The Construalization of Sequential Scenes in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code: A Cognitive Semantic Study

Mustafa Abdulsahib Abdulkareem ,Ahmed Sahib Mubarak

doi:10.32996/ijllt.2022.5.1.18

Mustafa Abdulsahib Abdulkareem , Ahmed Sahib Mubarak

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.32996/ijllt.2022.5.1.18

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Abstract

One of the challenges that cognitive linguists face is how the parts of a scene are arranged and how sequential actions are joined together to form a wider scene. The order of actions in a scene is affected by how we see that scene, which is reflected in the language we use. The current study aims to develop a model of construalization to see how sequential scenes in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code are viewed. A group of operations have been suggested under three umbrella terms: saliency, perspective and comparison. The proposed operations can base on either syntactic (such as grammatical saliency) or semantic properties (such as zooming). The study chose 28 actions in two broad scenes. The present study concluded that construalization plays an important role in the viewing arrangement of dynamic scenes. The place of entities in a scene affects our conceptualization of them; whenever the entity moves, our viewpoint changes.

Highlights

Cognitive linguistics (CL) is an approach to studying natural language in relation to cognition
The current study aims to develop a model of construalization to see how sequential scenes in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code are viewed
While its origins are philosophical in nature, CL has been strongly influenced by theories and findings from the other cognitive sciences, especially combining knowledge from both cognitive psychology and linguistics, and more recently by the brain sciences, the interdisciplinary field known as cognitive neuroscience (Evans et al, 2007, p. 2)

Summary

Introduction

Cognitive linguistics (CL) is an approach to studying natural language in relation to cognition. This means that unlike the schematic system, the conceptual system is variable From this perspective, construalization is defined as conceptualising and interpreting the same situation in different ways (Langacker 2008). The money is in the kitchen, under the counter, in the left-hand cabinet, on the top shelf, behind the meat grinder This scene makes reference to the scope of attention that has to do with a combination of spatial relations, designated by the prepositions in, under, on, and behind. Perspective A further operation of construalization is perspective which plays an important role in the relationship between language and cognition It is the specific point from which a given entity or scene is viewed. Different conceptualizers conceive the same scene by using different grammatical structures This means that perspective depends on the spatial and temporal imagery conceptualised from a situation. This can be diagrammed in Figure 2: Figure 2: The car is in front of the tree

The car is behind the tree

Vantage point Orientation Spatiotemporal Epistemic ground

The Gallery

Change from dissolution to freezing

Conclusion