Language and Language Use Flashcards
common ground
info shared btw 2 people who engage in a conversation
* helps coordinate their language use
audience design
constructing utterances to suit the audiences knowledge
90% of conversation
- 4 or less people
we achieve conversational coordination by
- lexicon (words and expression)
- syntax (grammatical rules for arranging words and expressions together)
- speech rate and accent
situation models
mental representation of an event, object, or situation constructed at the time of comprehending a linguistic description
priming
activation of certain thoughts or feeling that make them easier to think of and act upon
gossiping
60% to 70% of daily conversation is gossip
- making more friends
(enlarging in-group against out-group)
social brain hypothesis
hypothesis that humans have evolved to maintain larger in-groups
*group size a human can support is about 150
linguistic intergroup bias
tendency for people to characterize positive things about their in-group using more abstract expressions, but negative things about their outgroups using more abstract expression
social networks
network of social relationships among individuals through which info can travel
- how gossip spreads
- stories change…stereotypes more likely to be retained and retold
psychological consequences of language use
when people linguistically labeled negative images, the amygdala was activated less than when they were not given a change to label them
reconstruction of negative life events
can have therapeutic effects on those suffering from traumatic experiences
- talking abut it improved peoples psychological well-being, but just thinking abut them worsened it
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
the language that people use determines their thoughts
