Swedish Association for Language and Cognition

[Jordan Zlatev]

Dear Colleagues,

On June 16 2006, The Swedish Association for Language and Cognition 
(SALC) was formed at an international conference at Umeå University 
involving mostly linguists, but also psychologists and cognitive 
scientists working on a variety of topics and utilising different 
methodologies.

The major goal of the association is to promote the study of the 
relationship between language and cognition, both in Sweden and 
internationally. This involves any type of research in which language 
is not treated in isolation (e.g. as a "module"), but both as based on 
structures and processes of general cognition (e.g. perception, memory 
and reasoning) and social cognition (e.g. joint attention and 
imitation), and as affecting such structures and processes. The 
association is intended to be a forum for cooperation and exchange of 
ideas between disciplines, fields of study and theoretical frameworks.

In terms of disciplines, the association is intended to bring together 
not only linguists (at both Linguistics and Modern Language 
departments), but also psychologists, cognitive scientists, 
semioticians and philosophers with an interest in the 
language-cognition nexus.

The relationship between language and cognition is central within 
various fields of study, such as semantic analysis, discourse analysis, 
grammar, pragmatics, semiotics, linguistic typology, language 
development, language evolution, language change, gesture studies, 
consciousness studies and linguistic relativity.

Members of the association working in these fields use various 
theoretical frameworks such as cognitive semantics, functional 
semantics, conceptual semantics, cognitive grammar, construction 
grammar, relevance theory, blending theory and discourse representation 
theory. There is much to gain by enhancing communication between 
researchers within such different frameworks, who are all interested in 
the same fields of study, and in the same overarching question "How 
does language relate to cognition"?

While the nature of the research to be supported by SALC is primarily 
theoretical, in the sense that is aims at a better understanding of the 
relationship between language and cognition, such research is also of 
direct relevance for various more applied fields such as language 
impairment, advertising and language technology.

Finally, SALC has already entered discussions with the UK Association 
for Cognitive Linguistics for launching a common journal Language and 
Cognition, to be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2007. The 
Board of SALC is also conducting discussions with prominent researchers 
in Denmark, Norway and Finland for the establishment of a Scandinavian 
Association for Language and Cognition, or some other form of 
"umbrella" organization in order to consolidate research in language 
and cognition even further.

We invite all researchers, within Sweden and abroad, who wish to 
contribute to the goal of the newly established association to join as 
members! This can achieved by sending an email to the Secretary of 
SALC, Ulf Magnusson at mag.nusson at bredband.net.

A temporary homesite for SALC, with the goals, constitution and 
governing board of the association is available at:

http://project.sol.lu.se/sedsu/salc.html

Please spread the information to others who may be concerned.

Sincere regards,

Jordan Zlatev, President of SALC
Ulf Magnusson, Secretary SALC


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Jordan Zlatev, Associate Professor
Department of Linguistics
Center for Languages and Literature
Lund University
Box 201
221 00 Lund, Sweden

email: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se
http://www.ling.lu.se/persons/JordanZlatev.html
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