Istvan Kecskes

Istvan Kecskes holds the position of Professor of Linguistics at the State University of New York, Albany, USA He is a specialist in pragmatics, second language acquisition and bilingualism. Kecskes made his name by being the first to demonstrate that foreign language has a beneficial effect on the use of the mother tongue, as demonstrated in his book "Foreign Language and Mother Tongue", which he co-authored with Tunde Papp. The book presents empirical data garnered through a logitudinal experiment on the effects of foreign language learning.

His dynamic model of meaning (DMM) presented in his books (2003; 2007) and articles (2004; 2006) argues that "meaning values of words" encapsulating prior contexts of experience play as important a role in "meaning construction" as situational context. According to this approach meaning is the result of the interplay of prior experience and current experience. Prior experience is encapsulated in the meaning values of lexical items that make up the utterances used by the interlocutors, and current experience is represented in the actual situation context in which communication takes place, and which is interpreted (often differently) by the interlocutors.

His major publications on these topics include four books (Kecskes, I. & T. Papp. 2000, "Foreign Language and Mother Tongue." Lawrence Erlbaum; Kecskes, I. 2003, "Situation-Bound Utterances in L1 and L2." Berlin/New York: Mouton; Kecskes, I. & L. Albertazzi. 2007. "Cognitive Aspects of Bilingualism." Springer; and Kecskes, I. & L. Horn eds. 2007. "Explorations in Pragmatics". Mouton.) and numerous articles published in prestigious journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, International Journal of Bilingualism, Slavica, Intercultural Pragmatics, Second Language Research, WORD and others.

Kecskes is the founding editor of the linguistics journal Intercultural Pragmatics and the Mouton Series in Pragmatics published by Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin/New York. He sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Pragmatics (Elsevier) and the International Journal of Multilingualism (Multilingual Matters). He was the guest editor of a special issue of the International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) on cognitive approaches to bilingualism.

Publications

Kecskes, I. and Laurence Horn (eds.) 2007. Explorations in Pragmatics: Linguistic, Cognitive and Intercultural Aspects. Berlin/New York: Moutonde Gruyter.

Kecskes, Istvan and Liliana Albertazzi (eds.) 2007. Cognitive Aspects of Bilingualism. Heildelberg/London: Springer.

Kecskes, Istvan. 2003. Situation-Bound Utterances in L1 and L2. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kecskes, Istvan - Papp, Tünde. 2000. Foreign Language and Mother Tongue. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Kecskes, I. 2006. On My Mind: Thoughts about Salience, Context, and Figurative Language from a Second Language Perspective. Second Language Research. Vol. 22. No. 2: 219-237.

Kecskes, I. & I. Martinez Cuenca. 2005. Lexical Choice as a Reflection of Conceptual Fluency. International Journal of Bilingualism. Vol. 9. No. 1: 49-69.

Kecskes, I. 2004. Lexical merging, conceptual blending, cultural crossing. Intercultural Pragmatics. 2004. Vol. 1. No. 1: 1-26.

Kecskes, I. 2005. Communicative principle and communication. In Keith Brown (ed.) Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier Science. 2nd edition.

Kecskes, I. 2005. Pragmatics aspects of multilingualism. In Keith Brown (ed.) Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier Science. 2nd edition.

External links

Kecskes’ websitehttp://www.albany.edu/~ik692

Mouton Series in Pragmaticshttp://www.degruyter.com/cont/fb/sp/spReiEn.cfm?rc=22319

Journal: “Intercultural Pragmatics”http://www.degruyter.com/journals/intcultpragm/detailEn.cfm

Australian Linguistic Institute presenterhttp://www.ali06.une.edu.au/presenters.php

Intercultural Communication and Linguistics Conference in South Africahttp://www.sun.ac.za/iccling/

Journal Summer School in Shanghaihttp://jfl.shisu.edu.cn/

Review of “Situation-Bound Utterances in L1 and L2’http://www.benjamins.nl/jbp/series/P&C/12-1/art/0010a.pdf