Discourse and Context: A Sociocognitive Approach (Hardcover)

Teun A. Professor Van Dijk

ISBN 10: 0521895596 / ISBN 13: 9780521895590

Published by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008

About this Item

Hardcover. 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. How do social situations influence language use and conversation? This book is the first to discuss and develop a theory of 'context' and its relationship to communication. Traditionally, the context of an expression has been defined as an objective social variable (such as gender, class or age of speakers). Teun van Dijk argues that it is not the social situation that influences (or is influenced by) conversation, but the way the participants define such a situation. Contexts are therefore subjective constructs designed and updated in interaction by participants as members of groups and communities. If contexts were 'objective' social conditions or constraints, all people in the same social situation would speak in the same way. Contexts are participant constructs and the main hypothesis of the theory of context is therefore a socio-cognitive one - it can show how communication depends on - and influences - the context. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780521895590

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Discourse and Context: A Sociocognitive Approach (Hardcover)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521895596
• ISBN 13: 9780521895590
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Discusses and develops a theory of 'context' - how do social situations influence language use and conversation?

About the Author

Teun A. van Dijk was Professor of Discourse Studies at the University of Amsterdam until 2004, and is at present Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. After earlier work on generative poetics, text grammar, and the psychology of text processing, his work since 1980 has taken a more critical perspective and deals with discursive racism, news in the press, ideology, knowledge and context. He is the author of several books in most of these areas, and edited The Handbook of Discourse Analysis (four volumes, 1985) the introductory book Discourse Studies (two volumes, 1997) as well as the reader The Study of Discourse (five volumes, 2007). He has founded six international journals - Poetics, Text (now Text & Talk), Discourse & Society, Discourse Studies, Discourse & Communication and the internet journal in Spanish Discurso & Sociedad (www.dissoc.org) - of which he still edits the latter four. His last monographs in English are Ideology (1998) and Racism and Discourse in Spain and Latin America (2005), and his last edited book (with Ruth Wodak) is Racism at the Top (2000). He is currently completing a new interdisciplinary study in two volumes on the theory of context, and planning a new book on discourse and knowledge. Van Dijk, who holds two honorary doctorates, has lectured widely in many countries, especially Latin America. With Adriana Bolivar he founded the Asociación Latino-Americana de Estudios del Discurso (ALED), in 1995. For a list of publications, recent articles, resources for discourse studies and other information, see www.discourses.org.