the essential participation of the teacher, who is engaged in continuous professional development in educational sociolinguistics. This field emphasizes the importance of preventing linguistic prejudice in the classroom and recognizes that all language varieties are valid, depending on the context in which language is used, including factors such as social groups, gender, ethnicity, age, and discourse genres. The theoretical framework is based on contributions from authors such as Bortoni-Ricardo (2004), Marcos Bagno (2006), Perini, Piaget (1947), and Vygotsky (1994), among others, who discuss issues related to the education of Portuguese language teachers, social interaction, and how social groups relate to language and its varieties as expressed in everyday oral communication.