Searching for the unit of meaning: Knowledge construction in university small group talk

Abstract

Previous research has extensively addressed the relationship between collaborative knowledge construction and communicative language use. For interactive academic talk, a broad range of socio-cultural factors has been investigated to examine group dynamics for the construction of disciplinary or linguistic knowledge. What has been overlooked, however, is a focus on the basic unit of meaning for a cognitive interpretation of knowledge structures. This study is aimed to bridge the research gap by examining the semantic–pragmatic interface involved in collaborative knowledge construction in a Higher Educational setting. Using a specialized corpus of university small group talk, this study conducts an empirical linguistic inquiry into the participants’ discursive practice of drawing particular lexical concepts to invoke and manipulate knowledge structures for meaning negotiation. The research findings contribute to understanding the relationship between linguistically represented knowledge and the way language users conceptualize the academic world.