Social and cognitive approaches to interpersonal communication

Historically, the social aspects of language use have been considered the domain of social psychology, although the underlying psycholinguistic mechanisms have been the purview of cognitive psychology. Recently, however, it has become increasingly clear that these two dimensions are highly interrelated: Cognitive mechanisms underlying speech production and comprehension interact with social psychological factors, such as beliefs about one's interlocutors and politeness norms, and with the dynamics of the conversation itself, to produce shared meaning. This realization has led to an exciting body of research integrating the social and cognitive dimensions which has greatly increased our understanding of human language use. This volume contains a collection of papers by noted social and cognitive psychologists illustrating this theme. The book will be of interest to all those who study interpersonal language use: social and cognitive psychologists, theoretical and applied linguists, and communication researchers.