Knowledge-mediated Context Models

What is primarily at issue is how to account for the important notion of context. As pointed out by van Dijk (2002, 2006), traditional concepts of context generally assume a more or less direct relationship between socio-political elements and the structures of discourse. Van Dijk further remarks that socio-political constraints do not directly influence discourse because there is no conditional or causal connection

between social or power groups and discourse structures due to the very different natures they have. There should be an interface to accommodate the contextual elements so that social resources and discourse could be connected (van Dijk 2006: 162). The ‘interface’ that van Dijk alluded to is the cognitively defined notion of context.

Specifically, context is defined as mental constructs from a participant perspective, enabling it to function as the interface between situational and societal structures and discourse structure, because they subjectively represent relevant aspects of societal situations and directly interfere in the mental processes of discourse production and interpretation. Van Dijk asserts that if contexts control discourse at all, it is only possible when contexts are conceived as cognitive structures of some kind (ibid: 163). This concern is echoed in the relatively recent work of Chilton’s (2005), he notes that CDA should attend to the cognitive dimension in the analysis of discourse in social and political contexts. It is postulated that CDA cannot seriously claim to make a contribution to discourse analysis without taking account of the highly sophisticated models of representation.

One might argue that Fairclough (1992) mentions the socio-cognitive dimension in discourse production. This move may be seen to supposedly remedy the heavily socialised direction of his model in which discourse is explicitly related to the social conditions of production. However, this line of thought has not been developed to the extent to which it can be applicable and thus cannot account for the relations between discourse and society to a satisfactory level.

Given the complexity of human mental constructs in the course of social interaction, it must be firstly spelled out that this study does not intend to detail a cognitive theory, but to show the relevance of text-context relationships from a socio-cognitive perspective. Following the initial intent of van Dijk (2006: 163), it is not within the scope of the study to prove the existence of minds, so that one theoretical requisite is

to take their existence for granted in the same way as we do with other abstract non-observable entities such as society, politics, culture and power.

Like the existence of minds, context is a more or less unobservable notion. According to van Dijk (ibid: 164), ‘contexts are only observable by their consequences on discourse’. Here ‘consequences of discourse’ could be construed as the projection of social participants’ interpretations of communicative situations onto the observable parameters such as discourse and text. Thus, van Dijk gives immense credit to the role of text as the basis for discourse analysis. In his words, contexts are only interesting for discourse analysts ‘because they involved language use, text, or talk as its constituent or component practical activity’ (ibid: 165). Similarly, textual analysis is accorded greater importance by Fairclough as foundation in discourse analysis based on the understanding that texts provide evidence of lasting processes such as the reconstruction of knowledge and identities and the redefinition of social relationships (Fairclough 1992: 97; Titscher et al 2000: 152). This fits well with the tenet of this thesis which brings together a range of texts composed in different periods under scrutiny. For the purposes of this study which is geared towards the practical and empirical analysis of textual data, the cognitive account will be subsequently simplified to a few basic concepts purely for analytic considerations.

First of all, the notion of a mental model is crucial for discourse production and comprehension. It is construed closely with discourse processing. It should be assumed that the production and understanding of discourse prominently involve the formation, activation or actualisation of a mental model as a representation of long-stored personal experiences. Hence a mental model is a subjective representation of the events in which discourse is produced. Indeed, the construction of mental models is based on everyday events. ‘Mental models have culturally based (and hence variable) schematic structures’ (van Dijk 2006: 169). To put it another way, the somewhat vague traditional notion of ‘making sense of texts’ involves the production or actualisation of a mental model. It is through the handy schematic structures

manifested in mental models that people are able to understand variably represented discourse.

After the above informal but practical characterisation of mental models, it is time to move on to the highly related concept — context models. Like the subjective nature of mental models, context is a participant’s ‘subjective definition of the situation’ (van Dijk 2009: 5). In van Dijk’s formulation, a context is ‘what is defined to be relevant to the social situation by the participants themselves’ (ibid.). Context models are thus defined as ‘the participants’ mental models of communicative situations’ (van Dijk 2006: 170). They share some general features with other mental models: they are representations of the long-stored personal experiences; and they are ‘subjective and organised by a handy schema that allows language users to quickly understand the vast amount of possible communicative situations in their everyday lives’ (van Dijk 2006: 170). In his more recent work, van Dijk (2008, 2009) offers a more concrete conceptualisation of context models in relation to mental models. For a mental model of an accident, a person may come up with different versions when talking to a friend, than when giving evidence to the police. The reason behind this phenomenon is that the language user needs to construct a mental model of the very communicative event which is interpreted as a context model. In other words, it is the context model that manages the mental model of an event as to what knowledge will be considered as relevant for the immediate communicative situation.

As ‘the basis of our pragmatic understanding of discourse’ (van Dijk 2006: 170), context models accordingly possess the following properties to fulfil this important function. The initial design of context models entails the ‘plans’ that precede all discourse based on the presupposed knowledge of the upcoming events. Secondly, the construction of contexts models provides the possibility of understanding discourse production and interaction beyond the linear meaning of mere speculation of the relationship between discourse and communicative events. Thirdly, context models feature the dynamically updated and adapted models of ongoing situations and are

capable of controlling ‘the appropriateness of each state of the developing discourse’ (ibid: 171). In sum, context models are intention-oriented and goal-directed mental models for interpreting and controlling the unfolding discourse.

So far the basic understanding of context models may have generally been achieved in terms of the key aspects of the processing and interpreting of discourse. But efforts still need to be invested at the level of operation, that is, more elaboration is called for to apply context models into the practical understanding of the discoursal microstructures and macro-level socio-political resources.

In this case, the notion of knowledge is ideally suited to fill in the analytical gap. Knowledge is crucial for discourse production and comprehension and thus indispensable in van Dijk’s socio-cognitive framework of CDA. Different from most philosophical and psychological approaches to knowledge, van Dijk’s discourse-oriented definition of knowledge is well-suited for organising the context models to a satisfactorily applicable level. It is defined as the basic unit of ‘the organised mental structure consisting of shared factual beliefs of a group or culture’ (van Dijk 2002: 208). According to van Dijk (2006: 164), most knowledge is supposed to be implicitly and indirectly influencing discourse production and understanding, while occasionally it is signalled in discourse. In recognition of the fundamental mutual dependence of discourse and knowledge, van Dijk (2011: 27) further claims that ‘we acquire most of our knowledge by discourse, and without knowledge we can neither produce nor understand discourse’.

In a broad sense, context models sketched above can be pragmatically interpreted by means of the interaction of multi-level knowledge. For instance, the plausible context models of a political speech event must involve the interaction between the knowledge influenced by the speaker’s personal experiences, the presupposed or shared knowledge about participants’ roles and their relevant knowledge, social settings and political actions as well as the knowledge of institutionally constrained

discursive conventions.

Therefore, knowledge can be viewed as an effective device to concretise the vague notion of context from a cognitive perspective and control many aspects of discourse processing for textual analysis. This point of view is firmly grounded in van Dijk’s theorising of knowledge as a cognitive device (K-device). K-device, as an indispensable parameter of context models, activates and makes available the other context-dependent parameters for discourse production and interpretation. Its importance can be summarised in his own remarks: ‘whereas context models are the controller of all interaction and discourse, the K-device is itself the controller of the context model’ (van Dijk 2005: 77).

In order for K-device to manage the inherently changing context models, it is necessary to expand the understanding of knowledge so that it can operate effectively and strategically. Basically there are three categories of knowledge: personal knowledge, group knowledge, and cultural knowledge. Personal knowledge is the knowledge about personal experiences. Unless communicated, it is private and not shared by others who do not participate in other relevant experiences (ibid: 78). Group knowledge is the socially shared knowledge by a specific group. Broadly speaking, the institutional or organisational knowledge distinguished in van Dijk’s categorisation (ibid: 79) is included in this category because the institutional or organizational knowledge is by nature social knowledge shared by members of an institution or organisation which can be viewed as social groups in a general sense. Discursive activities within a group are facilitated by the presupposed group knowledge, whereas inter-group communication largely hinges on the awareness of group knowledge known to the participants of other groups. Cultural knowledge is the general knowledge shared by members of the same culture throughout society. It is the common ground for all discursive communications and hence is widely presupposed in discourse production across different groups within the same culture (ibid: 80). Therefore cultural knowledge is also known as ‘Common Ground

Knowledge’ (van Dijk 2002: 218). This type of knowledge is generally undisputed and taken for granted, and thus widely employed in public discourse.

Recently, van Dijk (2009) tends to add to the cognitively-oriented mental models a fundamental social dimension, given the concern that contexts are not only constructed through subjective personal knowledge derived from personal experience, but also primarily influenced by socially and culturally shared knowledge. It thus makes much sense to believe that any personal mental models of an event are based on socially and culturally shared representations of groups and societies. In addition, according to van Dijk (2006; 2008; 2009), the three categories of levels of knowledge are not fixed, but ongoingly constitutive of the K-device in its management of context models. In this light, discourse processing is about the process in which knowledge is shared and controlled among social participants.