Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T04:11:01.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Language as shaped by social interaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

N. J. Enfield
N. J. Enfield
Affiliation:
Language and Cognition Group, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, 6500 AH, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Nick.Enfield@mpi.nlhttp://www.mpi.nl/Members/NickEnfield
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Language is shaped by its environment, which includes not only the brain, but also the public context in which speech acts are effected. To fully account for why language has the shape it has, we need to examine the constraints imposed by language use as a sequentially organized joint activity, and as the very conduit for linguistic diffusion and change.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 31 , Issue 5 , October 2008 , pp. 519 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. & Feldman, M. W. (1981) Cultural transmission and evolution: A quantitative approach. Princeton University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Chafe, W. (1994) Discourse, consciousness, and time: The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. (1996b) Using language. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croft, W. (2000) Explaining language change: An evolutionary approach. Longman.Google Scholar
Durham, W. H. (1991) Coevolution: Genes, culture, and human diversity. Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enfield, N. J. (2005) Areal linguistics and Mainland Southeast Asia. Annual Review of Anthropology 34:181–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enfield, N. J. (2008) Transmission biases in linguistic epidemiology. Journal of language contact 2:295–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enfield, N. J. & Stivers, T., eds. (2007) Person reference in interaction: Linguistic, cultural, and social perspectives. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foley, W. A. & Van Valin, R. D. Jr. (1984) Functional syntax and universal grammar. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1964) The neglected situation. American Anthropologist 66(6):133–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heritage, J. & Atkinson, J. M. (1984) Introduction. In: Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis, ed. Atkinson, J. M. & Heritage, J., pp. 1–15. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hutchins, E. (1995) Cognition in the wild. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hutchins, E. (2006) The distributed cognition perspective on human interaction. In: Roots of human sociality: Culture, cognition and interaction, ed. Enfield, N. J. & Levinson, S. C., pp. 375–98. Berg.Google Scholar
McNeill, D. (1992) Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Nettle, D. (1999) Linguistic diversity. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pawley, A. & Syder, F. (2000) The one clause at a time hypothesis. In: Perspectives on fluency, ed. Riggenbach, H., pp. 163–91. University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Richerson, P. J. & Boyd, R. (2005) Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Rogers, E. M. (1995) Diffusion of innovations, 4th edition. The Free Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A. & Jefferson, G. (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50(4):696–735.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (2006) Interaction: The infrastructure for social institutions, the natural ecological niche for language, and the arena in which culture is enacted. In: Roots of human sociality: Culture, cognition, and interaction, ed. Enfield, N. J. & Levinson, S. C., pp. 70–96. Berg.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (2007) Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis, vol. 1. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G. & Sacks, H. (1977) The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53(2):361–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sidnell, J. (2007) Comparative studies in conversation analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology 36:229–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, D. (2006) Why a deep understanding of cultural evolution is incompatible with shallow psychology. In: Roots of human sociality: Culture, cognition, and interaction, ed. Enfield, N. J. & Levinson, S. C., pp. 431–49. Berg.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (1995) Language is not an instinct (Review of Pinker 1994). Cognitive Development 10:131–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2004) What kind of evidence could refute the UG hypothesis? A commentary on Wunderlich. Studies in Language 28(3):642–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar