Cognitive-pragmatic Approach Research Articles

Difficulties in Teaching English Modal Auxiliaries to Turkish Students: A Cognitive Pragmatic Approach

Recently, attention in modern linguistic theory has been shifted to facilitating a broader understanding of the world, in which language is a tool to establish a bridge between the interlocutor and the recipient. To do so, the development of linguistic, communicative and socio-pragmatic competences enriched with socio-cultural inputs in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) or Second Language (L2) teaching and learning contexts have a significant impact on language learners both to develop their perception as native speakers of English and to facilitate the progress of cognitive skills and capabilities. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate a case study to show some of the difficulties in teaching English modal auxiliaries to Turkish students in EFL/L2 contexts which arise not only from structural characteristics, but also from insufficiently developed linguistic, communicative and socio-pragmatic competencies. It is also asserted that only teaching the lexical properties of modal auxiliaries in isolation from their socio-pragmatic and semiotic contexts alone cannot help learners to become successful communicators in the target language as it ends in communication failures, hesitation, a slower L2 progress, fear and misunderstandings. Therefore, role-play activities, cloze tests, research assignments, writing tasks and songs can also be integrated into the teaching-learning process to assist learners to become more aware of their actual authentic usages in a wide range of contexts through different activities. On the whole, this would also free language learners to refer to their First Language (L1) input and shape a broader understanding of the Foreign Language (FL) framed with its actual authentic usage.

РИТОРИЧЕСКИЙ ВОПРОС КАК СРЕДСТВО КОГНИТИВНО-ПРАГМАТИЧЕСКОГО ВОЗДЕЙСТВИЯ В МЕДИАДИСКУРСЕ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ ЖУРНАЛОВ COSMOPOLITAN И GLAMOUR)

This article examines the features of the rhetorical question functioning by the material of the English glossy magazines for women. The source for the analysis is the texts of “features” group and advertisements. The author studies the notion and structure of the given language means, noting significant differences in its form and content that reveal the purposes of its application in the media discourse. The typical functional features of the rhetorical question are singled out, as well as the means and degree of their influence on the reader in the light of the cognitive-pragmatic approach.

Difficulties in Teaching English Modal Auxiliaries to Turkish Students: A Cognitive Pragmatic Approach

Recently, attention in modern linguistic theory has been shifted to facilitating a broader understanding of the world, in which language is a tool to establish a bridge between the interlocutor and the recipient. To do so, the development of linguistic, communicative and socio-pragmatic competences enriched with socio-cultural inputs in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) or Second Language (L2) teaching and learning contexts have a significant impact on language learners both to develop their perception as native speakers of English and to facilitate the progress of cognitive skills and capabilities. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate a case study to show some of the difficulties in teaching English modal auxiliaries to Turkish students in EFL/L2 contexts which arise not only from structural characteristics, but also from insufficiently developed linguistic, communicative and socio-pragmatic competencies. It is also asserted that only teaching the lexical properties of modal auxiliaries in isolation from their socio-pragmatic and semiotic contexts alone cannot help learners to become successful communicators in the target language as it ends in communication failures, hesitation, a slower L2 progress, fear and misunderstandings. Therefore, role-play activities, cloze tests, research assignments, writing tasks and songs can also be integrated into the teaching-learning process to assist learners to become more aware of their actual authentic usages in a wide range of contexts through different activities. On the whole, this would also free language learners to refer to their First Language (L1) input and shape a broader understanding of the Foreign Language (FL) framed with its actual authentic usage.

A cognitive pragmatic approach to punctuation

A cognitive pragmatic approach to punctuation

Cognitive-pragmatic account of the English imperative-conditional construction

The imperative-conditional construction (ICC) in English is a type of construction which consists of an ordinary imperative clause and an ordinary declarative clause connected by the connective and or or. This article deals with the speaker intentions of ICCs and their motivations from a cognitive-pragmatic approach. Based on the concept of construction in cognitive linguistics, an ICC can be called a complex symbolic structure which, though composed of two components, should be regarded as a single pragmatic processing unit. It is demonstrated that, in everyday communication, the ICC can usually convey three kinds of speaker intentions: a prohibitive intention, an inducing/forcing intention, and an advisory intention. The first refers to the intention of the speaker to prohibit the hearer from carrying out the act described by the imperative. The second is the intention of the speaker to induce or force the hearer to bring about the act described by the imperative. The third refers to the intention of the speaker to advise the hearer to carry out the act described by the imperative. These speaker intentions are highly motivated. The motivations include the constructional context, the conditional relation between the imperative and the declarative, the directive force of the imperative, the pragmatic enrichment of the declarative, and the complementary and interactive relationship between the imperative and declarative clauses, among which the constructional context serves as an overall motivation, and the rest may be seen as specific motivations.

The use of situation-bound utterances in Chinese foreign language textbooks

AbstractThis article examines the use of situation-bound utterances (qíngjìng zhuānyòngyǔ情境专用语) in five mainstream Chinese foreign language textbooks in order to survey, categorize, and discuss their use therein. Kecskes (2000a. A cognitive-pragmatic approach to situation-bound utterances.Journal of Pragmatics32(5). 605–625) defined Situation-bound utterances (hereafter SBUs) as “highly conventionalized, prefabricated pragmatic units whose occurrences are tied to standardized communicative situations” (2000a: 606). SBUs are prevalent in Modern Chinese and in several ways represent Chinese culture. Many Chinese foreign language textbooks, however, underestimate the importance of SBUs. Based on information culled from five textbooks (Integrated Chinese中文听说读写,First Step中文起步,Basic Spoken Chinese基础中文：听与说,Practical Audio-Visual Chinese实用视听华语, andNew Practical Chinese Reader新实用汉语) a Chinese SBUs database has been generated. One hundred seventy-eight Chinese SBUs are identified, and they are categorized into ten speech act categories. Among these, the three most common speech acts are: (1) greetings/daily conversation, (2) polite request, and (3) inquiry. These speech acts represent and reflect the concept and practice of politeness in Chinese culture.Basic Spoken Chineseprovides the most detailed and clearest explanations of SBUs, and explains the most appropriate contexts for use of SBUs. As for repeated use of SBUs, bothBasic Spoken ChineseandIntegrated Chineseoutperformed the other textbooks. None of the textbooks examined, however, adequately explain the use and importance of SBUs in Modern Chinese. The purpose of this study is to fill this lacuna.

A critical metaphor analysis of Arab uprisings in “The Washington Post” and “Keyhan” editorials

This study examines the metaphorical representation of the Arab uprisings in a number of Arab countries that came to be known as the Arab Spring in the editorials of two newspapers, one Persian and the other in English, namely “Keyhan” and “The Washington Post”. Sixty editorials from the two newspapers were examined for the metaphorical representation of the Arab uprisings during 2011 and the possible ideologies those representations reflect. A cognitive-pragmatic approach was adopted in the analysis of the editorials to uncover any ideology embedded in the fabrics of the text. The results indicated that the newspapers cast the same events in completely different frames. It is shown that these events were mainly portrayed as a religious conflict in “Keyhan”, presenting the dictators and their supporters as unbelievers and the greatest evil and the demonstrators as believers and God’s soldiers. However, the same events were described by “The Washington Post” via a range of different source domains, the main ones being a journey toward democracy, a natural phenomenon and a game between political powers.

A cognitive-pragmatic approach to error analysis

Abstract The purpose of the present paper is to analyze L2 and L3 production and comprehension from a cognitive-pragmatic point of view, taking into account Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1986; Wilson and Sperber, 2006), Mental Models Theory (Johnson-Laird, 1983) and the Graded Salience Hypothesis (Giora, 1997). Special attention is paid to error analysis and to the detection of error sources, especially in the case of errors not attributable to transfer, interference or overgeneralization. The paper is based on three studies involving, first, L2 and L3 production (Study 1), both production and comprehension (Study 2) and L3 comprehension (Study 3). In general, the phenomena observed can be explained by a combination of Relevance Theory, Mental Models Theory and the Graded Salience Hypothesis. In fact, even when transfer is used as a strategy, its use is relevant to the learner, who assumes that it will be relevant to the recipient as well. The results also shed some light on the multilingual mental lexicon and multiple language processing.

Viewpoints on the cognitive-pragmatic description of personal names

Personal names are characterized both by cultural determination and language taxonomic background. This allows for the comparative study of linguistic and cultural interferences in the composition of different name systems. The realization and extension of this to different languages is hindered by the lack of a unified conceptual framework. To this end, our paper offers an analytic model based on a cognitive-pragmatic approach, which is suitable for the appropriate examination of both linguistic and cultural elements. We illustrate the workability of this model by presenting and interpreting in broad outline the history of Hungarian personal name-giving. We do this in the hope that the extension of the analysis to the name systems of other languages will shed new light not only on the individual name systems themselves, but also more generally on the interplay of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors involved in language change.

Relevance Theory and translation: Translating puns in Spanish film titles into English

The present paper aims to analyse the translation of puns from a Relevance-Theory perspective. Relevance Theory is a cognitive-pragmatic approach to communication proposed by Sperber and Wilson in the mid-1980s (Sperber and Wilson, 1986). According to such theoretical framework, the relation between a translation and its source text is considered to be based on interpretive resemblance, rather than on equivalence (see Gutt, 1998, 2000). The translator would try to seek optimal relevance, in such a way that s/he would use different strategies to try to recreate the cognitive effects intended by the source communicator with the lowest possible processing effort on the part of the target addressee. The analysis carried out in this study is based on one hundred and ninety titles of Spanish and Latin American film titles containing puns and their translations for the Anglo-Saxon or international market. The strategies used by the translators to render puns in the translated titles have been analysed. The selection of strategy is determined, among other factors, by the principle of relevance. In those cases in which there is a coincidence in the relation between the levels of signifier and signified across source and target language, translators normally opt to translate literally and reproduce a pun based on the same linguistic phenomenon as the source pun and semantically equivalent to it. In the rest of the cases, the translator will have to assess what is more relevant, either content or the effect produced by the pun.

A Cognitive-pragmatic Approach to Puns

The present paper is intended to provide a unified account for the interpretation of puns from a cognitive-pragmatic perspective. In recent years a few scholars have delved into the processing mechanism of puns, but none of them has demonstrably elucidated the cognitive psychological foundation of puns and the development of our cognitive strategy for pun interpretation. Through careful analyses, the present paper proves that the logic of taxonomy is the cognitive psychological foundation of puns and shows that a cognitive approach incorporating the notion of the impartment and inheritance of connotation and denotation (IICD for short) can be successfully applied to the analyses of puns. Based on this notion, we propose a four-step hypothesis for the interpretation of puns. It is demonstrated that this hypothesis can effectively elucidate the interpretation of puns, and meanwhile, unfold a picture of addressees’ mental progress.

Explicitness, implicitness and commitment attribution: A cognitive pragmatic approach

This paper proposes a cognitive-pragmatic alternative to the traditional, speech-acttheoretic, account of the notion of commitment. The perspective adopted here questions the relevance of addressing actual commitment as a speaker category and shifts the focus of the discussion from properties of speaker commitment to processes ofcommitment attribution. Using a relevance-theoretic framework, it will be suggested that inferring commitment in ordinary, cooperative, communication is part of the processes by which hearers derive speaker meaning, and that the degree of reliability that a hearer may expect to attain in attributing commitment to a speaker correlates with the degree of certainty associated to the derivation of explicatures and implicatures from an utterance.

The effects of sound patterning in poetry: A cognitive pragmatic approach

AbstractIn this article I posit a pragmatic model of how sound-patterning in poetry contributes to interpretation, with particular attention to the cognitive processes involved. The model is based in cognitive pragmatics (relevance theory) and psycholinguistics (spreading activation models), and the focus here is largely on segmental patterning such as rhyme and alliteration, though there is also some reference to metrical features. The article draws on relevance theory notions of literary language conveying a range of weak implicatures and thus resulting in diffuse and non-propositional impressions (Sperber and Wilson 1995 [1986]), notions used so far in relevance theory approaches to literary features such as repetition and metaphor. The article develops Pilkington's (2000) argument that poetic form, in slowing down lines and anticipating rhyming words, allows for longer access and deeper exploration of information associated with lexical concepts. Such exploration can lead to a potentially wide range of interpretive material. Here I focus on associative, iconic, and mimetic effects, which, I argue, are enabled through the spreading of semantic properties along sequences of relatively contiguous similar sounding words, and through the association of formal properties with semantic and encyclopaedic information. Through the analysis, my aim is also to account for the instability of poetic interpretation. The argument is presented with reference to poetry by Pope and Keats.

A Cognitive-pragmatic Approach to Discourse Topic: A Cross-linguistic Analysis and Universal Account

A Cognitive-pragmatic Approach to Discourse Topic: A Cross-linguistic Analysis and Universal Account

The dual language model to explain code-switching: A cognitive-pragmatic approach

AbstractThe present paper seeks to explain code-switching produced by Spanish-English bilingual speakers from the community of Gibraltar from acognitive-pragmatic perspective new perspective based on the dual languagesystem developed by Kecskes (1998) and Kecskes and Papp (2000) to ac-count for bi- and multilingual language development and language use.The reasons for code-switching in Gibraltar are provided in Moyer (1992,1998) 1 in terms of social and culture specific information, conversation andcontext creating devices used in discourse, and structural or syntactic con-straints on the way the two languages are combined in a sentence.The advantage of the dual language model (DLM) is that it integrateslinguistic, conceptual, and socio-cultural information into a single model,provides a theoretical framework—from a psycholinguistic perspective—toexplain the way speakers from a bilingual community such as Gibraltarcombine two languages as a productive and regular communicativepractice, and postulates that the primary cause for code-switching isconceptual-pragmatic rather than syntactic.The DLM is a bilingual production model that integrates the dual lan-guage system (DLS), the language production model of Levelt (1989;1995), and the bilingual language mode theory of Grosjean (1998, 2001).The focus of the model is on conceptualization and the manner in whichconceptual knowledge is lexicalized or mapped onto linguistic forms (i.e.,words, phrases, sentences, utterances) and grammatically formulated. Themain contribution of the DLM is the way it enables conceptual knowledgeacquired along with each language in the case of members of a bilingualcommunity to interact by means of the dual language system consisting ofthe common underlying conceptual base (CUCB) and two distinct lan-guage channels. Switching is made possible by the CUCB that is responsi-ble for the operation of both language channels (Kecskes 1998; Kecskes &Papp 2000). In this first attempt to adapt the DLM to code-switching, the

Towards a critical cognitive–pragmatic approach to gender metaphors in Advertising English

This paper investigates the methodological convenience of a critical cognitive–pragmatic approach to gender metaphors in Advertising English. We begin by reviewing recent research in cognitive linguistics, pragmatics and critical discourse analysis (CDA) with regard to advertising metaphors and gender, then proceed to characterize advertising gender metaphors as indirect cognitive–pragmatic devices used in Advertising English to give rise to often covertly sexist communicated interpretations. Next, we present a description of advertising gender metaphors, subtypes (cases of metaphorical gender, universal gender metaphors and cultural gender metaphors) and cross-categorization in a case study of 1142 advertisements published in British Cosmopolitan (years 1999 and 2000). Finally, we argue that a critical cognitive–pragmatic approach to advertising gender metaphors is of most salience since it permits to (1) help the audience's search for cognitive efficiency, (2) unmask the advertiser's rhetorical intentions to make certain non-neutral assumptions more manifest to the target audience without making public its intention to do so and (3) call for action on the part of the addressee to overcome negative social consequences of its use in Advertising English.

From ‘bad’ to ‘worse’: pragmatic scales and the (de)construction of cultural models

This article uses a cognitive-pragmatic approach to discourse which is informed by two basic concepts: cultural models and pragmatic scales. The data consist of an essay by a literary writer, Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, as well as editorials and letters to the editor published in a Luxembourgish newspaper. The analysis reveals how the authors of the editorials and letters to the editor both rely upon and construct a particular cultural model about education in Luxembourg, and how the literary writer deconstructs her readers’ (at least potentially stereotypical) model of tourism. Rather than attempt to distinguish between different text genres on such a basis, the article focuses on cognitive aspects that are common to all discourse processing; in particular, it highlights the key role played by pragmatic scales in linking and structuring cultural models. The scales are invoked primarily by evaluative adjective forms such as bad, worse, etc., and they make possible a high degree of linguistic implicitness in the writers’ rhetorical and argumentative strategies. The article concludes that the consequent processes of moving information across evaluative scales and filling in missing values are characteristic of the way human beings think, and that they work together with other processes of reasoning (such as conceptual blending) to produce the full complexity, but also the potentially stereotyped nature, of human thinking.

A critical cognitive-pragmatic approach to advertising gender metaphors

In this paper we claim that pragmatics combined with cognitivism can enhance a critical discourse understanding and debate (Fairclough 1989, 1992, 1995) on ideologically-loaded metaphors and, in particular, on advertising gender metaphors. The former are defined as metaphors that conceal underlying social processes and determine interpretation, and the latter are characterised as cognitive-pragmatic discourse devices used to give rise to often covertly communicated sexist interpretations. We attempt to present a comprehensive description and evaluation of a combined critical cognitive-pragmatic approach to the analysis of ideological metaphors on the basis of a prototypical case study of gender metaphors in 1142 ads published in British Cosmopolitan (years 1999 and 2000). We argue that such an approach is desirable since it is useful in accounting for metaphor as a multifunctional phenomenon that is not exclusively discursive, cognitive, or pragmatic. The application of the proposed model to advertising gender metaphors has proved useful in helping the ad audience’s search for cognitive relevance, in revealing the advertiser’s rhetorical and ideological intentions, and in calling for action on the part of the ad addressees to overcome the negative social consequences of the use of sexist advertising gender metaphors.

The principles of communicative language use

The paper aims to overview some typical principles of communicative language use in a cognitive pragmatic approach applying a reductionist method in order to demonstrate that the well-known principles can be reduced to a very general rationality (economy) principle. After briefly reviewing the principles the paper re-evaluates them and provides a new classification of them relying on the definition of ostensive-inferential communication. The principles which can be divided into rationality and interpersonality principles are really principles of effective information transmission on objects and selves. They refer to two kinds of language use: informative and communicative ones. The only principles valid for only communicative language use are the communicative principle of relevance and the principle of communicative intention suggested in the present article. Finally, the paper reduces all rationality and interpersonality principles to a very general rationality principle, i.e., the cognitive principle o...

The cognitive-pragmatic approach.

The cognitive-pragmatic approach.