Language as Social Action: Social Psychology and Language Use

Abstract

Given the diversity and number of disciplines that take an interest in the social aspects of language use, providing an interdisciplinary perspective on this topic would be a challenging prospect for many scholars. Holtgraves, a social psychologist, meets this challenge in an admirable fashion. The book's stated aim, as outlined in the introductory chapter "The Social Bases of Language and Linguistic Underpinnings of Social Behavior," is to approach the topic of language use as social action from an interdisciplinary viewpoint, and the material covered is an impressive, wide ranging synthesis of research from the fields of philosophy, linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, anthropology, and cognitive and social psy- chology. Fundamental to the approach taken is the reciprocal relationship between language and social context: How the social dimensions of language cannot be ignored and how social psychological processes are mediated by language. A chapter is devoted to each of five major themes of language use: language as action, lan- guage as interpersonal action, language as contextualized action, language as coordinated action, and language as thoughtful action.

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