Glossary

common ground

a shared set of social, cognitive and linguistic assumptions between speakers.

information structure

describes how speakers organise language in discourse based on whether it is new or given, topic or comment, for example.

inhibitory control

the ability to suppress interfering thoughts or actions.

irony

typically involves a speaker juxtaposing a situation which would normally provoke one response with the opposite one.

pragmatic

or pragmatics, how the communicative context influences language use.

working memory

a system for temporarily holding and processing information in the mind.