Cognitive Pragmatics Research Articles

THE EXAMINATION OF CONCEPT OF «MORALITY» IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE FROM A COGNITIVE LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE

The presented paper deals with the concept of morality in a political context. The aforementioned concept was examined within a cognitive linguistic framework and from a cognitive pragmatic perspective. After familiarising ourselves with the literary sources concerning the present topic, newspaper articles relating to politics and published on Transcarpathian Hungarian news portals were analysed. The aim of the analysis was to demonstrate the role of context in conceptualisation. In the course of the research, the authors were also curious about whether or not the concept of morality is understood differently in our everyday lives and when talking about politics, and which related concepts appear when talking about morality in a political context. In order to give answer to questions, fifteen newspaper articles on political topics were put under investigation. The articles involved ideas such as criticising and blaming the Ukrainian society and Hungarian minorities as well as power and social relations. In the course of the research, passages of the articles regarding concepts of morality were identified. As a second step, metaphorical linguistic expressions were systematized and compared with previous research findings to shed light on the relationship between conceptualization and context. The theoretical background of the research was mainly based on the works of George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, ‪Zoltan Kovecses, Albert Widdowson. In order to identify which linguistic expressions were metonymic and/or metaphorical, the Metaphor Identification Procedure VU was followed, which is an improved method of the metaphor identification procedure developed by the Pragglejaz group (2007). The results of the study confirmed Lakoff's (2002) theory that people’s conceptions of morality are related to patterns of political thinking. In addition, the views of cognitive pragmatics that moving from context to language, its influence on our conceptualisation can be demonstrated were also supported.

The evolution of the English small talk: a cognitive-pragmatic analysis

Since Malinowski defined small talk as a communicative mode – the establishment of human bonds or communion, abundant studies have supplied numerous data about its cultural contexts, social and phatic function, participants and topics of small talk, conversational routines and etiquette mores etc. Nevertheless, some aspects of small talk, both its historical and contemporary procedures, still lack clarification. Lately, the development of a new linguistic approach of cognitive pragmatics has worked out a new methodology that makes it possible to take inquiry into cognitive-intentional and social-cultural aspects of the communicative behavior of small talk. In this paper, we have worked out an integrative framework for cognitive-pragmatic analysis of small talk underpinned by the ideas of historical pragmatics. We implemented this framework in the analysis of small talk on the material of English fiction of the 17th -21st centuries elicited from the BNC database. We aimed to find out evolutionary trends of small talk in English and to describe the underlying change of English ethos, in particular, politeness principles. Our findings have revealed historically stable and variable characteristic features of small talk: the former mainly concern people’s communion as a universal value, the latter reflect procedural communication patterns and requirements of a particular community. We argue that small talk is a meta-communicative (accompanying informative communication) form of behavior that satisfies human needs for social cohesiveness; its cultural conceptualization depends upon the leading social-cultural values and changes throughout history. We hope, this study may shed light on the understanding of small talk as communicative behavior found not only in fiction but also in other contexts.

Is irony ironic?

The paper explores correlations between irony and sense of humour (HQ). Its questions are informed by functional cognitive pragmatics, with irony considered an emergent way of exploiting reflexivity (the metapragmatic awareness of discourse participants) as an essential feature of linguistic cognition. Accordingly, the research focuses on the folk category of irony, i.e. those utterances are treated as ironic, which informants so judged.
 The initial hypothesis of the research was that HQ was in positive correlation with both the production and the interpretation of irony. Our study followed a two-step procedure: two consecutive questionnaire studies measured the correlation between HQ and the production and interpretation of irony. HQ was measured with the Humor Styles Questionnaire, whereas 15 visual stimuli elicited the production and recognition of irony. 397 subjects participated in the study. Performing statistical analysis, we found that participants judged utterances produced by above-average HQ significantly more ironic than those produced by average or below-average HQ. However, there was no significant difference between the below-average and above-average HQ groups in most cases about the interpretation of utterances. At the same time, utterances that contain an appropriate instance of irony were judged significantly more ironic by informants with higher HQ than by informants with low HQ.

Complexity of Mental Representation: A Cognitive Pragmatics Perspective

This article attempts to elucidate the meaning construction process, mental states and mental relations, communicative intentions, and action plans and thereby to explore the complexity of mental representations from a purely cognitive pragmatics perspective. It also attempts to reevaluate the violations of cooperative principle and maxims.
 Cooperation, mental states and intentionality are the three basic tools for any communication process. Mental states are either conscious or unconscious. They are emotional and cognitive which include common attention, shared belief, and consciousness. Three different types of beliefs are differentiated: individual, common and shared. Intentionality is the relationship between mental acts and the external world. Every mental phenomenon has content and it is directed at an object. Two fundamental distinct meanings are attributed to the concept of intentionality: direction and deliberateness. Intentionality can be conceived of through communicative intentions and action plans.
 The main concepts of communication, namely, cooperation, sharedness and intentionality are indispensable concepts to understand the process of comprehension and reconstruction of response in communication. Without rich shared knowledge, the inferential chain in non-standard communication becomes lengthy and laborious. Other possibilities arise due to the absence of the fundamental concepts, one of which is failure of communication. Any mental process can be envisaged in terms of steps starting with the expression of an act, moving through speaker meaning, to the communicative effect, then to the reaction it creates and finally the production of overt communicative response.
 The paper examines the scale of complexity of mental representation and shows the underlying processes required in meaning construction. Additionally, the difference between standard and non-standard communication is presented in terms of complexity of inferential processes needed for each two different cases in communication.

Impoliteness in parliamentary discourse: a cognitive-pragmatic and sociocultural approach

This article focuses on the use of impoliteness strategies in the discourse of American, Bulgarian, Polish, and Ukrainian parliaments. Our research of impolite rhetoric, also known as unparliamentary language, is located on the intersection of cognitive pragmatics, cultural linguistics, and discourse analysis. We use an integrative framework, in which the pragmatics of impoliteness is underpinned by the cognitive model of the concept of impoliteness. We offer a description of impoliteness strategies in parliamentary discourse, single out the leading strategy of devaluation of the opponent, and define the stereotypical for each parliament verbal means of the strategy of devaluation and its tactics: criticism and belittlement of one’s merits and importance. Their verbal markers are lexicalized and syntactic units bearing the meaning of negative characterization, disrespect, mockery, sarcasm. We hypothesize that the variation of impoliteness strategies is different parliamentary discourses corresponds to linguistic, pragmatic, and sociocultural dissimilarities, and provide support for this through an empirical study. Linguistically, discursive means of devaluation in the American, Bulgarian, Polish, and Ukrainian parliaments are context free and context dependent, and their ratio varies. In all these parliamentary discourses, the lexicalized markers of impoliteness come from common mental source domains: negative evaluation, legal offence, democracy, deception, hostilities, their variation is due to corresponding construals of the world. Culturally, we claim that the form and content of impoliteness strategies is indirectly connected with a low-context culture in the USA as opposed to a high-context type of Slavic cultures. In the former, devaluation of opponents is mostly reached by lexicalized markers with inherent negative meaning; and in the latter, by syntactic context-dependent means. Pragmatically, the specific properties of impoliteness strategies in the four parliamentary discourses reveal their relation to the dominant politeness principles, which are negatively oriented in modern English and positively in Bulgarian, Polish, and Ukrainian.

The role of context and relevance in translating European Union texts

The article presents the nature and legitimacy of translation studies; it examines the function of a translator, its role during the translation process and the generated linguistic product from the point of view of cognitive pragmatics. In the present study we are looking for the answer to what factors influence the translator in his/her activity, what aspects he/she keeps in mind, how relevance theory prevails in translation, what role the current context, target audience and readers’ prior knowledge have in interpreting the translated text. In order to answer the questions, in the first part we summarize the opinions published in the literature, then we examine our hypothesis with the method of structural discourse analysis in relation to three languages (English, German, Hungarian) in EU texts, according to which, despite the European Union’s language policy aspirations, similarities and differences can be noticed depending on what the translator considered relevant to highlight. In the examined texts we can find formal, semantic and pragmatic differences according to the levels of identity. In the course of the analysis, we have made an attempt to highlight the semantic and pragmatic similarities and the differences between the versions, the factors which may cause them, and also their connection with the cognitive context, relevance and the general context. As a first step, we identified the different parts of the texts, and then the reason for the differences was revealed during the analysis. The aim is therefore to support our hypothesis and to illustrate with linguistic examples that context and relevance are central to translation.

Fast and slow thinking as secret agents behind speakers’ (un)conscious pragmatic decisions and judgements

In this article I discuss and explore how two cognitive systems –fast and slow thinking– may affect our pragmatic decisions and judgements. I draw on Kahneman's (2011) description of mental life by the metaphor of two agents, System 1 and System 2, which respectively produce fast and slow thinking. The capabilities of System 1 include –among other things– mental, linguistic and sociopragmatic activities, all of which have an effect on people's relational work (Locher and Watts 2005). Research in psychology (cf. McGuire and Botvinick 2010; Simon 1992; Klein 1999) suggests that the ‘intuitive’ System 1 is frequently more influential than the ‘rational’ System 2, the former thus being the secret author of many of human beings' choices and judgments, including those speakers make in discourse.My approach in this study is therefore multidisciplinary. Drawing from Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Pragmatics, Functional Linguistics, (Socio)pragmatics and Discourse Analysis, I theoretically explore how the systems of fast and slow thinking participate in our discourse-pragmatic decisions and activities. I also analyze different examples of statements and short narratives where the (un)conscious exploitation of the interplay between these two systems (for the negotiation of pragmatic meanings) can be appreciated.

Особливості відтворення сучасних англомовних текстів в астрологічному дискурсі

The article deals with the peculiarities of rendering texts of astrological discourse in Ukrainian. Astrological discourse – is a verbalized way of thinking, functioning of thoughts that is based on a real astrological model. As a structural element it is based upon acceptance of the material space that correlates with the energy of celestial objects. The present paper concentrates on analyzing how to systemize and generalize information on the definition of astrological discourse in scientific field and to find out the directions of astrological discourse research in the aspect of translation. The paper proposes a new approach to determine the peculiarities of rendering pragmatics in astrological discourse. The objective of this article is to analyze cognitive-pragmatic characteristics of astrological discourse, to identify communicative strategies and tactics in astrological discourse and to consider the features of rendering communicative strategies and tactics in the texts of astrological discourse in Ukrainian. It was revealed that daily horoscopes use certain communicative strategies to manipulate the audience. In this paper we proposed to categorize these strategies using the following classification: 1) Forming emotional state: «to catch a glimpse of its mysteries»; «astrology primes us»; «super-powered ruler Mars»; 2) Pointing to vital events: «protect what is valuable»; «spend time with yourself»; «study the needs of what you are doing»; 3) Emphasis on valuable information: «for the first time since 2016»; «won’t be back in Sagittarius until 2030»; 4) Revealing possible or real results: «today might startle the senses»; «Mercury solidifies plans, help us define our days»; 5) Advice: «pay attention to...»; «take your time to...»; «stay open to...» 6) Affirmation: «I set myself free»; «I make my mental health a priority»; «I am intentional about ...»; «I am worthy of being ...»; Reflection: «I remembered the power of my word»; «I need to know»; «the living is in trying»; 7) Conclusion: «over the past year, I have ...»; «the last year has shown me ...». It was ascertained that in daily horoscopes the author uses universal archetypes to appeal to the readers, such as «The Ruler», «The Scientist», «The Judge». They are interconnected with the horoscope signs and conceptual beliefs regarding each realia. This special feature of astrological discourse gives the opportunity to use a wide range of semantic devices in Ukrainian to render author’s intentions. The results of the analysis showed that cognitive pragmatics characteristics of astrological discourse are rooted to the rational and astronomic dimensions. A high demand on daily horoscopes proves that people tend to rely on astrological horoscopes as they make their mood better, show positive directions and boost confidence.

An Analysis of Figures of Speech from the Perspective of Relevance Theory-Case Study of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

This paper attempts to analyze the use of various figures of speech in literature from the perspective of Relevance Theory and take the figures of speech used in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as an example. By using the Relevance theory, an important theory of cognitive pragmatics, the author tries to interpret the process of readers’ understanding these figures of speech when reading the novel. In this paper, five important figures of speech, including parody, pun, malapropism, simile and allusion have be discussed respectively. After analysis of the figures of speech under the guidance of Relevance Theory, some main findings have been obtained. Firstly, the understanding all of the figures of speech appropriately involves a process of ostention and inferences, getting the optimal contextual effects and seeking the optimal relevance between the speaker and the addressee. Secondly, the analysis of the figures of speech used in the novel gives some important hits to the reasons or mechanism of the humorous and critical effects of this novel. All in all, this study provides a little experience towards the study of the use of figures of speech used in literature. Hopefully, its efforts will make some contributions to the future research.

RELEVÂNCIA E MOTIVAÇÃO: PROPRIEDADES INERENTES DA AQUISIÇÃO DE L2

Muitas pesquisas têm surgido na Pragmática social e cognitiva, e os estudos linguísticos tomaram um novo caminho. Esta nova perspectiva também aparece nos estudos de aquisição de línguas adicionais, com novas concepções de aprendizagem e elementos importantes para a aquisição de uma língua. Dentre eles está a motivação, que acreditamos ser um elemento crucial para a aquisição de línguas, bem como a relevância, propriedade cognitiva proposta por Sperber e Wilson (1986), que determina o processamento cognitivo em níveis de efeito e esforço. Nosso objetivo é identificar a relação entre as propriedades cognitivas relevância e motivação e determinar como essa relação influencia no processo de aquisição de segundas línguas. Para tanto, utilizamos como aporte teórico para esta pesquisa principalmente os estudos de Sperber e Wilson (2001,2005), Ryan e Deci (2000), Schwartz (2014), Tapia (2005, 2015), Kreitler (2013), entre outros. Pudemos perceber que a motivação e a relevância são propriedades cognitivas muito importantes para a aquisição de L2, que são elementos correspondentes e dependentes dos mesmos fatores cognitivos e sociais. No entanto, após relacionarmos as duas propriedades, inferimos que a relevância se sobrepõe à motivação, o que nos leva a supor que a motivação poderia ser um componente da relevância.

The Geopolitics of COVID-19: A Pragma-Cognitive Approach

This study intends to investigate the outbreak of coronavirus, scientifically known as COVID-19, within the context of discursive geopolitics. In so doing, Cap’s proximization is particularly suitable to address the cognitive paradigm of critical geopolitics. Cap’s proximization, as a pragma-cognitive framing device based on tempo-spatial dimensions, conceptualises the geopolitical identity of coronavirus by associating it with the qualities of space and time. It is found that the NYT reporting of the corona event is framed in certain tempo-spatial configurations which cognitively endorse and proximize the geopolitical identity of the Chinese threat. The notion of metaphorical scenario (Kovecses, 2003; Musolff, 2004), originated in the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff, 1993; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980/2003) is then deployed to show how a geopolitical scenario of a CHINESE THREAT is represented in the NYT. China is being laid before us spatially and temporally as the culprit behind the outbreak of coronavirus. The study aims to give guidance to the field of discursive geopolitics by suggesting cognitive pragmatics as suitable tool for analyzing the construction of geopolitical entities.

On the nature of the lexicon: The status of rich lexical meanings

Both in linguistics and in psycholinguistics there is some debate about how rich or thin lexico-semantic representations are. Traditionally, in formal semantics but also in philosophy of language as well as in cognitive pragmatics, lexical meanings have been thought to be simple stable denotations or functions. In this paper, we present and discuss a number of interpretational phenomena of which the analysis proposed in the literature makes crucial use of rich meanings. The phenomena in question are cases where the assignment of truth-conditional contents to utterances seems to follow rules that do not operate on simple stable denotations or any other kind of ‘thin’ meanings but where composition takes rich structured representations as input. We also discuss problems for such accounts, which are mostly based on the inability of extant rich meanings accounts to explain many other interpretational phenomena, and we discuss the solutions that have been proposed to solve them. Furthermore, we address the discussion whether the informationally rich meanings are part of semantics, and more specifically part of the lexicon, or whether this information should be ascribed to more general world knowledge.

Modelagem Matemática de transformações isovolumétricas: análise conforme a teoria de conciliação de metas

Analisamos a pertinência da arquitetura abdutivo-dedutiva da teoria de conciliação de metas para descrever e explicar processos cognitivos em tarefas de Modelagem Matemática. Para dar conta desse objetivo, observamos o desempenho de um grupo de estudantes do segundo ano do Curso Técnico de Química Integrado ao Ensino Médio do Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina, campus Criciúma, na tarefa de modelar transformações gasosas isovolumétricas com o auxílio de um simulador de propriedades gasosas. As evidências mostram que os estudantes foram capazes de modelar as transformações, negociando colaborativamente planos de ação intencional menores associados às diferentes fases e ações cognitivas de modelagem, com os quais, relacionando Matemática e Físico-Química, mobilizaram o objeto matemático adequado de seu repertório didático; propuseram um modelo; interpretaram e validaram os resultados; e refletiram sobre limitações e potencialidades do modelo. O estudo sugere que a arquitetura pode contribuir para descrever e explicar processos cognitivos em atividades de Modelagem Matemática, oferecendo ao professor ferramentas para gerar e avaliar intervenções didáticas. Palavras-chave: Modelagem Matemática. Pragmática cognitiva. Planos de ação intencional.

CULTURE OF SPEECH: ANTROPOLINGUISTIC ANALYSES

The research work is dealt with the culture of speech. Culture of speech is identified by language of speech , social surrounding , language and psycology , language and pragmatics. As a result of culture of speech, personal culture, human quality, linguistic knowledge of a person is realized. Several types of antropolinguistic analyses are mentioned. Public speech (in auditorium, in crowd) shows the social aspect of communicative, linguistic norms and humans morality in speaking expresses wisdom and psycholinguistic aspect of speaker. Literary norm, functional grammar , cognitive pragmatics , literary language are thoroughly explained.

Exploring key indicators of social identity in the #MeToo era: Using discourse analysis in UGC

Recent years have been characterized by the ubiquitous use of social networks as a mean of self and social identity, which offers new opportunities for qualitative and quantitative research in social sciences. The dynamics of interactions on social platforms such as Twitter promote the development of social movements around hashtags, such as #MeToo. According to previous research, this movement has set the beginning of an era. The present study aims to determine the key indicators of social identity in the #MeToo movement in Twitter using textual analysis and sentiment analysis of user-generated content. To this end, we use a cognitive pragmatics point of view to study a corpus of 31.305 tweets. Using the methodological approaches of corpus linguistics (CL) and discourse analysis (DA), we identify keywords, topics, frequency, and n-grams or collocations to understand the social identity of the #MeToo movement. The key indicators of the social identity in the #MeToo Era are validated using association statistical measures of Log-Likelihood and Mutual Information (MI). Our results reveal the polarization of sentiments where UGC is associated with both negative and positive topics. The social identity is particularly strongly correlated with women and the workplace. Finally, regardless the industry or area, these results present a holistic approach to the social identity of #MeToo.

Cognitive pragmatics of American presidential debates: a case for economic metaphors

This article focuses on cognitive-pragmatic properties of conceptual metaphors of ECONOMY in the 21st century American presidential campaigns. In this paper, we aim to elaborate the models of metaphoric conceptualization of ECONOMY, state their functions in terms of discourse strategies, and describe their impact on the opponents and the audience. This research is underpinned by conceptual metaphor theories and ideas of cognitive pragmatics, which postulates the unity of cognitive and communicative aspects of discourse. The benefits of this integrative cognitive-pragmatic approach are in the fact that it can consequently explicate the meaning of speaker’s message and the expected impact of their discourse on the audience. For this aim, we stress the persuasive and manipulative nature of American presidential debates as a mass-media mediated genre of political discourse. Adopting a cognitive-pragmatic perspective on presidential debates, we claim that conceptual metaphors of economy constitute time and ideology specific conceptual models; their dominant functions are persuasive, informative, and manipulative. In the discourse of the 21st century presidential debates, we distinguish seven leading models of conceptual metaphors of economy, common for both republican and democratic candidates. The choice of discourse strategies of debate participants depends upon the candidates’ intentions while their impact on the opponent and the audience is influenced by meta-communicative issues of candidates’ communicative behavior and (im)politeness strategies in particular. The 21st century presidential debates are characterized by the abundance of discourse strategies of aggression and impoliteness.

ЗНАЧЕНИЕ КОНЦЕПТА В СОВРЕМЕННОЙ ЛИНГВИСТИКЕ

The analysis of existing approaches to the concept description in modern linguistics is carried out. The research is based on the scientific works of modern linguists dealing with cognitive linguistics, semantics and pragmatics: A. A. Zalevskaya (2001), V. I. Karasik (2002, 2007, 2019), Z. D. Arutyunov (1999), V. A. Maslov (2007), Y. S. Stepanov (2007). The versatility of the concept noted by the linguists requires a more detailed consideration of approaches to its description. The article discusses two positions in the study of the concept - cognitive and lingua-cultural. Terminological differences of term ‘concept’ are given from the point of view of several representatives of the observed linguistic schools. The research methodology is based on the dialectical method of cognition. The concept as a mental category embodies the linguistic and cultural connection of a person's ideas about the world around them - "a clot of culture in the mind". Representatives of cognitive linguistics consider the concept as the result of conscious activity of the speaker, behind which the meanings of native speakers of a particular language are hidden. Psycholinguists interpret the concept as a basic perceptual-cognitive-affective education, which serves as an indicator of a person's mental life. Representatives of the lingua-cultural direction distinguish several features in the concept. First, the value characteristics are expressed in the meaning - "cultural saturation of the concept". Secondly, conceptual properties are represented in the meaning of "mental education". Thirdly, the figurative components of the concept serve its operation in various activities. The multilayered nature of the concept is a subject to abstract modeling, which is used in applied research in linguistics, synchronous comparative studies, confrontational and comparative- typological linguistics. The concept as a unit of meaning is represented as an abstract category that is implemented in language tools and images. Cultural linguistics examines the structure of the concept from the standpoint of three components - conceptual, figurative and axiological (evaluative). The content of the concept can be furtherly investigated in accordance with the field principle - the core (information content), the near periphery (metaphorical interpretation and value features) and the far periphery (infrequent functioning of features).

Spatial, Temporal and Epistemic Proximization as Dynamic Event Construal Strategies

The present paper examines the discursive construal of the Coronavirus as the proximizing entity in the Anglo-American political discourse with the goal of elucidating the pragmatic effects and underlying construal operations of threat representation. The research was carried out within the theoretical framework of cognitive pragmatics, and the data consists of the written samples and transcripts of the political statements made by the ruling party representatives at the Coronavirus public briefings. The corpora were concluded to be replete with linguistic forms that realize intersubjective positioning strategy for the sake of achieving shared cognitive viewpoint, thus legitimizing policies implemented during the pandemic.

Cognitive-Pragmatic Strategies for English Translation of Colloquial Metaphors in Political Discourse

The colloquial metaphor is a distinguishing feature of Chinese political discourse. Relevance theory of cognitive pragmatics is instructive and significant for the English translation of colloquial metaphors in political discourse, according to which, in the process of metaphor translation, the translator is supposed to take into consideration the cognitive context and pragmatic-communicative intention of the author, and also the cognitive environment of the target readers. Taking the Chinese an

What is an indirect speech act?

AbstractThe notion of an indirect speech act is at the very heart of cognitive pragmatics, yet, after nearly 50 years of orthodox (Searlean) speech act theory, it remains largely unclear how this notion can be explicated in a proper way. In recent years, two debates about indirect speech acts have stood out. First, a debate about the Searlean idea that indirect speech acts constitute a simultaneous realization of a secondary and a primary act. Second, a debate about the reasons for the use of indirect speech acts, in particular about whether this reason is to be seen in strategic advantages and/or observation of politeness demands. In these debates, the original pragmatic conception of sentence types as indicators of illocutionary force seems to have been getting lost. Here, I go back to the seemingly outdated “literal force hypothesis” (seeLevinson 1983: 263–264) and point out how it is still relevant for cognitive pragmatics.