No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Arenas of Language Use
Abstract
When we think of the ways we use language, we think of face-to-face conversations, telephone conversations, reading and writing, and even talking to oneself. These are arenas of language useâtheaters of action in which people do things with language. But what exactly are they doing with language? What are their goals and intentions? By what processes do they achieve these goals? In these twelve essays, Herbert H. Clark and his colleagues discuss the collective nature of languageâthe ways in which people coordinate with each other to determine the meaning of what they say. According to Clark, in order for one person to understand another, there must be a "common ground" of knowledge between them. He shows how people infer this "common ground" from their past conversations, their immediate surroundings, and their shared cultural background. Clark also discusses the means by which speakers design their utterances for particular audiences and coordinate their use of language with other participants in a language arena. He argues that language use in conversation is a collaborative process, where speaker and listener work together to establish that the listener understands the speaker's meaning. Since people often use words to mean something quite different from the dictionary definitions of those words, Clark offers a realistic perspective on how speakers and listeners coordinate on the meanings of words. This collection presents outstanding examples of Clark's pioneering work on the pragmatics of language use and it will interest psychologists, linguists, computer scientists, and philosophers.
... Prior research already used CASA theory to explain that considering theories of interpersonal relationships matters for designing conversational agents, but it becomes even more crucial for the intention of social companionship (Krämer et al., 2011;Strohmann et al., 2022). Stressing the relevance of a bonding relationship corresponds well to common ground theory (Clark, 1992), which we incorporate thus as a second kernel theory into our design approach. The common ground theory is elementary in human-machine interaction, as pointed out by many researchers (e.g., Rothwell et al., 2021;Strohmann et al., 2022;Tolzin & Janson, 2023). ...
... This theory states that when communication partners establish a common understanding, a basis for a fruitful and collaborative conversation is growing (H. Clark, 1992;H. H. Clark, 1996;Koulouri et al., 2016) and applies to non-human interaction partners (in this case, the VLC and the user) as well (Elshan & Ebel, Design Knowledge for Virtual Learning Companions from a Value-centered Perspective Accepted Manuscript 2020; Strohmann et al., 2022). ...
... Moreover, context awareness is desirable (Fischer, 2012) (MR7), e.g., in that the communication style adapts to the situation (Iwase et al., 2021) as well as to the learner's mood (Diederich et al., 2019). To do so, the VLC might be both friendly and admonishing in case of upcoming deadlines and promote the emergence of common ground during the interaction (Clark, 1992;Krämer et al., 2011;Strohmann et al., 2022). Furthermore, to address students' individual challenges (ranging from addressed difficulties in time management and motivation to comprehension gaps), it is relevant that the VLC addresses personal concerns (MR8), potentially enabled by advances of AI in natural language processing (Khosrawi-Rad, Rinn, et al., 2022). ...
The increasing popularity of conversational agents such as ChatGPT has sparked interest in their potential use in educational contexts but undermines the role of companionship in learning with these tools. Our study targets the design of virtual learning companions (VLCs), focusing on bonding relationships for collaborative learning while facilitating students' time management and motivation. We draw upon design science research (DSR) to derive prescriptive design knowledge for VLCs as the core of our contribution. Through three DSR cycles, we conducted interviews with working students and experts, held interdisciplinary workshops with the target group, designed and evaluated two conceptual prototypes, and fully coded a VLC instantiation, which we tested with students in class. Our approach has yielded 9 design principles, 28 meta-requirements, and 33 design features centered around the value-in-interaction. These encompass Human-likeness and Dialogue Management, Proactive and Reactive Behavior, and Relationship Building on the Relationship Layer (DP1,3,4), Adaptation (DP2) on the Matching Layer, as well as Provision of Supportive Content, Fostering Learning Competencies, Motivational Environment, and Ethical Responsibility (DP5-8) on the Service Layer.
... Naturally, this chapter cannot tackle the vast field that is interpersonal communication in its entirety but has to focus on illustrative examples. We will exemplarily discuss Clark's theory of common ground (Clark, 1992), Watzlawick's five axioms of communication (Watzlawick et al., 1967), and linguistic alignment (Pickering et al., 2006). Finally, we will highlight intersections between computer science and communication science where scholars of both disciplines can jointly contribute to the development of sophisticated conversational agents. ...
... In fact, these unimposing interactions are possible only when both interlocutors either know or refer to the same concepts. Addressing this issue, Clark (1992) postulated that interaction partners draw on common ground (i.e., "the sum of their mutual, common, or joint knowledge, beliefs, and suppositions'' [p. 93]) when stepping into communication. ...
... As Krämer et al. (2011) stated when critically reflecting the role (and limits) of common ground in HMC, artificial entities, per default, lack communal common ground unless it is programmed. However, even if such information has been provided to a social machine (e.g., the biological nature of humans, their forms and rules of living together), it might not be able to make sense of it due to a lack of self -awareness (composed of self-knowledge, self-belief, and self-assumption) in a given situation and missing knowledge that other interactants may have an analogous self-awareness in that situation (Clark, 1992). In other words, the social machine does not only need Many social machines also lack appropriate abilities to build up personal common ground with their users as they do not store a "history of joint personal experiences." ...
... We focus on a type of knowledge whose emergence can be traced over an interactional history. In contrast to shared cultural knowledge (Clark, 1992(Clark, , 1996 about interaction types and responses which are likely to be expected to a certain type of first action (as in sales encounters, Mondada & Sorjonen, 2016), knowledge based on shared interactional histories relies on prior joint performances of the same interactional task (Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986;Deppermann, 2018;Deppermann & Schmidt, 2021b). While the emergence of shared cultural knowledge that covers long periods of time is diffuse, hardly traceable, and extremely dispersed, routines based on shared interactional histories are restricted in terms of relevant situations, time-span of emergence, and social distribution. ...
... For anticipating next actions, participants also draw on shared knowledge or common ground. Clark (1992Clark ( , 1996 defines 'common ground' as assumptions about shared knowledge, which participants use to coordinate with each other. Clark (1996) understands routines as part of common ground: "Much of what people take as common ground may be represented in the form of procedures for joint activities. ...
... There are the routine actions, such as shaking hands and offering thanks-when, with whom, and how" (1996: 109). Routines can rely on either 'communal common ground' or 'personal common ground' (Clark, 1992(Clark, , 1996. The former includes what everybody presumably knows in a certain community, however, with various degrees of certainty and sometime depending on culture, region, class, and age. ...
In workplace settings, skilled participants cooperate on the basis of shared routines in smooth and often implicit ways. Our study shows how interactional histories provide the basis for routine coordination. We draw on theater rehearsals as a perspicuous setting for tracking interactional histories. In theater rehearsals, the process of building performing routines is in focus. Our study builds on collections of consecutive performances of the same instructional task coming from a corpus of video-recordings of 30 h of theater rehearsals of professional actors in German. Over time, instructions and their implementations are routinely coordinated by virtue of accumulated shared interactional experience: Instructions become shorter, the timing of responses becomes increasingly compacted and long negotiations are reduced to a two-part sequence of instruction and implementation. Overall, a routine of how to perform the scene emerges. Over interactional histories, patterns of projection of next actions emanating from instructions become reliable and can be used by respondents as sources for anticipating and performing relevant next actions. The study contributes to our understanding of how shared knowledge and routines accumulate over shared interactional experiences in publicly performed and reciprocally perceived ways and how this impinges on the efficiency of joint action.
... This field has long been well researched. We consider selected theories of this kind that are most relevant to companionship (Krämer et al., 2011(Krämer et al., , 2012Skjuve et al., 2021), i.e., the need for belonging (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), the social exchange theory (Blau, 1968;Homans, 1958), the social penetration theory (Altman & Taylor, 1973), the equity theory (Walster et al., 1978), the common ground theory (Clark, 1992), the theory of mind (Carruthers & Smith, 1996;Premack & Woodruff, 1978), and interpersonal trust theory (Rotter, 1980). As social beings, humans have a strong desire for interpersonal relationships motivated by the need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). ...
... Equity contributes to partners feeling valued and satisfied in an interpersonal relationship, which is also relevant for the relationship between humans and machines (Fox and Gambino 2021). The formation of interpersonal relationships requires developing common ground over time (Clark, 1992;Krämer et al., 2011), building the ability to grasp and share the mental perspective of the relationship partner and to predict their actions. This phenomenon is often described as people being "soulmates" or "mindreaders" and defines deep interpersonal relationships that are especially relevant in communication between human interactants (Krämer et al., 2011). ...
... Not only to maximize a better interaction, but also to help establish common ground and mutual language (Danilava et al., 2012;Krämer et al., 2011;Turkle, 2010). When interpersonal relationships are formed, common ground is necessary (Clark, 1992;Krämer et al., 2011) (MR10), which enables the ability to better take the mental perspective of the relationship partner and predict his or her actions (Carruthers & Smith, 1996;Premack & Woodruff, 1978). The virtual companion should therefore use a language that is familiar to the user (Park et al., 2012) (MR11) and must be designed to understand the user's language as well as possible (MR12), as this is an inevitable condition for satisfactory communication . ...
Due to significant technological progress in the field of artificial intelligence, conversational agents have the potential to become smarter, deepen the interaction with their users, and overcome a function of merely assisting. Since humans often treat computers as social actors, theories on interpersonal relationships can be applied to human-machine interaction. Taking these theories into account in designing conversational agents provides the basis for a collaborative and benevolent long-term relationship, which can result in virtual companionship. However, we lack prescriptive design knowledge for virtual companionship. We addressed this with a systematic and iterative design science research approach, deriving meta-requirements and five theoretically grounded design principles. We evaluated our prescriptive design knowledge by taking a two-way approach, first instantiating and evaluating the virtual classmate Sarah, and second analyzing Replika, an existing virtual companion. Our results show that with virtual companionship, conversational agents can incorporate the construct of companionship known from human-human relationships by addressing the need to belong, to build interpersonal trust, social exchange, and a reciprocal and benevolent interaction. The findings are summarized in a nascent design theory for virtual companionship, providing guidance on how our design prescriptions can be instantiated and adapted to different domains and applications of conversational agents.
... Since George Miller's classic studies in the early 1960s (e.g., Miller 1962 ), most work on sentence processing has been rooted in what Clark (1992 ) has called the "language -as-product " tradition (for a recent review , see T anenhaus and Trueswell , 1995 ). Research in this tradition has focused primarily on how readers and listeners recover the linguistic structure of a written sentence or a spoken utterance . ...
... Given the central role context has played in recent work, it is important to note that the view of context dominating the language -as-product tradi-tion differs from the view of context within a second tradition in language processing research , which focuses on the pragmatics of language use. According to this Illanguage -as-action" tradition, the interpretation of an utterance , including the interpretation of individual words, is inextricably contextualized to a particular time, place, and circumstance (Clark 1992). Crucially, from the language -as-action perspective , the linguistic processing that accompanies comprehension cannot be divorced from the relevant behavioral context in which comprehension takes place. ...
The contributions to this volume, the sixteenth in the prestigious Attention and Performance series, revisit the issue of modularity, the idea that many functions are independently realized in specialized, autonomous modules.
Although there is much evidence of modularity in the brain, there is also reason to believe that the outcome of processing, across domains, depends on the synthesis of a wide range of constraining influences. The twenty-four chapters in Attention and Performance XVI look at how these influences are integrated in perception, attention, language comprehension, and motor control. They consider the mechanisms of information integration in the brain; examine the status of the modularity hypothesis in light of efforts to understand how information integration can be successfully achieved; and discuss information integration from the viewpoints of psychophysics, physiology, and computational theory.
Bradford Books imprint
... Speakers can choose concealment as an attitude towards overhearers. While real-life speakers are not responsible for what is or is not understood by overhearers, speakers in movies/TV may try to conceal some information from another fictional participants while keeping it obvious to the audience as an overhearer (Clark 1992). Speakers' meaning is recognized by the audience because of the communal common ground (Clark 1992: 257) it shares with the characters. ...
... However, since her male colleagues are having trouble with understanding it, she continues and uses the second, commonly known neutral time-related menstrual euphemism, "Time of the Month. " Roy realizes what Jen is referring to and produces a truncator (Clark 1992: 291) utterance in line 4. Moss, however, still has troubles understanding, so Jen continues with her explanation and truncation. Next, she uses a nature-related euphemism ("High Tide" [line 9]), and after that, another common euphemism, "Closed for Maintenance. ...
This paper analyses menarche episodes from TV series using the discourse-historical approach to compare how menarche has been depicted on TV during different decades and takes a closer look into inter-generational experience of menarche. The analysis focuses on membership categorization analysis of the scenes and dialogues involving menarche. After analyzing several decades of menstrual discourse, it is possible to conclude that TV discourse has changed from depicting menarche as a shameful taboo to a powerful visual storyline statement. However, the menarche scenarios did not change dramatically and continue to rely heavily on a mother-daughter bonding plot and highlight childbearing as the main and sometimes the only positive aspect of menstruation. The continuous use of menstruational euphemisms is still predominating the TV discourse.
... However, listeners are able (and likely) to draw social inferences from a speaker's linguistic behavior regardless of whether the speaker meant to produce a particular impression or not (see Acton, 2022;Beltrama, 2020;Eckert, 2019, for further discussion). Even though pragmatic and social inferences have typically been studied independently of one another, leading scholars in the study of linguistic communication have argued that the two kinds of inferences should jointly be seen as part and parcel of language's ability to convey meaning at different levels (Clark, 1992;Eckert, 2019;Eckert & Labov, 2017;Ochs, 1992;Silverstein, 1985). Especially prominent, in this perspective, is work exploring the link between a speaker's pragmatic behavior and politeness inferences, a variety of social inferences that listeners draw about the type of interpersonal relationship that a speaker aims to establish with the interlocutor -e.g., how respectful, tactful, rude or threatening towards the interlocutor the speaker comes across as depending on the amount and type of information communicated. ...
... Moreover, our results cohere with prior efforts to study pragmatic inferences within a social context (e.g., Bonnefon et al., 2009;Fairchild et al., 2020;Gweon et al., 2018;Mazzarella et al., 2018) but show that the scope of the social inferences invited by pragmatic behavior is extremely broad, as it also extends to how the speaker is evaluated along traits that bear on their personality, and can be framed within psychological models developed to capture the evaluation of human behavior (Fiske, 2018;Fiske et al., 2002;Fiske et al., 1999;Judd et al., 2005). This, in turn, highlights linguistic communication as "a paradigm case of social interaction" (Sperber & Wilson, 1997) -a domain of human action that allows interlocutors to jointly draw inferences on both the descriptive and the social plane, and in ways that cannot be thought of as fully independent of one another (see also Clark, 1992;Eckert, 2019;Levinson, 1983;Silverstein, 1985, and 2.1). ...
Listeners systematically extract two types of information from linguistic utterances: information about the world, and information about the speaker – i.e., their social background and personality. While both varieties of content have been widely investigated across different approaches to the study of language, research in pragmatics has mostly focused on the former kind. Here we ask how listeners reason about a speaker’s conversational choices to form an impression about their personality. In three experiments, we show that a speaker’s adherence to, or violation of, the pragmatic principles of Relevance and Informativeness, as well as the reasons underlying these violations, affect the evaluation of the speaker’s personality along the core social dimensions of Warmth and Competence. These findings highlight the value of enriching work in pragmatics with insights from sociolinguistics and social psychology about how people reason about human speech to draw inferences about the identity and personality of their interlocutors.
... Within cognitive science, it has long been recognized that communication is a joint effort (see e.g., Grice, 1975;Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986;Clark, 1992), during which two or more interlocutors align their mental states (e.g., Brennan and Clark, 1996). It has been shown that humans employ audience design processes, in other words, they adapt their language to their interlocutor (Clark and Marshall, 1981). ...
... The psycholinguistic literature is rich of interesting studies about how humans adapt their language taking into account their interlocutor's characteristics and prior experiences (global level) as well as cues that emerge as the dialogue unfolds (local level), or the interplay between these two levels. Such studies are carried out by letting subjects interact through repeated reference games (Krauss and Weinheimer, 1964;Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986;Clark, 1992;Gann and Barr, 2014). Based on these experiments several theoretical models of human adaptive ability have been proposed. ...
Communication is a dynamic process through which interlocutors adapt to each other. In the development of conversational agents, this core aspect has been put aside for several years since the main challenge was to obtain conversational neural models able to produce utterances and dialogues that at least at the surface level are human-like. Now that this milestone has been achieved, the importance of paying attention to the dynamic and adaptive interactive aspects of language has been advocated in several position papers. In this paper, we focus on how a Speaker adapts to an interlocutor with different background knowledge. Our models undergo a pre-training phase, through which they acquire grounded knowledge by learning to describe an image, and an adaptive phase through which a Speaker and a Listener play a repeated reference game. Using a similar setting, previous studies focus on how conversational models create new conventions; we are interested, instead, in studying whether the Speaker learns from the Listener's mistakes to adapt to his background knowledge. We evaluate models based on Rational Speech Act (RSA), a likelihood loss, and a combination of the two. We show that RSA could indeed work as a backbone to drive the Speaker toward the Listener: in the combined model, apart from the improved Listener's accuracy, the language generated by the Speaker features the changes that signal adaptation to the Listener's background knowledge. Specifically, captions to unknown object categories contain more adjectives and less direct reference to the unknown objects.
... Prior research already used CASA theory to explain that considering theories of interpersonal relationships matters for CA design (Krämer, Eimler, Pütten, & Payr, 2011;Strohmann et al., 2022). For instance, this paper takes up that establishing a common ground (Clark, 1992) leads to a positive CA perception (Elshan & Ebel, 2020;Strohmann et al., 2022). Furthermore, according to the theory of interpersonal trust (Rotter, 1980), CAs should promote the building of trust by users' to be accepted in the long run Strohmann et al., 2022;Wambsganss, Höch, Zierau, & Söllner, 2021). ...
... Moreover, context-awareness is desirable (Fischer, 2012) (MR7), e.g., in that the communication style adapts to the situation (Iwase, Gushima, & Nakajima, 2021) as well as to the learner's mood (Diederich, Brendel, & Kolbe, 2019). To do so, the VLC might be both, friendly as well as admonishing in case of upcoming deadlines and promote the emergence of common ground during the interaction (Clark, 1992;Krämer et al., 2011;Strohmann et al., 2022). Furthermore, to address students' individual challenges (ranging from addressed difficulties in time management and motivation to comprehension gaps), it is relevant that the VLC addresses personal concerns (MR8), potentially enabled by advances of AI in natural language processing (Khosrawi-Rad, Rinn, et al., 2022). ...
Conversational agents (CAs) are getting smarter thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, which opens the potential to use them in educational contexts to support (working) students. In addition, CAs are turning toward relationship-oriented virtual companions (e.g., Replika). Synthesizing these trends, we derive the virtual learning companion (VLC), which aims to support working students in their time management and motivation. In addition, we propose design knowledge, which was developed as part of a design science research project. We derive nine design principles, 28 meta-requirements, and 33 categories of design features based on interviews with students and experts, the results of an interdisciplinary workshop, and a user test. We aim to demonstrate how to design VLCs to unfold their potential for individual student support.
... Häufig erklären sie das Handeln der Gesprächsbeteiligten anhand spezifischer, soziologisch-gesprächsanalytischer Verstehens-Konzepte. Dazu gehören z. B. der common ground (Clark 1992;1996) oder der Adressat*innenzuschnitt (recipient design, Sacks et al. 1974, 727). Der common ground beschreibt das Wissen, das die Gesprächsbeteiligten teilen und jeweils für ihre aktuelle Turnproduktion präsupponieren (Deppermann 2018, 113). ...
Wie in Ärzt*innen-Patient*innen-Gesprächen sind auch in geburtsvorbereitenden Gesprächen zwischen Hebammen bzw. Ärzt*innen und Schwangeren Aspekte der Wissensanzeige und -aushandlung sowie eine interaktive Etablierung von common ground von Bedeutung. Wenngleich in der Regel nicht die Behandlung einer Erkrankung, sondern die Geburtsvorbereitung im Fokus steht, müssen die Interagierenden einander in solchen Gesprächen dennoch aufzeigen, über welches Wissen sie verfügen bzw. in welchem Bereich sie Wissensdefizite aufweisen. Dadurch können sie nicht nur die Relevanz bzw. Irrelevanz der Thematisierung
bestimmter Informationen indizieren oder sich epistemisch positionieren, sondern
zugleich eine optimale Vorbereitung beidseitig informierter Akteur*innen auf die Geburt sicherstellen. Der Beitrag untersucht die verschiedenen Verfahren der Anzeige von Wissen und Nicht-Wissen in geburtsvorbereitenden Gesprächen und zeigt diverse Funktionen dieser Wissensanzeigen auf.
... I assume that DSs include the truth commitments T C a (which may be empty) for each participant a. T C a is a set with those propositions to which a is committed in the conversation up to a relevant time. Assertion, as well as other discourse moves, have an effect on the discourse context, i.e., an assertion is viewed as a proposal to change the context set by adding the proposition that the asserted sentence denotes to the CG or, differently put, the assertion of a proposition puts such a proposition on the Table with the intention of adding it to the CG (see Clark and Schaefer 1989;Clark 1992;Ginzburg 1996Ginzburg , 2015Krifka 2008). ...
This paper discusses the discourse contrasts that arise in connection to direct evidentiality in Southern Aymara (henceforth, Aymara), an understudied Andean language. Aymara has two direct evidentials, the enclitic =wa and the covert morpheme -∅, which are used whenever the speaker has the best possible grounds for some proposition. I make the novel observation that a sentence with =wa can be felicitously uttered if the speaker attempts to update the common ground by addressing an issue on the table. In fact, the sentence with =wa that is uttered must be congruent with prior discourse; I tie this to the claim that =wa is a (presentational) focus marker (Proulx in Language Sciences 9(1):91–102, 1987). This paper thus claims that =wa is a marker that combines evidentiality and focus. In contrast, uttering a sentence with -∅ entails that the speaker’s contribution is already in the common ground, which likens this evidential to common ground management operators—there is no congruence requirement in this case. I identify which construction can be used in different discourse settings (conversation openers and telling anecdotes). I implement a formal analysis based on Farkas and Bruce (Journal of Semantics 27:81–118, 2010) and Faller (Semantics and Pragmatics 12(8):1–53, 2019) that links evidentiality and discourse.
... They argue that the dyadic order of logic (truth vs falsity) and the simplified dyadic view of interaction (e.g., roles of speaker and hearer) led to a false belief that the interconnection of reasoning and communication requires a dyadic analysis. The authors aim to illustrate the normativity of polylogue by turning to the studies of natural organization of everyday interaction (e.g., integrating Clark's (1992) and Sacks' (1992) ideas) and participation status (e.g., Goffman's (1981) and Levinson's (1988) work). They demonstrate that dyadic interaction is "just a particular case of polylogue" (p. ...
... Subsequently, children were 1 The familiar name was always provided first to conform to the pragmatics of labeling. This is a specific case of the more general pragmatic principle of providing familiar or shared information before new information (see Clark, 1992). This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. ...
Four studies examined the influence of essentialist information and perceptual similarity on preschoolers’ interpretations of labels. In Study 1, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were less likely to interpret 2 labels for animals as referring to mutually exclusive categories: when the animals were said to share internal, rather than superficial, properties and when the animals were perceptually similar rather than dissimilar. In Study 2, neither internal nor functional property information influenced 4-year-olds’ interpretations of labels for artifacts. Studies 3 and 4 provide baseline data, demonstrating that the domain differences were not due to prior differences in children's lexical knowledge in the 2 domains. These results suggest that children have essentialist beliefs about animals, but not about artifacts, and that these beliefs interact with children's assumptions about word meaning in determining their interpretations of labels.
... According to Aune et al. (2005), CRT postulates that interlocutors and communicative parties make judgments about how much responsibility each of them bears to create a mutual understanding (i.e., co-creation of particular meaning or thought in the listener's mind as intended by the speaker, Clark, 1992). From Grice's perspective (1989), the common goal of communication is to establish a shared understanding and knowledge. ...
By examining how perceived usefulness and ease of use relate to the user’s perception (i.e., communicative responsibility), the communicative behavior of the navigation system (i.e., the landmarks used to give directions), and the context of driving (i.e., familiarity of the driving location), this study applies the theory of communicative responsibility to the technology acceptance model to better understand why users are more likely to adopt certain navigation technologies while driving. We hypothesized that users’ perceived symmetry in communicative responsibility independently and interactively (with communicative behavior of the navigation system and the driving situation) affects perceived ease of use and usefulness of the navigation system. Consequently, the perceived ease of use and usefulness may affect the user’s intention to use the navigation system. This study found that usefulness was a significant predictor of behavioral intention. While driving in a less familiar location, the drivers perceived the navigation system to be more useful. When the navigation system provided location-specific landmarks, such as the name of a local store, drivers who attributed more communicative responsibility to the system were likely to find it useful.
... Para conceber um fluxo de diálogo, onde existam conhecimento de assuntos entre as partes, se faz necessário que as pessoas tenham no início de qualquer diálogo um terreno comum para ambos. Segundo Clark (1992), o terreno comum (em inglês, common ground) é a informação compartilhada por duas ou mais pessoas. Tecnicamente, é a soma de seu conhecimento mútuo, crenças mútuas e suposições mútuas. ...
... The former are the matters which speakers have the right and obligation to know, and the latter are matters that speakers know from report, hearsay and inference. Besides, Sharrock's (1974) "ownership of knowledge", Drew's (1991) "asymmetries of knowledge", Clark's (1992) "common ground" and Kamio's (1997) "territories of information" are all related to the study of knowledge claim and attribution in interaction. These studies have been brought together by Raymond and Heritage (2005) in their exploration of "epistemics" in interaction. ...
Despite an increasing scholarly interest in doctors’ behaviour in online settings, doctors’ epistemic behaviour (i.e. how doctor employs discursive practices to deal with their side and patients’ side knowledge) in online medical consultation (OMC) is still underexplored in research. Drawing on 300 highly rated OMC cases retrieved from dxy.com, a well-known digital health consulting platform in China, this study explores how Chinese pediatricians discursively deploy different types of epistemic behaviour in OMC settings. Data analyses yield three typical types of epistemic behaviour by Chinese pediatricians: strengthening epistemic primacy, mitigating epistemic certainty and showing concerns about parents’ epistemic domain. It is argued that pediatricians conduct epistemic behaviour to win parents’ perceptions of their trustworthiness. The three types of epistemic behaviour are targeted at the three dimensions of trustworthiness – ability, integrity, and benevolence. This study could yield insightful suggestions for online doctors’ strategic choice of discursive practices to promote a trusting doctor–patient relationship and harmonious consulting atmosphere in e-health activities.
... limited value without being integrated in a situated context [e.g., Clark, 1996, Hudley et al., 2020, Bucholtz and Hall, 2005, Labov, 1978, Wittgenstein, 1953, Grice, 1975, Lakoff, 1972, Clark, 1992. But even solving the more restricted problem of formal linguistic competence (e.g., what counts as a valid string of a language) is far from trivial and indeed has been a major goal of modern linguistics. ...
Today's large language models (LLMs) routinely generate coherent, grammatical and seemingly meaningful paragraphs of text. This achievement has led to speculation that these networks are -- or will soon become -- "thinking machines", capable of performing tasks that require abstract knowledge and reasoning. Here, we review the capabilities of LLMs by considering their performance on two different aspects of language use: 'formal linguistic competence', which includes knowledge of rules and patterns of a given language, and 'functional linguistic competence', a host of cognitive abilities required for language understanding and use in the real world. Drawing on evidence from cognitive neuroscience, we show that formal competence in humans relies on specialized language processing mechanisms, whereas functional competence recruits multiple extralinguistic capacities that comprise human thought, such as formal reasoning, world knowledge, situation modeling, and social cognition. In line with this distinction, LLMs show impressive (although imperfect) performance on tasks requiring formal linguistic competence, but fail on many tests requiring functional competence. Based on this evidence, we argue that (1) contemporary LLMs should be taken seriously as models of formal linguistic skills; (2) models that master real-life language use would need to incorporate or develop not only a core language module, but also multiple non-language-specific cognitive capacities required for modeling thought. Overall, a distinction between formal and functional linguistic competence helps clarify the discourse surrounding LLMs' potential and provides a path toward building models that understand and use language in human-like ways.
... The situated and nonsituated aspects of language map onto a distinction made by Clark (1992) between two separate traditions within language research. The language-asproduct tradition has lauded the nonsituated virtues of language: spoken language is an evanescent auditory signal, yet it can be used to refer to objects, people, and events that are not present. ...
... Yet another difference is that pantomiming functions as an instruction when it is used for teaching, while pantomiming narratively is part of forming a common ground (Clark, 1992; see also Tomasello, 2009, p. 67). Hence, when pantomime is used for teaching, it is proto-imperative, while when a pantomime is used communicatively, it is a proto-declarative. ...
The central thesis of this article is that the evolution of teaching is one of the main factors that lead to increasingly complex communicative systems in the hominin species. Following earlier analyses of the evolution of teaching, the following steps are identified: (i) evaluative feedback, (ii) drawing attention, (iii) demonstration and pantomime, (iv) communicating concepts, (v) explaining relations between concepts, and (vi) narrating. For each of these step the communicative and cognitive demands will be analyzed. The focus will be on demonstration and pantomime, since these seem to be the evolutionarily earliest unique human capacities. An important step is the transition from pantomime for teaching to pantomime for informing and how this in turn leads to communicating concepts. As regards explaining relations between concepts, the focus will be of the role of generics in teaching and communication. Analyzing these topics involves combining cognitive science with evolutionary theory, archaeology and theories of communication. Two factors are important as a background: (i) the evolution of prospective planning, that is, planning for future goals, and (ii) the evolution of a theory mind. These capacities are central in explaining how more advanced forms of teaching, communication and cooperation emerged along the hominin line.
... (20) ⟦ja⟧ g = λp<s,t>: g(s0) believes that g(a0) does not actively considers the possibility of ¬p in g(w0) • p where"x actively considers the possibility of " means: x believes that or x tries to resolve the question of whether or ¬ . (Grosz, 2020: 28) German ja signals that a proposition is accepted as true by all the participants of the conversation; in Clark's (1992) terms, it is factual. The definition in (20) entails that the proposition is also marked as uncontroversial. ...
This paper proposes an analysis of the discourse particle (DiP) poi in the Italian as spoken in Vallecamonica, in the north of the country. The data discussed here show that the informal characterizations provided in the literature (e.g., Cognola & Cruschina 2021) are insufficient to capture the meanings of poi described in the paper. The import of the particle is, in fact, one of uncontroversiality and factuality, two concepts related to the notion of common ground management (Krifka 2008). Following Grosz (2020), I propose an analysis in terms of expressive presupposition to capture (i) the presuppositional content activated by poi and (ii) the doxastic dimension of the particle, which only relates to the speaker's beliefs, rather than to the actual common ground.
... Language is not an isolated system. Language is grounded in the physical world and serves to coordinate and achieve common objectives [1,2]. Under this functional perspective, it becomes obvious that language interfaces with many areas of cognition, among others, perception, action and embodiment, and social cognition [3]. ...
Language interfaces with many other cognitive domains. This paper explores how interactions at these interfaces can be studied with deep learning methods, focusing on the relation between language emergence and visual perception. To model the emergence of language, a sender and a receiver agent are trained on a reference game. The agents are implemented as deep neural networks, with dedicated vision and language modules. Motivated by the mutual influence between language and perception in cognition, we apply systematic manipulations to the agents' (i) visual representations, to analyze the effects on emergent communication, and (ii) communication protocols, to analyze the effects on visual representations. Our analyses show that perceptual biases shape semantic categorization and communicative content. Conversely, if the communication protocol partitions object space along certain attributes, agents learn to represent visual information about these attributes more accurately, and the representations of communication partners align. Finally, an evolutionary analysis suggests that visual representations may be shaped in part to facilitate the communication of environmentally relevant distinctions. Aside from accounting for co-adaptation effects between language and perception, our results point out ways to modulate and improve visual representation learning and emergent communication in artificial agents.
... It is a complex socio-cultural artefact, that came to be partly because of cumulative cultural evolution (Tomasello, 1999(Tomasello, , 2014Sterelny, 2016;Christiansen & Chater, 2016). In order to acquire it, one needs specific cognitive abilities (i.e., joint attention: Racine & Carpendale, 2007a, 2007bCarpendale et al., 2007), social experience (common ground: Clark, 1992Clark, , 1996 and it also requires taking part in social practices such as joint attentional frames (Tomasello, 1999). This view on language and social practice can be traced to Lev Vygotsky (1999), who differentiated elementary mental functions such as perception or memory, and higher cognitive abilities such as "voluntary attention". ...
Abstract. In this article we propose an extended approach in terms of Cognitive Pragmatics (CP) to the explanation of the development of the higher cognitive processes. Therefore, we explain in terms of CP how linguistic and pre-linguistic social practices shape the mind. CP, as we understand it here presents a broader transdisciplinary position covering developmental psychology, primatology, comparative psychology, cultural psychology, anthropology and philosophy. We present an argumentation for the thesis that CP provides an explanation to the origins and developmental mechanisms of some of higher mental functions unique to humans. Thus, we want to extend the notion of CP beyond its standard definition by emphasizing the transformative component of communicative acts. In our approach, CP first and foremost examines the cognitive mechanisms underlying social pre-linguistic and linguistic communication. Secondly, it explores how this communication reorganizes and transforms cognitive abilities and processes. We would like to extend the tasks of CP as well, because its goal is to not only describe cognitive processes that enable communication, but also to explain the social mechanisms of transformation of mind and cognition. We provide an example of said mechanisms of development of higher cognitive functions through the account of metacognition
... It happens with a lone monk transcribing a text in his cubicle, a tête-à-tête over coffee, a dinner party, and in a classroom (H. Clark, 1992). Ever since the printing press and the internet, language now happens across millions of readers throughout a large community as well (Masten, Stallybrass, & Vickers, 2016;Spivey, 2017;Vosoughi, Roy, & Aral, 2018). ...
... The major concern raised by these results are related to how this decreased uncertainty affects traffic safety. Shared space therefore also needs to be studied from the car driver's perspective in order to understand the interaction between different road user groups, i.e., to understand whether car drivers share a common ground (Clark, 1993) of uncertainty with pedestrians. ...
Background: Shared spaces, in the context of road transport, often refer to areas shared by un�protected and protected road users and intended to facilitate a living city space for every-one. A
basic idea behind shared spaces is to create traffic safety by inducing some uncertainty. This study
investigates how young, middle-aged, and elderly pedestrians experience shared space, as well as
whether and, if so, how two shared space designs (without and with large flowerpots) affect this
experience.
Method: Thirty-seven participants, divided into three age groups, participated in the study, con�ducted in Fisherman’s Square, V¨
astervik, Sweden. An adjacent non-signal-regulated pedestrian
crossing was used as a control. Two studies – visual scanning and Q studies – were combined. In
the visual scanning study, eye-tracking examined how the two designs affected the participants’
visual scanning behaviour (i.e., what participants looked at) as pedestrians. In the Q-study, Q�methodology was used to examine how the two designs affected the participants’ experiences as
pedestrians.
Results: The visual scanning study showed that different age groups were affected in different
ways by designs without and with large flowerpots in the shared space. While the middle-aged
participants always glanced more often at traffic-relevant objects, and young participants al�ways glanced equally often at traffic-relevant and non-traffic-relevant objects, the elderly par�ticipants changed their visual scanning behaviour depending on the design. Without large
flowerpots deployed, the elderly participants glanced more often at traffic-relevant than non�traffic-relevant objects. No such difference was obtained when large flowerpots were deployed.
The Q-study showed that participants, regardless of age, experienced no great uncertainty in this
shared space. The perceived uncertainty, which nevertheless existed, was reduced with large
flowerpots deployed to recreate the traditional division with clear zones where pedestrians could
stay in relatively car-free areas while motor vehicles had clear paths to travel along.
Conclusion: The results suggest that shared space, without large flowerpots, succeeded in inducing
some uncertainty, especially among middle-aged and elderly pedestrians. However, deploying
large flowerpots seemed to decrease this uncertainty, especially among elderly pedestrians. The
major concern prompted by these results is how this decreased uncertainty affects traffic safety.
Shared space also needs to be studied from the car driver’s perspective to understand the inter�action between different road user groups
... Por último, o agente relacional é basicamente um agente conversacional com traços humanizados, o que afere um engajamento de longo prazo para a aplicação que dispõe deste recurso. No caso deste trabalho, almeja-se prototipar uma aplicação a fim de alcançar um engajamento de longo prazo com usuários idosos utilizando, para esse fim, a técnica common ground.Segundo[2], o common ground é a informação compartilhada por duas ou mais pessoas. Tecnicamente, é a soma de seu conhecimento mútuo, crenças mútuas e suposições mútuas. ...
Por conta do crescente isolamento de idosos em casa, estes podemse encontrar cada vez mais solitários e deprimidos. Emcontrapartida, existe a figura dos cuidadores de idosos, quepossuem um papel primordial na preservação da saúde dessesidosos e também na diminuição da solidão dos mesmos. Porém,em um futuro não muito distante, talvez se torne escassa adisponibilidade deste profissional no mercado para atender àcrescente demanda decorrente do observável envelhecimento dapopulação mundial. Tendo isso em vista, o foco deste trabalho é oenvelhecimento saudável e a promoção da autonomia do idoso. Osagentes relacionais são chatbots com características humanas(nome, voz, emoções, opiniões, etc.), eles têm o potencial depossibilitar um engajamento maior entre o usuário e a aplicação.Neste sentido, este trabalho, de caráter quanti-quali, exploratório eexperimental, visa explorar formas de se assegurar o engajamentode longo prazo entre idosos e agentes relacionais no intuito demitigar o problema da solidão tão presente na sociedade moderna.Essa investigação busca entender as potencialidades do uso deagentes conversacionais embarcados em alto-falantes inteligentesna interação com 7 (sete) idosos com idade superior a 60 anos noambiente domiciliar durante um mês. Para a construção de talsaber, propõem-se um experimento Mágico de Oz, Instrumento decoleta de dados: embasado nos dados obtidos via ferramenta daspessoas do círculo social do idoso, que está devidamenteregistrado na Plataforma Brasil sob o número CAAE46437621.7.0000.5534, Mágico de Oz, por meio do qual o autorinterage diretamente com as pessoas idosas por meio dodispositivo Echo Dot. Esse experimento assegura que o idosoimaginará que a interação se dará entre ele e o agenteconversacional, quando, na verdade, o autor fará o papel doagente. O autor seguirá um protocolo de pesquisa que lheassegurará a devida análise do corpus de interação produzido, quelhe servirá de base para avaliação das oportunidades e riscos que atecnologia oferece. O protocolo de interação será construído apartir da construção prévia de um banco de dados de informaçõesrelevantes dos sujeitos de pesquisa com base no common groundobtido. Portanto, o intuito desta pesquisa é de identificar oselementos comunicacionais que melhoram o engajamento dousuário idoso com interfaces de voz e, a partir desses achados,criar diretrizes para futuros pesquisadores e desenvolvedores deagentes relacionais dirigidos ao público idoso.
... These models are then used to adapt the interaction to the respective agent. Common ground (Clark 1992) between communicating situated agents is the notion that affirms that all agents involved in the interaction have constructed appropriate models of each other to an extent sufficient for the purpose of the current interaction. Figure 4 depicts the pairs of (FBS) models that have to adequately match to establish the common ground between two agents. ...
... The roots of contemporary studies of human communication trace back to mentalist readings of work done in the philosophy of language by Austin (1962), Grice (1989) and Searle (1969Searle ( , 1979, as well as to later attempts to formalize their theories in a computational perspective (e.g., Allen & Perrault, 1980;Cohen & Perrault, 1979;Cohen, Morgan, & Pollack, 1990). The overall framework so developed was then adopted by researchers more interested in understanding the actual functioning and activities of the human mind (e.g., Airenti, Bara, & Colombetti, 1993;Clark, 1992Clark, , 1996Sperber & Wilson, 1986;Tirassa, 1997Tirassa, , 1999a. ...
... (20) ⟦ja⟧ g = λp<s,t>: g(s0) believes that g(a0) does not actively considers the possibility of ¬p in g(w0) • p where"x actively considers the possibility of " means: x believes that or x tries to resolve the question of whether or ¬ . (Grosz, 2020: 28) German ja signals that a proposition is accepted as true by all the participants of the conversation; in Clark's (1992) terms, it is factual. The definition in (20) entails that the proposition is also marked as uncontroversial. ...
This paper proposes an analysis of the discourseparticle (DiP) poi in the Italian as spoken in Vallecamonica, in the north of the country. The data discussed here show that the informal characterizations provided in the literature (e.g., Cognola & Cruschina 2021) are superfluous to capture the meanings of poi described in the paper. The import of the particle is, in fact, one of uncontroversiality and factuality, two concepts related to the notion of common ground management (Krifka 2008). Following Grosz (2020), I propose an analysis in terms of expressive presupposition to capture (i) the presuppositional content activated by poi and (ii) the doxastic dimension of the particle, which only relates to the speaker’s beliefs, rather than to the actual common ground.
This study comprehensively analyzes ostensible refusals, a type of ostensible communicative act. The research utilizes the Joint Action theory framework proposed by Clark to highlight the functions and structure of this communicative act in Jordanian culture. The data of the study is collected through informal interviews with twenty participants and direct observation and recalls, and a qualitative analysis is conducted. The study shows that, like other cultures, ostensible refusals in Jordan often follow a multipartite structure like ‘invite-refuse-invite-accept’ and are characterized as immediate, unmitigated, and short. These refusals play crucial roles in different contexts, such as avoiding support, responding to compliments, mitigating embarrassment, adhering to cultural rituals, fostering customer loyalty, expressing frustration, and negotiating offers. The research significantly contributes to understanding the complexity of verbal interactions and cultural communication practices in Jordan.
In this article, I argue that centering multimodal practices is important in the study of human communication and sociality, and becomes particularly relevant in the presence of asymmetries in language access. Using data collected as part of a two-year linguistic ethnography of deaf youth in Iquitos, Peru, I demonstrate how three siblings engage in extended dispute routines even in the face of sensory and communicative asymmetries. The microanalysis of video-recorded sibling interaction sheds light on their use of diverse multimodal resources to navigate the common interactional work of securing an interlocutor, coordinating attention, managing misunderstandings, and establishing shared references (Sidnell 2007, 2009). Not only do the siblings utilize multimodal resources to carry out the interactional project of making an accusation and building alliances, but they also ‘co-operatively’ engage in building a shared semiotic repertoire (C. Goodwin 2018). (Deaf, sign language, linguistic ethnography, multimodality, semiotic repertoire, Peru)*
Purpose
We examined which measures of complexity are most informative when studying language produced in interaction. Specifically, using these measures, we explored whether native and nonnative speakers modified the higher level properties of their production beyond the acoustic–phonetic level based on the language background of their conversation partner.
Method
Using a subset of production data from the Wildcat Corpus that used Diapix, an interactive picture matching task, to elicit production, we compared English language production at the dyad and individual level across three different pair types: eight native pairs (English–English), eight mixed pairs (four English–Chinese and four English–Korean), and eight nonnative pairs (four Chinese–Chinese and four Korean–Korean).
Results
At both the dyad and individual levels, native speakers produced longer and more clausally dense speech. They also produced fewer silent pauses and fewer linguistic mazes relative to nonnative speakers. Speakers did not modify their production based on the language background of their interlocutor.
Conclusions
The current study examines higher level properties of language production in true interaction. Our results suggest that speakers' productions were determined by their own language background and were independent of that of their interlocutor. Furthermore, these demonstrated promise for capturing syntactic characteristics of language produced in true dialogue.
Supplemental Material
https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24712956
This article aims to introduce the notion of panoptic structures as a way of theorizing how people strategically exploit the affordances of digital devices to expose other people's behavior. I argue that Foucault's notion of panopticism becomes relevant in new ways in social life as a consequence of the polymedia repertoires of networked individuals. Central here is the ability to store digital communication and repost it for selected audiences. The data I analyze here were collected from a group of students who had just entered the gymnasium (the Danish equivalent of high school). During the months of multi-sited, online and offline ethnography, a conflict occurred between two groups of students. During this conflict, a repeated activity involved students confronting students from the opposing group with screenshots of their earlier social media activities and doing so in front of larger audiences of other students. On this basis, I argue that a theory of such panoptic practices belongs in the sociolinguistic toolbox. (Panopticism, social media, conflict, polymedia repertoire, audience)*
Compare and contrast the following scenarios. In the first, Betty sends Fred an email saying that she will be in town tomorrow, and then sends the same message to Barney. In the second scenario, Betty addresses the two men jointly with one message. In both scenarios, Barney and Fred are apprised of the fact that Betty will be in town tomorrow, but otherwise their information states are palpably different: whereas in the first scenario they unwittingly share the same information, in the second scenario, it is common ground between the two men that Betty will be in town tomorrow.
Common ground is a central notion in pragmatics, and a fixture in discussions of reference, presupposition, speech acts, implicature, language conventions, fiction, and many other topics related to language use. Stalnaker (2014: 2) introduces common ground as "a body of information that is presumed to be shared by the parties to a discourse", and descriptions like this abound in the literature. However, it is generally understood that common ground "is a sine qua non for everything we do with others---from the broadest joint activities to the smallest joint actions that comprise them." (Clark 1996: 92)
If the context of a discourse is the indefinitely large surroundings of the exchange, common ground is that part of the context that is shared, in some special sense that remains to be elucidated, between interlocutors. The pink marble in my pocket is part of the contexts in which I interact with others, but it isn't common ground until I reveal it to them, verbally, manually, or otherwise. The nature of that special kind of sharing is controversial, and it is our main topic.
The bulk of this entry is devoted to the three main views on common ground: the container view, which treats common ground as a set of possible worlds or propositions; the mentalist view, which takes it to be a structure of mental states; and the normative view, according to which common ground is a structure of normative states. Each of these views is associated with a distinctive take on pragmatics and specifically on how speech acts change the common ground.
Within the realm of language pedagogy, proficient pronunciation skills are deemed a critical component of achieving communicative competence. While previous scholarship has recognized motivation as a significant psychosocial factor in language learning, research on the role of motivation in pronunciation learning has been limited and narrow in scope. Therefore, a thorough examination and analysis of factors related to learners, teachers, and context are needed. The present review endeavors to elucidate the current state of scholarship as to how motivation affects pronunciation learning, and provide suggestions for classroom pedagogy. To this end, the review commences with an explication of concepts germane to learner motivation and related concepts in L2 pronunciation with an emphasis on relevant theoretical frameworks and the application of these frameworks in empirical studies that scrutinize the relationship between L2 pronunciation and motivation learning. Subsequently, the review offers a discussion of the pedagogical implications and recommendations for further research.
Do you want to talk about the linguistic research that you think is important but you don't know where to start? Language is a topic that is relevant to everyone, and linguists are often asked to speak publicly about their research, to a range of lay audiences in the media, politics, festivals and fairs, schools, museums and public libraries. However, relaying this vital information in an engaging way can often feel like an insurmountable task. This accessible guide offers practical advice on how to talk about language to a range of non-academic audiences. It draws on the linguistics behind effective communication to help you have cooperative conversations, and to organize your information for a diverse range of people. It is illustrated with a wealth of examples from real-life scenarios, and includes chapter-by-chapter worksheets, enabling you to make your own fun and interesting language science activities to share with others.
A pervasive aspect of human communication and sociality is argumentation: the practice of making and criticizing reasons in the context of doubt and disagreement. Argumentation underpins and shapes the decision-making, problem-solving, and conflict management which are fundamental to human relationships. However, argumentation is predominantly conceptualized as two parties arguing pro and con positions with each other in one place. This dyadic bias undermines the capacity to engage argumentation in complex communication in contemporary, digital society. This book offers an ambitious alternative course of inquiry for the analysis, evaluation, and design of argumentation as polylogue: various actors arguing over many positions across multiple places. Taking up key aspects of the twentieth-century revival of argumentation as a communicative, situated practice, the polylogue framework engages a wider range of discourses, messages, interactions, technologies, and institutions necessary for adequately engaging the contemporary entanglement of argumentation and complex communication in human activities.
Humorous discourse uses diverse linguistic strategies and devices to elicit laughter from viewers. This paper studies metalinguistic reflection as a creative and cohesive element of humorous discourse. To this end, we analyze a corpus of 50 examples taken from a well-known Spanish comedy TV show. These examples of metalinguistic reflection are then classified according to the linguistic elements involved in each of them (polysemies, folk etymologies, euphemisms, metalinguistic expressions, etc.). The results show that metalinguistic reflection functions as a device of linguistic creativity with a high degree of dynamism in the creation of humorous situations.
El discurso humorístico utiliza diferentes estrategias y recursos lingüísticos para suscitar la risa de los televidentes. Este artículo estudia la reflexión metalingüística como elemento creador y cohesionador del discurso humorístico. Para ello, se analiza un corpus de 50 ejemplos extraídos de una conocida serie de humor española y se clasifican los ejemplos de reflexión metalingüística según los elementos que operan en cada uno de ellos (polisemias, etimologías populares, eufemismos, expresiones metalingüísticas, etc.). En términos de creatividad lingüística, se comprueba que la reflexión metalingüística opera como un recurso que muestra un elevado dinamismo creador de situaciones humorísticas.
O presente capítulo tem como objetivo refletir sobre alguns aspectos importantes da aprendizagem que têm re-flexo nas práticas docentes dos profissionais de Letras e de Linguística-do ponto de vista das abordagens sociais da cognição e dos conceitos de linguagem, contexto e significa-do, como objetos de estudo de uma ciência tanto cognitiva quanto social. Em nossa abordagem (LEITE, 2005, 2010), a aprendizagem enquanto processo cognitivo não pode ser vista apenas como o acesso aos tipos de conhecimento disponíveis em um repositório mental, nem como o processamento linear de informações obtidas pela percepção, mas como um repertório de habilidades e competências múltiplas.
In the middle part of Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1818), Keats stages a night encounter between Isabella and her dead lover Lorenzo, whose spirit appears to her in a vision as a rotting corpse endowed with remarkable—and disturbingly accurate—corporality. This chapter looks at the way in which, in Isabella, Keats investigates and represents the boundary between life and death—with a focus on their embodied aspects—and the possibility of overcoming it. In order to do so, I will take into account his medical training and his familiarity with medical theories of the time. Particular attention will be devoted to Keats’s use of the multifaceted notion of sympathy and the interplay between its different early-nineteenth-century definitions in the poem.
When facing mental health concerns, men seek help less, confront greater stigma in accessing treatment, and experience more severe consequences. Interventions targeted at men are often grounded in activity and situated in appealing contexts, such as sporting or gaming spaces. In this paper, we question how pinball---a social tangible and digital leisure activity---can support men's mental health and wellbeing, through thematic analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews (n=15) with male pinball enthusiasts. Our contribution is threefold: first, we evidence pinball as a context that provides incidental benefits to mental health directly, and indirectly through social connectedness; second, that enthusiasts actively enhance their social lives and resulting wellbeing via pinball; and third, that pinball contexts are suited for designing interventions that provide mental health supports within subcultures that appeal to men. We situate our findings in theories of wellbeing, activity-based communication, shoulder-to shoulder self-disclosure, and the importance of third-spaces for social wellness.
This article examines how the prosody and pragmatic function of repair requests in adult-child interaction provide clues that guide language acquisition. Children respond very early on to prompts for repair, whether such prompts are open requests (how?), restricted requests (what fell off the shelf?) or restricted offers (child: Mom goed to the store; adult: Mom went to the store?). We analyze these three categories of requests to determine (i) which pragmatic functions they fulfill, (ii) what prosodic forms they display, and (iii) how the function-prosody concomitance provides infants with clues for error detection. The data come from the natural interaction between a child and her caregivers from 1;9 to 2;6. Caregivers' requests fulfill specific pragmatic functions, such as asking for clarification, completion, confirmation, among others; and display some exaggerated prosodic cues, as well as intonational patterns of invitation (L* HH%). In restricted offers, children take prosodic form into account in responding to requests. These findings show that adults display concomitant pragmatic-prosody patterns that children process in a multimodal way and not in isolation.
The article presents the problem of eliminating the writing blocks as a process of finding ways, means, and conditions for success in teaching students. The study involved 852 students (of which 84 students of the faculty of oriental studies and history of Pacific State University participated in the formative experiment; while 83 students of the faculty of philology, translation studies and intercultural communication, and faculty of psychology, social and humanitarian technologies made up the control group). The authors propose to unlock the potential of student learning psychology by using qualitative methods of teaching students to understand the phenomenon of writing blocks to reduce them in order to increase the motivation for success in writing a scientific text.
Dog whistling—speech that seems ordinary but sends a hidden, often derogatory message to a subset of the audience—is troubling not just for our political ideals, but also for our theories of communication. On the one hand, it seems possible to dog whistle unintentionally, merely by uttering certain expressions. On the other hand, the intention is typically assumed or even inferred from the act, and perhaps for good reason, for dog whistles seem misleading by design, not just by chance. In this paper, I argue that, to understand when and why it’s possible to dog-whistle unintentionally (and indeed, intentionally), we’ll need to recognize the structure of our linguistic practices. For dog whistles and for covertly coded speech more generally, this structure is a pair of practices, one shared by all competent speakers and the other known only to some, but deployable in the same contexts. In trying to identify these enabling conditions, we’ll discover what existing theories of communicated content overlook by focusing on particular utterances in isolation, or on individual speakers’ mental states. The remedy, I argue, lies in attending to the ways in which what is said is shaped by the temporally extended, socio-politically structured linguistic practices that utterances instantiate.
The use of discourse markers, like that of any other linguistic element, is dependent on contextual factors that interact at the specific moment of an enunciation. The utterers, with the need to adjust their language product to their communicative intentions, perform an analysis of the contextual, material, and relational factors involved, resulting in the choice of the linguistic operators to be used in that particular utterance situation. A first goal of this paper is then to identify those contextual aspects encompassed in such selection, likely indeed to generate problems in the acquisition of affirmative operators by Spanish as Foreign Language learners, and to identify what types of unwanted implicatures can be caused by a lack of adjustment to the context. Subsequently, we introduce a methodological-didactic tool, based on a previously established theoretical framework which comprises these various contextual variables at its own formal level, directed at promoting the processes of acquisition of these markers.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.