Papers by Zsuzsanna Schnell
The dissertation is rooted in an empirical study investigating the social-cognitive background of... more The dissertation is rooted in an empirical study investigating the social-cognitive background of the different aspects of pragmatic competence (metaphor-, humor-, irony comprehension and the recognition of the infringement of conversational maxims), and their relationship to Theory of Mind (ToM) skills. The empirical study serving as the backbone of the dissertation is based on two ToM tests: a verbal, first- and second order test (Wimmer and Perner 1983) and a novel non-verbal eyes-test developed by the author (Schnell 2012). We compare nonverbal and verbal ToM test results with performance in both verbal and non verbal tasks of pragmatic competence to see if there is a verbal performance limitation as hypothesized by some researchers in cognitive development (Astington and Jenkins 1999). The results suggest that ToM skills and pragmatic competence do correlate, and that verbal ToM tasks prove to be more predictive in forecasting pragmatic abilities. Furthermore, the cognitive mec...
Akadémiai Kiadó eBooks, Dec 31, 2020
The current chapter presents a distinction between individualistic versus collectivistic cultures... more The current chapter presents a distinction between individualistic versus collectivistic cultures based on communication styles. In particular, this distinction involves the concept of "face," and cultural communicative preferences for, respectively, negative politeness and positive politeness. In light of this distinction, the chapter further investigates four social aspects of irony: (a) humor, (b) status enhancement, (c) aggression, and (d) emotional control. In a series of pilot studies 1 , the perception of these social aspects was tested in two groups of participants coming from individualistic versus collectivistic cultures and responding to both critical and praise irony. The results suggest that the individualistic group found the ironic utterances funnier and more status enhancing than the collectivistic group. While no statistically significant difference was found for aggression ratings, the results revealed that in the individualistic group, irony was rated as more face-threatening when a person's poor performance was targeted, while in the individualistic group, this effect occurred when moral behavior was targeted rather than the situation.
European Psychiatry, 2013
Introduction Pragmatic language skills were examined in schizophrenia patients compared to IQ-mat... more Introduction Pragmatic language skills were examined in schizophrenia patients compared to IQ-matched control subjects measured by the decoding of the flouting of the four Gricean maxims. Methods 19 schizophrenic patients and 19 matched controls were evaluated. Five experimental conditions (all included four stories) were used, such as „quantity maxim” (QNM) condition, „quality maxim” (QLM) condition, „relevance maxim” (RM) condition, „manner maxim” (MM) condition and "control” (C) condition. An investigator presented the stories and asked for the hidden communicative intentions. PANSS scores and general intelligence were also measured. Results Patients with schizophrenia performed significantly worse than controls in each of the conditions containig the flouting of the Gricean maxims. The response accuracy in the C condition was not differed significantly between the two groups (QNM:p< 0.001; QLM:p< 0.001; RM:p< 0.001; MM:p< 0.001; C:p=0.487). Significant positive correlations were found between QLM and IQ (p< 0.001) and between RM and IQ (p=0.025), and there was no significant correlatios between PANSS scores and response accuracy. Full scale IQ was not differed significantly between the two groups (p=0.095). Conclusions We found that a complex pragmatic language deficit exists in schizophrenia. The impairment do not seem to have a relationship with symptom severity. Besides, it seems, that good intellectual function supports pragmatic language skills in schizophrenia.
Kultúratudományi Szemle, Mar 30, 2022
The project method in ESL teaching – a method supporting 21st century competencies as a platform ... more The project method in ESL teaching – a method supporting 21st century competencies as a platform for inclusion in the classroom
The present study gives an overview of the basic notions of Project Pedagogy as a method in rebirth in modern educational approaches. Defining the major principles and its connections to reform pedagogical perspectives and the RJR model of acquisition, we highlight how the Project method is particularly suited for ESL (English as a Second Language) teaching, in learning and understanding foreign languages and cultures. We delineate a representative example of Project methodology in the ESL classroom by providing a synopsis of the English program’s project in Deák Elementary School of the University of Pécs, a partner institute of the University of Pécs and our Faculty. The ZOOm-in-Project is a concrete example of project pedagogy and its creative fruitful application in the foreign language classroom. We also provide the exact steps, parts, phases of the project with important notes on potential pitfalls and future corollaries.
Humanities & social sciences communications, Jun 25, 2022
This article explores a novel methodology in the globalized classroom to face and tackle new chal... more This article explores a novel methodology in the globalized classroom to face and tackle new challenges across cultures. The new online educational form of international discourse has the potential to make a difference in and outside Academia as it encompasses interpersonal communication across cultures and thus offers a novel framework for interpretation of different sociocultural perspectives to bring about social change. It transcends geographical and physical boundaries as it brings people together for discussion in the online joint event. Our study guides the reader through a collaborative educational framework and offers a methodology that transcends boundaries, exemplifying a tool for 21st century education. It offers techniques that bring on social change and enhances open-mindedness in tackling social problems with valuable methods from the fields of humanities and intercultural, collaborative communication.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
The present article addresses the professional conclusions of an international platform of educat... more The present article addresses the professional conclusions of an international platform of education in intercultural discourse in the European Union’s EDUC Project. In flagging social issues and concerns, cross-cultural academic collaboration is a powerful tool to bring about social change. In our educational project participants encounter different cultures, so the discussed topics, and especially the metaphors for the Covid-19 pandemic, receive instant reflections from different cultural perspectives, multiplying the potential sphere of valid interpretations, yielding novel perspectives in intercultural pragmatics and communication. This gives birth to a novel methodology that builds on the open-minded integration of different points of view, understanding universal traits of human cognition and differences in culture in the linguistics of discourse.
Humanities and Social Siences Communications (HSSComm) - Springer Nature, 2022
This article explores a novel methodology in the globalized classroom to face and tackle new chal... more This article explores a novel methodology in the globalized classroom to face and tackle new challenges across cultures. The new online educational form of international discourse has the potential to make a difference in and outside Academia as it encompasses interpersonal communication across cultures and thus offers a novel framework for interpretation of different sociocultural perspectives to bring about social change. It transcends geographical and physical boundaries as it brings people together for discussion in the online joint event. Our study guides the reader through a collaborative educational framework and offers a methodology that transcends boundaries, exemplifying a tool for 21st century education. It offers techniques that bring on social change and enhances open-mindedness in tackling social problems with valuable methods from the fields of humanities and intercultural, collaborative communication.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications- Springer Nature, 2022
The present article addresses the professional conclusions of an international platform of educat... more The present article addresses the professional conclusions of an international platform of education in intercultural discourse in the European Union's EDUC Project. In flagging social issues and concerns, cross-cultural academic collaboration is a powerful tool to bring about social change. In our educational project participants encounter different cultures, so the discussed topics, and especially the metaphors for the Covid-19 pandemic, receive instant reflections from different cultural perspectives, multiplying the potential sphere of valid interpretations, yielding novel perspectives in intercultural pragmatics and communication. This gives birth to a novel methodology that builds on the open-minded integration of different points of view, understanding universal traits of human cognition and differences in culture in the linguistics of discourse.
Fuzzy Boundaries in Discourse Studies, 2019
When we engage in discourse, we automatically take the shared, common knowledge of the listener a... more When we engage in discourse, we automatically take the shared, common knowledge of the listener and their ability to make inferences from context for granted. This level of interaction thus entails social cognitive factors that determine linguistic processing. The aim of the present chapter is to compare metaphor and irony, which are two very common examples of polysemy (here, defined as being the property of a single word which has two or more distinct but related senses (Matthews, Peter H., The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014, p. 135)), but whose interpretations, in cognitive terms, do not follow identical pathways. All the more, the infringement of the Gricean conversational Maxim of Quality (Grice, Paul, Syntax and Semantics. Academic Press, New York, 1975) has been identified as metaphor and/or irony (Grice, Paul, Syntax and Semantics. Academic Press, New York, 1975; Brown, Penelope, and Steven Levinson, Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978), which makes the case of irony versus metaphor even more complicated: do they overlap? The present study seeks to identify the extent of fuzziness in terms of the examined overlap. Are they similar despite serving markedly different social purposes? The present study sets out to answer these clarifying questions in an experimental pragmatic paradigm, contrasting and comparing the two polysemous forms in terms of their cognitive underpinnings and social cognitive corollaries in mental terms. The findings indicate that the processing of irony and metaphor are based on markedly different cognitive strategies, even though they are often taken as forms of violations of the Quality Maxim (Grice, Paul, Syntax and Semantics. Academic Press, New York, 1975). They also serve different social purposes, and their acquisition reflects different patterns (Schnell, Zsuzsanna, Miklos Marton, Gabor Molnar, and Janos Tőzser Janos (eds), Mas Elmek. L’Harmattan kiado, Budapest, 2016). The Irony principle (Leech, Geoffrey, Principles of Pragmatics. Longman, London, 1983) is also justified by the study’s cognitive developmental findings.
Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 2007
In this paper I review some of the theoretical issues surrounding metaphor, investigating the und... more In this paper I review some of the theoretical issues surrounding metaphor, investigating the understanding of metaphor-based constructions from a developmental psycholinguistic view. Reviewing the classification of metaphorical expressions, I elaborate on the morphological aspect of idioms; thus on the typology of metaphors, distinguishing them on the basis of their decomposability and conventionality (Gibbs 1994). I hypothesize a new, mentalistic model of interpretation, in which our mentalizing, intention-reading skills play a key role in deciphering intended (figurative) meaning. Furthermore, I point out the importance of decomposability and conventionality determining our interpretative processes; both factors playing a facilitating role in interpretation.
Our experimental pragmatic study explores the role of contextual cues in children&#39;s under... more Our experimental pragmatic study explores the role of contextual cues in children&#39;s understanding of noncompositional figurative utterances and explain why context awareness facilitates non-compositional meaning construction at an early age. We investigate preschoolers&#39; linguistic performance where the pragmatic trials are viewed in relation to children&#39;s mentalization skills: their ability to understand intentions and desires attributed to the self and others. We have found that contextual effects may vary according to what they address, and that the successful deciphering of implicit meaning (in our irony trial) is significantly influenced by contextual cues that target the mental state of the speaker, whereas regular linguistic context (in our idiomaticity condition) facilitates non-compositional understanding only moderately, at the level of tendentious correlation. Besides testing the effect of context within modalities (contextualized vs decontextualized utterances in the verbal modality), we also investigate the effect of context between two different modalities in the verbal vs. non-verbal domains (in our verbal vs. visual humor task). Our findings confirm results in developmental research that surface cues help in the recognition of communicative intent (Csibra 2010), in finding optimal relevance (Sperber-Wilson 1986) and contribute to the successful resolution of the intended meaning at hand (Schnell 2019), and that contextual effects may vary according to the nature of the cues available whether they affect mental state recognition or not.
Fuzzy Boundaries in Discourse Studies, 2019
Background Holistic meaning construction is a level of language use that entails the flexible app... more Background Holistic meaning construction is a level of language use that entails the flexible application of rules beyond mere semantic, morphosyntactic meaning construction. These fuzzy factors of interpretation give ground to interpersonal cognitive strategies that one has to apply in order to be a fully equal conversational partner. Participation in discourse requires the smooth handling of opaque constructions, the processing of which requires inferential activity on the part of the listener. This complex ability builds on social cognition, which has been found to be impaired in schizophrenia. Neurolinguistic research (Varga et al., Brain and Language 126:231−242, 2013; Varga et al., Journal of Neurolinguistics 29:1–16, 2014; Varga et al., Humour processing in schizophrenia. Proceedings of the IV International Humour Symposium, 2016; Schnell et al., Journal of Pragmatics 92:74–99, 2016) provides empirical evidence about social cognitive impairments that bring on pragmatic deficit.
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Papers by Zsuzsanna Schnell
The present study gives an overview of the basic notions of Project Pedagogy as a method in rebirth in modern educational approaches. Defining the major principles and its connections to reform pedagogical perspectives and the RJR model of acquisition, we highlight how the Project method is particularly suited for ESL (English as a Second Language) teaching, in learning and understanding foreign languages and cultures. We delineate a representative example of Project methodology in the ESL classroom by providing a synopsis of the English program’s project in Deák Elementary School of the University of Pécs, a partner institute of the University of Pécs and our Faculty. The ZOOm-in-Project is a concrete example of project pedagogy and its creative fruitful application in the foreign language classroom. We also provide the exact steps, parts, phases of the project with important notes on potential pitfalls and future corollaries.
The present study gives an overview of the basic notions of Project Pedagogy as a method in rebirth in modern educational approaches. Defining the major principles and its connections to reform pedagogical perspectives and the RJR model of acquisition, we highlight how the Project method is particularly suited for ESL (English as a Second Language) teaching, in learning and understanding foreign languages and cultures. We delineate a representative example of Project methodology in the ESL classroom by providing a synopsis of the English program’s project in Deák Elementary School of the University of Pécs, a partner institute of the University of Pécs and our Faculty. The ZOOm-in-Project is a concrete example of project pedagogy and its creative fruitful application in the foreign language classroom. We also provide the exact steps, parts, phases of the project with important notes on potential pitfalls and future corollaries.
A könyv bemutatja a nyelvelsajátítás törzs- és egyedfejődési vonatkozásait, s egyben rámutat, hogy jelen tudásunk szerint nem bizonyítható a folytonosság az állati és az emberi kommunikáció között. A kötet vázát alkotó egyedfejlődési perspektíva a gyermek életútja során kibontakozó nyelvelsajátítási fázisokat elemzi és veszi sorra, hogy feltérképezze e máig sok szempontból rejtélyes és fordulatokban gazdag folyamat lépéseit. Mit is adhat a gyermeknyelvkutatás a mai neveléstudomány, pszichológia, nyelvészet és kognitív tudomány számára? Az egyedfejlődési perspektíva mindig megmutat valamit a törzsfejlődésből, a kialakulás kérdéséről. A gyermeki gondolkodást tükröző gyermeknyelvből továbbá megtudhatunk sok mindent az emberi elméről: hogyan működik, milyen mechanizmusok mozgatják problémamegoldásunkat, társas kapcsolatainkat, kommunikációnkat. A gyermeki nyelvelsajátítás tanulmányozásából megismerhetjük egyedülálló szellemi, nyelvi képességeinket, míg a gyermeki társalgás nyelvezetének vizsgálata rávilágít személyközi kapcsolataink és mentális működéseink háttérfolyamataira, s kibontakozásának lépéseire. A nyelv kialakulásának, az állati és az emberi kommunikáció különbségeinek tanulmányozása emberségünk lényegébe ad betekintést nyelvi és mentális szinten egyaránt.
A gyermeknyelvkutatás hosszú évtizedek során rávilágított arra, hogy a babák valójában sokkal okosabbak, mint azt gondolták a 17.sz-i, Locke-i „tabula rasa” szemlélet korában és annak hagyományaként, ill. azt követően az 50-es években uralkodó behaviorista, tanuláselméleti paradigmában. Ma már tudjuk, hogy a gyermek kis nyelvészként rendszerező, a nyelvet feltérképező, konstruktív, építő munkát végez. Ennek kézzelfogható bizonyítékát a könyv egyes fejezeteiben bemutatott példák adják, rámutatva a gyermekek okos hibáira: kreatív szóalkotásaikra, a jelentéstani és nyelvtani túláltalánosításokra.
Az egyetemes fázisok mellett nagy variabilitás és egyedi vonások jellemzik a nyelvelsajátítás folyamatát, így napjaink nyelvelsajátítási elméletei között sem találunk egy minden gyermekre, minden körülmény között érvényes, önmagában teljes értékű modellt. A nyelvfejlődés mentális háttere ma az egyik legforrongóbb, legvitatottabb kérdéskör a pszichológus, nyelvész, kognitív és neurológus kutatók számára. Áttekintve a kötetben ismertetett elméletek megállapításait, és figyelmesen átgondolva a nyelvelsajátítás mozgatórugóját illetően az érvek eltérő hangsúlyait, megállapítható, hogy a nyelvelsajátítás magyarázó érvényű elmélete semmiképp nem képviselhet szélsőséges szemléletet, mivel az emberi természet és fejlődés, dinamikus jellegénél fogva nagy változatosságot mutat, és szinte lehetetlen fehéren-feketén definiálni a kiindulóponttól a végpontig vezető lépések pontos sorát. Mindig kell számolni egyfajta mozgástérrel, s minden megállapítást lehetőleg mint tájékozódást szolgáló támpontot kell tekintenünk. A kötet éppen ezért kitér a nyelvelsajátítás egyéni, a személyiségjegyek adta különbségire is.
A nyelvelsajátítást magyarázó uralkodó elméletek közül a veleszületett alapokat hangsúlyozó innátista tábor, s a vele szembeállított környezeti ingereket hangsúlyozó interakcionista tábor érveit összevetve nem radikális, hanem sokkal inkább enyhe álláspontra tudunk ma helyezkedni a tekintetben, hogy mik a nyelvelsajátítás motorját adó központi mozzanatok. Ebben enyhe, megengedő szemléletben fontos, hogy elfogadjuk (a nyelv vitathatatlanul és egyedien emberi természetből adódóan) a biológiai alapokat, teret adva a környezettel való interakció nevelő, építő, alakító hatásának, s mindezt a gyermek aktív, konstruktív szerepvállalásán alapuló kognitív és nyelvi fejlődési keretbe helyezve szemléljük.
A társalgás személyközi kapcsolatokat érintő jelentőségéről
A nyelv nélkülözhetetlen szerepet tölt be társas életünkben, személyközi kapcsolatainkban, s személyes, gondolati világunkban is. Lehetővé teszi, hogy érzelmeket fejezzünk ki, hogy felidézzük a múltat, vagy hogy elképzeljük a jövőt. A verbalitás a gyermek számára új dimenziókat nyit meg, s biztosítja a társas kapcsolatteremtés eltérő módozatait (ha nincs közös nyelvünk, az elszakít másoktól). A nyelv tehát mind egyéni, mind társas tekintetben fontos eszközünk a személyközi kapcsolatokban. Egyéni szerepét erősíti, hogy a nyelvhasználat az identitás részét képezi, gondolataink megfogalmazására használjuk, ezáltal gondolkodásunknak, s a kulturális tanulás és felhalmozott tudás továbbadásának fontos eszköze. Társas vonulatát tekintve is számos tényezőért felelős: eltérő földrajzi területeken eltérő nyelvhasználat jellemző, dialektus jelzi az egyes népcsoport összetartozását, identitását. Mindezek mellett az információközlés fontos eszköze (gondoljunk csak a sajtó, tömegkommunikáció közvetítő szerepére és informatív erejére). Felhalmozott tudásanyagunk továbbörökítését teszi lehetővé közösségi szinten is, történetek, narratívák és népmesék születnek, s az adott társadalmi csoport írja történetét, történelmét.
A nyelv szintén vizsgálható „nyelv mint kódrendszer” minőségben, azaz mint gondolataink kifejezésének eszköze, melyet szabályalapú szimbólumhasználat jellemez. Az elemek és szabályok ismerete alapján létrehozhatóak mesterséges nyelvek is (pl. Esperanto). A kommunikáció elsődleges eszközeként a nyelvek közül kiválasztódó világnyelv az ún. lingua franca. Az eltérő nemzetek közti közös nevezőt biztosító világnyelv célja, hogy a minél szélesebb körben biztosítsa az információáramlást globális szinten is (egykoron a ma már holt nyelvként számon tartott latin, napjainkban pedig az angol tölti be ezt a szerepet). A nyelv, ahogy kiemeltük, humánspecifikus, ám nem kizárólagos kommunikációs eszközünk. A verbalitás kapcsolatteremtést szolgáló eszköztárunknak csupán egy dimenziója, mivel, ahogy a kötetben több helyen kiemeltük, kiegészül a gesztusos modalitás metakommunikációs jelzéseivel (kézmozdulatok, arcmimika, testtartás, stb.). A nyelv tehát emberi létünk szerves részét képezi, áthatja életünk minden mozzanatát, egyéni, társas és funkcionális vonalon egyaránt.
A gyermeki társalgás eltérő vetületeit bemutató, kézikönyvként, ill. tankönyvként is használható kötetet ajánlom mindenkinek, aki laikusként, szülőként, diákként, vagy éppen szakemberként, kutatóként érdeklődik a társalgás, a fejlődéspszichológia, a gyermeki gondolkodás, a nyelvelsajátítás, a pszichológia vagy a nyelvtudomány iránt, s gyakorlati szempontból, életszerű helyzeteken keresztül szeretné megismerni a nyelv kibontakozásának folyamatát, s a társalgás mentális és személyközi hátterét.
Background
Holistic meaning construction is a level of language use that entails the flexible application of rules beyond mere semantic, morphosyntactic meaning construction. These fuzzy factors of interpretation give ground to interpersonal cognitive strategies that one has to apply in order to be a fully equal conversational partner. Participation in discourse requires the smooth handling of opaque constructions, the processing of which requires inferential activity on the part of the listener. This complex ability builds on social cognition, which has been found to be impaired in schizophrenia. Neurolinguistic research (Varga et al., Brain and Language 126:231−242, 2013; Varga et al., Journal of Neurolinguistics 29:1–16, 2014; Varga et al., Humour processing in schizophrenia. Proceedings of the IV International Humour Symposium, 2016; Schnell et al., Journal of Pragmatics 92:74–99, 2016) provides empirical evidence about social cognitive impairments that bring on pragmatic deficit.
Aim
We investigated inferential abilities and humour comprehension in schizophrenia with an empirical test targeting mentalizing abilities of patients and their correlations with success on pragmatic tasks in contextual humour and Gricean maxim infringement recognition.
Results
Our results showed that patients were significantly worse in understanding verbal jokes and Gricean implicatures when compared to healthy subjects. These levels of pragmatic competence demonstrate a higher-level mentalization, namely, the application of mental states (Sperber, Dan, Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. Oxford University Press, 2000; Schnell, Zsuzsanna, Más Elmék. [Other minds]. L’Harmattan kiadó, 2016) to the linguistic and situational context at hand, as opposed to representation and attribution.
Keywords
Mentalization Interpretation Implicatures Neuropragmatics Inferential activity
Background: When we engage in discourse, we automatically take the shared, common knowledge of the listener and their ability to make inferences from context for granted. This level of interaction thus entails social cognitive factors that determine linguistic processing.
Aim: Metaphor and Irony are two very common examples of polysemy, but in cognitive terms their interpretation does not follow identical pathways. All the more, the infringement of the Gricean conversational maxim of Quality (Grice 1957, 1975) has been identified as Metaphor and/or Irony (ibid.), which makes the case of Irony vs. Metaphor even more complicated: do they overlap? Are they similar despite serving markedly different social purposes? The present study sets out to answer these clarifying questions in an experimental pragmatic paradigm, contrasting and comparing the two polysemous forms in terms of their cognitive underpinnings and social-cognitive corollaries in mental terms.
Results: The findings indicate that the processing of Irony and Metaphor are based on markedly different cognitive strategies, even though they are often taken as forms of violations of the Quality Maxim (Grice 1975). They also serve different social purposes, and their acquisition reflects different patterns (Schnell 2016). The Irony principle (Leech 1983) is also justified by the study’s cognitive developmental findings.