COGS 311 - Seminar in Cognitive Science

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2026/27a: How Minds Align: Everyday Language. Each mind only experiences the world from its own perspective, yet minds manage to align every day using language. In this course, we read foundational texts from philosophy of language alongside empirical work from linguistics, psychology, computer science, and sociology to understand what it is about language and our minds that makes this possible. Crucially, we apply these theories to language at its site of use: everyday conversation. Using recordings of conversations from our lives, we analyze language use with frameworks spanning semiotics, conversation analysis, discourse pragmatics, and speech act theory, and using computational techniques from natural language processing. Our work is to uncover from messy, idiosyncratic conversational behavior the stable principles of communication that allow language to be learned, used, and maintained. Claire Augusta Bergey.

Prerequisite(s): At least one 200-level course in Cognitive Science.

May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS