A cognitive account of discourse understanding and discourse interpretation: The landscape model of reading

Menahem Yeari, Paul van den Broek

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

Text interpretation - the main interest of discourse analysts - is a central component of the text understanding process. In this article we introduce the Landscape Model, which describes the cognitive processes underlying reading comprehension in a detailed and precise manner. Moreover, this model captures the interpretative processes in which the human mind engages during reading. Within the context of the Landscape Model, we describe the relation between discourse understanding and discourse interpretation, and explain some of the phenomena that are central to the field of discourse analysis as seen from a cognitive perspective. In the first section we describe the basic cognitive processes that underlie discourse understanding, as captured by the Landscape Model. In the following section we illustrate the way that the Landscape Model can be applied to the work of discourse analysts. We conclude by discussing the usefulness of the cognitive Landscape Model for the field of discourse analysis.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)635-643
Number of pages9
JournalDiscourse Studies
Volume13
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2011
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • constructionist processes
  • discourse analysis
  • landscape model
  • memory-based processes
  • reading comprehension
  • standards of coherence

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