In our everyday life, communicative processes are relevant in almost all situations. It is important to know whether you should say something which is adequate in the situation or whether it is better to say nothing at all. Communicative competence is fundamental for a successful life in our society as it is of great importance for all areas of life. Therefore, it is not surprising that communicative competence is the subject of many theoretical and empirical approaches and, in consequence, research on this topic is diverse. We focus our contributions on linguistic aspects of communication. In the centre of interest are linguistic oriented performances of different forms of communicative competence, language acquisition, and language disorders. The topics of this book concern the description of methods for studying language in the brain, the interaction between language and cognition, discourse acquisition of children, literacy acquisition and its precursors, the use and acquisition of the sign language, models and training of writing and reading, nonverbal communicative competence, media competence, communication training, developmental dyslexia, the treatment of stuttering, and the description of language disorders.

From the contents:

Introduction to the handbook series, Karlfried Knapp and Gerd Antos; Introduction

I. Foundations 1. The concept of communicative competence, Gert Rickheit, Hans Strohner †, and Constanze Vorwerg

II. Acquisition 2. Language and neurophysiological development, Ralph-Axel Müller and Erica Palmer; 3. Cognitive foundations, Katharina J. Rohlfing; 4. First utterances, Holly L. Storkel; 5. Discourse acquisition, Clair Pond and Michael Siegal; 6. Literacy acquisition and its precursors, Pekka Niemi; 7. Sign language acquisition, Vivian Gramley

III. Adult competence 8. Speaking and listening, Thomas Holtgraves; 9. Writing and reading, Elke Prestin; 10. Nonverbal communicative competence, Nancy M. Puccinelli; 11. Media competence, Daniel Perrin and Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow

IV. Competence training 12. Communication training, Annette Lepschy; 13. Coping with the needs of presentation, Mike Allen, Nancy Burrell, and John Bourhis; 14. Training of writing and reading, Eva-Maria Jakobs and Daniel Perrin

V. Language therapy 15. Developmental dyslexia: A developmental neurolinguistic approach, Virgina W. Berninger, William Nagy, Todd Richards, and Wendy Raskind; 16. Language disorders, Martina Hielscher-Fastabend; 17. The nature and treatment of stuttering, Ashley Craig