LINGUIST List 9.1260

Fri Sep 11 1998

Books: Cognitive Ling

Editor for this issue: Martin Jacobsen <martylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Robert Sidor, New book: Cognitive Linguistics

THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Language Structure
Edited by
Michael Tomasello, Emory University

The history of psychological approaches to the study of language has
included periods of little communication between the disciplines of
linguistics and psychology, and periods where each field drew upon the
theories and methods of the other in limited--and often
limiting--ways. This book represents a new approach that may define
the next era in the relationship between psychology and
linguistics. It does so by presenting the evolving linguistic theories
collectively known as Cognitive-Functional Linguistics in terms that
are intended to be accessible to cognitive scientists interested in
how language works psychologically. In contrast to the Chomskian
linguistic theories with which most psychologists today are familiar,
the cognitive-functional approach of these linguists focuses on the
things people communicate about (communicative functions) and the
social conventions by means of which they do so (linguistic symbols
and structures). The chapters in this book were all written by
linguists who are leading proponents of this approach and edited by a
psychologist committed to bringing this new way of looking at language
into the mainstream of psychology. The volume promises to give
psychologists a new appreciation of what this variety of linguistics
can offer their study of language and communication, as well as to
provide cognitive-functional linguists new models for presenting their
work to audiences outside the boundaries of traditional linguistics.

0-8058-2576-2 [cloth]/1998/312pp./$65.00 0-8058-2577-0
[paper]/1998/312pp./$29.95 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Orderserlbaum.com

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