Plenary Speakers
David McNeill, emeritus professor of psychology and linguistics at the University of Chicago. Since about 1980 he has been studying co-speech gesture production in children, adults, speakers of different languages, and speakers in different neurological conditions. His 1992 book, Hand and Mind, received the Laing Prize in 1994 from the University of Chicago Press. His 2005 book Gesture and Thought, also by the University of Chicago Press, continues the themes of Hand and Mind with theoretical development of the concepts of the growth point, the catchment, dialectic of imagery and language, and the dynamic dimension of language. One important branch of this study has been the ‘IW case,’ which is the subject of the talk to be offered at the Summer Institute. McNeill received his AB and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and has worked over the years at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Duke University, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (Wassenaar), as well as the University of Chicago.
Anita Pomerantz is a professor in the Department of Communication. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of California at Irvine, 1975. Her dissertation research was an analysis of the ways in which people agree and disagree with each other and the ways in which people respond to compliments and self-deprecations. Using audio and videotapes of interaction, Prof. Pomerantz analyzes the practices that people employ in a variety of contexts. She published articles on information-seeking practices used in both social and institutional contexts and on methods used to negotiate responsibility for wrong-doings and for good deeds. In the health delivery context, she studied the enactments of doctor and patient roles, patients= practices for actualizing their own agendas, and teaching practices used by supervising physicians with residents in ambulatory clinics. She has served as chair of the Language and Social Interaction Division of the National Communication Association and the International Communication Association. She currently serves on the editorial boards of Communication Monographs, Research on Language and Social Interaction, Language in Society, and Discourse Studies.
Carl Ratner has been developing a comprehensive approach to the relationship between between culture and mind. His macro cultural psychology emphasizes macro cultural factors such as social institutions, artifacts, and cultural concepts. Drawing on Vygotsky, he explains how these macro cultural factors form the basis, the characteristics, and the function of psychological phenomena. Ratner emphasizes the political nature of culture, psychology, and social science theories and methodologies. His recent book is Cultural Psychology: A Perspective on Psychological Functioning and Social Reform. His forthcoming book Macro Cultural Psychology: A Political Philosophy of Mind will be published by Oxford University Press. Ratner recently was a Fulbright Fellow at Nehru University in New Delhi.
Talbot J. Taylor is the Louise G.T. Cooley Professor of English and Linguistics at the College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, Virginia). He received his D.Phil. in philosophy from Oxford University in 1982. For the past 20 years he has been coeditor of Language & Communication, an international journal highlighting interdisciplinary approaches to the study of language. He has held research fellowships from the Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Leverhulme Foundation (U.K.), and the National Humanities Center. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Mutual Misunderstanding (1992), Theorizing Language (1997), Apes, Language, and the Human Mind (1998), and Landmarks in Linguistic Thought: the Western Tradition (vol.1, 1997; vol.2, 2001).
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