Discourse and Context: A Sociocognitive Approach

by Teun A. van Dijk

How do social situations influence language use, discourse and conversation? This book is a monograph which presents a multidisciplinary theory of context and the way context influences language use and discourse. Unlike in earlier approaches, contexts are not defined as objective social 'variables', such as gender or age. Rather, they are constructs of the participants themselves, that is, 'subjective definitions of the communicative situation' that are made explicit in the sociocognitive notion of context models. These models dynamically control all language use, make sure that discourses are appropriate in the communicative situation and hence are the basis of pragmatics. In this book, context models are studied especially from a (socio) linguistic and cognitive perspective. In another book published by Cambridge University Press, Society and Discourse, Teun A. van Dijk develops the social psychological, sociological and anthropological dimensions of the theory of context.

282 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2008

About the author

Teun Adrianus van Dijk, is a scholar in the fields of text linguistics, discourse analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis. With Walter Kintsch he contributed to the development of the psychology of text processing.

Reviews

[Naila · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great introductory to Discourse's approach. here I could clearly understand what are the tools that led to critic certain topics. According to context and the preface of sociology, many things will be ,definitely, come to another precpetive in seeing things.

[Nada · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm in love with this linguist.. simply because he used a generic she.

Although some concept seemed a bit complicated to me, the language was simple and I found plenty of examples. I enjoyed reading the book.