Fictive Motion in English: An Elicitation Experiment
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Authors:
Diego Caroca* Huili Wang and Hanning Guo / Language and Cognitive Science / 2018,4(1): 79−99 / 2018-08-26
- Keywords: cross-linguistic investigation; dynamism; embodiment; enactive perception
- Abstract: After Talmy’s (1983) seminal work, fictive motion sentences have received much attention in cognitive- and psychological-oriented linguistic studies. The reason for such interest lies in the rather paradoxical semantic phenomenon that fictive motion sentences exhibit: in them, verbs of motion are used to describe a static scene. Proponents of embodied theories of language comprehension see in this kind of expression a paradigmatic example of how linguistic meaning is determined by embodied cognitive mechanisms. However, these explanations tend to overlook important aspects of the linguistic realization of fictive motion dand reduce the phenomenon to a single cognitive motivation. Here, we replicate Blomberg’s (2014) picture elicitation experiment of fictive motion expressions in French, Thai, and Swedish for English in order to confirm to what extent these languages confirm the results of his investigation, namely, the bias towards dynamism of human cognition as one of the main motivational factors behind the use of fictive motion expressions (Talmy’s enactive perception hypothesis). Despite the fact that we were unable to replicate Blomberg’s main finding, our results still provide evidence in favor of the hypothesis of enactive perception and shows that the experiment design is suitable for further cross-linguistic investigation on fictive motion.
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Framing and Reframing Strategies in Feminist Speech
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- Keywords: critical cognitive analysis; Emma Watson; gender equality; gender roles; HeForShe; metaphor analysis; person deixis
- Abstract: Awareness of gender equality has been rising constantly in social arenas as people come to recognize the different but equally crucial gender roles of men and women, and researchers have paid increasing attention to speeches on feminism in recent years. This paper intends to examine and identify the framing and reframing strategies in Emma Watson’s “HeForShe” Speech at the United Nations on September 20, 2014. The analytical framework is built up by integrating metaphor analysis, person deixis use, and frame repetition, each of which deal with different aspects of the discourse and on the whole provide a comprehensive analysis of it. Critical cognitive analysis of the speech reveals that Watson tactfully uses metaphor and special person deixis to frame her views on gender equality to control the audience‘s emotions on moral and psychological grounds, and she reframes the audience’s traditional attitude toward feminism that men do not share responsibilities and benefits in feminism. Watson also repeats these frames and reframes them to strengthen the significance of men’s role in feminism. The critical cognitive analysis of feminist speech discloses the views that speakers hold on particular issues, providing valuable reference for understanding or evaluating the speeches’ contents, and revealing the ideology inherent in feminist thinking.
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VO-OV Mixed Word Order in Mandarin Chinese and Its Effects
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- Keywords: contextual filtering; structural ambiguity; word order typology
- Abstract: This paper revisits the word order type of Mandarin with reference to the fifteen pairs of grammatical elements correlated with VO-OV language types proposed by Dryer (1992a, 2009, 2011) and Haspelmath (2006). The research indicates that among the fifteen pairs, ten pairs exist in Mandarin and the other five are absent. In the relevant ten pairs, Mandarin has four pairs exhibiting both VO and OV word orders, three pairs tend to be in OV order, and the last three tend to be in VO order. Therefore, Mandarin can be seen as a VO-OV mixed order type language. As in the case of the genetic advantages and defects acquired by biological mixed or hybrid species, Mandarin VO-OV mixed order on the one hand brings more available syntactic structures and much expressive convenience, while on the other hand it pays the price of resulting in structural ambiguity. However, the de-contextualized ambiguous structures can be clarified in meaning through contextual filtering in communications, so Mandarin obtains relatively more benefits from VO-OV mixed word order.
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