Gunter Senft

Publications

Displaying 1 - 12 of 12
  • Senft, G. (2016). "Masawa - bogeokwa si tuta!": Cultural and cognitive implications of the Trobriand Islanders' gradual loss of their knowledge of how to make a masawa canoe. In P. Meusburger, T. Freytag, & L. Suarsana (Eds.), Ethnic and Cultural Dimensions of Knowledge (pp. 229-256). Heidelberg: Springer Verlag.

    Abstract

    This paper describes how the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea used to construct their big seagoing masawa canoes and how they used to make their sails, what forms of different knowledge and expertise they needed to do this during various stages of the construction processes, how this knowledge was socially distributed, and the social implications of all the joint communal activities that were necessary until a new canoe could be launched. Then it tries to answer the question why the complex distributed knowledge of how to make a masawa has been gradually getting lost in most of the village communities on the Trobriand Islands; and finally it outlines and discusses the implications of this loss for the Trobriand Islanders' culture, for their social construction of reality, and for their indigenous cognitive capacities.
  • Senft, G. (2016). Pragmatics. In K. B. Jensen, R. T. Craig, J. Pooley, & E. Rothenbuhler (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy (pp. 1586-1598). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781118766804.wbiect165.

    Abstract

    This entry takes an interdisciplinary approach to linguistic pragmatics. It discusses how the meaning of utterances can only be understood in relation to overall cultural, social, and interpersonal contexts, as well as to culture-specific conventions and the speech events in which they are embedded. The entry discusses core issues of pragmatics such as speech act theory, conversational implicature, deixis, gesture, interaction strategies, ritual communication, phatic communion, linguistic relativity, ethnography of speaking, ethnomethodology, and conversation analysis. It takes a transdisciplinary view of the field, showing that linguistic pragmatics has its predecessors in other disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, ethology, ethnology, and sociology.
  • Senft, G. (2005). Bronislaw Malinowski and linguistic pragmatics. In P. Cap (Ed.), Pragmatics today (pp. 139-155). Frankfurt am Main: Lang.
  • Levinson, S. C., & Senft, G. (1996). Zur Semantik der Verben INTRARE und EXIRE in verschieden Sprachen. In Jahrbuch der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft 1996 (pp. 340-344). München: Generalverwaltung der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft München.
  • Pederson, E., & Senft, G. (1996). Route descriptions: interactive games with Eric's maze task. In S. C. Levinson (Ed.), Manual for the 1996 Field Season (pp. 15-17). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3003287.

    Abstract

    What are the preferred ways to describe spatial relationships in different linguistic and cultural groups, and how does this interact with non-linguistic spatial awareness? This game was devised as an interactive supplement to several items that collect information on the encoding and understanding of spatial relationships, especially as relevant to “route descriptions”. This is a director-matcher task, where one consultant has access to stimulus materials that shows a “target” situation, and directs another consultant (who cannot see the target) to recreate this arrangement.
  • Senft, G. (1996). Phatic communion. In J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman, & J. Blommaert (Eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics (loose leaf installment) (loose leaf installment, 1995). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Senft, G. (1995). Elicitation. In J. Blommaert, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics: Manual (pp. 577-581). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Senft, G. (1995). 'Noble savages' and 'the islands of love': Trobriand Islanders in 'popular publications'. In C. Baak, M. Bakker, & D. Van der Meij (Eds.), Tales from a concave world: Liber amicorum Bert Voorhoeve (pp. 480-510). Leiden: Projects division, department of languages and cultures of South East Asia and Oceania, Leiden University.
  • Senft, G. (1995). Fieldwork. In J. Blommaert, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics: Manual (pp. 595-601). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Senft, G. (1995). Mit Tinkertoy in die Tiefe(n) des Raumes: Zum räumlichen Verweisen im Kilivila - Eine Fallstudie. In R. Fiehler, & D. Metzing (Eds.), Untersuchungen zur Kommunikationstruktur (Bielefelder Schriften zu Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft, pp. 139-162). Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag.
  • Senft, G. (1991). Mahnreden auf den Trobriand Inseln: Eine Fallstudie. In D. Flader (Ed.), Verbale Interaktion: Studien zur Empirie und Methologie der Pragmatik (pp. 27-49). Stuttgart: Metzler.
  • Senft, G. (1991). Prolegomena to the pragmatics of "situational-intentional" varieties in Kilivila language. In J. Verschueren (Ed.), Levels of linguistic adaptation: Selected papers from the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, August 1987 (pp. 235-248). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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