Communicating with One Another: Toward a Psychology of Spontaneous Spoken Discourse

266 Pages·2008·1.9 MB·English

by  Daniel C. O'Connell

Communicating with One Another
COGNITION AND LANGUAGE
A Series in Psycholinguistics (cid:2) Series Editor: R. W. RIEBER
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VYGOTSKY’SSOCIOHISTORICALPSYCHOLOGYANDITSCONTEMPORARY
APPLICATIONS
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COMMUNICATINGWITHONEANOTHER:TowardaPsychologyofSpontaneous
SpokenDiscourse
DanielC.O’ConnellandSabineKowal
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(cid:2)
Daniel C. O’Connell Sabine Kowal
Communicating with One
Another
Toward a Psychology of Spontaneous
Spoken Discourse
Foreword by Donelson E. Dulany
1 3
DanielC.O’Connell SabineKowal
GeorgetownUniversity TechnischeUniversita¨t
Washington,DC Institutfu¨rSpracheundKommunikation
USA Berlin
[email protected] Germany
[email protected]
ISBN:978-0-387-77631-6 e-ISBN:978-0-387-77632-3
DOI:10.1007/978-0-387-77632-3
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2008924420
#2008SpringerScienceþBusinessMedia,LLC
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AN ACADEMIC DEBT
OF RECOGNITION
Dedicated to the memory of Professor Hans
Ho¨rmann, mentor to both of us, and to
futuregenerationsofscholars,thattheymay
havethecourageheendeavoredtoteachtous
by his example: to be honestly and
steadfastly open to empirical evidence. He
wasevermindfulofwhatourtaskis:tolearn
more about how people use language to
communicate with one another – to work
toward a psychology of language use.
A PERSONAL DEDICATION
To two women who have inspired us with
their integrity and kindness and wisdom: to
our sisters, Mary Virginia Sabin and
Christiane Oberg
Foreword
A reader with any background in psycholinguistics should find this book
intellectually stimulating and important, as well as perhaps provocative in
someways.MyowninterestinpsycholinguisticscameearlybeforeIturnedto
analysis of the roles of conscious states and development of a mentalistic
metatheory–ametatheoryIseeasquiteconsistentwiththeauthors’theore-
tical proposals. What I see throughout this book is the authors’ vision of a
need to move psycholinguistics to the analysis of more psychologically sig-
nificant uses of language. That indeed is a very significant and fundamental
aimwhensomuchofcognitivepsychologyhassacrificedsignificantcontentin
thesearchforlawfulnessandrigor.Indeed,whatcouldbemorefundamental
than to ‘‘reinstate genuinely psychological considerations to the analysis of
spontaneousspokendiscourse’’(Chapter23,p.217)?Psycholinguisticsis,as
the very term reveals, interdisciplinary in substance, and the Chomskyan
(1957)revolutioninlinguisticshaslonginspiredmainstreampsycholinguistics
tofocusconceptuallyonthewayinwhichlinguisticstructurefunctionsintheuse
oflanguage,withthecontributionfrompsychologybeinglargelymethodologi-
cal–afocusontheindividualspeakerorwriterwithinacontrolledexperimental
environment.Soasummaryofthemainstreampsycholinguisticfocusisgivenin
a few terms: monologue, linguistic concepts, and an artificial experimental
environment.
Whatthenisthecontrastproposedthroughout,inthetheorytheydevelop
and in their own and others’ empirical research presented here? The authors
provocativelylayoutwhattheyseeaslimitationsofmainstreampsycholinguis-
tics. There should then be a shift of emphasis to an exploration of more
significantpsychologicalconceptionsofintentions,feelings,beliefs,andmean-
ings – significant states of awareness – that can animate the speaker and the
hearer as well. Indeed, the authors lay out the groundwork for the further
development of theory: intersubjectivity, perspectivity, open-endedness, and
verbalintegrity.Forthesepsychologicallymoresignificantaspectsoflanguage
usetobe revealed,there would thenbe ashiftofempirical focus from mono-
loguetodialogue.Infact,weshouldlookforashiftfromtheartificialityofour
insignificant little experimental tasks to real spontaneous dialogue in field
ix
x Foreword
observation–as,forexample,inpoliticalinterviews.Thatkindofshiftisalso
intrinsicallyafocusonoralratherthanwrittenlanguage.
Howcouldthesephenomenaberevealedempirically?Theauthorsdrawon
the work of others and on 40 years of their own research together. What is
psychologicallysignificantcanoftenberevealedinrhetoric–andastheauthors
putit,‘‘Prosodyisoneofthemostimportanttoolsoforalrhetoric’’(Chapter5,
p. 50): pauses, stress, intonation, intensity, duration, and articulation rate.
These, as well as semantic content and assertion forms, can convey meaning
andasenseofreferencefromthespeakerasathematic‘‘centerofgravity’’.And
howshouldweregardpausesandfillerssuchas‘‘uh’’or‘‘um’’?Asdepartures
fromamodelofthe‘‘idealspeaker,’’onamainstreamassumption,orassome-
timesfacilitatingthearticulationofthespeakeraswellastheunderstandingof
thehearer?Forthatmatter,whenisaninterjectionaninterruptionandwhenis
it only natural turn-taking? And we should not forget that laughter and even
booing are communicative. All of these things are topics elaborated by the
authorsconceptuallyandintheempiricalevidencetheyreview.
Now here is what I think would be an especially provocative and intellec-
tuallystimulatingquestionsforthereader:Iswhattheauthorsareproposinga
classical Kuhnianparadigmshiftinpsycholinguistics?Kuhnoriginally (1962)
used the term ‘‘paradigm’’ in enough different senses to occupy scholars for
decades,butthecoreandinfluentialmeaninghasbeenthatofgenerallyaccepted
metatheory,theory,andmethodologythatguidesresearchinafield–inKuhn’s
term,a‘‘consensuallyvalidatedmodusoperandi.’’Itisimportanttoask,then,
whethertheconceptual andempiricalapproachestheyillustrate andpromote
arecomplementarytomainstreamapproachesorirreconcilable.Forthatmat-
ter, could some of the proposed shifts be complementary and some others
irreconcilable? On my reading that is closest to the authors’ view, a view that
seemsreasonabletome.Theshiftfromabehavioristictoacognitiveparadigm
came with some evidence that was irreconcilable with general stimulus–
responsetheory–forexample,evidenceforcomplexityofmemoryandaction
structures as well as evidence against direct and automatic strengthening by
reinforcement. But some see connectionist models (a version of S–R theory
re-embodied) as complementary to information processing models, and
behaviorists and cognitivists alike have employed manipulation response
experimental designs and interpreted subject reports within a physicalistic
data language. What is to be said of the relation of the mainstream and
proposedpsycholinguisticparadigms?
After his early theological studies in Austria, Dan O’Connell entered the
PhDprogramhereattheUniversityofIllinois–wherewecollaboratedonan
experimental and theoretical analysis of the causal role of verbally reported
consciousstatesinconceptdevelopment(Dulany&O’Connell,1963).Thiswas
beforeheleftforapostdoctoralappointmentatHarvardCenterforCognitive
Studies, further work in Germany, and faculty appointments at St. Louis
University (including President), Loyola University of Chicago, and George-
town University (including Department Chair). Sabine Kowal studied at the
Foreword xi
Free University of Berlin, received her PhD at St. Louis University, and has
been for many years at both theTechnical University ofBerlin and the Anna
FreudOberschuleinBerlin.O’ConnellandKowalhavebeenlongtimecolla-
borators in psycholinguistic research. As Editor of the American Journal of
Psychology,Ipublishedtheauthors’2003‘‘HalfCenturyofMonologism,’’their
description of mainstream psycholinguistics and the approach much further
elaboratedinthispresentbook.
I believe the reader will see what I see in this work – a thesis that is
intellectuallystimulatingandsignificant,andinfact,provocativeinwaysthat
canbeimportantforthedisciplinewhenexamined.
DepartmentofPsychology, ByDonelsonE.Dulany
UniversityofIllinois
Champaign/Urbana,Illinois
Preface
WewishtheacademicdedicationofourbooktobearecognitionofProfessor
HansHo¨rmann,mentortobothofusattheFreeUniversityofBerlin.Thefirst
author, Daniel C. O’Connell, was a Humboldt Fellow there during the
1968–1969 academic year. It was a year of academic protests, strikes, and
endless debate over rights and duties. Altogether, it was a time of chaos and
scholarlystalemate,notthebestyeartoappearinaBerlinbeleagueredbyboth
thecoldwarandnowastudentrevolt.
It must have been January of 1969 that Professor Ho¨rmann approached
Sabine Kowal, a student at that time, in the corridor of the Psychological
InstituteoftheFreeUniversityofBerlinwithasuggestionthatsheworkwith
himandO’Connellonaresearchproject,sinceO’Connellwasfreetocarryon
his research unimpeded. The reason for this freedom was that none of the
protesterswantedtoconfronttheAmericanorriskreprisals.
Sabine Kowal did go to see O’Connell. Within a year, the new team had
attended two international psycholinguistic conferences (Schloss Lehen near
Heidelberg,Germany,andBressanone,Italy)andhadpublishedtwice(O’Connell,
Kowal,&Ho¨rmann,1969,1970).Thatwasalmost40yearsago,andO’Connell
andKowalarestillengagedinresearchtogether.
Ho¨rmann (1967) had quickly become a critic of the new psycholinguistics
that emerged at the middle of the twentieth century. And it was precisely his
attitudeofquestioningandcriticizingthatbothO’ConnellandKowallearned
from him. But there was more: Beneath his deep personal reserve, Hans
Ho¨rmann offered to us a sort of fatherly expectation of excellence and exem-
plifiedforusadisciplinedandstubborndedicationtoempiricaldiscovery.Both
ofusaredeeplygratefultohimforhisencouragementandhismentoringofour
fledgling efforts to learn in a genuinely psychological framework about how
peopleuselanguagetocommunicatewithoneanother.
Many others havecontributed alongtheway tothegrowthofthis project.
Notable among them was Frieda Goldman-Eisler (1968), whose interest in
pauses was our own starting point. Dozens of students and colleagues have
workedwithus.Andanumberofinstitutionsandfoundationshaveinvestedin
us. Among the universities that have supported our research are St. Louis
University(almamatertousboth),LoyolaUniversityofChicago,Georgetown
xiii