Symbols and abbreviations Foreword John J. Gumperz Introduction to the reissue Notes 1. Introduction 2. Summarized argument 3. The argument: intuitive bases and derivative definitions 4. On the nature of the model 5. Realizations of politeness strategies in language 6. Derivative hypotheses 7. Sociological implications 8. Implications for language studies 9. Conclusions Notes References Author index Subject index.

Politeness : Some Universals in Language Usage

How to Do Things With Words

People are capable of thinking about the future, the past, remote locations, another person's perspective, and counterfactual alternatives. Without denying the uniqueness of each process, it is proposed that they constitute different forms of traversing psychological distance. Psychological distance is egocentric: Its reference point is the self in the here and now, and the different ways in which an object might be removed from that point-in time, in space, in social distance, and in hypotheticality-constitute different distance dimensions. Transcending the self in the here and now entails mental construal, and the farther removed an object is from direct experience, the higher (more abstract) the level of construal of that object. Supporting this analysis, research shows (a) that the various distances are cognitively related to each other, (b) that they similarly influence and are influenced by level of mental construal, and (c) that they similarly affect prediction, preference, and action.

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Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance

This paper discusses some principles of critical discourse analy- sis, such as the explicit sociopolitical stance of discourse analysts, and a focus on dominance relations by elite groups and institutions as they are being enacted, legitimated or otherwise reproduced by text and talk. One of the crucial elements of this analysis of the relations between power and discourse is the patterns of access to (public) discourse for different social groups. Theoretically it is shown that in order to be able to relate power and discourse in an explicit way, we need the cognitive interface of models. knowledge, attitudes and ideologies and other social represen- tations of the social mind, which also relate the individual and the social, and the micro- and the macro-levels of social structure. Finally, the argu- ment is illustrated with an analysis of parliamentary debates about ethnic affairs.

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Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis

Preface I. On the Shoulders of Bakhtin and Vygotsky 1. The Woman Who Climbed Up the House 2. A Practice Theory of Self and Identity II. Placing Identity and Agency 3. Figured Worlds 4. Personal Stories in Alcoholics Anonymous 5. How Figured Worlds of Romance Become Desire III. Power and Privilege 6. Positional Identities 7. The Sexual Auction Block IV. The Space of Authoring 8. Authoring Selves 9. Mental Disorder, Identity, and Professional Discourse 10. Authoring Oneself as a Woman in Nepal V. Making Worlds 11. Play Worlds, Liberatory Worlds, and Fantasy Resources 12. Making Alternate Worlds in Nepal 13. Identity in Practice Notes References Credits Index

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Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds

/pdf/learning-to-talk-about-motion-up-and-down-in-tzeltal-is-3zah6ih036.pdf

Learning to talk about motion UP and DOWN in Tzeltal: Is there a language-specific bias for verb learning?

Crosslinguistic perspectives on argument structure: Implications for learnability

The great 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant held a complex sequence of views about the fundamental nature of space. At first he seems to have hoped to reconcile Newton's views about space as an 'absolute' (a sort of 'ethereal stuff), independent of and prior to any of the objects in it, with Leibniz's celebrated 'relativist' view of space where space is nothing but the system of relations between things (or rather 'monads'). Twenty years later in 1768 he published a pamphlet (Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume, On the First Ground of the Distinction of Regions in Space) that seemed to establish the Newtonian view and to force the rejection of Leibniz's views; it is the ideas sketched there that are the focus of this article. Later, though, he came to reject the Newtonian view as well, claiming that space is neither a set of relations between things nor an 'ethereal stuff, but a subjec-

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Immanuel Kant among the Tenejapans: Anthropology as Empirical Philosophy

Daylong at-home audio recordings from 10 Tseltal Mayan children (0;2?3;0; Southern Mexico) were analyzed for how often children engaged in verbal interaction with others and whether their speech environment changed with age, time of day, household size, and number of speakers present. Children were infrequently directly spoken to, with most directed speech coming from adults, and no increase with age. Most directed speech came in the mornings, and interactional peaks contained nearly four times the baseline rate of directed speech. Coarse indicators of children?s language development (babbling, first words, first word combinations) suggest that Tseltal children manage to extract the linguistic information they need despite minimal directed speech. Multiple proposals for how they might do so are discussed.

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Early Language Experience in a Tseltal Mayan Village

Description: This paper surveys the lexical and grammatical resources for talking about spatial relations in the Mayan language Tzeltal for describing where things are located, where they are moving, and how they are distributed in space. Six basic sets of spatial vocabulary are presented: i. existential locative expressions with ay ‘exist’, ii. deictics (demonstratives, adverbs, presentationals), iii. dispositional adjectives, often in combination with (iv) and (v), iv. body part relational noun locatives, v. absolute (‘cardinal’) directions, and vi. motion verbs, directionals and auxiliaries. The first two are used in minimal locative descriptions, while the others constitute the core resources for specifying in detail the location, disposition, orientation, or motion of a Figure in relation to a Ground. We find that Tzeltal displays a relative de-emphasis on deixis and left/right asymmetry, and a detailed attention to the spatial properties of objects. Title of Series: Language, culture and cognition Place of Publication: Cambridge Full Name of Book-Editor(s): Levinson, Stephen C.; Wilkins, David P. Communicated by: Gunter Senft Affiliations: MPI für Psycholinguistik Grammars of Space. Editor: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity Stephcn C. Levinson Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Nij~negen. Edi~or,s: This scries looks at the role of language in human cognition language in both its ~~niversal. aspects. Space in lan~uageand cognition. The partition itself reflects major conceptual This book collects together in one volume closely comparable descriptions cleavages in the domain: stasis vs. and each paper represents a summary of inthe limits to the variation? What kind of semantic typology can be constructed depth research. of spatial language in a dozen languages. which has been subject to extensive mutual discussion. of Book: Grammars of space: Explorations in cognitive diversity

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Penelope Brown

Papers

Learning to talk about motion UP and DOWN in Tzeltal: Is there a language-specific bias for verb learning?

Crosslinguistic perspectives on argument structure: Implications for learnability

Immanuel Kant among the Tenejapans: Anthropology as Empirical Philosophy

Early Language Experience in a Tseltal Mayan Village

A sketch of the grammar of space in Tzeltal