The Socio-Cognitive Approach to Communication and Pragmatics

Istvan Kecskes

Dis 2023 · Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology Ibhuku elingu-33 · Springer Nature

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The book aims to serve as a theoretical framework for the socio-cognitive approach (SCA) that is an alternative to the two main lines of pragmatics research: linguistic-philosophical pragmatics and sociocultural-interactional pragmatics. SCA broadens the scope of the field with an intent to incorporate not only L1 communication but also intercultural communication, and communication in a second language. The author integrates the pragmatic view of cooperation and the cognitive view of egocentrism and emphasizes that both cooperation and egocentrism are manifested in all phases of communication, albeit to varying extents. SCA places equal importance on the social and cognitive individual factors in pragmatics. The author claims that while (social) cooperation is an intention-directed practice that is governed by relevance, (individual) egocentrism is an attention-oriented trait dominated by salience.

The book serves as a theoretical guide for researchers and students who would like to understand how we need to change first language-based theories to make sense of what happens not only in L1 but also in intercultural and multi-lingual interactions.

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ISTVAN KECSKES is Distinguished Professor of the State University of New York, Albany. He is the President of the American Pragmatics Association and the Chinese as a Second Language Research Association. His book Foreign language and mother tongue (Erlbaum 2000) was the first that described the effect of the second language on the first language. His monograph Intercultural Pragmatics (OUP, 2014) is considered a groundbreaking work shaping research in the field. His latest monograph is English as a Lingua Franca: The pragmatics perspective (CUP, 2019). He is the editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Pragmatics (CUP 2022) and the founding editor of the journals Intercultural Pragmatics, and Chinese as a Second Language Research, and the Mouton Series in Pragmatics