Towards a Theory of Situated Languaging

Lecture by Per Linell
Senior Professor in the Department of Education, Communication and Learning at Gothenburg University, Sweden

Friday, April 17, 2015
125 Nicholson Hall
10:30 am-12:00 pm

There is an ongoing perspective shift in the language sciences from unquestionably assuming abstract language systems to be primary with regard to language use, to the opposite assumption with situated languaging (language use) in talk, text events, new media, etc. as the primary phenomenon of language. This shift will move linguistics from structuralism to substantialism (but still with a fair amount of structuralism), and it will require partly new approaches to most domains of language study, as compared to modern linguistics of the 20th century. I argue that these theories of situated languaging should build on a dialogical meta-theory of human sense-making. Such a meta-theory is an antidote to monological theories of individualist information processing in cognition, unidirectional transfer in communication, and code models of language.

In this lecture I will sketch the implications of the meta-theory of dialogical activities for theories of syntax, lexicology/semantics, phonology and pragmatics. Other topics that will be mentioned, and at least minimally discussed, in the lecture are the embodiment of language, the relation of language to non-linguistic semiotic resources, the participatory agency of speakers (and other participants), and the relationship of talk and writing.

Further reading at z.umn.edu/perlinell