Conference: Finding Common Ground: Social, Ecological, and Cognitive Perspectives on Language Use

University Of Connecticut, Storrs CT

Investigators

Abstract

Project Overview This award funds a three-day conference that is planned for June 2014 at the University of Connecticut. The conference will bring together a distinguished group of researchers from a variety of disciplines and perspectives to share their theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of language as a socially and physically situated interaction that is public, meaning observable and accountable. The conference will offer three full days with presentations, posters, and discussions. There will be a pre-conference workshop intended to introduce graduate students to pioneering work on language that will be unfamiliar to most. The conference is entitled: "Finding Common Ground: Social, Ecological, and Cognitive Perspectives on Language Use." Intellectual Merit Dramatic developments across an array of disciplines and theoretical perspectives in the past decade are challenging influential views of language as private, individual, biological, and designed for thinking. These developments have generally emerged largely independently of each other, and researchers with similar concerns often do not know of each other's work. These new methodological and theoretical approaches to understanding language are exciting and promising, but they have yet to achieve the coordination and collaboration necessary to lead to major changes in how most scientists and scholars view language. This conference will enable various researchers to engage in face-to-face conversations in order to develop an appreciation for other theoretical approaches and methods that can amplify and strengthen their own, and serve to promote collaborations that could in time transform the language sciences. Potential Broader Impacts The PI will use conference proceeding to produce an edited book, a special issue of a journal, and a website resource center. These outcomes will allow a broad array of language researchers and cognitive scientists to benefit from discussions that take place at the conference. The most significant effect of the meeting may be the challenge and inspiration it will provide to graduate students in ecological psychology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and related areas of cognitive science, to go beyond the successes and failures of the current generation of scholars. The outcomes of the meeting will also be of interest to members of the broader public who have a serious interest in the important role of language in social, political, and economic life.