Displaying 1 - 7 of 7
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Cutler, A., Klein, W., & Levinson, S. C. (2005). The cornerstones of twenty-first century psycholinguistics. In A. Cutler (
Ed. ), Twenty-first century psycholinguistics: Four cornerstones (pp. 1-20). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. -
Dunn, M., Terrill, A., Reesink, G., Foley, R. A., & Levinson, S. C. (2005). Structural phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language history. Science, 309(5743), 2072-2075. doi:10.1126/science.1114615.
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Levinson, S. C. (2005). [Comment on: Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Piraha by Daniel L. Everett]. Current Anthropology, 46, 637-638.
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Levinson, S. C. (2005). Living with Manny's dangerous idea. Discourse Studies, 7(4-5), 431-453. doi:10.1177/1461445605054401.
Abstract
Daniel Dennett, in Darwin's Dangerous Idea, argues that natural selection is a universal acid that eats through other theories, because it can explain just about everything, even the structure of the mind. Emanuel (Manny) Schegloff (1987) in ‘Between Micro and Macro: Context and Other Connections’ opposes the importation of ‘macro’ (sociological/sociolinguistic) factors into the ‘micro’ (interaction analysis), suggesting that one might reverse the strategy instead. Like Darwin, he is coy about whether he just wants his own turf, but the idea opens up the possibility of interactional reductionism. I will argue against interactional reductionism on methodological grounds: Don't bite off more than you can chew! Instead I'll support the good old Durkheimian strategy of looking for intermediate variables between systems of different orders. I try and make the case with data from Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea. -
Levinson, S. C. (2005). Languages: Europe puts it's money where its mouth is [Letter to the editor]. Nature, 438, 914-914. doi:doi:10.1038/438914c.
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Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In E. N. Goody (
Ed. ), Questions and politeness: strategies in social interaction (pp. 56-311). Cambridge University Press.Abstract
This study is about the principles for constructing polite speech. We describe and account for some remarkable parallelisms in the linguistic construction of utterances with which people express themselves in different languges and cultures. A motive for these parallels is isolated - politeness, broadly defined to include both polite friendliness and polite formality - and a universal model is constructed outlining the abstract principles underlying polite usages. This is based on the detailed study of three unrelated languages and cultures: the Tamil of south India, the Tzeltal spoken by Mayan Indians in Chiapas, Mexico, and the English of the USA and England, supplemented by examples from other cultures. Of general interest is the point that underneaath the apparent diversity of polite behaviour in different societies lie some general pan-human principles of social interaction, and the model of politenss provides a tool for analysing the quality of social relations in any society. -
Levinson, S. C. (1978). Comment on Beck's theory of metaphor. Current Anthropology, 19(1), 92-92.
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