Abstract
This paper presents an account of the phenomenon of mental construal manifested in English expressions of stance through the distinction of clauses that are headed by subjects associated with two conceptual archetypes: participant (P) invoked by the first-person pronoun ( I am certain that ) and abstract setting (S) conveyed by anticipatory it ( It is certain that ). With recourse to the main theoretical points on the anchoring of linguistic meaning in the acts of speech activity (Leontiev A.A.), mental construal (Langacker R.), processes of discourse-driven conceptualization and categorization (Kubryakova E.S.) and with reference to discourse oriented studies of stance (Biber D., Finegan E., Karkkainen E.), the conducted analysis focuses on a corpus of about 350 examples that represent narrative and dialogic discourse in English-language fiction. As evidenced by linguistic data, the choice of stance expressions with P- and S-subjects is motivated, respectively, by the distinctions that arise in discourse between actual and mentally represented types of reality, the contrast between reference-making and viewing as types of cognitive events and the distinction between event-schemas and mental experiences. These discursively relevant distinctions are further shown to be related to narrative and dialogic strategies that are used in literary texts for the expression of stance with the alternative stance-clauses.
Highlights
INTRODUCTIONOne of the cognitive abilities that is regularly reflected in uses of linguistic items and expressions is mental imagery, or construal
MENTAL CONSTRUAL IN THE DISTINCTION OF CONCEPTUAL ARCHETYPESOne of the cognitive abilities that is regularly reflected in uses of linguistic items and expressions is mental imagery, or construal
In English the expression of epistemic, perceptual and emotional stance can involve choosing between alternative stance clauses like those in (1), (2) and (3), respectively: (1) I am certain that — It is certain that
Summary
One of the cognitive abilities that is regularly reflected in uses of linguistic items and expressions is mental imagery, or construal. The aim of the proposed paper is to reveal the nature and discourse motivations of mental construal manifested in choosing the above mentioned stance-clauses headed by either P- or S-subjects To this end, the following questions are addressed: (1) the discursively relevant facets of the conceptual content that are invoked through alternations of P- and S-subjects; (2) the nature of contextual factors that make the use of a particular stance-clause felicitous or non-felicitous. In addressing the previously mentioned research questions the subsequent analysis of linguistic data in section 3 focuses on the following two issues: (a) the possibilities of the communicative and syntactic structuring of stance-clauses with the chosen P- vs S-subjects; (b) the discursive motivations and/or purposes that underlie the choice and (sometimes) contrastive uses of clauses
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