Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T15:19:52.410Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Spoken language usage events

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2015

ALAN CIENKI
ALAN CIENKI*
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam & Moscow State Linguistic University
*
†Address for correspondence: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

As an explicitly usage-based model of language structure (Barlow & Kemmer, 2000), cognitive grammar draws on the notion of ‘usage events’ of language as the starting point from which linguistic units are schematized by language users. To be true to this claim for spoken languages, phenomena such as non-lexical sounds, intonation patterns, and certain uses of gesture should be taken into account to the degree to which they constitute the phonological pole of signs, paired in entrenched ways with conceptual content. Following through on this view of usage events also means realizing the gradable nature of signs. In addition, taking linguistic meaning as consisting of not only conceptual content but also a particular way of construing that content (Langacker, 2008, p. 43), we find that the forms of expression mentioned above play a prominent role in highlighting the ways in which speakers construe what they are talking about, in terms of different degrees of specificity, focusing, prominence, and perspective. Viewed in this way, usage events of spoken language are quite different in nature from those of written language, a point which highlights the need for differentiated accounts of the grammar of these two forms of expression taken by many languages.

Keywords

spoken languageusage eventcognitive grammarconstrualgestureintonationnon-lexical sounds
Type
Research Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 7 , Issue 4: Special issue on Cognitive Linguistics and Interactional Discourse , December 2015 , pp. 499 - 514
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2015 

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

references

Barlow, M., & Kemmer, S. (Eds.) (2000). Usage-based models of language. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Boersma, P. (2001). Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer. Glot International 5(9/10), 34–345.Google Scholar
Bressem, J., & Müller, C. (2014). A repertoire of German recurrent gestures with pragmatic functions. In Müller, C., Cienki, A., Fricke, E., Ladewig, S. H., McNeill, D., & Bressem, J. (Eds.), Body–language–communication: an international handbook on multimodality in human interaction (pp. 1575–1592). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Calbris, G. (2003). From cutting an object to a clear-cut analysis: gesture as the representation of a preconceptual schema linking concrete actions to abstract notions. Gesture 3(1), 19–46.Google Scholar
Chafe, W. (1994). Discourse, consciousness, and time: the flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cienki, A. (2008). Spoken language semantics. Plenary lecture at the Sixth Semantics in the Netherlands Day, Leiden, NL, October 2008.Google Scholar
Cienki, A. (2013). Image schemas and mimetic schemas in cognitive linguistics and gesture studies. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 11(2), 417–432.Google Scholar
Cienki, A. (In press). Ten lectures on spoken language and gesture from the perspective of cognitive linguistics: issues of dynamicity and multimodality. Beijing: Foreign Language and Teaching Research Press.Google Scholar
Clark, H. (1973). Space, time, semantics, and the child. In Moore, T. E. (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language (pp. 27–63). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Clark, H., & Fox Tree, J. (2002). Using uh and um in sponaneous dialog. Cognition, 84, 73–111.Google Scholar
Croft, W. (1995). Intonation and grammatical structure. Linguistics, 33, 839–882.Google Scholar
de Saussure, F. (1959 [1916]). Course in general linguistics. New York: Philosophical Library.Google Scholar
Du Bois, J. (2003a). Argument structure: grammar in use. In Du Bois, J., Kumpf, L. E., & Ashby, W. J. (Eds.), Preferred argument structure: grammar as architecture for function (pp. 11–60). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Du Bois, J. (2003b). Discourse and grammar. In Tomasello, M. (Ed.), The new psychology of language: cognitive and functional approaches to language structure, vol. 2 (pp. 47–87). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Du Bois, J. (2014). Towards a dialogic syntax. Cognitive Linguistics, 25(3), 359–410.Google Scholar
Du Bois, J., Schuetze-Coburn, S., Cumming, S., & Paolino, D. (1993). Outline of discourse transcription. In Edwards, J. A. & Lampert, M. D. (Eds.), Talking data (pp. 45–87). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Efron, D. (1941). Gesture and environment [= 1972: Gesture, race and culture]. New York: King’s Crown Press.Google Scholar
Ellis, N. C., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (Eds.) (2009). Language as a complex adaptive system. Ann Arbor, MI: Language Learning Research Club.Google Scholar
Fricke, E. (2008). Grundlagen einer multimodalen Grammatik des Deutschen. Unpublished Habilitationsschrift, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder, Germany.Google Scholar
Gibbs, R., & Cameron, L. (2008). The social-cognitive dynamics of metaphor performance. Cognitive Systems Research, 9(1/2), 64–75.Google Scholar
Goodwin, C. (2000). Gesture, aphasia, and interaction. In McNeill, D. (Ed.), Language and gesture (pp. 84–98). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Güldemann, T., & von Roncador, M. (Eds.) (2002). Reported discourse: a meeting ground for different linguistic domains. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Harrison, S. (2009a). Grammar, gesture, and cognition: the case of negation in English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Université Michel de Montaigne, Bordeaux, France.Google Scholar
Harrison, S. (2009b). The expression of negation through grammar and gesture. In Zlatev, J., Andrén, M., Falck, M. J., & Lundmark, C. (Eds.), Studies in language and cognition (pp. 421–435). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind: the bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendon, A. (1988). How gestures can become like words. In Poyatos, F. (Ed.), Cross-cultural perspectives in nonverbal communication (pp. 131–141). New York: C. J. Hogrefe.Google Scholar
Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. R. (1996). Intonational phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ladewig, S. (2006). Die Kurbelgeste. Unpublished MA thesis, Freie Universität Berlin.Google Scholar
Ladewig, S. (2011). Putting the cyclic gesture on a cognitive basis. CogniTextes. Revue de l’Association Française de Linguistique Cognitive, 6, online: <http://cognitextes.revues.org/406>.Google Scholar
Ladewig, S. (2014a). Creating multimodal utterances: the linear integration of gestures into speech. In Müller, C., Cienki, A., Fricke, E., Ladewig, S. H., McNeill, D., & Bressem, J. (Eds.), Body–language–communication: an international handbook on multimodality in human interaction (pp. 1662–1677). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Ladewig, S. (2014b). Recurrent gestures. In Müller, C., Cienki, A., Fricke, E., Ladewig, S. H., McNeill, D., & Bressem, J. (Eds.), Body–language–communication: an international handbook on multimodality in human interaction (pp. 1558–1575). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar, vol. 1. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. (1988). A usage-based model. In Rudzka-Ostyn, B. (Ed.), Topics in cognitive linguistics (pp. 127–161). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. (1991). Foundations of cognitive grammar, vol. 2. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. (1998). Conceptualization, symbolization, and grammar. In Tomasello, M. (Ed.), The new psychology of language (pp. 1–40). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. (2008). Cognitive grammar: a basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
LeVan, E. A. (1984). Nonverbal communication in the courtroom: attorney beware. Law and Psychology Review, 8(83), 83–104.Google Scholar
Liddell, S. K. (2003). Grammar, gesture, and meaning in American Sign Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind: what gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McNeill, D. (2005). Gesture and thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Monahan, B. (1983). A dictionary of Russian gestures. Tenafly, NJ: Hermitage.Google Scholar
Müller, C. (1998a). Iconicity and gesture. In Santi, S., Guaïtella, I., Cavé, C., & Konopczynski, G. (Eds.), Oralité et gestualité: Communication multimodale, interaction (pp. 321–328). Paris: L’Harmattan.Google Scholar
Müller, C. (1998b). Redebegleitende Gesten. Kulturgeschichte – Theorie – Sprachvergleich. Berlin: Berlin Verlag A. Spitz.Google Scholar
Müller, C. (2004). Forms and uses of the Palm Up Open Hand: A case of a gesture family? In Müller, C. & Posner, R. (Eds.), The semantics and pragmatics of everyday gestures (pp. 233–256). Berlin: Weidler.Google Scholar
Müller, C. (2008). What gestures reveal about the nature of metaphor. In Cienki, A. & Müller, C. (Eds.), Metaphor and gesture (pp. 219–245). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Müller, C. (2014). Gestural modes of representation as techniques of depiction. In Müller, C., Cienki, A., Fricke, E., Ladewig, S. H., McNeill, D., & Bressem, J. (Eds.), Body–language–communication: an international handbook on multimodality in human interaction (pp. 1687–1702). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Namy, L., Campbell, A., & Tomasello, M. (2004). The changing role of iconicity in non-verbal symbol learning. Journal of Cognition and Development, 5 37–57.Google Scholar
Parrill, F. (2012). Interactions between discourse status and viewpoint in co-speech gesture. In Dancygier, B. and Sweetser, E. (Eds.), Viewpoint in language: a multimodal perspective (pp. 97–112). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, J. (1980). The phonology and phonetics of English intonation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, J., & Hirschberg, J. (1990). The meaning of intonational contours in the interpretation of discourse. In Cohen, P. R., Morgan, J., & Pollack, M. E. (Eds.), Intentions in communication (pp. 271–311). Boston, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Saitz, R. L., & Cervanka, E. J. (1972). Handbook of gestures: Colombia and the United States. The Hague: Mouton and Co.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. (1987). Thinking for speaking. Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 435–445). Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Stec, K. (2012). Meaningful shifts: a review of viewpoint markers in co-speech gesture and sign language. Gesture, 12(3), 327–360.Google Scholar
Stelma, J., & Cameron, L. (2007). Intonation units in spoken interaction: developing transcription skills. Text and Talk, 27, 361–393.Google Scholar
Streeck, J. (2010). Gesturecraft: the manu-facture of meaning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Teßendorf, S. (2005). Pragmatische Funktionen spanischer Gesten am Beispiel ‘gesto de barrer’. Unpublished MA thesis, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.Google Scholar
Teßendorf, S. (2014). Pragmatic and metaphoric – combining functional with cognitive approaches in the analysis of the ‘brushing aside gesture’. In Müller, C., Cienki, A., Fricke, E., Ladewig, S. H., McNeill, D., & Bressem, J. (Eds.), Body–language–communication: an international handbook on multimodality in human interaction (pp. 1540–1558). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Ward, N. (2006). Non-lexical conversational sounds in American English. Pragmatics and Cognition, 14, 129–182.Google Scholar
Wennerstrom, A. (2001). The music of everyday speech: prosody and discourse analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wylie, L. (1977). Beaux gestes: Aa guide to French body talk. Cambridge, MA: Undergraduate Press.Google Scholar
Zlatev, J. (2005). What’s in a schema? Bodily mimesis and the grounding of language. In Hampe, B. (Ed.), From perception to meaning: image schemas in cognitive linguistics (pp. 313–342). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar