Human communication consists of an intricate combination of verbal and non-verbal signals. We shall see that the verbal aspects of messages are elaborated and supported in a number of ways by non-verbal ones. In order to understand human verbal communication we need to know about these non-verbal components. Non-verbal communication can be studied experimentally as a problem in encoding and decoding; it can also be studied as part of a sequence, using the methods (...) of ethology or of linguistics. We shall see that this kind of analysis has theoretical implications about the nature of human communication, and has practical implications in a number of fields. (shrink)

Recent studies of naturalistic face‐to‐face communication have demonstrated coordination patterns such as the temporal matching of verbal and non‐verbal behavior, which provides evidence for the proposal that verbal and non‐verbal communicative control derives from one system. In this study, we argue that the observed relationship between verbal and non‐verbal behaviors depends on the level of analysis. In a reanalysis of a corpus of naturalistic multimodal communication (Louwerse, Dale, Bard, & Jeuniaux, ), we focus on (...) measuring the temporal patterns of specific communicative behaviors in terms of their burstiness. We examined burstiness estimates across different roles of the speaker and different communicative modalities. We observed more burstiness for verbal versus non‐verbal channels, and for more versus less informative language subchannels. Using this new method for analyzing temporal patterns in communicative behaviors, we show that there is a complex relationship between verbal and non‐verbal channels. We propose a “temporal heterogeneity” hypothesis to explain how the language system adapts to the demands of dialog. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to the study of humor as an important pragmatic phenomenon bearing on cognition, and, more specifically, as a cooperative mode of non-bona-fide communication. Several computational models of humor are presented in increasing order of complexity and shown to reveal important cognitive structures in jokes. On the basis of these limited implementations, the concept of a full-fledged computational model for the understanding and generation of humor is introduced and discussed in various aspects. The model draws upon the (...) authors ' General Theory of Verbal Humor, with its six knowledge resources informing a joke, and on SMEARR, a sophisticated semantic-network-based computational lexical environment. The relevance of the approach to the interpretation, generation, and cognitive structure of humor is discussed in the broader context of the nature of the cooperative non-bona-fide modes of communication. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to the study of humor as an important pragmatic phenomenon bearing on cognition, and, more specifically, as a cooperative mode of non-bona-fide communication. Several computational models of humor are presented in increasing order of complexity and shown to reveal important cognitive structures in jokes. On the basis of these limited implementations, the concept of a full-fledged computational model for the understanding and generation of humor is introduced and discussed in various aspects. The model draws upon the (...) authors ' General Theory of Verbal Humor, with its six knowledge resources informing a joke, and on SMEARR, a sophisticated semantic-network-based computational lexical environment. The relevance of the approach to the interpretation, generation, and cognitive structure of humor is discussed in the broader context of the nature of the cooperative non-bona-fide modes of communication. (shrink)

Autistic individuals have been observed to demonstrate high intelligence through musical communication, leading to many empirical studies on this topic. Absolute Pitch has been a captivating phenomenon for researchers, although there has been disagreement regarding AP percentages among the population and appropriate testing methods for AP. This study analyzed data collected from 118 people, using a pitch matching paradigm designed specifically to be inclusive of those who are likely to have note-naming difficulty due to communication challenges. Thirty-eight participants were autistic (...) individuals, 32% of which were considered to have severe language impairment. Twelve other participants had other developmental disorders. All but 1 of the 38 autistics demonstrated exceptional and instantaneous pitch matching abilities on piano. Ten of the 12 with other developmental disorders demonstrated this ability, and approximately half of neurotypicals were able to exhibit this ability. Our numbers indicate that with a more inclusive paradigm for assessing AP, it may be demonstratable in close to 50% of the population, and near 100% in the autistic population. This testing method represents a neurodiversity-friendly and fully inclusive, non-verbal paradigm for demonstrating AP. (shrink)

While a large body of literature on pejorative language has emerged recently, derogatory communication is a broader phenomenon that need not constitutively involve the use of words. This paper delineates the class of non-verbal pejoratives and sketches an account of the derogatory power of a subset of NVPs, namely those whose effectiveness crucially relies on iconicity. Along the way, I point out some ways in which iconic NVPs differ from wholly arbitrary NVPs and ritualized threat signals in the animal (...) kingdom, such as the wolf’s snarl, which do not threaten or demean targets by virtue of any kind of iconographic depiction. An iconic portrayal such as a racist caricature disparages its target by inviting recipients to entertain an unflattering image of the target. “Blackface” performers in the nineteenth-century, for example, promulgated an unflattering image of African-Americans by means of make-up, costumes, and vocal impersonations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to determine how stakeholder engagement can be adapted for the conduct of COVID‐19‐related clinical trials in sub‐Saharan Africa. Nine essential stakeholder engagement practices were reviewed: formative research; stakeholder engagement plan; communications and issues management plan; protocol development; informed consent process; standard of prevention for vaccine research and standard of care for treatment research; policies on trial‐related physical, psychological, financial, and/or social harms; trial accrual, follow‐up, exit trial closure and results dissemination; and post‐trial access (...) to trial products or procedures. The norms, values, and practices of collectivist societies in Sub‐Saharan Africa and the low research literacy pose challenges to the conduct of clinical trials. Civil‐society organizations, members of community advisory boards and ethics committees, young persons, COVID‐19 survivors, researchers, government, and the private sector are assets for the implementation and translation of COVID‐19 related clinical trials. Adapting ethics guidelines to the socio‐cultural context of the region can facilitate achieving the aim of stakeholder engagement. (shrink)

Delays in early language development are characteristic of young autistic children, and one of the most recognizable first concerns that motivate parents to seek a diagnostic evaluation for their child. Although early language abilities are one of the strongest predictors of long-term outcomes, there is still much to be understood about the role of language impairment in the heterogeneous phenotypic presentation of autism. Using a person-centered, Latent Profile Analysis, we first aimed to identify distinct patterns of language and social communication (...) ability in a clinic-based sample of 498 autistic children, ranging in age from 18 to 60 months. Next, a multinomial logistic regression analysis was implemented to examine sociodemographic and child-based developmental differences among the identified language and social communication profiles. Three clinically meaningful profiles were identified from parent-rated and clinician-administered measures: Profile 1 “Relatively Low Language and Social Communication Abilities,” Profile 2 “Relatively Elevated Language and Social Communication Abilities,” and Profile 3 “Informant Discrepant Language and Relatively Elevated Social Communication Abilities.” Overall, young autistic children from the lowest-resource households exhibited the lowest language and social communication abilities, and the lowest non-verbal problem-solving and fine-motor skills, along with more features of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and atypical auditory processing. These findings highlight the need for effective community-based implementation strategies for young autistic children from low-resource households and underrepresented communities to improve access to individualized quality care. (shrink)

Maternal gift-giving sustains life and creates positive human relations. Addressing important issues in the theory of language and communication, Genevieve Vaughan associates language and mothering to the free gift economy. A fundamental hypothesis is that maternal gift-giving, mothering/being-mothered forms a non-essentialist, but fundamental core process of material and verbal communication that has been neglected by the Western view of the world. The mothering/being-mothered paradigm is thematized in the framework of gift logic, which is otherness logic. Restoring such a paradigm (...) offers a new light on language, communication and human relations, contributing to recovery of the “properly human” in terms of gift economy values, ultimately to the end of affecting social praxis for radical social change and creating better worlds. The second part of this text is titled “For the Sake of the Other” and presents an exchange of ideas with Vaughan in the form of a written conversation. This text is structured around the following titles: 1. Otherness and Gifting as the Basis of Communication: 1.1. Semiosis, Language, and the Gift Economy; 1.2. The Gift of Speaking and the “Mother Work Schema”; 1.3. Material gifting, Verbal Nurturing, Imagination; 1.4. New Perspectives for Studies in Language and Communication; 2. For the Sake of the Other, with Genevieve Vaughan. (shrink)

The possibility and extent of thought without language have been subject to much controversy. Insight from non- or minimally verbal humans can inform this debate empirically. Since most such individuals are on the autism spectrum, of which they make up a sizable 25–30%, an important connection between language and autism transpires. Here we propose a model which makes sense of this link and explains why the non-verbal human mind, as present evidence suggests, represents a fundamentally different cognitive phenotype. (...) This model views the relevant part of the autism spectrum as reflecting the breakdown of a cognitive phenotype of which language is an inherent element and which will manifest principled limitations in the latter's absence. (shrink)

En développant l’argument selon lequel les mots sont les signes des idées de celui qui parle, Locke semble assigner une origine individuelle à la signification. Pourtant, au début du livre III de l’Essai sur l’entendement humain, il définit le langage comme le lien commun de la société : loin de constituer une simple formule d’introduction, cette définition est illustrée et confirmée tout au long du livre. Le langage constitue un lien commun parce qu’il fixe non seulement les idées mais également (...) les rapports entre idées d’une manière qui détermine l’esprit des hommes et organise leurs représentations. Plutôt que de voir en Locke un penseur de l’intériorité, pour lequel le langage n’est que l’extériorisation par le signe de pensées qui sans les mots resteraient enfermées dans l’esprit de l’homme, il faut envisager le rôle des pratiques et des usages dans la constitution du rapport entre idées. Tout en élaborant une critique de l’imperfection des mots, Locke, à la suite d’Arnauld et Nicole, s’efforce de penser les liens entre logique et vie civile. (shrink)

The idea that verbal communication involves a species of mindreading is not new. Among linguists and philosophers, largely as a result of Grice’s (1957, 1967) influence, it has long been recognized that the act of communicating involves on the part of the communicator and the addressee mutual metarepresentations of each others’ mental states. In psychology, the coordination of common ground and attention in conversation has been pursued in a variety of studies (e.g. Clark and Marshall, 1981; Bruner, 1983).

Our everyday practices are meaningful in several ways. In addition to the linguistic meanings of our terms and sentences, we attach social meanings to actions and statuses. Philosophy of language and public debates often focus on contesting morally and politically pernicious linguistic practices. My aim is to show that this is too little: even if we are only interested in morally and politically problematic terms, we must counteract a pernicious linguistic practice on many levels, especially on the level of its (...) underlying social meanings. Otherwise, the critique of specific words as the most salient fruits of this practice will be futile. I trace out two paths through which pernicious social meanings feed into linguistic meanings and make the case for constructive contestations of social meanings as an alternative to criticising the use of a few highly pernicious terms in which these social meanings are manifest. My investigation into how social structures shape both social and linguistic meanings sheds further light on the ways in which social meanings enter linguistic exchanges. Moreover, it reveals that what is said in specific situations is more closely connected to our non-verbal actions than the current literature on semantics and the social sciences allows. (shrink)

Based on neuropsychological evidence of nonverbal impairment accompanying aphasia, I propose that the neural prerequisites for language acquisition are shared with a range of nonverbal capacities. Their commonality concerns the ability to recognize a limited number of finite elements in manifold perceptual entities and to combine them for constructing manifold entities.

In this paper, I illustrate how children’s mentalizing abilities interface with both implicit and explicit aspects of communication. I use two examples to make this point. First, I argue that some understanding that other people have mental states which can be affected by communication is present already in infancy. I show that this early sensitivity to intentionality is responsible for early communicative successes. Second, I suggest that mindreading is involved in learning the meaning of evidentials and other mental terms. I (...) present some cross‐linguistic evidence for the acquisition of evidential morphemes and relate those findings to young children’s ability to reason about beliefs, evidence and information. (shrink)

In the present paper we address the old question of respiratory planning in speech production. We recast the problem in terms of speakers’ communicative goals and propose that speakers try to minimise respiratory effort in line with H&H theory. We analyze respiratory cycles coinciding with no speech (i.e. silence), short verbal feedback expressions (SFE’s) as well as longer vocalisations in terms of parameters of the respiratory cycle and find little evidence for respiratory planning in feedback production. We also investigate (...) timing of speech and SFEs in the exhalation and contrast it with nods. We find that while speech is strongly tied to the exhalation onset, SFEs are distributed much more uniformly throughout the exhalation and are often produced on residual air. Given that nods, which do not have any respiratory constraints, tend to be more frequent towards the end of an exhalation, we propose a mechanism whereby respiratory patterns are determined by the trade-off between speakers’ communicative goals and respiratory constraints. (shrink)

To the extent that language is conventional, non-verbal individuals, including human infants, must participate in conventions in order to learn to use even simple utterances of words. This raises the question of which varieties of learning could make this possible. In this paper I defend Tomasello’s (The cultural origins of human cognition. Harvard UP, Cambridge, 1999, Origins of human communication. MIT, Cambridge, 2008) claim that knowledge of linguistic conventions could be learned through imitation. This is possible because Lewisian accounts (...) of convention have overstated what one must know to participate in conventions; and because the required knowledge could be learned imitatively. The imitation claim that I defend is consistent with what we know about both the proliferation of conventional behaviours in human children, who are skilful imitators, and the comparative absence of such behaviours in non-human great apes, who are poor at imitative learning. (shrink)

Human diversity cannot be denied. In our everyday social interactions, we constantly experience the fact that each individual is a unique combination of characteristics with specific cultural norms, roles, personality, and mood. Efficient social interaction thus requires an adaptation of communication behaviors to each specific interlocutor that one encounters. This is especially true for non-verbal communication that is more unconscious and automatic than verbal communication. Consequently, non-verbal communication needs to be understood as a dynamic and adaptive process (...) in the theoretical modeling and study of social interactions. This perspective paper presents relevance, challenges, and future directions for the study of non-verbal adaptation in social interactions. It proposes that non-verbal adaptability is more pertinently studied as adaptation to interlocutor's inner characteristics than to interlocutor's behaviors per se, because behaviors are communication messages that individuals interpret in order to understand their interlocutors. The affiliation and control dimensions of the Interpersonal Circumplex Model are proposed as a framework to measure both the interlocutors' inner characteristics and the individuals' non-verbal responses. These measures can then be compared across different interactions to assess an actual change in behavior tailored to different interlocutors. These recommendations are proposed in the hope of generating more research on the topic of non-verbal adaptability. Indeed, after having gathered the evidence on average effects of non-verbal behaviors, the field can go further than a “one size fits all” approach, by investigating the predictors, moderators, and outcomes of non-verbal adaptation to the interlocutors' inner characteristics. (shrink)

Number morphology (e.g., singular vs. plural) is a part of the grammar that captures numerical information. Some languages have morphological Number values, which express few (paucal), two (dual), three (trial) and sometimes (possibly) four (quadral). Interestingly, the limit of the attested morphological Number values matches the limit of non‐verbal numerical cognition. The latter is based on two systems, one estimating approximate numerosities and the other computing exact numerosities up to three or four. We compared the literature on non‐verbal (...) number systems with data on Number morphology from 218 languages. Our observations suggest that non‐verbal numerical cognition is reflected as a core part of language. (shrink)

This paper explores the process of human-horse communication using ethnographic data of in-depth interviews and participant observation. Guided by symbolic interactionism, the paper argues that humans and horses co-create a language system by way of the body to facilitate the creation of shared meaning. This research challenges the privileged status of verbal language and suggests that non-verbal communication and language systems of the body have their own unique complexities. This investigation of humanhorse communication offers new possibilities to understand (...) the subjective and intersubjective world of non-verbal language using beings—human and nonhuman alike. (shrink)

Using multimodal conversation analysis, we investigate how novices learning the “inner body” acting technique in the context of a community theater project share their experiences of the bodily exercises through verbal and embodied conduct. We focus on how verbal description and bodily enactment of the experience mutually elaborate each other, and how the experienced sensorimotor and affective qualities are made to be witnessed and recognized by the others. Participants describe their experiences without naming qualities. Instead, a display of (...) the experienced qualities is made accessible to others through coordinating the unfolding talk and bodily conduct. In particular, we show how grammatical and action projection is fulfilled by interconnected verbal and embodied conduct, with body movement and posture giving off ineffable experiential qualities. The moving body appears both as a source of the experience and as a resource for depicting perceived qualities to others; additional resources (non-specific person reference and gaze aversion) contribute to organizing the subjective and intersubjective layers of the reflection of the experiences. The study contributes to and extends recent research on sensoriality in interaction by focusing on phenomena of proprioception and interoception. The data are two cases drawn from 60 h of video-recordings made in the context of a devised community theater project. The data are in Finnish with English translations. (shrink)

How can English language teachers contribute to peace locally and globally? English language teachers and learners are located in the global civil society – an international network of civil organizations and NGOs related to human rights, the environment, and sustainable peace. English, with its special role as an international language, is a major tool for communication within this network. On the local level, many teachers are interested in promoting reconciliation and sustainable peace, but often do not know how to do (...) so. This book provides information, analysis, and techniques to help teachers around the world take action toward this goal. Balancing, in a readable and accessible way, the global and the local, core and periphery, cultural diffusion and resistance, theory and practice, pessimism and optimism, outsider and insider perspectives, the expert role and the apprentice role, and prescriptive and elicitive methods, it offers an alternative to literature about critical applied linguistics, globalization, and peace education that is simply too complex and wordy to spread easily from theoretician to the classroom teacher. _The English Teacher in Global Civil Society_: synthesizes threads from many fields and topics into a coherent and empowering argument for the activist role English language teachers can take to promote social change draws on humanistic education, peace education, cross-cultural understanding, problem-posing, cooperative learning, and critical thinking methodologies to help English language teachers learn how to teach conflict resolution skills in their classrooms covers issues in critical applied linguistics, approaches and methodologies in ESL/EFL, global and local curricular issues, and specific skill areas such reading, writing, and speaking suggests a new goal for English language teachers: global citizenship. This engaging, informative, provocative, and highly readable book is a welcome resource for English language teacher trainers, pre-service teachers, practicing classroom teachers, and Peace Corps workers around the world. (shrink)

Humans and animals communicate in various non-linguistic modes of communication. This multi-channelled form of communication seems to be characteristic of humans, and involves facial expression, calls/gestures, music and dance, as well as symbolic language; and seems likely to depend, in part, on the psychological mechanisms of projection and projective identification. This article attempts to reflect on the relation between these evolved forms of human communication, both linguistic and non-verbal, in terms of the unconscious as discovered by Freud.

In any act of worship, the believer sees a symbolic hint of a supersensitive world. Thus, the sensualistic aesthetics of antiquity gives place to the spiritualistic aesthetics of today. Although not only the spiritualism of the cult attracts believers. They also like the richness of the ritual, which shines with gold, silver, precious stones and colorful marble. And when a person listens to church singing, he sees the glow of endless lights reflected by gold on mosaics, when he looks closely (...) at the images of saints and gospel scenes, then one feels on top of bliss. (shrink)

BackgroundVerbal autopsy is a pragmatic approach for generating cause-of-death data in contexts without well-functioning civil registration and vital statistics systems. It has primarily been conducted in health and demographic surveillance systems (HDSS) in Africa and Asia. Although significant resources have been invested to develop the technical aspects of verbal autopsy, ethical issues have received little attention. We explored the benefits and burdens of verbal autopsy in HDSS settings and identified potential strategies to respond to the ethical issues identified.MethodsThis (...) research was based on a case study approach centred on two contrasting HDSS in Kenya and followed the Mapping-Framing-Shaping Framework for empirical bioethics research. Data were collected through individual interviews, focus group discussions, document reviews and non-participant observations. 115 participants were involved, including 86 community members (HDSS residents and community representatives), and 29 research staff (HDSS managers, researchers, census field workers and verbal autopsy interviewers).ResultsThe use of verbal autopsy data for research and public health was described as the most common potential benefit of verbal autopsy in HDSS. Community members mentioned the potential uses of verbal autopsy data in addressing immediate public health problems for the local population while research staff emphasized the benefits of verbal autopsy to research and the wider public. The most prominent burden associated with the verbal autopsy was emotional distress for verbal autopsy interviewers and respondents. Moral events linked to the interview, such as being unsure of the right thing to do (moral uncertainty) or knowing the right thing to do and being constrained from acting (moral constraint), emerged as key causes of emotional distress for verbal autopsy interviewers.ConclusionsThe collection of cause-of-death data through verbal autopsy in HDSS settings presents important ethical and emotional challenges for verbal autopsy interviewers and respondents. These challenges include emotional distress for respondents and moral distress for interviewers. This empirical ethics study provides detailed accounts of the distress caused by verbal autopsy and highlights ethical tensions between potential population benefits and risks to individuals. It includes recommendations for policy and practice to address emotional and moral distress in verbal autopsy. (shrink)

This essay contains material which will hopefully be of interest not only to philosophers, but also to those social scientists whose research concerns the analysis of communication, verbal or non-verbal. Although most of the topics taken up here are central to issues in the philosophy of language, they are, in my opinion, indistinguishable from topics in descriptive social psychology. The essay aims to provide a conceptual framework within which various key aspects of communication can be described, and it (...) presents a formal language, using techniques from modern modal logic, in which such descriptions can themselves be formulated. It is my hope that this framework, or parts of it, might also turn out to be of value in future empirical work. There are, therefore, essentially two sides to this essay: the development of a framework of concepts, and the construction of a formal language rich enough to express the elements of which that framework is composed. The first of these two takes its point of departure in the statement quoted from Lewis (1972) on the page preceding this introduction. The distinction drawn there by Lewis is accepted as a working hypothesis, and in one sense this essay may be seen as an attempt to explore some of the consequences of that hypothesis. (shrink)

This book maps out the lexico-conceptual articulation of Greene's narrative dramatization of ethical situations. This main aim issues from three working hypotheses: in the first place, a reduced set of terms such as peace, despair, pity or commitment have a striking lexical recurrence in Greene's texts. They are considered here as keywords that articulate his discourse at a conceptual level. In the second place, those keywords are invested with narrative potential. They have the capacity to generate narrative situations and developments. (...) In the third place, they articulate a particular narrative pattern. Such lexico-conceptual articulation is shaped mainly as ethical conflict dramatized in narrative form. Drawing on contemporary theories of community and ethics developed by Jean-Luc Nancy, Maurice Blanchot, J. Hillis Miller or Derek Attridge, this book sets out to explore a recurrent narrative pattern in Greene's work, emerging from his personal use of the language of ethics and community. (shrink)

Communication, when defined as an act intended to affect the psychological state of another individual, demands the use of inference. Either the signaler, the recipient, or both must make leaps of understanding which surpass the semantic information available and draw from pragmatic clues to fully imbue and interpret meaning. While research into human communication and the evolution of language has long been comfortable with mentalistic interpretations of communicative exchanges, including rich attributions of mental state, research into animal communication has balked (...) at theoretical models which describe mentalized cognitive mechanisms. We submit a new theoretical perspective on animal communication: the model of inferential communication. For use when existing proximate models of animal communication are not sufficient to fully explain the complex, flexible, and intentional communication documented in certain species, specifically non-human primates, we present our model as a bridge between shallower, less cognitive descriptions of communicative behavior and the perhaps otherwise inaccessible mentalistic interpretations of communication found in theoretical considerations of human language. Inferential communication is a framework that builds on existing evidence of referentiality, intentionality, and social inference in primates. It allows that they might be capable of applying social inferences to a communicative setting, which could explain some of the cognitive processes that enable the complexity and flexibility of primate communication systems. While historical models of animal communication focus on the means-ends process of behavior and apparent cognitive outcomes, inferential communication invites consideration of the mentalistic processes that must underlie those outcomes. We propose a mentalized approach to questions, investigations, and interpretations of non-human primate communication. We include an overview of both ultimate and proximate models of animal communication, which contextualize the role and utility of our inferential communication model, and provide a detailed breakdown of the possible levels of cognitive complexity which could be investigated using this framework. Finally, we present some possible applications of inferential communication in the field of non-human primate communication and highlight the role it could play in advancing progress toward an increasingly precise understanding of the cognitive capabilities of our closest living relatives. (shrink)

Explores some steps toward non-assimilative encounters in the "global village.".

From the Greek satyr to the American Mickey Mouse and from the Chinese dragon to the Egyptian Sphinx, animals and animal/humans have come throughhuman imagination into myth, legend and story. This combination or fusion of animal and human in literature presents a double signification. At the same time that our attention goes to the animality of the human, we may also entertain the humanity of the animal. Besides blending of physical and psychological characteristics, these ancient and modern characters of world (...) texts may embed authentic experiences of communion or communication between humans and animals. The texts may be understood as signifying the limits of both the human and the animal and the possibility of the humanimal. Humanimality signifies the fusion of human and animal which dissolves the ordinary dualism of human subject and animal object and allows for intersubjectivity unmarked by specific biological limitations. This kind of intersubjectivity occurs in the contact of communication and is often an occasion for awe on the part of the human if not of the animal. We may understand such awesome communication as imitation, non-verbal cooperation, and as teaching and learning. Three poems by the author, reproduced in the Appendix, “The Ravens Fly Yet,” “Neighbors,” and “The Lesson,” provide the literary fields in which humanimal phenomena may appear. (shrink)

BackgroundThe association between language and mental health may be connected to several aspects of language. Based on the known associations, emotional vocabulary could be an important contribution to mental health and act as a risk, protective or resilience factor for mental health in general. As a preliminary test of this hypothesis, an assessment of emotional vocabulary was constructed and used among youths in school age. Cross-sectional associations and prediction models with parent-reported youth mental health as outcome were examined for emotional (...) vocabulary as well as general vocabulary, non-verbal problem solving and social communication, controlled for age, gender and subsamples.ResultsEmotional vocabulary, general vocabulary and non-verbal problem solving were directly associated with each other and similarly associated with age and gender. However, they were not significantly associated with social communication skills or mental health in the expected direction. Only social communication skills showed significant negative associations with behavioral mental health problems, suggesting these skills to be potential resources related to mental health.ImplicationFuture research should investigate whether behavioral problems may be prevented or improved by developing better social communication skills among community school-age youths. However, our results suggest that merely expanding emotional vocabulary is not likely to produce such effects unless this is integrated with improving social communication. (shrink)

Non-verbal enrichment in the form of pictures or gesture can support word learning in first and foreign languages. The present study seeks to compare the effects of viewing pictures vs. imitating iconic gestures on learning second language vocabulary. In our study participants learned L2 words together with a virtual, pedagogical agent. The to-be-learned items were either enriched with pictures, or with gestures that had to be imitated, or without any non-verbal enrichment as control. Results showed that gesture imitation (...) was particularly supportive for learning nouns, whereas pictures showed to be most beneficial for memorizing verbs. These findings, suggesting that the type of vocabulary learning strategy has to match with the type of linguistic material to be learned, have important educational implications for L2 classrooms and technology-enhanced tutoring systems. (shrink)

This paper presents the notion that verbal discourse is structured, in form and contents, by metaphorical reasoning. It discusses the concept of “metaphorical network” as a framework for relating the parts of a speech act to each other, since such an act seems to cohere into a meaningful text on the basis of “domains” that deliver common concepts. The basic finding of several research projects on this concept suggest that source domains allow speakers to derive sense from a (...) class='Hi'>verbal interaction because they interconnect the topic of discussion to culturally-meaningful images and ideas. This suggests, in turn, that language is intertwined with nonverbal systems of meaning, reflecting them in the contents of verbal messages. Overall, the concept of metaphorical networks implies that human cognition is highly associative in structure. (shrink)

This review explored the investigations on the role of teacher immediacy in English as a Foreign Language learners’ foreign language enjoyment. Earlier investigations have proved that teacher immediacy, such as posture, body language, vocal variety, gestures, and smile, can significantly affect learners’ positive emotions like foreign language enjoyment. It means that teachers should try both to control the feelings of their learners and manage their feelings to enhance enjoyment among learners. Moreover, studies have shown that teacher immediacy is significantly related (...) to learner motivation which is a basis for increasing foreign language enjoyment among learners. However, specific strategies can be employed to increase learner motivation, which in return increases learner foreign language enjoyment. Furthermore, the study presented the implications and future directions of this line of research for different people, such as EFL teachers, teacher educators, and foreign language scholars. The ideas can improve their awareness of teacher-student relationships, in particular, teacher immediacy and its role in learners’ foreign language enjoyment. (shrink)

Discursive knowledge is expressed in a conceptual, specialized language, which offers the standardization and rigor necessary to a rational reasoning. For the non discursive knowledge, language, as a means of communication, is inadequate and insufficient.

The paper addresses the question how descriptive language is used to express legal norms. Sentences we find in legislative acts, i.e. statutes, constitutions and regulations, express legal norms. Linguistically speaking, there are various grammatical and lexical ways of expressing norms, such as imperative mood, modal verbs, deontic verbs, etc. However, norms may also be expressed by descriptive sentences, namely sentences in present or future tense and indicative (declarative) mood (i.e. _The minister determines the tax rate_). In many civil law countries (...) (including Poland), this is a very common, if not the default, form of expressing norms in legislative texts. Often presented as a legal peculiarity, this phenomenon has yet to draw much academic attention. The normative meaning of descriptive sentences is usually attributed to purely pragmatic factors stemming from our shared assumptions about the legal system. However, a closer look reveals that similar grammatical constructions are ubiquitous in everyday communication and in different languages. We tend to utter various sorts of directives using descriptive sentences (_Now we add a spoon of salt to the sauce_; _credit cards are not accepted_). This suggests the possibility for a linguistic (as opposed to exclusively legal) explanation. This paper aims to offer such an explanation. Rather than resorting to formal semantics, so prevalent in legal theory, it borrows from Cognitive Linguistics to reveal the cognitive underpinnings of our surprising tendency to express normativity in descriptive terms. This involves four different, yet complementary, theories. Firstly, the theory of conceptual metaphor by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson which explains the phenomenon in question in terms of the metaphor “ ought is is ”; with “ ought ” as the more abstract target domain and “ is ” as the more concrete, cognitively simpler source domain. Secondly, the theory of speech act metonymy by Panther and Thornburg which presents descriptive legal sentences as referring to various components of the underlying cognitive scenario of obligation. Thirdly, Ronald Langacker’s notion of the virtuality of language as the explanation for non-present, including future, perpetual and directive, uses of the present tense. Fourtly, the notion of normative generics which points to the nominal, as opposed to verbal, structure of descriptive legal sentences as the source of their normativity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:What Happened to Civility: The Promise and Failure of Montaigne's Modern Project by Ann HartleVicente Raga RosalenyHARTLE, Ann. What Happened to Civility: The Promise and Failure of Montaigne's Modern Project. Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 2022. ix + 178 pp. Cloth, $100.00; paper, $30.00Why are we witnessing increasing social polarization in Western societies? What has happened to make our liberal democracies so ideologically charged? Professor Ann (...) Hartle's book tries to answer these and other questions in line with the concept of civility that, according to her thesis, Michel de Montaigne created in early modernity and that is about to disappear in our day. Not in vain is Montaigne the protagonist of this book, given that Professor Hartle is a world-renowned specialist on the author of the Essays, although in this case she is interested in the transformations that gave rise to modernity in order to understand our present day. She reads Montaigne for a better interpretation of some central problems of our time, such as the difficulty to speak freely that is experienced on university campuses and, in general, the increasing politicization of our civil societies.Thus, in the first place, Professor Hartle's work interrogates the origins of civility, the social bond created in modernity. To this end, she exposes what happened in the time of Montaigne, when societies, based on the classical and Christian tradition, were plunged into a general crisis. This is what the French essayist detected, and it led him to propose a new type of bond. For this, it is necessary to free oneself from tradition, which had legitimized the division between masters and slaves, the source of all conflicts.Montaigne's movement is philosophical in character: It consists of a split carried out in his Essays between the natural human being and the philosophical observer, which leads to a break with traditional moral standards, identified with Nature. The new human being, thus unfolded, can choose his own hierarchy of values and address the good he chooses with his own will (although this will be a will purified of particularisms, without excessive self-esteem). Such self-awareness, achieved by Montaigne as an accidental philosopher, is concretized in the predominance of the concept of judgment, in the ability to freely choose our possibilities (and not ends dictated by Nature).The new world thus created, Hartle explains, gave rise to the liberal order. It is true that Montaigne was not a theorist, but in his work it is possible to find the rupture of the traditional hierarchy between masters [End Page 351] and slaves, now considered as equals before the law, which is above all, and which is the fruit of reason. In this civil society, human beings no longer dominate each other, and each peacefully pursues his purposes. It is the state, as the embodiment of the law, that regulates everything, except the space of freedom gained with the emergence of the modern public sphere.In this context, the concept of authenticity makes sense, which, according to Professor Hartle, is the best reflection of the breakdown of the traditional order and the disappearance of its moral community. Now each individual pursues his purposes and is no longer to fulfill the ends of a universal human nature. That is why the bond of civility, in which the absolute autonomy of the subject is recognized, as well as his equality before the law, replaces the moral ties of the traditional community and its hierarchies. It is the French thinker who best exemplifies this transit, by showing himself openly in his Essays as a common subject who pursues his purposes and who relates to others as equals, no longer as someone superior, capable of disputing merit, and dominating others.However, this new society and its civil bonds are in crisis; civility fades, or that is Professor Hartle's pessimistic conclusion. Today we are witnessing an ideologization of previously depoliticized areas, such as the university, with the demand for the use of politically correct language and the fear of expressing oneself freely, especially when one's own opinions do not align with the current political trends. The failure... (shrink)

This article addresses the relationship between content, voice, and body language in persuasive communication and the contribution of these three elements of persuasive performances to its overall persuasiveness. Findings are presented from two separate laboratory experiments. In the first experiment three versions of a video displaying a speech were shown to three different groups of participants: without vocal emphasis and without gestures of the speaker, with vocal emphasis but without gestures, with vocal emphasis and gestures. Audio tracks of the first (...) two experimental conditions were later used in the second experiment to analyze the effects of vocal emphasis when no visual cues are present. Measurement included a questionnaire as well as Real Time Response-measurement. It was found that content dominates the effect of the speech; emphasis and gestures, however, improved the perception of some features of the speech, such as liveliness and power. Audio-only versions yielded similar results but were rated more favorably in general. (shrink)

This article argues for a view on languaging as inherently affective. Informed by recent ecological tendencies within cognitive science and distributed language studies a distinction between first order languaging (language as whole-body sense making) and second order language (language as system like constraints) is put forward. Contrary to common assumptions within linguistics and communication studies separating language-as-a-system from language use (resulting in separations between language vs. body-language and verbal vs. non-verbal communication etc.) the first/second order distinction sees language (...) as emanating from behavior making it possible to view emotion and affect as integral parts languaging behavior. Likewise, emotion and affect are studied, not as inner mental states, but as processes of organism-environment interactions. Based on video recordings of interaction between (1) children with special needs, and (2) couple in therapy and the therapist patterns of reciprocal influences between interactants are examined. Through analyzes of affective stance and patterns of inter-affectivity it is exemplified how language and emotion should not be seen as separate phenomena combined in language use, but rather as completely intertwined phenomena in languaging behavior constrained by second order patterns. (shrink)

This paper explains how we create concepts such as the forest or the backyard through language. Reflecting on Andreas Weber’s hope for a revolution of the life sciences and a re-evaluation of the role human beings play in nature, this paper adopts as a starting point Bruno Latour’s characterization of the distinctionbetween nature and culture as an illusion that came with Modernity. Theoretical notions from modelling systems theory and cognitive linguistics explain that whilelanguage plays a key role in constructing new (...) models of nature, new cognitive habits and changes of belief depend on face-to-face and non-verbal communication with other organisms, human and non-human. (shrink)

This study critically explores the representation of ideologies across the verbal and visual modes in 15 articles and photographs from local Spanish-language print media with the goal of determining the potential for minoritized semiotic texts to challenge the negative semiotic treatment of Latin@ immigrants in the United States. Following a critical social semiotic approach, the analysis of intersemiotic relationships demonstrates that approximately half of the semiotic texts analyzed communicate an overall transformative message by challenging the negative representations of Latin@s (...) in the mainstream media. The strong presence of transformative ideologies in the verbal and visual modes underscores the potential for Spanish-language media to represent Latin@s as powerful social actors who stand up to negative treatment through activism. Moreover, the contrast of ideologies across the verbal and visual modes may incite the audience to participate in activism that supports Latin@ immigrants in the United States. (shrink)