The Socio-Cognitive Approach to Communication and Pragmatics

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.

Summarizes the main tenets of the socio-cognitive approach to communication and pragmatics Brings together seemingly antagonistic factors to explain production and comprehension in the communicative process It attempts to include communication taking place not in the first language (L1)

Auteur

ISTVAN KECSKES is Distinguished Professor of the State University of New York, Albany. He is the President of the American Pragmatics Association and the Chinese as a Second Language Research Association. His book Foreign language and mother tongue (Erlbaum 2000) was the first that described the effect of the second language on the first language. His monograph Intercultural Pragmatics (OUP, 2014) is considered a groundbreaking work shaping research in the field. His latest monograph is English as a Lingua Franca: The pragmatics perspective (CUP, 2019). He is the editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Pragmatics (CUP 2022) and the founding editor of the journals Intercultural Pragmatics, and Chinese as a Second Language Research, and the Mouton Series in Pragmatics

Contenu
Part I. General Issues.- Chapter 1. The socio-cognitive approach as a theoretical framework.- Chapter 2. The paradox of communication: A socio-cognitive approach to pragmatics.- Chapter 3. Intercultural communication and our understanding of language.- Chapter 4. Impoverished pragmatics? The semantics-pragmatics interface from an intercultural perspective.- Part II. Pragmatic competence and linguistic creativity.- Chapter 5. How does pragmatic competence develop in bilinguals?.- Chapter 6. Linguistic creativity in English as a Lingua Franca.- Chapter 7. Why do we say what we say the way we say it?.- Part III. Context and Salience.- Chapter 8. Dueling contexts: A dynamic model of meaning.- Chapter 9. Context-sensitivity in intercultural impoliteness.- Chapter 10. The role of context in English as a Lingua Franca.- Chapter 11. The interplay of recipient design and salience in shaping speaker's utterance.- Part IV. Common Ground and Background Knowledge.- Chapter 12. Activating, seeking and creating common ground: A socio-cognitive approach.- Chapter 13. On the dynamic relations between common ground and presupposition.- Chapter 14. The interplay of linguistic, conceptual and encyclopedic knowledge in meaning production and comprehension.- Chapter 15. Processing implicatures in English as a Lingua Franca communication.- Chapter 16. Formulaic language and its place in intercultural pragmatics.