Exploring the Power of Language in Persuasion and Communication through the Lens of Ella Minnow Pea and The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Abstract

Cognitive structures embody mental concepts and direct our thinking about the world. In addition, semantic approaches reveal the conceptual structures involved in organizing the meaning of a word in light of the frames by which the meanings of words are understood. To understand the most prominent cognitive theories and semantic concepts, one must rely and refer to the cognitive model consisting of the frame theory which is a cognitive theory that seeks to embody the mental concepts derived from the linguistic structure. Frames are the mental structures underlie the lexical unit and draw its paths of meaning and define its embodied frame. They also translate the process of interaction between language and the human mind in creating new meanings and conceptual concepts. Among the scholars who developed this theory is the American linguistic Charles Fillmore (1929-2014) who had a strong presence in the field of behavioral psychology through his structural and lexical semantic researches. He was one of the founders of mental and cognitive linguistics along with George Lakoff and others. Fillmore insisted on the great importance of semantics and its value in explicating different morphological and syntactic phenomena.