Call for Papers
Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Literacy
a seminar sponsored by
The Society for Critical Exchange
at the annual meeting of the
Midwest Modern Language Association
Minneapolis, November 2-6, 1999
Recent work in rhetoric and composition theory, education, as well as
cultural and media studies has approached the question of literacy by
focusing on the material conditions of the production, dissemination, and
comprehension of texts. Examining the social, political, and economic
settings in which individual rhetorical agents write and read is clearly
indispensable to understanding acts of writing and reading. Equally
important, however, is an understanding of language structure and use as
these relate to human psychology.
Recent activity in linguistics and cognitive science has produced a family
of approaches to language structure known collectively as
cognitive-functional linguistics. While many of its sibling theories vary
in scope and method, they unite around a common assumption that language
structure is a composite of cognitive and social communicative activities
emerging from basic psychological operations of perception, attention,
memory, categorization, and metaphoric mapping. Thus, an account of
language structure must address such issues as how individuals perceive the
world, how they make use of their limited cognitive resources, and, as
important, how they lay claim to the limited cognitive resources of other
individuals -- which entails having a theory of memory, categorization, and
metaphoric mapping consistent with present research in the behavioral and
brain sciences. This family of approaches to language structure may be a
useful complement to current discussion of the material, cultural, and
historical conditions that motivate literate practices.
The aim of this seminar is to explore the possibility of combining
cognitive-functional approaches to language structure with
cultural-material approaches to literacy (broadly defined). Individual
contributors may wish to address (but are not restricted to) the following
issues:
> the metaphors specific cultures use to conceive acts of writing
and reading;
>whether or not specific conceptual stands toward writing can be
inferred from existing texts, and whether or not these conceptual
stands form identifiable styles of writing;
>the limits of working- and long-term memory and how those
limitations affect the development of specific kinds of textual
production (literary or otherwise);
>the relationship between words and images in texts;
>how categorization affects reading;
>the relationship between writing and speech;
>meaning and context in the undergraduate essay;
>how readers construe intent from writing.
Deadline for abstracts: 1 April 1999; deadline for full papers: 31 August 1999
Send Abstracts via email to "tvo2@po.cwru.edu" or to this postal address:
Professor Todd Oakley,
Department of English, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland,
OH 44106-7117
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