The Cognitive Turn

The research on political discourse has been experiencing a ‘cognitive turn’ in recent years, where there is an increasing awareness of the role minds play in interacting with the world. Chilton (2004) aims at developing a theoretical framework to explore the relationship between language capacity and political ability. In his view, the current linguistic approaches to political discourse concentrate on language in the service of power, which is not enough for building a theory of language and politics. It is of more importance to study how manifestations of power, language, conflict and cooperation come into being than regard these components of political discourse as the natural phenomena out there in society. In this sense, a broadly cognitive

perspective has been adopted to look at how the interaction of human individuals are motivated and executed by the political cognition of human individuals living in social groups. The mental models developed by language users function in a way that the political and the linguistic could communicate in a cognitive context. Chilton states that the presumption of where the centre lies is fundamental to political discourse processing. Therefore a spatial frame is constructed to reflect the cognitive schemas of centre-periphery in the political representations of identity and exclusion. In sum, Chilton’s comprehensive employment of CDA and cognitive linguistics together with relevant work in social theory offers a stimulating theoretical model for understanding political language in both the domestic and global arena.

Considerable interests have been shown in the analyse of metaphors in discourse on political topics (Chilton & Ilyin 1993; Anderson Jr 2001; Zinken 2003; Guillem 2009). Zinken (2003) looks into the role that metaphors play in the ideological construction of political events. The emphasis is on the integration of socio-cultural experience into the experientialist framework of cognitive metaphor research.

Zinken (2003) takes issue with the basis assumption of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) phenomenal Cognitive Theory of Metaphor which gives enormous prominence to body experience on metaphorical conceptualisation. It is argued that a significant number of metaphors pertaining to ideologically-mediated topics are in effect motivated by semiotic experience rather than body experience. As a salient move towards the integration of socio-cultural experience into the experientialist framework in cognitive metaphor research, Zinken (2003) provides evidence for the important role that intertextual and correlational metaphors play in political discourse. The term ‘intertextual metaphor’ is created to refer to the type of metaphors culturally situated in the collective mentality, while ‘correlational metaphor’ tends to align more with conceptual metaphors. Zinken (2003) attempts at a coherent ideological interpretation with the ‘intertextual metaphors’ linking the author to a specific semiotic environment, a community of stereotypes, and the ‘correlational metaphors’ objectifying an

interpretation in ‘ordinary’ language (ibid.: 519-20). The analysis centers on the metaphorical interpretation of communism and change of Polish newspaper discourse on the tenth anniversary of the end of communism in 1999. Quantitative findings show that intertextual metaphors appear predominantly in salient places such as in headlines, under pictures, while correlational metaphors are spread across the main part of newspaper articles. In terms of the functions that the two metaphors play, intertextual metaphor are more apt to account for social aspects of a phenomenon by linking individual minds to a specific semiotic environment, whereas correlational metaphors tend to objectify an interpretation in ordinary language.

Chilton & Ilyin (1993) projects a cognitive-interactive perspective on the single metaphor of the ‘common European house’ in a hugely intensive manner. Treated in a trans-national angle, sample texts from several European political speeches are explored in order to demonstrate that the meanings of metaphors are not fixed but vary with local languages, cultures and political interests. It is illuminating to note that the trans-linguistic analysis of political metaphors is embedded in a cognitive-interactive framework where the general cognitive dimension is modelled by specific interactional discourse purposes of speakers. The process of metaphor specification implies a discourse process that is both cognitive and interactive. The dynamic vision towards metaphor in the political domain offers significant methodological insight into the socio-cultural dimensions in international political communication.

Anderson Jr (2001) contributes to the current research in that it takes a diachronic approach in analysing the changes of political discourse in the matrix of drastic socio-political transformations as the Soviet communist regime gave way to the Russian electoral polity in 1993. In comparison, China has a considerable amount of parallels in terms of socio-political transformations resulting from its economic reform, although it is of purely different political nature. This may be of practical value to the study of political discourse from a historical point of view. Three corpora

have been built according to the three consecutive periods in Russian history, i.e. authoritarian, transitional and electoral corpus. Frequencies of metaphors in the chosen categories are calculated to facilitate qualitative analysis. For instance, findings emerging from the table comparing frequencies of metaphors of ‘size’ in the three corpora show that the most common size metaphors become far less frequent as Russia becomes democratic, indicating the attempt of electoral politicians to downplay the dogmatic sense of the previous communist discourse in order to reach out to ordinary Russians. Ultimately, the initial hypothesis holds through the findings that changes in Russian political discourse have been effected in an attempt to promote the emergence of democracy.

Guillem (2009) contributes to the ongoing ‘cognitive turn’ by proposing a socio-cognitive, discursive approach to argumentation in parliamentary debates. There are two aspects that Guillem (2009) could fill the gap in the realm of political communication. One is that it goes beyond the structural analysis of text and talk and emphasises the interplay amongst discourse, cognition and society in understanding the concepts of argumentation and metadiscourse. The other is that it averts the overemphasis in the existing studies on metadiscourse in the analysis of written texts and calls for more comprehensive analysis of metadiscourse in oral settings.

Despite being one of the ‘difficult-to-grasp’ concepts relevant to discourse study, Guillem (2009) has made clear that metadiscourse in his study ‘refers in general to the unique reflexive capacity of language, as used by human beings, to have itself as its subject matter’ (ibid: 733). It can be understood that the notion of metadiscourse is used to link the surface meanings of text and talk to the context and relevant socio-cultural knowledge lying behind it. The focus is on how the functions performed by the components of metadiscourse could invoke knowledge about both the ongoing interaction and the process of discourse production, thus becoming crucial elements of argumentation.

A qualitative and discursively based analysis was conducted based on the transcript of explanations for votes at the European Parliament on 25 October 2006 over the issue of the peace process in Spain. With the notion of metadiscourse running through the whole analysis, four relevant strategies are identified in relation to the interaction with different levels of metadiscourse when speakers construct arguments: (re)framings in debating European Parliament’s role, (re)definitions in positioning oneself and others, quotations in incorporating others’ words and silences and references to previous events to assess the importance of past experiences. It is concluded that meta-discursive components play a crucial part in cognitively constructed argumentative communication. Guillem (2009) would undoubtedly shed new light on discourse analysis in terms of re-invigorating the notion of metadiscourse in relation to the cognitive interpretation of discourse.