REFERENTIATION OPERATION AND LITERACY: THE USE OF PREFABS

Abstract

This paper presents a socio-cognitive approach of the referentiation process, in order to check to what extent and in which way the strategies adopted in the treatment of the lexicon in the literacy process can be updated, or even confirmed, in reading or in writing. Studies on how words are stored in the user memory and on how they are accessed - while language is being used - represent a great advance in understanding the literacy process, especially for psycholinguistics research. Besides, this paper highlights the prototypical notion of categorization treated in the cognitive studies as well as the notion of exemplar representation in the socio-cognitive area, which is based on the experience of culturally-situated speakers. A practical approach of these studies to the literacy process is demonstrated in this paper, taking into consideration prefabs in the referentiation operation.