About the speaker

Herb Clark, professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University, is a psycholinguist whose focuses include cognitive and social processes in language use; interactive processes in conversation, from low-level disfluencies through acts of speaking and understanding to the emergence of discourse; and word meaning and word use. Clark is known for his theory of "common ground," which posits that individuals engaged in conversation must share knowledge in order to be understood and have a meaningful conversation. Together with Deanna Wilkes-Gibbs, he also developed the collaborative model, a theory for explaining how people in conversation coordinate with one another to determine definite references.

This lecture was supported by the The Body’s Role in Thinking, Performing and Referencing project at the Neubauer Collegium and co-sponsored by the Center for Gesture, Sign, and Language at the University of Chicago.