Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women’s University
Graduate School of TESOL
Introduction to Linguistics
Fall 2016
Week 15 – Answers
Pragmatics
Dirven and Verspoor (2004), Chapter 7
Lee (2001), Chapter 13
Dirven and Verspoor (2004), Chapter 7 – Doing things with words: Pragmatics
1. How do cognitive linguists view speech acts and how do they organize them?
Working from Searle’s original 5-part taxonomy (1969), cognitive linguists have made a 3-part
taxonomy of their own.
Knowledge-based (informative) speech acts
Volition-based (obligative) speech acts
State-changing (constitutive) speech acts
2. How is the concept of conversational implicature used in cognitive linguistic theory?
Maxims, as proposed by Grice (1975), themselves are part of our cognitive structure. Implicature,
or the way we interpret utterances, occurs on the basis of these maxims and as such is a cognitive
process. It is also important to bear in mind that cognitive linguistics does not make a fundamental
distinction between competence-performance or production reception, so the implicatures we use
to help us interpret utterances are part of the same process we use to create utterances. We have
all these norms, set by our society, in all the different types of speech acts, but maybe more
specifically in constitutive speech acts and all these norms form the basis of our utterances, but
they can also be changed. These norms are tempered by context as well the purposeful flouting of
maxims. With this in mind, the process of putting together utterances seems indeed to be a
cognitive process along the lines proposed by cognitive linguists.
The flouting of maxims is part of our cognitive intent/structure and reveals/sheds light on the
way the speaker chooses to build mental spaces.
3. How are pragmatic considerations seen to function overall in the theory of cognitive linguistics?
Generally the theory of cognitive linguistics is easily able to accommodate pragmatic theories of
language use. This is done on the above mentioned assumption that pragmatic considerations are
part of the way we frame an utterance and have a direct effect on the way we map the constituent
parts of an utterance together. This relates to what Lee (2001) mentions regarding the idea that
meaning is something that is manufactured from the mind using language but is not inherent in
language itself.
Lee (2001), Chapter 13, Creativity and the nature of meaning
4. How is creativity manufactured in the cognitive approach?
Creativity is manufactured with every instance of language use, potentially at least.
Because of the theory of constructions, this kind of creativity may have less to do with the
creation of sentences than the use of lexical items. And as Lee (2001), not all instances of
language use are creative either. The amount and degree of creativity varies.
A: How’s it going?
B: Fine, thanks.
This is not exactly an exchange brimming with creativity. Other instances of language use
will be extremely creative making use of mapping operations.
5. What affects/interfaces with the creative process?
In effect
The things that people know
Interpersonal knowledge
Encyclopedic knowledge
Cultural knowledge
The context
The intent of the speaker
6. Are the means for creating language finite or fixed?
The means for creating language are definitely infinite. It is an infinite as our thought s and
our ability to extend, alter and change our thoughts as we are confronted with new
situations. Again, it is essentially on lexis that language is creative in the cognitive view.
In this the last week in his class we've decided to focus on the idea of creativity as a means to
try to tie together observations about the two very different approaches to linguistics we
have been looking at. It should be clear from our description of the generative approach that
Chomsky's initial selling point of the approach is that it was able to easily describe what he
thought was the creative nature of language. Basically what Chomsky claims in all versions
of generative grammar is that from a finite number of different linguistic elements an infinite
number of different utterances can be produced. What Chomsky and all generativists seek to
do is to find the cognitive mechanisms which allow for this type of creativity. More than this,
Chomsky further claims that people are able to produce and understand utterances which
they have not encountered previously. For him creativity simply comes from the actual
structural process of producing and parsing novel structures. There is no concern for
creating novel meanings, nor for how new concepts are encoded into language or how they
might affect a language over time. Chomsky argues that such things do not happen normally
(systematically) and that from a simply numerical situation creativity in producing
utterances on a regular basis far outweighs any kind of creativity in producing new
meanings. In short, according to Chomsky we are creating every time we produce any kind of
utterance. All utterances are creative on all levels, even the most mundane ones. Now, in
order for this to be true this means that we must build utterances from the bottom up (from
the component parts) every single time. On this view we have the principles and parameters
of universal grammar (Chomsky, 1981) or in later versions UG itself to help guide us in this
endeavor, but in essence it is always a bottom up creative process. It has to be because the
lexical items (lexemes), which are inserted into the structure, are done so based on their
categorization information and not on their meaning (at least at first). Since meaning is cut
out of the initial stages of the process than this structural process becomes the creative
element and must be recreated every time a new utterance is produced. This is important to
rationalize because whether we are aware of it or not this is the model we base all our
teaching on. Almost all teaching principles are derived from this somewhat archaic and
entirely grammar-focused (structure-focused) model.
Lee (2001), as a linguist with strong cognitive tendencies, challenges this Chomskian view
of creativity by employing the simple idea of meaning. As we've seen throughout this course
one of the main challenges to, or indeed problems with, the generative model is that it
separates structure from meaning and language itself from its use (remember Chomsky’s Ilanguage and e-language distinction). For many people working in the field of linguistics this
is simply counterintuitive. It would be nice if it were true but language appears to be a bit
more messy and a bit more involved than that. Thus, for Lee and other proponents of the
cognitive model, creativity comes not from the building of structures themselves, but rather
from how the structures are used to encode new (or old) meanings and new (or old) concepts.
Structures are not a means in and of themselves, as in the generative model. They are
accomplices in the process of creating of meaning and for them meaning is essential. This is
essentially what Lee (2001) tries to show us in his final chapter.
He makes a great final push to show us that creativity, and indeed meaning, is cognitive
and not structural. In the cognitive view, creativity is inherent in mapping across mental
spaces. Thus, it is not the forming of structures devoid of concerns of meaning which is
creative but the joining of concepts or ideas taken from frames and/or radial categories and
projected into mental spaces which shows genuine human cognitive creativity. I use the term
cognitive creativity to underscore the belief that such creativity is not limited just to
language, but applies to general cognition as well. The implication, then is that language is a
part of human general cognitive processes and capabilities and functions under the same
principles as well as restrictions. Now, once these mental spaces have been set up then
different elements of each mental space are mapped together in order to achieve meaning.
Any structure created will be a product of the mapping process. Thus, it is the creation of
new meanings with old (pre-existing) structures (structural components) which is truly
creative. It should also be mentioned that in the cognitive view this is not some sort of special
of rarely occurring phenomenon, but rather happens all the time.
Fauconnier (1997: 9-11) identifies three basic types of mappings which he terms projection
mappings, pragmatic function mappings, and schema mappings. Projection mappings, also
known as metaphorical mappings involve projecting part of one domain onto another. The
general idea is that in order to talk about one thing we adopt the structure of something else
and in the process borrow certain concepts and vocabulary items associated with the
source. The simplest way of thinking about this would be to project a movie onto the surface
of something else, a large mural perhaps. In this way the images from the movie (the
projected source) will be on top of and be used to define (but not completely) the underlying
(new, target domain) structure. A simple example would be taking the familiar structure of
anger is heat (See, Lakoff and Kövecses, 1987 for a detailed discussion of this structure). This
structure is called a cultural model in that all speakers of English are familiar with it. Thus, it
is hardly controversial to go one step further and claim that this structure is used to mold
thought and as such is often projected onto other structures such as, John boiled in rage, or
He ran about the room with steam coming out his ears. It should be clear based on the above
discussion that both the development and the comprehension of such utterances are reliant
on the source domain.
Another type of mapping is the pragmatic function mapping. In such mappings two
different categories of objects are mapped onto each other by a common pragmatic function.
Thus, a painter and the painting she has created can be identified by just one or the other
term, as demonstrated in the examples below.
(1) Bring me that Georgia O`Keeffe over there. (referring to a specific painting by Georgia
O`Keeffe)
(2) Oh look, here comes `The Faraway`. (referring to Georgia O`Keeffe herself)
or
(3) Get a load of Mr. Spills A Lot over there. (referring to guy who must spill things often)
In such examples we can see how people or things can be blended with properties that are
salient to them (as deemed by the speaker) and can then be referred to by those properties.
(4) Giant Head waltzed around the ballroom floor like a giraffe on speed.
This can be done for humorous purposes as in (4), because the speaker wants to draw the
listener’s attention to something as in (3), or simply because the speaker does not know the
name of the person/thing s/he is talking about as in (1).
The last type of mapping mentioned by Fauconnier (1997) is schema mapping. In schema
mappings an entire schema/frame is used to structure a situation. Thus, is someone says that
this course was difficult the uttering of `this course` will open up a schema (Fauconnier’s
term) or frame (Lee`s term). The opening of this frame not only allows the listener to
understand the utterance as a whole (provided she has that frame), but enables her to make a
judgment of the validity of the claim. She might utter in response, “No way! The Human
Learning and Cognition course I took last semester was much harder than this class. We had
to draw mental space mappings all the damn time”. As we speak frames are projected into the
discourses we create.
As we discussed previously in this course, mapping is a regular process in the forming
of utterances, but it is not always necessary. In the cognitive model, not all utterances are
created by a complicated mapping process. This is particularly true in informal conversation
as argued by Lee (2001: 198).
(5) Good morning.
(6) Good morning my dove.
Example 5 shows an utterance devoid of any creative processes. In (5) a single mental space
is opened for the utterance. Example 6, on the other hand, does show what cognitivists would
call creativity. In this example, a mental space would have to be opened for dove and the
person being a called a dove as well as the speaker (because of the possessive my). The
creativity, from the cognitive point of view, comes in mapping elements of the radial category
for dove onto the person being called a dove. It is this and similar such processes which
underlies the creative process in language.
Based on this it is easy to see a connection between what cognitivists view as creativity
and the word coining process and indeed there is a connection. If we understand that
creativity is based on cognitive structure and/or linguistic structure and not linguistic
structure alone we can see this connection. We are creative in taking pre-existing concepts
and blending them together to form new concepts, or by taking features from one concept
and applying them, in part, onto another concept. How this evolves linguistically is of little or
no concern because linguistic structures are seen as by-products of cognitive processes. It
is not on the structural level that creativity occurs except for the cases when new linguistic
elements are created as a result of a creative cognitive process as in the case of workaholic
from alcoholic or spellathon from marathon. The moment of creation here is both cognitive
as well as linguistic. It is cognitive in that features from the source concept are being mapped
onto a preexisting loaner concept to create a cognitively new concept. It is a linguistic
process in that the creative process just so happens to create two new morphemes, -aholic
and -athon, in the process. Two new words have been coined and once the first -aholic word
has been coined then others like chocaholic, loveaholic, meanaholic, etc. can be made (and
for the other morpheme, just to be fair, sleepathon, rideathon, stinkathon, smashemupathon,
etc.). On the one hand, the coining of all these new words, some of which I think I have just
made up here, is a creative process. If, however, these new coinings become accepted as
words in the language then they are no longer creative. They are just pulled down from the
mental lexicon when their concept (in production) or form (in reception) is fired.
From a historical point of view, we can see that many (if not all, provided we go back far
enough) of the `regular` forms in language originated as a result of creative processes. In
fact all must have done so at some distant point in time. As these forms are used more often
and become more accepted they eventually make it into the lexicon as regular of more fixed
forms. At the point in which the forms are stored in the lexicon they cease to be merely
creative in nature and become more but nit entirely fixed. They are simply called up when
needed, not created. At the same time these now more fixed forms become ready to be used
creatively in their own right. In this view, forms pass through stages of development which
are related to creativity and the creativity seems to be related to the degree of fixedness. All
forms are potentially creative but in different ways.
The evidence Lee (2001) provides is quite compelling as we have found throughout the book
but he also fails to mention a few very important parts which one would need to understand
in order to really feel comfortable with this (cognitive) model. For the most part this has to do
with the basic format of our organization and treatment/use of the structural elements of
language. It should be clear at this point that mappings are created based on what is stored
in the brain. Mappings become both culturally and lexically entrenched over time and use,
but even so the speakers who use such mappings on a regular basis remain unaware of
them. “Rather remarkably, although the vocabulary often make the mapping transparent, we
are typically not conscious of the mapping during use, and in fact are liable to be surprised
and amused when it is pointed out to us.” (Fauconnier, 1997:9). Taking a slightly different view
on the issue of creativity issue from Lee (2001), Fauconnier claims that there really is no
difference between what is seen as a being creative (an initial instance of a blend) and an
entrenched use of a blend. Fauconnier (1997) claims that extension from an entrenched
structure is a regular creative process. But this brings us to the point that the brain must
somehow list all these domains from which cognitive constructions are created.
In this course we have mentioned briefly how the mental lexicon might be structured but
basically from a generative or very traditional point of view. We said that the lexicon is a
storehouse of idiosyncratic linguistic information and this is the standard generative view. It
should be mentioned at this point that in the generative view the mental lexicon can only be
composed of words no more and no less than an actual word. This is because the generative
model relies on the specific categories (syntactic properties) of a word in order to build
structures. All other types of information are going to be outside the lexicon and outside the
module of language. Obviously the cognitive model takes a very different view than the
generative model, particularly in relation to the lexicon. Unfortunately, however, no
cognitivist has tackled the job of trying to propose an exhaustive lexical design which
corresponds to the potentials of the cognitive model. This is what we will briefly try to do
here. This job is made somewhat easier by the overwhelming correspondences we find
between aspects of the cognitive model and aspects of what has been termed the lexicalist
position (there is no real working lexicalist model yet). These correspondences are even
more compelling because they were arrived at independently.
The first major thing we need to come to terms with is that lexicon cannot be composed
merely of words. In this cognitive model we have seen that blendings become entrenched in
the language. This means that they must be stored in their complete form somewhere in the
brain. If we define the mental lexicon as a storehouse of linguistic forms then in this must
also be the place where such entrenched blendings are stored. In fact, following Fauconnier's
(1997) claim that all bits of language were originally blendings which have been extended or
altered over time we can therefore say that really the mental lexicon is a storehouse of
linguistic chunks used to reflect our perceptions of reality. From a linguistic point of view
these occur at all different structural levels. Thus, in the cognitive mental lexicon we would
need to store radial categories for specific sounds (phonemes), commonly used morphemes
(principally derivational), words and word forms (and here we include all the variant forms of
a particular base), as well as phrases and even sentences in a variety of interconnected
networks. Once more, it can be argued that all these different levels of structure are prey to
schematic type of construction techniques (along the lines of Fillmore’s Construction
Grammar). Words in English as well as sentences are prey to certain patterns. These
patterns are often referred to as constructions and these constructions are seen as being
prototypical patterns, both on the structural and semantic/cognitive level, which the
language follows. It is these constructions which form the basis of how we linguistically
compose language. But again, in the cognitive model we are not forced to rely on words
alone. In this model we generally use chunks, constructions, and schemas, or frames. It is
here where the cognitive model and the lexicalist approaches converge. Both argue that
chunks are major units in language. The lexicalists have arrived at this position by simply
studying patterns of language use. The cognitivists have come to this position by studying
patterns of language use in the relation to thought and cognitive processing. Thus, when we
go to speak we pull down chunks out of the lexicon which reflect the meaning we wish to
convey. The structure is secondary and can be extended an altered and played with
according to further cognitive principles which we have not had the time to explore in this
course.
In conclusion it should be clear that in the cognitive model creativity is really seen as
taking concepts which are stored in the mental lexicon both as conceptual structure and
linguistic forms and extending them through blending operations which are either
linguistically discernible or opaque. In order for this to happen this means that the mental
lexicon needs to store a tremendous amount of information both linguistic but also in some
ways cognitive. Extra-linguistic information is necessary.
References
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Everett, D. (2008). Don't sleep, there are snakes: Life and language in the Amazonian jungle. New
York: Pantheon.
Fauconnier, G. (1997). Mappings in thought and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Giles, H. and N. Copeland. (1991). Language: Contexts and consequences. Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth.
Grice, H.P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds). Syntax and semantics
Vol. 3: Speech acts. New York: Academic Press.
Lakoff, G. and Z. Kövecses. (1987). The cognitive model of anger inherent in American English. In D.
Holland and N. Quinn. (eds.) Cultural models in language and thought. Cambridge: CUP.
Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.