In this chapter, I have presented the two major aspects of this study’s theoretical framework – cognitive linguistics and CG formalism – which hinge on the description of visualisation as a resource for enhancing textual analysis. The explanation of cognitive linguistics focuses on the three identified views about language that characterise how meaning is construed. While explaining each characteristic of linguistic meaning, I referred to at least one principal topic of research representing these basic hypotheses about language within the cognitive linguistic standpoint. Explanations on the principle of CG formalism began from the original application of CG as prescribed by Sowa (1984) to the modified version used for the purpose of this study. Furthermore, the relationship between CG formalism and the concept of visualisation forms part of subsequent discussions, and indicates that CG falls within the broader category of external visualisation mechanisms. This relationship is further elucidated in the paragraphs that follow, as reference is made to each of the three characteristics of linguistic meaning.
The cognitive linguistic principle which explains that linguistic meaning is based on usage and experience is first and foremost about human experiences of regular events and scenes, and correlations of events and scenes in the real world. According to Tenbrink (2008:16), these experiences motivate the integration of such regularities into language. It has been said that knowledge of the world that has been integrated with our other cognitive capacities is what sometimes constitutes our well-formed formulas in our conceptual systems – a mental language of sorts (cf. Landau & Jackendoff 1993). It is therefore this same well-formed formula that influences the manner in which humans also interpret textual information. For example, in Section 2.2.2.1 I cited House and Loenhoff (2016:102) that reading involves the translation of textual information into a non-linguistic form referred to as a ‘mental text’. Hence, it is safe to say that reading – purely a mental process, according to Gadamer (2004:153) – can take any direction as either decoding linguistic or non-linguistic information but must converge as a mental text. Landau and Jackendoff (1993:219) insist that people, while encoding spatial relations, do not take into account every detail of the objects involved. By the same token, the principle governing the plotting of CG formalism as an instance of visualisation, stipulates that the essential information that would enable comprehension of the conceptualised information should not contain redundant detail. This latter statement validates the notion that the language of CG interpretation does not have to be impeccable.
Herein lies the roots of cognitive grammar. I explained in Section 3.2.3.1.1 that a common idea about cognitive grammar is that a speaker’s knowledge of his language consists of a very large
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inventory of constructions, namely an assembly of symbolic structures (Langacker 2009:10) or the pairing of form and meaning (Goldberg 2003:219). As the name suggests, these symbolic constructions are conceptualised as visual representations. Another major aspect of constructionist approaches is the fact that grammatical categorisation (in several languages) is informed by general cognitive mechanisms. For example, the abstract linguistic form ‘noun’ is a representation of the concept of ‘thing’ while the concept of ‘process’ is represented by e.g. verbs. These are fundamental to the explanation of CGs, where concepts are usually conceived as ‘thing’ and their ‘types’ while relations are often a representation of verbs.
Another factor that highlights this relationship is the ‘embodiment’ of domains. This is explained by the fact that in one way or another, domains directly relate to our bodily movements through space, our manipulation of objects, and our perceptual interactions — ways through which we make meaning. When humans form meaning out of those abstract semantic structures by relating them (consciously or unconsciously) to their preconceptual foundations in bodily experience, image schema is said to have been formulated. Under normal circumstances, images or visual language explains and concretises experiences more than words (Johnson 1987:108). Since ‘understanding is seeing’, the role internal visualisation plays in the construction of meaning is exemplified by the metaphorical examples cited in Section 3.3.3.1.
Of course, the nature of the constructed image depends on the specific way the reality is construed, i.e. the perspective the individual offers to the reality. Langacker’s position that grammar is conceptualisation and imagery (the concept of cognitive grammar for example) is basically about the visualisation of reality. The tools of CGs, the mechanism used to exemplify visualisation in this dissertation, bear resemblance to the relationship existing in the trajector- landmark organisation described in Section 3.2.3.2.1. According to Janda (2010), there is usually a participant – the primary figure in the scene, or trajector – whose activity is being followed, while the other participant – the landmark – features as secondary figure. Using the examples, “the knob is above the keyhole” and “the keyhole is below the knob”, Janda shows that the notions of trajector and landmark are not defined spatially, but as a matter of focal prominence, hence they are applicable to any kind of relationship. By the same token, the readings (and by implication, the construction) of CGs used in this dissertation (in Section 3.3.1) have a multiplicity of interpretations.
This multiplicity of interpretations therefore highlights the dynamic and flexible nature of linguistic meaning. Meaning is indeed flexible when for instance we think of how the
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interpretations assigned to a particular word or expression change when there is a shift in the domain in which those expressions are used. Wherever polysemy arises in the construction of meaning, it is perhaps at the visual cognitive level that the specificity of meaning is guaranteed. It follows therefore that any attempt to externalise any semantic interpretation construed of a specific reality by means of word or expression in the context of a particular domain (with CGs, for example) must account for these nuances. Frame semantics, and related structuring principles, were specifically proposed to account for the dynamic and flexible nature of linguistic meaning. These terms, such as idealised cognitive models (ICMs), mental spaces and scripts, are visually construed and illustrated by means of visuals; the importance of visuals in translation has been highlighted in the examples previously cited in this chapter.
Finally, considering the fact that the majority of the discussions in TS have thus far focused on interlinguistic mediation, there exists no doubt that the notion of translation has always assumed a linguistic perspective. However, there is no denying that the semiotics “… (i.e. a theory of signs and signification) and techniques for representing and manipulating conceptual structures …” (May & Petersen 2007:225), which is increasingly becoming operational within translation, is recently enjoying ample recognition within the field. Due to the changes brought to the profession by information technology and the internet, intersemiotic translation has recently taken on a more practical sense. In this context, a text now refers to an organised set of signs – no matter whether verbal or nonverbal/visual. This therefore shows that translating does not only refer to something we do with words, but also something we do to words and to other signs as well. Since the main function of signs, according to Stecconi (2007:18), is to mediate between objects and interpretants, it is therefore appropriate to say that translation semiosis, such as the one represented by means of CG formalism, aims at producing visual signs that are similar to the verbal signs organised in the ST. Even if the ST has been written in words, the ‘thing’ referred to by those words can be interpreted by means of any type of sign that suits the purpose for which the translation is to be used.
I have presented the methodology for the study, in Section 1.5, where I outlined how the experimental participants were divided into two groups. It would be recalled that one group was instructed the formalism explained in this chapter before the tasks presented in Section 1.5.3 were carried out by the participants. Chapter 4, therefore, presents the results of the first set of the experimental procedure – tests on reading comprehension in translation.
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