Cognitive Frames Research Articles

Refugee Crisis and Cognitive Frames

Refugee Crisis and Cognitive Frames

Border Disputes: Recent Debates along the Perception–Cognition Border

AbstractThe distinction between perception and cognition frames countless debates in philosophy and cognitive science. But what, if anything, does this distinction actually amount to? In this introductory article, we summarize recent work on this question. We first briefly consider the possibility that a perception‐cognition border should be eliminated from our scientific ontology, and then introduce and critically examine five positive approaches to marking a perception–cognition border, framed in terms of phenomenology, revisability, modularity, format, and stimulus‐dependence.

Win the next war vs innovate or die: framing the digital transformation across the Taiwanese sectors

PurposeThis paper examines the framing of digital transformation. The research questions are specified as follows: what are the different types of framing strategies in response to digital transformation? How do the strategies differ across organizations? Theoretically, the authors draw on the framing perspective to emphasize the use of linguistic frames in shaping innovation and change processes. Empirically, the authors choose to study the Taiwanese sectors, including publicly governed entities, traditional private business or technology-based ventures.Design/methodology/approachThe authors’ approach combines topic modeling and qualitative analysis. Using data collected from newspaper and magazine articles, the authors employ topic modeling to generate a set of distinctive framings that Taiwanese actors typically adopt to motivate and justify their digital move. The authors also conduct personal interviews to qualitatively complement the authors’ topic modeling analysis and to identify the rationale behind the linguistic framings and the strategic differences brought about by the various organizations.FindingsThe authors identify five topics that the Taiwanese actors commonly used in the framing of digital transformation. These topics or frames are labeled as cross-domain coordination, market demand, intelligent technology, global trend and competition and digital innovation. The practical use of the framings is contingent on organizational characteristics. Furthermore, the authors show how the framings can be classified as either positive framing (e.g. winning the next war) or negative framing (e.g. innovate or die), generally applicable to organizations around the world struggling to cope with digital disruption.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors’ study has two research implications. First, the authors extend the appreciation of the digital transformation from the usual concern with technological and business model innovations to linguistic or framing practices. Second, the authors enrich the framing analysis by emphasizing a practice or contingency perspective based on sector difference. The findings are subject to the limitations of the choice of only established and reputable media outlets, the diatextual reading and filtering of useful articles for topic modeling analysis and the use of world frequency to account for frame significance.Practical implicationsThe authors shift actors' attention from improving technical efficiency to acquiring linguistic resources in the pursuit of digitalization. For example, framing the digital transformation in terms of creating a market orientation calls for not only real consumer power but also strategic discursive competence that enables the move to change. The findings also point out that practitioners can enlarge the scope of their agency rather than being trapped in the habituated routine of practices. Despite social embeddedness, organizations are more often widely connected and built enough to call for more of the cognitive frames to appeal to heterogeneous stakeholders.Originality/valueThe authors study contributes to the literature by developing a linguistic or socio-cognitive view of digital transformation strategy that is capable of expanding organizational attention toward change and innovation. The authors explore menus of strategic frames employed by actors in response to digital transformation. We also address the application of a machine-learning tool such as topic modeling to explore the socio-cognitive dimensions of digital transformation. Furthermore, the analysis leads us to identify the outcomes or effects – either positive or negative – that move beyond the particular Taiwanese case to explain the framing of digital transformation in general.

Working from anywhere: yin–yang cognition paradoxes of knowledge sharing and hiding for developing careers in China

Digital technology coupled with the quarantines caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has made working from anywhere (WFA)—a modern form of remote working—a widespread phenomenon. Given that WFA brings new career challenges to and engenders paradoxes of knowledge exchange among employees, this research aims to examine how the interactions of remote work time (RWT), knowledge sharing (KS), and knowledge hiding (KH) affect career development (CD) from a culturally grounded paradoxical framing of yin–yang harmonizing. The data were collected from Chinese manufacturing employees, and a moderated hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine the hypotheses. The results show an inverted U-shaped relationship between RWT and CD. The interaction of KS and KH is significantly related to CD, and the inverted U-shaped RWT–CD relationship is moderated by the interaction term, in which RWT exerts the most substantial positive impact on CD when KS is high and KH is low. This study offers valuable implications for coping with perplexing employment relationships and increasing career challenges in volatile work environments. The primary originality is to adopt a novel cognitive frame of yin–yang harmonizing to examine the nonlinear effect of remote working and the symbiotic impact of KS and KH on CD, which not only enriches the understanding of flexible work arrangements in the digital economy but also provides novel insights into the interconnectedness of KS and KH and their interacting effects on HRM-related outcomes.

Three levels of framing.

A sociologist and a linguist, unaware of each other's work, each assigned a technical meaning to the term frame around 1970, based on separate usages of the word frame from the 1950s. Each researcher instigated a theory of frame analysis. Over the following decades, the two approaches to framing became intertwined as followers of both Goffman and Fillmore studied metaphoric framing, examined factors affecting the communication of frames, and became particularly interested in politics and the mass media. Years later, many theorists complain about the fragmented field of frame studies. The paper suggests that some of the fragmentation can be resolved by recognizing the dual origins of framing studies, and classifying instances of framing in either the Goffman or the Fillmore tradition as occurring at the level of language, thought, or communication. These three levels are termed semantic framing, cognitive framing, and communicative framing. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Cognitive Linguistics > Linguistic Theory Computer Science and Robotics > Natural Language Processing.

Estonian and Swedish color idioms – shared and unshared

Abstract Previous research on color idioms has shown that they are often culture-specific, and translating them requires shifting between cognitive frames of reference. However, little research has been carried out on the translation process of such idioms. We investigated how Swedish color idioms were translated into Estonian by professional translators and novices, tracking the components of the translation process, such as time spent on the tasks, resources used, and the importance of context provided. Finally, we detected eight translation strategies used for idiom translation. The strategies used depended on the idiom’s transparency between the source and target language. The conventionality of the idiom seemed to have little impact on the difficulty experienced. Professionals and novices used different approaches to translation which once again confirms the importance of acquired skills and experience. Color idioms can turn out to be false friends. Focusing first and foremost on the idiomaticity of the target language helps. Professionals searched for the target language idiom and used various monolingual resources in the target language while novices searched mainly for source-language idioms and used no monolingual target language web dictionaries.

Surviving or solidarity? Crisis responses of small and medium‐sized enterprises during the Covid‐19 pandemic

AbstractThe Covid‐19 pandemic posed a serious threat to small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). This explorative qualitative study of 100 SMEs from 20 industries and 21 countries investigates how entrepreneurs responded to the Covid‐19 pandemic and which cognitive frames guided their actions. Observed cognitive frames prioritize either business survival, conversion of business and stakeholder interest, or acceptance of conflicting social and financial goals. These cognitive frames influence the choice of crisis response without determining it. Four response patterns were found: weathering the storm, bricolage, solidarity and support, and social innovation. Strategic innovation creating access to new markets is the most successful response. The findings support a more encompassing definition of the concept of organizational resilience and shed light on motivations for acts of solidarity and social innovation as crisis responses.

Understanding Students as Achievers and Learners

Teachers’ data literacy and interpretive process are critical to understanding how they make sense of data. However, little is known about how mental representations shape and evolve in response to teachers’ interpretive process. In the present study, I model and explore this recursive relationship between teachers’ cognitive framing and interpretive process. Findings suggest that teachers evoke two frames, understanding students as achievers and learners, with implications for their cognitive focus on and interpretation of interim assessment data. Furthermore, findings suggest teachers’ interpretations feed back into cognitive frames via three mechanisms: elaboration, preservation, and reframing. Implications include cognitive framing as a leverage point for iterative school improvement, interim assessment report design, and new perspectives in the narrative around data use in education.

PROPOSITIONAL ANALYSIS AS A WAY OF REVEALING UNDERLYING CULTURAL MEANINGS IN THE TEXT OF OMENS

Background. The importance of the study is due to the attention to the picture of the world, the logic of mythopoetic thinking and mythopoetic representations of nature inherent in the Russian folk consciousness.
 Purpose. The article analyses the types and structure of event propositions of Russian ornithological omens with subjective dominance.
 Materials and methods. The material is about 350 Russian ornithological omens with a subjective dominant. The sources of the study are dictionaries of the Russian language and collections of omens, beliefs, superstitions, as well as works on Russian omens. The main method of research is the analysis of propositions. In addition, such methods as the method of classification and ethno-cultural analysis were used in the work.
 Results. The analysis of the types and structure of the event proposition in Russian ornithological omens with the subject dominant revealed the actual elements of the propositional semantics of this type of omens: these are the propositions “(over)movement” and “action”. Several semantic layers of the text of omens have been studied: proper propositional, intra-propositional and prepositional. It shows the advantage of propositional analysis in comparison with the cognitive (frame) and structural-semantic analysis of Russian folk omens, widespread in modern linguistics, which is that the propositional analysis of omens allows to identify models that reflect ways of cognition and evaluation of reality.
 Practical implications. The results of the analysis can be used to describe small folklore genres, as well as in pedagogical activities, in particular in the teaching of folklore.

Individuating: how founder's social identities shape their evaluation of opportunities

PurposeThis paper adds to the ongoing debate on judgements, opportunity evaluation and founder identity theory and shows that founders vary in their prioritisation and combination of judgement criteria, linked to their respective social founder identity. It further reveals how this variation among founder identity types shapes their perception of distinct entrepreneurial opportunities and the forming of first-person opportunity beliefs.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a qualitative approach by presenting three business scenarios to a sample of 34 first-time founders. It adopts a first-person perspective on their cognitive processes during the evaluation of entrepreneurial opportunities using verbal protocol and content analysis techniques.FindingsThe theorised model highlights the use of similar categories of judgement criteria by individual founders during opportunity evaluation that followed two distinct stages, namely search and validation. Yet, founders individualised their judgement process through the prioritisation of different judgement criteria.Originality/valueThe authors provide new insights into how individuals individuate entrepreneurial opportunities through the choice of different judgement criteria that enable them to develop opportunity confidence during opportunity evaluation. The study also shows that first-time founders depict variations in their cognitive frames that are based on their social identity types as they assess opportunity-related information and elicit variations in reciprocal relationships emerging between emotion and cognition. Exposing these subjective cognitive evaluative processes provides theoretical and practical implications that are discussed as well.

A ‘Uniform’ for All States?

A ‘Uniform’ for All States?

Analyzing frame analysis: A critical review of framing studies in social movement research

This critical review of more than three decades of studies of frames and framing in Social Movement (SM) research first offers a brief history of the notion of ‘frame’ in various disciplines, and then discusses empirical studies of frame alignment, frame disputes, frame resonance and master frames, among other notions. It is found that the very notion of discursive of cognitive frames remains very vague in these studies, and what are actually studied are for instance, beliefs, attitudes, goals, ideologies or values, especially how they are expressed in discourse. Also studies of relations between frames and culture, identity and discourse show that the notions of frames and framing are theoretically and methodologically unsatisfactory in empirical studies. It is concluded that the methods of the cultural paradigm of SM research may take advantage of the advances of more explicit methods in the study of language, discourse, interaction and cognition.

Power in Global Governance: Power without Rulers?

Abstract Is there global governance beyond the State? What kind of power emerges in a global arena? In contrast to the neorealist position, which stresses the role of states in the constitution of international power, many Foucauldian interpretations have emerged that emphasize the role of power networks that are constituted through an episteme. In this article I will focus on global governance through a Platonic notion of power and the relationship Plato establishes between the power of norms and rules. I argue that global governance should be understood as a network of power with different intermediations, based on a global constitution taken as a cognitive frame behind the international legal order. In this sense, new forms of power appear, and are different from the traditional state power activity, based on settled practices and norms. My main thesis is that there can be power without a clear ruler, but there is no power without rational order (based on norms, dispositions, and communicative intermediations), therefore, I examine which kind of rational order appears in global governance in accordance to Plato’s account of power and some remarks recently made by Byung-Chul Han.

Exploring the referential range of etymologically-related lexical pairs in the language of the Qur’an: A cognitive-semantic approach

The present study conducts a cognitive-semantic analysis of etymologically-related lexical pairs in the language of the Qur’an. Based on objective selection criteria, the lexical pair rīĥ (a singular form literally meaning wind) and riyāĥ (a plural form literally meaning winds) has been claimed to be representative of the final data set, which includes 20 lexical pairs. Building on the theoretical underpinnings of descriptive semantics and frame semantics, the analysis sought to fulfill three main objectives: (a) identifying the referential range of the pair rīĥ and riyāĥ and its central reference point; (b) explaining the way the historical and theological context helps to mark the connotations associated with each sense in the referential range; and (c) sorting the discourse functions communicated through the cognitive frame(s) evoked by such a lexical pair. Findings showed that the central cognitive frame of both lexical items is that of moving air. However, rīĥ has developed, through metaphorical extension, two other senses that are not applicable to riyāĥ: power/predominance and smell. Finally, both lexical items have been proven to have positive, negative, and neutral connotations that have been divinely manipulated to perform various discourse functions.

The Integration of Psychology & Christianity: A Domain-Based Approach

The Integration of Psychology & Christianity: A Domain-Based Approach

Routes and revisits: Places of tribulations and places of desire in the narration of Z.

This article covers the places that came to constitute the pivotal points of reference in the narration of the life of Z., a female migrant from Albania to Greece. It attempts to highlight the function of such places as cognitive and reconstructive frames that signify the life, memories and biographical plans of the narrator, the shaping but also the reception of a personal and social identity by herself as also by others. It attempts to point to the meaning of such places not only in the sense of the scenography (setting) of a life and its narration, but also as the defining elements in the trajectory and self-knowledge of an immigrant.

From the asylum official's point of view: frames of perception and evaluation in refugee status determination

ABSTRACT In 2021, there were 4.6 million asylum claims pending globally. How does the state determine that someone qualifies for refugee status? To understand refugee status determination, scholarship has focused on the characteristics of asylum seekers, their applications, and adjudicating officials. Relatively less is known about how officials make sense of asylum seekers and their claims. Building from a cognitive sociological approach, this article details frames of perception and evaluation at work in refugee status determination, cognitive prisms through which asylum officials make legible those seeking safe haven before the state. In doing so, it turns analytical focus from ‘what’ to ‘how’ officials interpret. It is based on an ethnography of the asylum-screening process in Brazil, including fieldwork, official interviews, and case files. It delineates four cognitive frames: credibility, gravity, affinity, and novelty. Such frames coexist, and they can also interact through frame configuration or competition. This article contributes to asylum scholarship by turning to the operative cognitive structures through which officials process information and evaluate asylum claims, and their variable development and operations in situated context.

Cognitive Term Frame: Creation of a Dictionary Entry on the Basis of a Specialized Text Corpus

The study deals with testing a specialized text corpus on the example of a number of cognitive linguistic terms with the hypernym frame. The corpus includes a subcorpus of scientific texts and a subcorpus of journalistic texts. The former is represented by 13 journals indexed in the RSCI; the latter one is represented by 10 significant Russian newspapers & magazines. The collected texts were lemmatized and tokenized, as well as automatically marked up using the Universal Dependencies standard. The corpus is used for creating a learner’s cognitive linguistic term dictionary. This lexicographic source includes 60 major terms in the university disciplines within cognitive sciences. The novelty of the approach is due to the thesaurus-encyclopedic type of dictionary which allows scholars to describe the word both as a term (a minimal component of scientific knowledge) and as a unit of scientific text in its various collocations and ontological relations (synonymy, quasi-synonymy, class-subclass; polysemy, etc.). The basis for describing the term systemic relations is corpus statistics: analysis of concordances, collocations, and n-grams. The results of using a specialized text corpus are presented on the example of a terminological field with the dominant frame. With the help of concordance lists, contexts of term usage are revealed and its derivational relations are established. The semantic and grammatical relationships of the term are characterized through n-grams analysis. Synonyms, hyponyms, hyperonyms of the term are described based on the study of collocations. The Dashinimaeva-Wang hypothesis about the links between the terms ‘concept’, ‘frame’, ‘gestalt’, and ‘image’ was also tested. Briefly characterized were the semantic transformations of the scientific term in the media discourse. Besides, systemic relations of the terms identified on the basis of corpus statistics were confirmed by the method of interpretative analysis of the contexts obtained from concordance lists. The data of automatically selected associative measures also largely agree with the results of the associative experiment carried out in the framework of the study.

The Role of Language in Organizational Sensemaking: An Integrative Theoretical Framework and an Agenda for Future Research

Despite the rapid growth of research on organizational sensemaking and an acknowledgment of the critical role of language in the sensemaking process, the literature on sensemaking and language is fragmented. In particular, there is no systematic review that explains the roles and functions of different linguistic elements in meaning construction. The purpose of this review paper is to develop an integrative theoretical framework that organizes existing research in a way that allows us to better understand how different linguistic processes shape the construction of meaning in sensemaking. First, we explain how a cognitive linguistic perspective elucidates how language provides the cognitive associations, schema, and frames used in sensemaking. Second, we discuss how a focus on the social practices of language use, as in rhetorical, narrative, or interactionist approaches, illuminates the patterns of meaning-making among organizational members in social interaction. Third, we explain how a focus on discourse helps us to understand how discursive structures enable or constrain sensemaking and thereby reproduce or transform systems of thought. This leads us to turn to the differences in these perspectives and suggest how they can be brought together in an integrative theoretical framework. Finally, we discuss the contributions of our framework and propose an agenda for future research focusing on the multifaceted role of language in sensemaking, intertextual and multimodal links in the language of sensemaking, the agentic and structural role of language in sensemaking, episodic and latent aspects of language use in sensemaking, and the role of power in discursive sensemaking.

Category of definiteness in cognitive framing in the use of English definite article

The paper focuses on English articles which are treated as the main means of definite/indefinite reference; and defines cognitive principles which govern usage of articles. Research methodology relies on the theory of classes, its explanatory potential is analyzed as regards the meaning and usage of the indefinite article as well as the word order in the attributive group which features more than one attribute. The research also relies on the frame approach which governs the usage of the definite article. The frame is treated in terms of the non-random link (binding, bond) between the object referred to and the frame, the frame approach being also instrumental in defining metonymical transfers. Definiteness is defined by the author as the result of the speaker’s cognitive operation to assign the object some “unique” — under given circumstances — features which distinguish it from other objects (of the same class of objects). Such distinction is performed by a variety of linguistic means, such as anaphora, restrictive post-modifying attributes (cataphora), using cardinal numbers, superlative-degree adjectives, and using triggers (words or general context, in other words, a frame) which oblige the speaker to refer to the inalienable element of the frame, which is a singular object in the frame, with the definite article, without any prior mentioning it, or any other above modifier.