Cognitive Analysis and Practical Exploration on the Process of Language Use(语言使用(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)


发布时间:2020-07-04 23:00:04

点击下载

作者:郭霞,黄丽君,潘晓霞,李红波

出版社:四川大学出版社

格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT

Cognitive Analysis and Practical Exploration on the Process of Language Use(语言使用

Cognitive Analysis and Practical Exploration on the Process of Language Use(语言使用试读:

Prelude

Language is a common but very complex phenomenon and for this reason there are different approaches to understanding how it works. Just as F. de Saussure says:“... other sciences work with objects that are given in advance, whereas in ours [linguistics]it would seem that it is the viewpoint that creates the object. ”It is just natural, therefore, that ever since the very beginning, the study of human language has been developing along two orientations, one being the theoretical inquiry on the nature of language and on how language works to bridge human mind with the world, and the other, studies for practical purposes, such as language teaching and learning in the west, and language planning for facilitating dialectal communications in China. The former is witnessed by philosophical speculations on language issues in ancient times and empirical researches on language as a system of signs, of syntactic rule, of meaning potential or of cognitive activities; while the latter is embodied in traditional grammar, language policy as well as in modern applied linguistics. These two lines still exist in parallel today.

When we say the two lines of studies exist in parallel, we do not mean to draw a clear borderline between the two, to the neglect of the mutual influence of one line on the other. They do have their respective aims and focuses, but theoretical thoughts on the nature and structure of language have been exercising great influences on practical studies of language. Take L. Bloomfield for example. He is not only an enthusiastic structuralist who regards language as verbal behavioral events, contributing significantly to descriptions of language structure, but also an active practitioner of his theory in language teaching, leading a language training program with a considerable success. However, his positivistic viewpoint on language knowledge and his mechanical approach to language teaching have raised further questions and met with serious criticism from N. Chomsky. To the latter, descriptions do not constitute knowledge; and language ability is not the result of training, but a process of development by parameter setting on the basis of innate language acquisition device. Chomsky' s rationalist viewpoint on what language is has led to a revolution in linguistics as well as language teaching, which has led to the prosperity of theories concerning how language works, including transformational-generative grammar, generative semantics, case grammar, GPSG, HPSG and so on. It has also caused a switch from the external to the internal in the studies of language teaching, such as error analysis, interlanguage hypothesis, monitor model, etc. , where the psychological processes and factors enter the vision of the language teaching theorists. Of course, Chomskyan formalism also faces challenges. M. A. K. Halliday rejects TG-style psychological orientation by claiming that language is a social product, and linguistic knowledge consists of the understanding of what can be done and what is done, i. e. , what and how speakers choose to express themselves appropriately in specific social conditions. This idea has been reinforced by the rise of pragmatics, which brings also into view the speakers and their intentions. How does language function and what speakers truly mean by what they say in different contexts come to be important topics, not only for linguistic theorization, but also for language education. Volumes of academic works have come and are still coming into being, deepening our understanding of how language works and how language is used.

It seems safe to say that modern linguistics research has come all the way from a purely structural examination to an investigation of language that takes into consideration both meaning, cognitive function and language users. This is even more obvious with cognitive linguistics, a new development of language study which is convinced that language is not just an autonomous rule system, nor is it just a means of communication, but is itself a cognitive activity, a part of the general cognitive ability of human beings. Such a new perspective has brought about so far considerable achievements in linguistic theorization. Space grammar, construction grammar, cognitive semantics, cognitive pragmatics and so on and so forth have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain and have been enthusiastically researched on. Because of the complexity of the subject matter and because of relatively short history beginning from around 1980s, there is not yet a unified theoretical framework in the realm of cognitive linguistics and there is not even a unified methodology for the research. Cognitive theorization, psycholinguistic experimentation, neurolinguistic investigation are all employed for highly diversified issues. At the same time, phenomena in language use are attempted and also probed into against the framework of cognitive linguistics. We can of course expect new ideas to come out as a result of theoretical exploration. But to me, we also have reasons to believe that new findings may turn up from practical exploration in the principle of cognitive linguistics, making new contributions to theories by confirming them and/or revising and deepening them.

The present book is an effort of the latter, written by young scholars who are teachers of English and doctorate students of linguistics. This book covers a wide range of topics from cognitive critical discourse analysis to conceptual metaphor and pragmatics, to functional language study, and to the learning theory of cognitive constructivism. There are both theoretical reasoning and practical researches that demonstrate the authors' mastery of the frontiers of current language study and their spirit of academic adventure while observing strict scientific research requirements. These studies are all original, providing their research findings that are of significant academic value for furthering inquiries. I am quite impressed by what they claim in the Conclusion: “If we have accomplished nothing else, we hope to have given some indication of the very great breadth of cognitive methodologies. ”This is really appreciable, because“the diversity of viewpoints that make the analyses of language use as utterly refreshing and attractive”is exactly the property of linguistics study. This realization is important because it is the viewpoint that determines the methodology which in turn makes new and deep-going understanding of language possible. If our young researchers keep such awareness in mind, we can be quite optimistic that some day major breakthroughs may be accomplished in their pursuit of language researches. This is why I decide to write this prelude for their book at the authors' invitation, even though I myself am only a student of linguistics.LIU Limin, PhDProfessor of linguistics School of Foreign Languages and CulturesSichuan UniversitythApril 7,2016

Preface

The book was motivated by our common desire to provide a systematic introduction to a theoretical descriptive model based on cognitive linguistics, and to demonstrate its theoretical value, not just to the analyses of words or texts, but more generally to the process of language use. We have been fascinated by what it would be behind the different texts in English. After some initial discussion we decided to work together to continue our sketchy research plans by introducing the relevant theories, and designing some parts of surveys. The result of this effort is the present book illustrating how the experimental and theoretical insights can be demonstrated in the analysis of language use(texts). The book has been hoped to be a trial to explore the process of language use.

The title of this book is Cognitive Analyses and Practical Exploration to the Process of Language Use. As the title may suggest, it is about how cognitive linguistics has been adopted as a theoretical perspective and how the process of language use has been expounded within the framework; the major theoretical issues that cognitive linguistics contend with today; and the attempts that we put the theoretical framework in practice, both within in English and across languages.

This research captures in a nutshell, we like to think, what makes this book different from the many excellent academic books on the analysis of texts that have appeared since long before. We outline the instructions describing the main branches of cognitive linguistics, and give some sample text analyses, and in some cases problematise the conceptual issues underlying the use of texts, as well as reviewing what we see as the major trends of research using texts to date. We take it for granted that texts in English offer us a window to see through the process of language use, and therefore we have selected four kinds of texts into the analytical corpus for current research.

In the earlier part of the book, we will discuss cognitive linguistics as a theoretical foundation, exploring the main issues that are of concern to cognitive linguists, such as the notions of language use and explanatory model, the development and features of cognitive linguistics and construction grammar. In doing so, we will investigate both their methodological apparatus and, where appropriate, the contributions to theory that they have sought to make. In later chapters we will move beyond the boundaries of cognitive linguistics per se to consider the role that cognitive approach now has across a range of types of linguistic investigation—including studies of texts and the issue raised by the use of various texts. Our discussion of the different texts, of the wider use of texts in linguistics and beyond(such as commercial advertisement), and of the future directions we see as desirable, thus amount to what might be called a trial for our practical exploration for the process of language use. Accordingly we will argue that, although cognitive linguistics has clearly long had a separate existence, there is a very great degree of convergence between cognitive linguistics and these other aspects of linguistics, such as critical discourse analysis, pragmatics, fuzzy linguistics, learning theory of constructivism.

This book could not have been written without the aid of many colleagues whose generous assistance we gratefully acknowledge. Discussion with various colleagues particularly helped us with clarifying a number of important points, specially with respect to how the theoretical model is supposed to establish and how the texts are supposed to convincingly analyze. We gratefully appreciated the ideas, insights, and comments of Prof. Duan Feng, Prof. Huang Jianbin, Prof. Liu Limin, Prof. Shi Jian, Prof. Wang Yin, Prof. Xiang Xiaohua, Prof. Xu Shenghuan, Prof. Zhang Weiding. We were also grateful to our colleagues Chen Dong and Wei Zumei for keeping us alive throughout the editing and rewriting process. Others, among our students, pointed us towards relevant literature or assisted us in dealing with some typos and improving the appearance of book draft. We are thankful to them all.

We sincerely thank China Scholarship Council which has financially supported all of us with a fellowship for visiting scholar in those preferable institutions during our work on this book. We are also grateful for the professionalism of the editorial staff at Sichuan University Press.Wangjiang CampusChengdu, Sichuan, Feb 2016.PART 1Theoretical PreliminaryThe present book is an attempt to combine what cognitive approaches in the analysis of language use have in common and to add some possibly valuable insights to our common understanding. Our goal in this research is to practice, by means of the four types of texts, some of the principal commitments and mechanisms of a cognitive approach, which assigns a central role to the analysis of language use.To adopt a cognitive approach is to undertake a commitment in principle to account for the integrity of language use. It means that the relatively different texts of language, such as the political texts exemplified in Bush' s speeches, commercial texts shown in advertisements; academic texts illustrated in reviews of technical books, and writing texts written by Chinese learners of English, stand on an equal footing as data for which the cognitive approach could provide an account.Given such a commitment, an explanatory model of language use will be advocated, capable of clarifying economically and without loss of generation about the four types of texts, from the most commercial text to the most academic text.The remainder of this part is structured as follows. Chapter 1 provides a preliminary look at the basics of the cognitive linguistic theories and an explanatory model of language use. Chapter 2 presents the general ideas of cognitive critical discourse analysis and discusses further about Fairclough' s and Halliday' s model about discourse analysis. Chapter 3 demonstrates a four-level analyzing frame by addressing the definition of conceptual metaphor and identifying metaphor as a speech act. Chapter 4 discusses hedge and hedging which fuzzy linguistics primarily concern, from the perspective of semantics and cognitive pragmatics. Chapter 5 starts off from the investigation into EFL(English as a Foreign Language)writing and explicates the contribution of constructivism to the teaching and learning of EFL writing.Chapter 1Introduction1.1 An explanatory model of language use

Language use in this book is suggested in a broad sense as the ways people talk and write. Language and word use have been shown to vary tremendously from topic to topic, or from one political context to another context. Several attempts have been made to devise comprehensive text-analytic models to efficiently investigate multiple dimensions of speech and text. Nevertheless, context constraints on language may be one reason why relatively little attention has been given to language use as a whole. Now that cognitive linguistics has been developing significantly, we have become interested in establishing a theoretical framework to make a possible generalization to language use illustrated in the four abovementioned types of texts.

Cognitive Linguistics has been directed towards interdisciplinary research and the application of empirical and experiment data, we will thus employ the relevant data to verify the explanatory model of language use, as it was recognized that some kind of data expansion was indispensable.

“Only through the employment of experimental methods and diagnostic procedures is it possible to get an insight into the representation, organization and processing of linguistic units. Introspectively reached data, seen as internal evidence, must be complemented by external evidence resulting from empirical and experimental research. If linguistic models disregard external evidence delivered by empirical an experimental cognition research, there is a real danger that they will ‘theorize away' , and in the process lose all contact with cognitive reality. A theoretical approach in the framework of cognitive linguistics is empirically adequate on condition that it is compatible with psychological and neurophysiological results. All the data realms that may provide insight in the architecture and the dynamic of the language faculty deserve attention. Consequently, cognitive linguistics offers a broadened methodological approach. ”(Schwarz, 1998,1992, p,47;2008:47-48)——cited in Zhanalina & Ordahanova,2015

Therefore, statistical data are employed and analyzed in detail even though it is a diversity of data types in the present research. In addition to the statistical analysis carried out by us, we will shed some light on the metaphoric and metonymic implication that coerces lexical items into a series of sentences in the domain of commercial advertisements. In line with a language use orientation, we will advocate for the necessity of incorporating pragmatic and discourse-functional information in order to avoid unacceptable interpretation in a specific context. We hereafter begin an explanatory model of language use by introducing the notion of cognitive linguistics and locating it within cognitive discourse analysis, metaphorical theories, fuzzy linguistics, and cognitive constructivism.1.2 The basics of cognitive linguistics

Originally inspired by outcomes of psychologists on the human categorization in the 1970s, cognitive linguistics emerged as a theoretical movement in the 1980s. Cognitive linguistics as the direction of linguistics was formed by 1989, when in Duisburg at a scientific symposium, which was organized by Dirven, announced the establishment of the association of cognitive linguistics. At the same conference on the initiative of the magazine Cognitive Linguistics was announced the founding of the International Association of Cognitive Linguistics(ISCL for abbreviation)and starting production of a new edition of a series of monographs(Cognitive Linguistics Research)(Zhanalina& Ordahanova,2015:720). The representative figures are Lakoff, Langacker, Croft, Evan, etc.

From its beginnings, cognitive linguistics was not a unified field but rather a collection-like of diverse approaches under a common title. In the United States, cognitive linguistics emerged as a result of a radical break from the dominant Chomskian generative grammar theory, whereas in Germany and most Europe, linguistics tried to build a bridge between the two approaches, focusing on the mental character of the language system. There are two conflict hypothesis, one of which denies that there is an autonomous linguistic faculty in the mind, another assumes that cognition has a module for language-acquisition that is unique and autonomous. However, the assumption is shared that linguistic theories are seen to be modeling the organization of the human mind, and it' s claimed that linguistic categories have some psychological reality. Cognitive linguists, like Lakoff (1987), Langacker(1987/2008), argue that all knowledge of linguistic phenomena(including syntax)is essentially conceptual in nature and that similar cognitive abilities are used in other non-linguistic system. Language, seen as a cognitive interface system, involves two major assumptions:first, that it is indeed a mental system of knowledge, and secondly, that language interacts with other systems of knowledge(see Schwarz-Friesel,2012:657 -658). Cognitive linguists assume that the analysis of the conceptual and experiential basis of linguistic categories and constructs is of primary importance:the formal structures of language are studies not as if they were autonomous, but as reflections of general conceptual organization, categorization principles, and processing mechanisms(Tendahl & Gibbs,2008:1825). Specifically, linguistic cognition is considered inseparable from general cognition, and linguists thus seek explanation of linguistic phenomena in terms of general cognition principles, such as memorizing, associating, activating, making an analogy, etc. Cognitive linguists view meaning in terms of conceptualization, sometimes universal,sometimes specific to a particular language, and claim that knowledge of language arise out of language use. Language use in producing and understanding employs similar cognitive abilities to those used in other non-linguistic tasks(Ungerer & Schmid,1996; Croft & Cruse,2004).

Construction grammar has been spurred on by the development of cognitive linguistics. Classic researches in the 1980s(Fillmore & Kay,1988; Lakoff,1987)pave the way for construction grammar which groups a number of models of grammars that all subscribe the idea that knowledge of a language is based on constructions of“form and function/content/meaning pairings”(Goldberg, 1995; Boas,2007/2013). “By construction, we mean a form-meaning pairing where form affords access to meaning(which can then be enriched on the basis of contextual factors)and where meaning is realized by form, i. e. , though morphosyntactic and phonological mechanism”(Sandra& Cervel,2015:1253). The semantic meaning of a construction is made up of conceptual structure, such as frames, conceptual metaphors, conceptual metonymies. The form/function pairs are symbolically linked in the sense of cognitive grammar advocated by Langacker(2008). Unlike the generative model, construction grammar denies any strict distinction between syntax and semantics, or grammar and lexicon. The arguments go that simple constructions like words and complex constructions like sentence patterns are both pairs of form and meaning which are intrinsically the same, only differ in internal complexity. In construction grammar, a grammar of a language is made up of taxonomic networks of families of constructions which are connected with principles like inheritance, prototypicality, extensions, and multiple parenting. The use of language is the process of acquiring and adopting constructions(Hoffmann,2013).

In addition, significant developments within cognitive linguistics in the past two decades include the new angle to account for discourse and the application of quantitative and qualitative methods to analyses. Cognitive discourse analysis is one of those significant theoretical developments and has been used as a tool for analyzing the language that speakers use to express thought. Relevant research questions broadly fall into two areas:mental representation(the conceptualization of complex scenes, event perceptions, and the like), and complex cognitive processes(such as problem solving or decision making)(Tenbrink,2014:4). We thus start to introduce critical discourse analysis from what cognitive discourse analysis has been developing.

试读结束[说明:试读内容隐藏了图片]

下载完整电子书


相关推荐

最新文章


© 2020 txtepub下载