Cognitive Semiotics最新文献

{"title":"For a new semiotics in Construction Grammar: A statistical analysis of the relationship between transitive syntax and semantics","authors":"Marcus Lepesqueur, Adriana Maria Tenuta","doi":"10.1515/cogsem-2019-2014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cogsem-2019-2014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract By extending the notion of constructions beyond “irregular” structures, Goldberg (1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press) made possible the analysis of clause units as a global pattern associating syntax to principles for semantic interpretation. Despite this theoretical advance, Construction Grammar’s pairing of syntactic structure and conceptual form reflects Saussure’s signifier/signified semiotic model, which poses some issues. Problems arise when a single formal structure expresses distinct semantic patterns or, conversely, when semantics persists notwithstanding formal variation. In order to approach this unstable syntax/semantics interface, this work proposes a statistical methodology to capture the correlation between syntax and Hopper and Thompson's (1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56(2). 251–299) parameters of transitivity. In a corpus of 7,939 clauses from 23 oral interviews, 690 randomly sampled clause units were analyzed using Generalized Estimating Equation. The data suggests that, in Brazilian Portuguese, most of those parameters are not particularly related to the prototypical transitive syntax and might be specified outside the scope of this clausal structure. Nonetheless, Affectedness is a syntax/semantic interface point that is, first, largely independent of lexical items and, second, capable of distinguishing transitive syntax from other clausal patterns. Based on this analysis, we conceive the Transitive Construction as a superordinate rule that acts upon the formal organization of a language, establishing clausal patterns both synchronically and diachronically.","PeriodicalId":52385,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semiotics","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89976526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What is up and down in embodied language processing? An experimental study on semantic priming of visual perception","authors":"M. Harder, K. Tylén","doi":"10.1515/cogsem-2019-2015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cogsem-2019-2015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Linguistic processing has been suggested to involve rich perceptual representations grounded in non-linguistic experiential content often straddling multiple modal cognitive systems. This distributed approach implies that the processing of words signifying perceptual content can interfere with other aspects of perceptual experience through cross-modal priming. In an experimental study, we investigated semantically activated cross-modal priming between perception of auditory verbs and visual motion illusions. Participants solved a lexical decision task involving concrete and abstract verbs while presented with the Motion Quartet Paradigm, a visual stimulus inducing the illusory experience of vertical or horizontal motion. We found that the semantic direction of verbs primed participants to experience the visual stimulus as moving in compatible directions (horizontally or vertically), supporting our predictions. Interestingly, and contrary to our hypotheses, the priming effect was mainly driven by abstract words. We suggest that these results might be due to the socially interactive semantics of the abstract words.","PeriodicalId":52385,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semiotics","volume":"62 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87497502","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From subjectivity to subjunctivity in children’s performatives: Peirce’s endoporeutic principle","authors":"Donna E. West","doi":"10.1515/cogsem-2019-2013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cogsem-2019-2013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Peirce’s treatment of index as seme, pheme, and delome supplies convincing explanatory support for gestural performatives. His semiotics evidences how non-symbolic signs can present, urge, and submit propositions, absent more conventional signs. Peirce uses index as a powerful agent to establish and highlight the implicit intentions pregnant within communicative acts, especially obviated in the interpretants which unfold in intra- and intersubjective exchanges. This inquiry explores the ontogeny of children’s prelinguistic gestures and posits, as does Austin, that these acts alone qualify as performatives given their communicative purpose. These indexical gestures are so foundational to proposition-making that they imply predicates and ultimately scaffold the construction of arguments. In fact, the propositions and arguments that index (shapes implicitly or explicitly) facilitate social ends as articulated in Peirce’s endoporeutic principle. This endoporeutic principle materializes when sign producers influence interpreters, urging them to adopt or recommending that they adopt proposed propositions/arguments housed in gestural sequences (performatives). What these early performative gestures ultimately exemplify is a social, subjunctive effect. This incorporates the Peircean principle of “submitting,” not compelling (to the mind of another for adoption), potential habits of mind.","PeriodicalId":52385,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semiotics","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82722914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Browse, Sam. 2018. Cognitive Rhetoric: The Cognitive Poetics of Political Discourse","authors":"Georgios Stampoulidis","doi":"10.1515/cogsem-2019-2016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cogsem-2019-2016","url":null,"abstract":"Cognitive Rhetoric is an innovative contribution to the growing body of academic literature on cognitive stylistics (Brône & Vandaele 2009; Gavins & Steen 2003; Semino & Culpeper 2002; Stockwell 2002, 2014). This is a rapidly expanding field at the intersection of (cognitive) linguistics, literary studies and rhetoric, narratology, and cognitive science. Stemming from theoretical foundations rooted in Aristotelian thought, notably the three rhetorical appeals of ethos (arguments built on the identity of the speaker), logos (arguments built on reason) and pathos (arguments built on the audience’s emotional response), this book investigates audience responses to political discourse by focusing on the processes of its perception. As Browse acknowledges in the very beginning, “the primary purpose of this book, then, is to present a reception-oriented account which examines how identity, argument, and emotions shape audience responses to the language of political discourse” (2018: 1). Cognitive Rhetoric is a compilation of eight chapters that sketches a reception-oriented account of political discourse using a wide variety of empirical evidence – from political speeches, (televised) interviews, and newspaper articles to more creative media such as politicized rap music, TV satire, and filmic drama. The diversity of the issues addressed in the book is integrated into a representative sample of research across diverse analytical and theoretical approaches (including schema theory, blending theory, text world theory, cognitive grammar, critical discourse analysis, and narrative research, among others). Apart from an Introduction (Chapter 1), which introduces the three-dimensional reception-oriented approach to political discourse, and a Conclusion (Chapter 8), which summarizes the main arguments and highlights their implications for future work, the book consists of three sets of two chapters that cover the Aristotelian triad: Part I Ethos (Chapters 2 and 3), Part II Logos (Chapters 4 and 5), and Part III Pathos (Chapters 6 and 7). In doing so, the thematic organization of the volume leads the reader from the identity and loyalty of the speaker (Part I) to audience’s rational (Part II) and emotional (Part III) response. More concretely, Part I accentuates the active engagement of the audience who may bring their own prior knowledge and political standpoint to the communicative event. In this sense, Chapter 2, “Layers of Ethos,” outlines a conceptual scaffolding of the socio-cognitive approach to ethos by using concepts and notions from cognitive narratology. A three-layered network of narratological accounts is unfolded, namely single speaker/narrator, cinematic narrator, and implied author. Chapter 3, “The Conceptual Ecology of Ethos,” introduces the reader to a cognitive stylistic framework for analyzing the speaker’s ethos in audience perception. This means that speakers often adapt their speech style in relation to communicative goals. As Browse argu","PeriodicalId":52385,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semiotics","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84556784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The metaphor and the iconic attitude","authors":"Sara M. Lenninger","doi":"10.1515/COGSEM-2019-2011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/COGSEM-2019-2011","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper discusses visual metaphors and aspects of similarity in relation to metaphors. The concept of metaphor should here be understood as a semiotic unit that is also a sign (cf. Ricœur, P. 1986. The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.). This implies that not all semiotic units are signs, but also that not all signs are typical metaphors. The metaphor is a particular kind of sign because of its making use of the openness present in similarity relations. Metaphorical meaning making is related to a quality of vagueness in iconic sign relations. Furthermore, a notion of iconic attitude is proposed as a designation of subjective and intersubjective perspectives that might be taken on meanings founded on similarity. The iconic attitude mirrors the flexibility of thought and responds to the potentiality of vagueness in iconic sign relations; but, at the same time, the iconic attitude works as a stabilizing factor for meaning. Moreover, this attitude is crucial for the specification of the similarity relation in an actual sign experience with an iconic ground.","PeriodicalId":52385,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semiotics","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83994038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A cognitive semiotic exploration of metaphors in Greek street art","authors":"Georgios Stampoulidis, M. Bolognesi, J. Zlatev","doi":"10.1515/COGSEM-2019-2008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/COGSEM-2019-2008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Cognitive linguistic and semiotic accounts of metaphor have addressed similar issues such as universality, conventionality, context-sensitivity, cross-cultural variation, creativity, and “multimodality.” However, cognitive linguistics and semiotics have been poor bedfellows and interactions between them have often resulted in cross-talk. This paper, which focuses on metaphors in Greek street art, aims to improve this situation by using concepts and methods from cognitive semiotics, notably the conceptual-empirical loop and methodological triangulation. In line with the cognitive semiotics paradigm, we illustrate the significance of the terminological and conceptual distinction between semiotic systems (language, gesture, and depiction) and sensory modalities (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste). Thus, we restrict the term multimodality to the synergy of two or more different sensory modalities and introduce the notion of polysemiotic communication in the sense of the intertwined use of two or more semiotic systems. In our synthetic approach, we employ the Motivation and Sedimentation Model (MSM), which distinguishes between three interacting levels of meaning making: the embodied, the sedimented, and the situated. Consistent with this, we suggest a definition of metaphor, leading to the assertion that metaphor is a process of experiencing one thing in terms of another, giving rise to both tension and iconicity between the two “things” (meanings, experiences, concepts). By reviewing an empirical study on unisemiotic and polysemiotic metaphors in Greek street art, we show that the actual metaphorical interpretation is ultimately a matter of situated and socio-culturally-sensitive sign use and hence a dynamic and creative process in a real-life context.","PeriodicalId":52385,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semiotics","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90704305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Two models of metaphoricity and three dilemmas of metaphor research","authors":"G. Sonesson","doi":"10.1515/COGSEM-2019-2009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/COGSEM-2019-2009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Starting out from classical metaphor theory, I consider two models, the Overlap model and the Tension model — the difference between which may not have been spelled out in that tradition. Although the latter has an Aristotelian pedigree, it may be less generally valid than the Overlap model, at least if the requirement for tension is placed very high. The metaphors distinguished by Lakoff and Johnson, like the catachresis of classical rhetoric, fulfils the Overlap model, but in a petrified form, as is shown by the fact that both may, in the same way, be awakened from their slumber by some modification or addition to the sentence. What Lakoff and Johnson, later on, call primary metaphors, however, does not really correspond to any of these models. They are quite literally extensions of human embodiments. Thus, they are actually diagrams, in the sense in which Peirce opposes them to metaphors. We go on to discuss similarities and differences between verbal and pictorial metaphors, arguing that some metaphorical configurations are more apt to work in pictures and others in language, although there are also some configurations which are common to both.","PeriodicalId":52385,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semiotics","volume":"60 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84382271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The structure of our concepts: A critical assessment of Conceptual Metaphor Theory as a theory of concepts","authors":"Peer F. Bundgaard","doi":"10.1515/COGSEM-2019-2010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/COGSEM-2019-2010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory is by and large a theory of what (abstract) concepts are, how they are structured, and how this structure is acquired — i.e., by mapping of structure from one more concrete or sensory-motor specific domain to another more abstract domain. Conceptual metaphors therefore rest on “cross-domain mappings.” The claims to the effect that our abstract concepts are metaphorically structured and that cross-domain mappings constitute one of the fundamental cognitive meaning-making processes are empirical and can therefore be put to the test. In this paper, I will critically assess Conceptual Metaphor Theory as a theory of concepts in light of recent experimental findings. Many such findings provide evidence for the psychological reality of cross-domain mappings, i.e., that structure activated in one domain actually can perform cognitive tasks carried out in another domain. They do not, however, support the claim that the structure of our (abstract) concepts is still metaphorical, as Lakoff and Johnson claim — that is to say, that our mind actually does perform cross-domain mappings when we process conventional conceptual metaphors such as “Death is Rest” or “Love is a Journey.” Two conclusions can be drawn from this: (1) it is necessary to distinguish between cross-domain mappings (which are psychologically real) and the metaphoric structure of our concepts (which is not, in the sense that such concepts do not any longer activate cross-domain mappings when processed); (2) Conceptual Metaphor Theory is not an adequate theory of concepts. I will therefore sketch another more viable theory of concepts where the structure of our concepts is defined as the full ecology of their situations of use, which includes the kind of situations (objects, agents, interactions) they apply to and the kind of emotional, cognitive, bodily, and behavioral responses they elicit. On this view, the contents of our concepts are to be considered as vague predicates, with vague extensions, which take on a specific form in their situation of use.","PeriodicalId":52385,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semiotics","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79512211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The rhetoric of contemporary metaphor theory","authors":"Peer F. Bundgaard, G. Sonesson","doi":"10.1515/COGSEM-2019-2007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/COGSEM-2019-2007","url":null,"abstract":"From Aristotle onwards, metaphors have often been considered to be, in some sense, privileged among the rhetorical figures. Nevertheless, for about two thousand years, the essential task of rhetoric was seen to be the classification of the rhetorical figures into complex taxonomies. At the same time, metaphorical figures were often looked upon as a kind of final decoration (elocutio) given to a discourse that had already gone through several stages of planning (inventio) and organization (dispositio). But, from the start, rhetoric was also the theory (and practice) of persuasion, and this sense of rhetoric has been increasingly recognized since the middle of the twentieth century. It was doubtless no small feat of persuasion on the part of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson when, overthrowing a two thousand year old tradition, they convinced us that metaphors were not signs but a way of thinking and indeed that they form the basis of our mental concepts; and, moreover, that they were not necessarily created or thought out by special individuals such as poets and public speakers, but instead were something that accompanied us all in our everyday life. In so doing, Lakoff and Johnson opened up a new space of investigation in the study of metaphor that has been productively cultivated since then by an increasing number of scholars, the fruits of which have been plentiful. Nevertheless, it should be possible at some moment to ponder whether one or other of these changes to the notion of metaphor is really justified and whether the results of all this scholarly effort may not, in the end, pertain to something different from what traditionally was known by the term metaphor. These questions were asked during a session convened by Göran Sonesson under the auspices of the journal Cognitive Semiotics at the Third International Conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics, held in Toronto, July 13–15, 2018. Participants at the time were Peer Bundgaard, Sara Lenninger, Todd Oakley, Georgios Stampoulidis, and Göran Sonesson. The present thematic issue is mostly based of the papers presented at that occasion. Oakley’s paper has been published elsewhere, but all the other articles here published are considerably reworked versions of the presentations given in Toronto. In addition, Stampoulidis has been joined by two other authors, Marianna Bolognesi and Jordan Zlatev. There is also a new contribution written by Piero Polidoro. Two of our authors can be said to work within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), although addressing rather serious criticism to this theory. Relying on both empirical psychological studies and theoretical arguments, Bundgaard claims that, while cross-domain mappings have a psychological reality, the same thing cannot be said about such metaphorical structures being the basis of concepts. As an alternative, Bundgaard proposes a theory of concepts based on vague predicates (where he happens to encounter ","PeriodicalId":52385,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semiotics","volume":"76 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85799939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Image schemas in visual semiotics: Looking for an origin of plastic language","authors":"P. Polidoro","doi":"10.1515/COGSEM-2019-2006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/COGSEM-2019-2006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The aim of this article is to present a hypothesis explaining the origin of plastic meaning. In visual semiotics, plastic meaning is that produced by visual configurations per se, i.e. independently from what they represent. This meaning can be assimilated to the kind of effects studied by (Arnheim, R. 1954/1974. Art and visual perception: A psychology of the creative eye, 2nd edn. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press). In his book The Body In the Mind, (Johnson, M. 1987. The body in the mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press) is the first to propose that image schemas and their metaphorical projections could be used to explain some of these visual effects. Nevertheless, I think that his approach presents some shortcomings. Above all, Johnson’s examples always concern cases in which visual stimuli match an image schema, while Arnheim’s observations are mostly about effects of tension and dynamism generated by a conflict with our expectations. I will propose that, to complete Johnson’s proposal, we need an inferential theory of aesthetic experience, derived from Meyer’s and Eco’s works. This theory would explain how expectations and their verifications can produce different kinds of tension and arousal, the basic mechanisms of plastic meaning.","PeriodicalId":52385,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semiotics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79918253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}