MSc Psycholinguistics 2004-2005
Dialogue

|  Course information  |   Reading list  |   Syllabus and handouts  |   Assessment  |

Course information

Module organiser: Dr Sarah Haywood

Aims and objectives: This course aims to provide an advanced understanding of current psycholinguistic research on dialogue, including both its comprehension and its production. By the end of the course, you should be able to answer questions like: how do interlocutors co-ordinate their contributions to a conversation? To what extent do they align on shared ways of talking and thinking about objects in the world around them? Do they consider their conversational partner's knowledge or perspective when they (a) formulate utterances, and (b) interpret messages that they hear? What kinds of dialogue skills do children have? How and when do they acquire them? Tutorial sessions will also consider the functional role of disfluencies in dialogue, and the production and avoidance of ambiguities.

Activities: Five two-hour lectures, which will include student presentations and time for group discussion. Two ninety-minute tutorial sessions. Assessment will be via one 3,000 word essay (see Assessment).

Lectures: Tuesdays 11:10 - 13:00 (weeks 7-11, Semester I, first meeting Tue Nov 2nd) in Room 1.07, 24 Buccleuch Place.

Tutorials: Wed Nov 17 2004 and Wed Dec 1 2004, 9:30-10:50, in Room 8.13, David Hume Tower.

Reading list

The updated course reading list is available here. Dialogue has received relatively little attention in psycholinguistics to date (for reasons that we'll discuss in Lecture 1), so there isn't one particular book that constitutes good background reading. However, Herb Clark's Arenas of Language Use (1992) is a useful collection of papers. Together, they form a nice introduction to the notion of dialogue as coordinated action, and also cover some of the issues relating to perspective taking, which is a major theme of this course. Another useful book is Approaches to studying world-situated language use, edited by John Trueswell and Mike Tanenhaus. Other key references are marked in the reading list with an asterisk (*).

Syllabus and Handouts

Click on the titles below to see the PowerPoint slides for each lecture.

  • Dialogue as co-ordinated action
  • Perspective-taking I: Comprehension
  • Perspective-taking II: Production
  • Dialogue as alignment | Pickering & Garrod (2004) and associated commentaries
  • Development of dialogue skills

    Assessment

    This course is assessed by means of a 3,000-word essay. You get to pick your own essay title, within limits (obviously it has to be related to the course content!). The submission deadline for essays is Fri Dec 17 2004. You should submit your essay to the Programme Secretary, Katie Keltie - you'll find her in room 1.02, 14 Buccleuch Place. For futher information about what's expected of your written work, see this web page, and your programme handbook.


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    This page last updated 1st November 2004