Language and Social Cognition: Expression of the Social Mind (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [tilsm], 206)

Main description: This interdisciplinary volume provides a novel perspective on social aspects of language. It views ways of how the acquisition and management of knowledge of ourselves and others is reflected in language. Hence, by combining the two disciplines social cognition and linguistics, it proceeds beyond cognitive linguistics by examining language from a wider perspective including cultural issues Introduction: linguistic structures as carriers of social-cognitive functions / Hanna Pishwa -- Section I: Social cognition and language: 1. The origin of the social approach in language and cognitive research exemplified by studies into the origin of language / Nathalie Gontier -- 2. Fused Bodies: Sense-making as a phenomenon of interacting, knowledgeable, social bodies / Anders R. Hougaard & Gitte R. Hougaard -- 3. Supracultural models, universalism and relativism: Chinese and American views of personhood / Jason D. Patent -- 4. On collective cognition / Farzad Sharifian -- 5. The development of Turkish and Finnish words related to privacy / Mai Kuha and M. Ali Bolgün -- Section II: Social cognition and discourse : 6. The creative construction of social orientation : Situated positioning with English as a lingua franca / Andreas Langlotz -- 7. Distributed cognition and play in the quest for the double helix / David Ritchie -- 8. Social Aspects of Verbal Irony Use / Roger J. Kreuz and Gina M. Caucci -- 9. Conversational pragmatics and social cognition / Thomas Holtgraves and Blake M. Anderson -- 10. Corporate self-presentation and self-centredness: a case for cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis / Veronika Koller -- 11. Constructing knowledge schemas in the workplace: A microanalysis / Susan Bridges and Brendan Bartlett -- Section III: Social cognitive functions of single structures: 12. Attribution Theories Wired Into Linguistic Categories / Klaus Fieder and Peter Freytag -- 13. Metaphor in mental representations of space, time and society: the cognitive linguistics approach / Paul Chilton -- 14. Emotion talk and emotional talk: cognitive and discursive perspectives / Monika Bednarek -- 15. From motion to emotion to interpersonal function: The case of fear predicates / Eliza Kitis -- 16. Tuned to hidden messages: Exploring recurrent word combinations in English / Rainer Schulze In a collection of 16 papers, eminent scholars from several disciplines present diverse and yet cohering perspectives on the expression of social knowledge, its acquisition and management. Hence, the volume is an attempt to view the social functions of language in a novel, systematic way. Such an approach has been missing due to the complexity of the matter and the emphasis on purely cognitive properties of language. The volume starts with a presentation of overarching issues of the social nature of humans and their language, providing strong evidence for the social fundaments of human nature and their reflection in language and culture. The second section demonstrates how social functions can be displayed in discourse by using language play and humor, irony and attributions as well as references to social schemas. The chapters in the third part examine a wide range of particular linguistic elements carrying social-cognitive functions. An important finding is that social-cognitive functions have to be inferred on the basis of social knowledge, frequently with the help of non-verbal cues, since languages offer only few direct expressions for them. In other words, linguistic devices used to express social content tend to be multifunctional. Interestingly, this multifunctionality does not prevent their rapid recognition. The volume presents valuable information to linguists by widening the cognitive-linguistic framework and by contributing to a better understanding of the role of pragmatics. It is also beneficial to social and cognitive psychologists by offering a broader view on the encoding and decoding of social aspects. Finally, it offers a number of fruitful ideas to students of cultural and communication studies. Provides a different perspective on social aspects of language. This work views ways of how the acquisition and management of knowledge of ourselves and others is reflected in language.