JELT_V5_N4_A2 Bincy Mathew B. William Dharma Raja Journal on English Language Teaching 2249 – 0752 5 4 6 12 Semantics, Social Cognition, Signaler, Syntax, Theory of Mind Language is of vital importance to human beings. It is a means of communication and it has specific cognitive links. Advanced social cognition is necessary for children to acquire language, and sophisticated mind-reading abilities to assume word meanings and communicate pragmatically. Language can be defined as a bi-directional system that permits the expression of arbitrary thoughts as signals and the reverse interpretation of those signals as thoughts. Although language appears as a seamless whole, with phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatic processes working together, many dissociable mechanisms underlie linguistic competence. Language allows forms of social understanding that would otherwise be impossible. Both language and social cognition are complex constructs, involving many independent cognitive mechanisms, and the comparative approach provides a powerful route to understanding the evolution of such mechanisms. Social Cognition (SC) encompasses a number of distinctive capacities, including social learning, imitation, gaze following, and Theory of Mind (ToM). Social cognition involves a set of interacting but separable mechanisms, and the language has led to an extensive dissection of social cognition and a correspondingly daunting profusion of terms. The most important way in which social cognitive linguistics differs from other approaches, is that language is assumed to reflect certain primary sources and design features of the human mind. October - December 2015 Copyright © 2015 i-manager publications. All rights reserved. i-manager Publications http://www.imanagerpublications.com/Article.aspx?ArticleId=3665