Context in Communication: A Cognitive View
Context in Communication: A Cognitive View

Author: Gabriella Airenti

Publisher: Frontiers Media SA

Published: 2017-04-03

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 2889451429

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Context is what contributes to interpret a communicative act beyond the spoken words. It provides information essential to clarify the intentions of a speaker, and thus to identify the actual meaning of an utterance. A large amount of research in Pragmatics has shown how wide-ranging and multifaceted this concept can be. Context spans from the preceding words in a conversation to the general knowledge that the interlocutors supposedly share, from the perceived environment to features and traits that the participants in a dialogue attribute to each other. This last category is also very broad, since it includes mental and emotional states, together with culturally constructed knowledge, such as the reciprocal identification of social roles and positions. The assumption of a cognitive point of view brings to the foreground a number of new questions regarding how information about the context is organized in the mind and how this kind of knowledge is used in specific communicative situations. A related, very important question concerns the role played in this process by theory of mind abilities (ToM), both in typical and atypical populations. In this Research Topic, we bring together articles that address different aspects of context analysis from theoretical and empirical perspectives, integrating knowledge and methods derived from Philosophy of language, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental and Clinical Psychology.

Handbook of Intercultural Communication
Handbook of Intercultural Communication

Author: Helga Kotthoff

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2008-09-25

Total Pages: 582

ISBN-13: 3110198584

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In today’s globalized world of international contact and multicultural interaction, effective intercultural communication is increasingly seen as a pre-requisite for social harmony and organisational success. This handbook takes a ?problem-solving? approach to the various issues that arise in real-life intercultural interaction. The editors have brought together experts from a range of disciplines, including linguistics, psychology and anthropology, to provide a multidisciplinary perspective on the field, whilst simultaneously anchoring it in Applied Linguistics. Key features: provides a state-of-the-art description of different areas in the context of intercultural communication presents a critical appraisal of the relevance of the field offers solutions of everyday language-related problems international handbook with contributions from renown experts in the field

Language, Culture and Knowledge in Context
Language, Culture and Knowledge in Context

Author: Brian Nolan

Publisher: Equinox Publishing (UK)

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9781800501928

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What exactly is meant by the term 'knowledge'? What are the different kinds of knowledge? How might this be shared in a dialogue between two interlocutors, within a shared common ground, in the realization of successful speech acts? This volume investigates the nature of language, culture, knowledge, and context, and their interrelationships. Each of these is defined - in terms of their relationship to language in particular, and to identify their respective properties. Cultural and other knowledge is also found within the linguistic landscape and the artifacts within our environment. The book explores the ways that language is central to expressions of knowledge and culture. It draws a comprehensive and representative picture of the dimensions of meaning, emerging from the interrelationship between these domains of language, culture, knowledge, and context.

Social and Cognitive Approaches to Interpersonal Communication
Social and Cognitive Approaches to Interpersonal Communication

Author: Susan R. Fussell

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2014-02-25

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1317778979

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Historically, the social aspects of language use have been considered the domain of social psychology, while the underlying psycholinguistic mechanisms have been the purview of cognitive psychology. Recently, it has become increasingly clear that these two dimensions are highly interrelated: cognitive mechanisms underlying speech production and comprehension interact with social psychological factors, such as beliefs about one's interlocutors and politeness norms, and with the dynamics of the conversation itself, to produce shared meaning. This realization has led to an exciting body of research integrating the social and cognitive dimensions which has greatly increased our understanding of human language use. Each chapter in this volume demonstrates how the theoretical approaches and research methods of social and cognitive psychology can be successfully interwoven to provide insight into one or more fundamental questions about the process of interpersonal communication. The topics under investigation include the nature and role of speaker intentions in the communicative process, the production and comprehension of indirect speech and figurative language, perspective-taking and conversational collaboration, and the relationships between language, cognition, culture, and social interaction. The book will be of interest to all those who study interpersonal language use: social and cognitive psychologists, theoretical and applied linguists, and communication researchers.

Contexts of Accommodation
Contexts of Accommodation

Author: Howard Giles

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1991-09-27

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0521361516

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In Contexts of Accommodation, accommodation theory is presented as a basis for sociolinguistic explanation, and it is the applied perspective that predominates this edited collection. The book seeks to demonstrate how the core concepts and relationships invoked by accommodation theory are available for addressing altogether pragmatic concerns.

Discourse and Context
Discourse and Context

Author: Teun A. van Dijk

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-02-11

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780521130301

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How do social situations influence language use, discourse and conversation? This book is a monograph which presents a multidisciplinary theory of context and the way context influences language use and discourse. Unlike in earlier approaches, contexts are not defined as objective social 'variables', such as gender or age. Rather, they are constructs of the participants themselves, that is, 'subjective definitions of the communicative situation' that are made explicit in the sociocognitive notion of context models. These models dynamically control all language use, make sure that discourses are appropriate in the communicative situation and hence are the basis of pragmatics. In this book, context models are studied especially from a (socio) linguistic and cognitive perspective. In another book published by Cambridge University Press, Society and Discourse, Teun A. van Dijk develops the social psychological, sociological and anthropological dimensions of the theory of context.

The Socio-Cognitive Approach to Communication and Pragmatics
The Socio-Cognitive Approach to Communication and Pragmatics

Author: Istvan Kecskes

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2024-01-08

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 3031301609

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The book aims to serve as a theoretical framework for the socio-cognitive approach (SCA) that is an alternative to the two main lines of pragmatics research: linguistic-philosophical pragmatics and sociocultural-interactional pragmatics. SCA broadens the scope of the field with an intent to incorporate not only L1 communication but also intercultural communication, and communication in a second language. The author integrates the pragmatic view of cooperation and the cognitive view of egocentrism and emphasizes that both cooperation and egocentrism are manifested in all phases of communication, albeit to varying extents. SCA places equal importance on the social and cognitive individual factors in pragmatics. The author claims that while (social) cooperation is an intention-directed practice that is governed by relevance, (individual) egocentrism is an attention-oriented trait dominated by salience. The book serves as a theoretical guide for researchers and students who would like to understand how we need to change first language-based theories to make sense of what happens not only in L1 but also in intercultural and multi-lingual interactions.

Cognition in the Wild
Cognition in the Wild

Author: Edwin Hutchins

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1996-08-26

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 0262581469

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Edwin Hutchins combines his background as an anthropologist and an open ocean racing sailor and navigator in this account of how anthropological methods can be combined with cognitive theory to produce a new reading of cognitive science. His theoretical insights are grounded in an extended analysis of ship navigation—its computational basis, its historical roots, its social organization, and the details of its implementation in actual practice aboard large ships. The result is an unusual interdisciplinary approach to cognition in culturally constituted activities outside the laboratory—"in the wild." Hutchins examines a set of phenomena that have fallen in the cracks between the established disciplines of psychology and anthropology, bringing to light a new set of relationships between culture and cognition. The standard view is that culture affects the cognition of individuals. Hutchins argues instead that cultural activity systems have cognitive properties of their own that are different from the cognitive properties of the individuals who participate in them. Each action for bringing a large naval vessel into port, for example, is informed by culture: the navigation team can be seen as a cognitive and computational system. Introducing Navy life and work on the bridge, Hutchins makes a clear distinction between the cognitive properties of an individual and the cognitive properties of a system. In striking contrast to the usual laboratory tasks of research in cognitive science, he applies the principal metaphor of cognitive science—cognition as computation (adopting David Marr's paradigm)—to the navigation task. After comparing modern Western navigation with the method practiced in Micronesia, Hutchins explores the computational and cognitive properties of systems that are larger than an individual. He then turns to an analysis of learning or change in the organization of cognitive systems at several scales. Hutchins's conclusion illustrates the costs of ignoring the cultural nature of cognition, pointing to the ways in which contemporary cognitive science can be transformed by new meanings and interpretations. A Bradford Book

Engaging Theories in Family Communication
Engaging Theories in Family Communication

Author: Dawn O. Braithwaite

Publisher: SAGE Publications

Published: 2005-08-26

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1452222215

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Engaging Theories in Family Communication: Multiple Perspectives covers uncharted territory in its field, as it is the first book on the market to deal exclusively with family communication theory. In this volume, editors Dawn O. Braithwaite and Leslie A. Baxter bring together a group of contributors that represent a veritable Who's Who in the family communication field. These scholars examine both classic and cutting-edge theories to guide family communication research in the coming years.

The Social Context of Cognitive Development
The Social Context of Cognitive Development

Author: Mary Gauvain

Publisher: Guilford Press

Published: 2001-01-01

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9781572306103

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Traditional approaches to cognitive development can tell us a great deal about the internal processes involved in learning. Sociocultural perspectives, on the other hand, provide valuable insights into the influences on learning of relationship and cultural variables. This volume provides a much-needed bridge between these disparate bodies of research, examining the specific processes through which children internalize the lessons learned in social contexts. The book reviews current findings on four specific domains of cognitive development--attention, memory, problem solving, and planning. The course of intellectual growth in each domain is described, and social factors that support or constrain it are identified. The focus throughout is on how family, peer, and community factors influence not only what a child learns, but also how learning occurs. Supporting her arguments with solid empirical data, the author convincingly shows how attention to sociocultural factors can productively complement more traditional avenues of investigation.