Approaches to Cognition through Text and Discourse

The purpose of this book is to explore the overlapping area of study that discourse linguists and cognitive linguists are interested in. In doing so, the volume contributes to bridging the gap between these two large groups of linguists who share an interest in discourse processing but approach the area from very different perspectives and frames of reference.

The starting point of this volume is text and discourse. The book includes an overview section and a number of carefully selected contributions which highlight central issues in the study of text and discourse attempting to give them cognitive explanations. In responding to the current interest in the area of discourse and cognition, the volume has adopted a wide scope which allows its individual chapters to focus on textual and situational contexts as well as the context of culture and society at large. The volume also provides its readership with a useful selection of methods used in the studies which form the basis of its chapters. The contributions, all by established linguists with highest qualifications, present new findings which have important theoretical implications. They offer unique and fresh analyses of central discourse phenomena in cognitive light and revealing discussions of the avenues opened to us at this stage of the development of the study of discourse and cognition.

This accessible research volume will be essential reading for scholars and advanced students of linguistics and languages.

Autorentext

Tuija Virtanen is Professor at Abo Akademi University, Finnland.

Inhalt

Text, discourse and cognition: An introduction Tuija Virtanen
Language, discourse, and cognition: Retrospects and prospects *Robert de Beaugrande

• On the discourse basis of person agreement *Anna Siewierska
  *The information structure of bilingual meaning: A constructivist approach to Californian Finnish conversation *M.M. Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest
  *Point of departure: Cognitive aspects of sentence-initial adverbials *Tuija Virtanen
  *What is foregrounded in narratives? Hypotheses for the cognitive basis of foregrounding *Brita Wårvik
  *From legal knowledge to legal discourse - and back again *Lita Lundquist
  *Conditionals: Your space or mine? *Anne Marie Bülow-Møller
  *Communicative fragments and the interpretation of discourse *Martina Björklund
  Drawing the line: A contested conceptual model in Danish 'child care talk' *Peter Harder