Cognition, Language and

Commumication
R. Zhivkova-Krupeva
Language and thought
• There is no thinking in general, but human thinking; there is no language in general, but human
language.

• A linguistic phenomenon is reflected once through the categories of thinking and cognition and a
second time through the categories of language.
Language
• Language does not simply reflect this world, it offers us an interpretation of it. The Russian linguist
and philosopher Lossev (1983) speaks of three kinds of existence:
1) Objective reality, which can be reflected, cognized, named, denoted – objective existence
2) This reality reflected in the mind, the images of it – cognitive existence
3) Language which does not reproduce reality, but offers a specifically “processed” picture of reality
in order for us to understand it in a specific way – semantic existence.
Cognition
• Human cognition develops through the symbolization of cognitive experience.
• Picture of the world
• Conceptual picture of the world and Linguistic picture of the world
Language ability
• extracting relations from (or computing relations in) the environment
• relating these relationships.
Receptive language proficiency
(a) Bottom-up processing: attention is focused on the oral or written text, words are identified and
propositions are created on the basis of the information present in the input;
(b) Top-down processing: propositions are connected with cognitive schemata, existing in long-term
memory; new information is assimilated into existing schemata.
Receptive competence
Understanding written texts
• Understanding written texts differs from comprehension of verbal speech because written language
is more contextualized.

• Oral language conveys meaning that is largely drawn from extralinguistic sources found in the
surrounding context.
Recognition, interpretation, comprehension
• Recognition

• Interpretation

• Comprehension
Strategic competence
• Relates to the semantic-pragmatic component

• also underlies all other components of the realization of receptive language competence in actual
speech events.
Misunderstanding
• Non-communication

• Miscommunication
 Strategies in interlanguage communication 1
• Exact repetition
• Semantic repetition question
• Self-repetition
• Other-repetition
• Confirmation check
• Or-choice question
• Decomposition
• Acceptance of an unintentional topic-switch
• (Impressionistically) abrupt topic change
• Repair of wh- or yes/no question
• (Impressionistically) marked use of a quotation or topic-initiating move
• Left dislocation
Strategies in interlanguage communication 2
• Question-and-answer
• Acceptance of ambiguity
• Lexical switch
• Stress for topic saliency
• Expansion
Situational context
• Setting
• Participants
• Roles
• Channel
• Key
Cooperative principle and territorial principle
• Cooperative principle

• Territorial principle
Thank you for the attention!
Sources
• Pencheva, M., T. Shopov, (2003) Understanding Babel. An Essay in
Intercomprehension Analysis, “St. Kliment Ohridski” University Press,
Sofia.