ABSTRACT
Psycholinguistics is concerned with the individual language user's mental processes, while pragmatics deals with the relationship between the individual's language use and the context in which his or her utterances are situated. This chapter draws together these rather scattered observations which have arisen in the course of a number of different arguments, so that we might formulate some more general conclusions. It suggest how both might complement each other in refining clinical practice in aphasia therapy. The psycholinguistic assessment of aphasic patients is becoming a standard procedure in case studies reported in the aphasiological literature and even to some extent in the neurological journals; it has also made considerable inroads into clinical practice in speech-language therapy clinics. Our recognition of how very skilled aphasia therapists need to become has been evident throughout this chapter. The education of such therapists has traditionally laid much emphasis on their training in neurology.
