Perspective’ and ‘viewpoint’ are widely used in everyday talk as well as in the specialist languages of the social, cognitive, and literary sciences. Taken from the field of visual perception and representation, these concepts have acquired a general meaning and significance, as characteristics of human cognitive processing. Since, however, this field is shared by an increasing body of disciplines, perspective terms have also acquired specific and technical meanings. A striking example is the newly introduced use of ‘perspectivation’ in discourse analysis.

This volume on ‘perspective and perspectivation’ — the first of its kind — will help to fill the gap between the common understanding of perspective and the specifics of its structure and dynamics as they have been elaborated in the human sciences, mainly in psychology and linguistics. The focus is on the structure of perspectivity in cognition and language, and the dynamics of setting and taking perspectives in social interaction and in the construction and understanding of texts. Both topics are presented here in an interdisciplinary way by a group of linguists and psychologists.

Table of contents

Perspective and perspectivation in discourse: An introduction

Carl Friedrich Graumann and Werner Kallmeyer 1–11

A. Perspectivity: Structure and functions

Knowledge and perspective setting: What possible consequences on conversation do we have to expect?

Klaus Foppa 15–23

Explicit and implicit perspectivity

Carl Friedrich Graumann 25–39

Perspectives, implicitness and recontextualization

Per Linell 41–57

Quaestio and L-perspectivation

Christiane von Stutterheim and Wolfgang Klein 59–88

Grammaticalization of perspectivity

Gisela Zifonun 89–109

B. Perspectivation in discourse and interaction

Verbal practices of perspective grounding

Werner Kallmeyer 111–141

Perspectivity and professional role in verbal interaction

Inken Keim 143–165

“You can say you to yourself”: Establishing perspectives with personal pronouns

Ursula Bredel 167–180

Strategic uses of self and other perspectives

Alissa Shethar 181–200

Irony, quotation, and other forms of staged intertextuality: Double or contrastive perspectivation in conversation

Helga Kotthoff 201–229

C. Perspectivity: Differences and divergences

Social discrimination and aggression: A matter of perspective-specific divergence?

Sabine Otten and Amélie Mummendey 233–250

Perspective-related differences in interpretations of injustice in close relationships

Gerold Mikula 251–262

Perspectivity in dialogues involving people with cerebral palsy

Ivana Marková and Sarah Collins 263–285

Perspective-dependent attributions in court: An investigation into closing speeches with the Linguistic Category Model

Jeannette Schmid 287–303

D. Perspectivity in reconstructive genres

Point of view, narrative mode and the constitution of narrative texts

Peter Canisius 307–321

Global and local aspects of perspectivity

Uta M. Quasthoff 323–346

Perspectivity in reported dialogues: The contextualization of evaluative stances in reconstructing speech

Susanne Günthner 347–374

The role of the narrative perspective in the cognitive-cultural context

János László and Tibor Pólya 375–387

Author index 389–393

Subject index 395–400

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