Second language acquisition theory has traditionally focused on the cognitive and psycholinguistic processes involved in additional language (L2) learning. In addition, research on learner psychology has primarily centered on learners' cognitive abilities (e.g., aptitude and working memory) and internal traits or states (e.g., dispositions,…

This article is concerned with how meaning potential, in particular an individual's personalized meaning potential, emerges from acts of meaning. This happens during different time frames: logogenetic--the creation of meaning in text; ontogenetic--the learning of a personalized meaning potential; and phylogenetic--the evolution of the collective…

In this chapter, the focus of attention moves from the contexts described in chapter 3 to the verbal, nonverbal, and interactional resources that participants employ in discursive practices. These resources are discussed within the frame of participation status and participation framework proposed by Goffman. Verbal resources employed by…

Individuals' use of language in contexts emerges from second-to-second processes of activating and integrating traces of past experiences--an interactionist view compatible with the study of language as a complex adaptive system but quite different from the trait-based framework through which measurement specialists investigate validity, establish…

Language is a complex adaptive system: Speakers are agents who interact with each other, and their past and current interactions feed into speakers' future behavior in complex ways. In this article, we describe the social cognitive linguistic basis for this analysis of language and a mathematical model developed in collaboration between…

Many millenia ago, a number of genetic changes endowed the human species with the remarkable capacity: (1) to construct highly complex systems of expressions--human languages; (2) to copy such systems, once created, from other members of the species; and (3) to use them for communicative and perhaps other purposes. This capacity is not uniform; it…

Language has a fundamentally social function. Processes of human interaction along with domain-general cognitive processes shape the structure and knowledge of language. Recent research in the cognitive sciences has demonstrated that patterns of use strongly affect how language is acquired, is used, and changes. These processes are not independent…

In this chapter, the historical roots of contemporary Practice Theory are unearthed in the work of semioticians, philosophers, and anthropologists. Saussure's semiotic theory is contrasted with that of Peirce, and the importance of Peirce's work for understanding the context of signs is stressed. The philosophy of language in the writings of…

Examines resolution of referential conflicts in second-language (L2) interaction in two different pairings of L2 learners. Pairs where the higher proficiency member was in the dominant role engaged in little interactive behavior, whereas pairs where the less proficient member was dominant engaged in substantial negotiation and interaction and were…

Reviews 10 studies, comprising 11 samples, of the effects of reading to young children in schools. Ages of the children varied between 31 and 90 months, and dependent variables were classified in two domains: oral language and reading skills. (Author/VWL)