Malapropism: A Psycholinguistic Study

Abstract

Human speech may not always be righteous; sometimes it may include errors that are described as slips of the tongue. These slips can be trace to the quickness of speech or to the fact that the speaker is fatigued. Among these errors is a type called malapropism on which this paper is designed to focus. Malapropism is a process in which certain word is replaced by another word which is neither a synonymy nor a related word. It is hypothesized that such replacement is based on phonological similarity. To say it differently, the speaker uses certain word which has similar or near pronunciation to the intended one. The current paper aims to investigate or to explain the psychological justifications for committing such errors. The problem of the study is that although slips of the tongue are sufficiently studied, yet there are few studies that focus on malapropism from a psychological perspective.