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Abstract
This paper continues to develop a programme of research which has recently emerged investigating the ideological functions of spatial construals in social and political discourse from a Cognitive Linguistic perspective. Specifically, inspired by principles in Cognitive Grammar, the paper attempts to formulate a grammar of ‘point of view’ and show how this trans-modal cognitive system is manifested in the meanings of individual grammatical constructions which, when selected in discourse, yield mental representations whose spatial properties invite ideological evaluations. The link between spatial organisation and ideological evaluation in these mental models, it is argued, is a function of our embodied understanding of language. These theoretical arguments are illustrated with data taken from online news reports of two political protests.
Notes
1. Vectors are mathematical entities possessing properties distance (magnitude) and direction.
2. This assumes that the scene has some asymmetry which allows one to conceive of it as having a ‘front’ and a ‘back’. This would be the case for certain scenes such as buildings or people all facing the same way but would not apply to landscapes or people facing in different directions.
3. As Aboushnouga and Machin (Citation2011) point out, a low angle may also be associated in other contexts with feelings of admiration as in the case of war memorials where soldiers are positioned aloft. Similarly, a high angle can also suggest vulnerability of the subject. This is often the case in images of children (Machin, Citation2007).
4. For a similar approach see Werth (Citation1999).
5. Although Langacker does not present an explicitly geometric characterisation, the arrows in Langackerian diagrams can be thought of as standing for vectors within the conceptualisation. At this point, a note is needed on the diagrams that will follow. It is not suggested that hearers of grammatical constructions have in their minds images of precisely the form presented in the diagrams. Rather, the diagrams are intended to model on paper the conceptual structures that language usages invoke. The use of diagrams, however, is not simply as a heuristic device but is motivated by the claim that linguistic meaning incorporates visuo-spatial properties. They are thus intended to at least suggest the nature of the conceptual structures they model, representing properties like topology, sequence, distance, direction, and distribution of attention in iconic but systematic rather than ad hoc ways.
6. The transfer of energy in (2) is via a theme which acts as a transmitter between the agent and the patient. For purposes of simplicity, however, we gloss over this in (b) but note that it would be present in the mental representation.
7. Hart (Citation2013a, Citation2013b) found that The Guardian generally preferred to construe interactions between police and protesters in terms of a reciprocal action chain whilst the rest of the press favoured one-sided action chains.
8. There is now a significant body of psycholinguistic and nueroscientific evidence to suggest that understanding an utterance involves activating the same brain structures that are activated in perceiving, performing, or being on the receiving end of the action designated in the utterance (see Bergen, Citation2012 for an overview). It is the activation of these structures that produces a simulation effect. There is also evidence (e.g. Isenberg et al., Citation1999) that such simulations trigger the same (albeit weaker) affective responses as direct experiences.
9. Given the visuo-linguistic account I am presenting, it is more than mere analogy and is in fact perfectly fitting to refer to the hearer as ‘the viewer’.
10. Notice that a sense of deep space is also created in these models as one participant, the Subject, is construed as closer and the other more distal. The two systems of perspective – deep space and point of view – can thus be seen to operate in concordance with one another where, as Croft and Cruse state, ‘a particular vantage point imposes a foreground-background alignment on a scene’ (Citation2004, p. 59). These proximity values may similarly serve an ideological function based on a conceptual metaphor morality is distance in which concepts of near and far are associated with right and wrong, respectively (Chilton, Citation2004).
11. See Hart (Citation2013b) for a more fine-grained semantic analysis of process-types and participant role categories.
12. In line with the general macro-strategy of positive-Self and negative-Other representation (van Dijk, Citation1998), ostensibly negative behaviours of the in-group will tend either to be absent or else reconstrued in more legitimating terms whilst ostensibly positive behaviours of the out-group will tend either to be absent or reconstrued in more delegitimating terms.
13. This holds for right-handers but is reversed for left-handers (van Dijk, Citation1998).
14. For a slightly different account of how reciprocal transactive constructions invoke ideological evaluations see Hart (Citation2014).
15. The same construal operation underpins the distinction between count and mass nouns (Talmy, Citation2000)
16. See also Talmy (Citation2000) on ‘windowing of attention’.
17. Ergative constructions can similarly be analysed as a shift in point of view on the distance plane.
18. Most causal interactions do not in reality, of course, start from nowhere. Rather, for any event there is a potentially infinite chain of causal interactions which precede it. We cannot therefore speak felicitously about the viewing frame covering the complete scene but only about it covering the complete schema which is invoked by the linguistic instantiation.
19. The form of mystification analysis presented here is deployed at a level above the clause encompassing larger text units and inferences made across adjacent clauses (cf. criticisms of mystification analysis from Widdowson, Citation2004).
20. PoV Z3 is the ‘default’ PoV on the distance plane and the one invoked by a canonical transactive clause.
21. This model glosses over the instrument which, instantiated by ‘metal batons and riot shields’, would be included in the conceptualisation as a transmitter.
Additional information
Christopher Hart is a senior lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University. He is author of Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science: New Perspectives on Immigration Discourse (2010, Palgrave) and Discourse, Grammar and Ideology: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives (2014, Bloomsbury).