Post 3: The Islamization of Psycholinguistics in IIUM

            When Dr. Rozina asked us to choose one linguistic subject for our topic to be discussed in the blog, Psycholinguistics immediately came to our mind. The uniqueness of human being in having a special machine that leads everything that we do every day in ourselves which to be known as brain brought us to choose this subject as our main topic in our blog.

 

In our university; International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), Psycholinguistics is one of the subjects that has been thought under the Department of English Language and Literature. It is one of the subject that offer for student who specializing in Linguistics other that Error and Contrastive analysis, Introduction to Pragmatics and so on. A book entitled “An Introduction to Psycholinguistics” written by Danny D. Steinberg and Natalia V. Sciarini is use as the text book. Basically, this subject covers 3 major parts which are first-language learning, second-language learning and language, mind and brain. How children learn language, the deaf and language, the methods of second-language teaching, bilingualism, where does language come from is part of the topics cover in learning Psycholinguistics in IIUM.

Psycholinguistics is one interesting field to be learned by students. All the topics cover as we mentioned earlier are so appealing for us the students to know more about it. We found that all the theories and ideologies came from non Muslim people like Noam Chomsky. It cannot be doubt that Chomsky’s theories are so great but as the university carry the “Islamic” name, the subject that students in IIUM learn have to have the Islamic gist in it. Muslim scholars such as Al-Farabi, Ali ibn Abbas al-Majusi, Ibn Zuhr and so on are the examples of so many scholars that can be related to this subject specifically. It is good for us to have this scholars and it is disappointing if we did not take this advantage in quoting or learning their theories and ideologies.

By inserting the Islamic side of the subject, it can open the student’s eyes that Islam has produced great scholars that we can learn from inline with other scholars. Moreover, learning things that reflect back to Islam is one way for us to remind ourselves that Allah s.w.t is the greatest creator.

Post 2: The islamization of Psycholinguistics

      In this video, Knowledge in the Light of Islam, Sh. Dr Yasir Qadhi shares with us the importance of knowledge through surah al-Alaq verse 1-5. He says how Allah calls on us to learn all kinds of beneficial knowledge (Islamic knowledge and Secular knowledge) but never forget that the Secular knowledge comes from Allah too. And we should make full benefit of religious knowledge and secular knowledge hand in hand. Dr. yasir Qadhi also shares with us on how Allah taught prophet Adam how to speak, and from that knowledge, all languages are derived. And Allah taught prophet Idris on the usage of the pen, and from that knowledge prophet Idris learnt the art of writing. In short, the main purpose of acquiring knowledge is not only for the sake of knowledge itself but also to bring us closer to Allah.

Post 1: The Islamization of Psycholinguistics

   The subject that our group had chosen is Psycholinguistics. As we know, Psycholinguistics has a very wide scope of study. It is the study of mental processes involved in the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language.   According to Steinberg and Sciarini (2006) in their book An Introduction to Psycholinguistics, psycholinguistics is the psychology of language as it relates to learning, mind and brain as well as various aspects of society and culture. Meanwhile according to Merriam-Webster dictionary, psycholinguistics is the study of the mental faculties which involved in the perception, production, and acquisition of language. There are variations of definition regarding the term which simply associated with psychology and language.

     Human being is the most unique creation that Allah ever created as He created them in good shape, excellent condition and the most crucial part is the brilliant human’s mind which also known as aql. He created human on purpose and the purpose of human’s creation is to serve Allah and to appreciate Allah such as appreciate the knowledge that He gives to human being and to follow His order. If we see the psycholinguistics study from Islamic perspective, we should realize how almighty and all-knowing Allah is yet we are not. Allah creates human brain with a lot of function in it and one of it is the production of language in human brain. In linguistics, Noam Chomsky explains how man can acquire language. Chomsky introduces the theory of Universal Grammar and about the Language Acquisition Device in human brain. This study has been found many years later after the creation of man and the revelation of Quran. However, Allah has already explains about the function and the miracle of human brain in the Quran before Chomsky attempted to found the theory of language acquisition in human brain.

In short, the psycholinguistics study enable us to understand more about how we as a human can acquire language through the brain that has been given by Allah only to human being. In addition, from the study we realize how Almighty and All Knowing Allah is. As a Muslim, we should study the Quran more as all of the knowledge that we need is actually all in the Quran.