science

Stephen Levinson

Stephen Levinson is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Stephen Levinson rather than just read about it. In short: Stephen Curtis Levinson FBA (born 6 December 1947) is a British social scientist, known for his studies of the relations between culture, language and cognition, and former scientific director of the Language and Cognition department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Levinson was born in London, England and educated at Bedales School and King's College, Cambridge, where…

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Reference excerpt

Stephen Curtis Levinson FBA (born 6 December 1947) is a British social scientist, known for his studies of the relations between culture, language and cognition, and former scientific director of the Language and Cognition department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Levinson was born in London, England and educated at Bedales School and King's College, Cambridge, where he received a BA in Archaeology and Social Anthropology, and University of California, Berkeley, where he received a PhD in Linguistic Anthropology. He has held posts at the University of Cambridge, Stanford University and the Australian National University, and is currently Professor of Comparative Linguistics at Radboud University. In December 2017, he retired as director of the Language and Cognition department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Among other distinctions, he is winner of the 1992 Stirling Prize, Fellow-elect of the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, member of the Academia Europaea, and 2009 Hale Professor of the Linguistic Society of America. In 2017 Levinson received an honorary doctorate award from Uppsala University. He is the current president of the International Pragmatics Association.

Career Levinson's earliest work was with John Gumperz in interactional sociolinguistics, studying the interaction patterns in a multilingual community in India. He has written extensively on pragmatics, producing the first comprehensive textbook in the field (1983). He locates his work on pragmatics under what he has called the Gricean umbrella (2000:12ff.), a broad theory of communication that focuses on the role of conversational implicatures. His work with Penelope Brown on language structures related to formality and politeness across the world led to the publication of Politeness: Universals in Language Usage (1978/1987), a foundational work in politeness theory. From 1991 onward Levinson has led his own research lab, funded by the Max Planck Society and based at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Work in his Language and Cognition group (formerly Cognitive Anthropology research group) focuses on linguistic diversity and its importance to cognitive science. The group has played a pioneering role in developing the field of semantic typology and new models of language documentation. LSA 2009, L&C Field Manuals and Stimulus Materials In 2009, Levinson co-wrote (with Nicholas Evans) a hotly debated article contesting the existence of non-trivial linguistic universals and arguing that linguistic diversity is a crucial datum for cognitive science. The department has also done work connecting typology with Conversation Analysis through studies on e.g. repair and sequence organization across a wide variety of language. This has also led to lesser studied languages being taken into account in Interactional linguistics. Levinson was one of the driving forces behind a re-evaluation of the notion of linguistic relativity in the early nineties, publishing (with Gumperz) an influential review of the issue (Current Anthropology, 1991) and co-editing (with Gumperz) a volume on the topic with contributions of experts from various fields (Gumperz & Levinson 1996). An influential paper with Penelope Brown titled Immanuel Kant among the Tenejapans: Anthropology as Empirical Philosophy won the 1992 Stirling Award of the Society for Psychological Anthropology. Levinson's work on language and space (Levinson & Brown 1993, Levinson 2003, 2006) demonstrated a form of linguistic relativity by showing that speakers of languages which use different spatial systems solve non-verbal spatial tasks in distinct ways. His recent work describes the relations between culture of the inhabitants of Rossel Island, and their Yélî Dnye language.

References cited and notable publications Levinson, Stephen C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22235-4. Brown, Penelope; Stephen C. Levinson (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Studies in interactional sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-30862-3. Levinson, Stephen C.; Penelope Brown (1993). "Background to "Immanuel Kant among the Tenejapans"". Anthropology Newsletter. 34 (3): 22–23. Levinson, Stephen C.; Penelope Brown (1994). "Immanuel Kant among the Tenejapans: Anthropology as empirical philosophy". Ethos. 22 (1): 3–41. doi:10.1525/eth.1994.22.1.02a00010. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0013-2BBD-2. JSTOR 640467. Levinson, Stephen C. (2000). Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature. MIT Press. Levinson, Stephen C. (2003). Space in language and cognition: explorations in cognitive diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Evans, Nicholas; Stephen C. Levinson (2009). "The Myth of Language Universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science". Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 32 (5): 429–492. doi:10.1017/S0140525X0999094X. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0012-C29E-4. PMID 19857320. Gumperz, John J.; Stephen C. Levinson (December 1991). "Rethinking Linguistic Relativity" (PDF). Current Anthropology. 32 (5): 613–623. doi:10.1086/204009. ISSN 0011-3204. JSTOR 2743696. S2CID 162295567. Levinson, Stephen C.; Pierre Jaisson (2006). Evolution and culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Levinson, Stephen C.; David P. Wilkins (2006). Grammars of space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

External links Levinson's MPI homepage List of publications

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Stephen Levinson

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Stephen Levinson claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Stephen Levinson before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Stephen Levinson ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Stephen Levinson

In research: Stephen Levinson appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Stephen Levinson in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Stephen Levinson is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1947 births, 21st-century British social scientists, Alumni of King's College, Cambridge, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Stephen Levinson outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Stephen Levinson in 20 minutes

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Frequently asked questions

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Why does Stephen Levinson matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

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Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

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It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Stephen Levinson.