Language as a construal instrument

A foundational claim of cognitive semantics is that an expression’s meaning is not just “an objective characterization of the situation described”. Equally important for linguistic semantics is how the speaker chooses to “construe” the situation and portray it for expressive purposes (Langacker 2002: 315). In other words, linguistic expression is inherently ‘perspectivized’. By choosing one formulation option rather than another, the speaker influences the mental representation of a text by its reader or hearer. This phenomenon is referred to as ‘speaker construal’, emphasizing the active role language users play in organizing their worlds (Taylor 1995b: 4). The

‘construal relationship’ is defined by Langacker (e.g. 1987: 487-488) as “the relationship between a speaker (or hearer) and a situation that he conceptualizes and portrays, involving focal adjustments and imagery”. These elements interact in a

‘viewing arrangement’, symbolized by Langacker as follows¹:

Figure 2.1 The viewing arrangement (Langacker 2002: 325).

The whole of two circles connected by a line represent the standard structure of a linguistic message in Langacker’s cognitive semantic theory: a ‘trajector’ (singled out for focal attention) a ‘landmark’ (a salient entity other than the landmark) and a

1 This is a strongly simplified reproduction of the ideas presented in Langacker (2002).

However, it is taken to be sufficient for the purposes of the present discussion.

relational expression that unites these elements ‘at any level of organization’ (cf.

Langacker 2002: 320). The circle at the lower level represents the speaker within his communicative setting. When producing an utterance, the speaker functions as a

‘conceptualizer’ of a particular situation. The circle at the higher level represent the

‘object of conceptualization’, that which the speaker’s message is about. The arrow pointing from the lower to the higher level symbolizes the construal relationship: it

“resides in the conceptualizer entertaining a certain conception and construing it in a particular fashion” (Langacker 2002: 318).

As a matter of fact, any linguistic utterance can be interpreted as an act of construal. When a speaker uses a particular construction or grammatical morpheme, he thereby selects a particular image to structure the conceived situation for

communicative purposes (Langacker 2002: 12). This phenomenon is illustrated in a clarifying manner by Talmy (1988; 2000), who discusses construal mechanisms with reference to the linguistic expression of causality. In modern scientific physics, causation is understood to involve a “continuum of interactions occurring at the finest scale of magnitude”. But in the linguistic expression of causality, ‘schematic reduction’ is involved: “the grammatical, constructional, and to some extent lexical structure of a language presents an extremely simple representation of causality, one that marks few distinctions and lumps together ranges of diversity. This

representation abstracts away, for example, from particularities of rate, scope, involvement, manner of spread, and the like.” The impact of this simplification is illustrated by examples (1) and (2), that Talmy presents by way of illustration:

(1) The heat broke the guitar.

(2) A falling radio broke the guitar.

In the first event, “the manner of breaking caused by the heat, in (1), would involve slow and gradual warping, spread of a trace work of cracks, and the like. On the other hand, the event depicted in (2), would involve a sudden localized disruption.

Though these situations involve very different causal particulars, they are treated together by a common grammatical structure and lexical structure.” Generalizing then, Talmy claims the linguistic expression of causality is built on a:

(…) simplified schema in which linguistic constructions represent causality is a tripartite structure: a static prior state, a discrete state transition, and a static subsequent state. Linguistic structures, in effect, “chunk” the complexities and continuities of occurrence into this simplified schema, and, in this, may very well parallel conceptual patterns of naïve physics (2000: 457).

An important characteristic of construal mechanisms is that the degree of ‘speaker involvement’ in the construal of a particular situation may vary. On the one hand, there are construal operations that impose aspects of structure on the object conceptualization without the subject of conceptualization playing a role in the construal (the speaker is “off-stage”). Well-known examples are figure-ground distinctions (rendering one element in the object of conceptualization more salient, at the expense of other elements – cf. Langacker 2002: 9), profiling (characterizing

(or: ‘profiling’) a concept with reference to a specific domain, e.g. referring to an individual as an “uncle” profiles this individual against a set of individuals linked by kinship relations – Langacker 2002: 5), or relative levels of specificity (consider the contrast between “that player is tall” vs. “that middle linebacker is precisely 6’ 5’’

tall”; Langacker 2002: 7). All of these construal operations function at the horizontal level of the viewing arrangment in Figure 2.1.

Another type of construal operations profiles the role of the speaker in the object of conceptualization; the speaker is becoming part of the scope of predication (Langacker 2002: 318). Examples are deictic expressions (such as I, you, here, now) and perspectivization phenomena such as ‘directionality’ (consider the difference between “The hill falls gently to the bank of the river” and “the hill rises gently from the bank of the river”), ‘vantage point’ and ‘subjectification’ (the relative increase in the speaker’s self-expression; cf. discussion in Chapter 4) (cf. Langacker 2002: 12).² These construal operations have in common that they take the vertical axis of Figure 2.1 into account. The conceptual difference between construals (predominantly) projected at the horizontal axis and those projected at the vertical axis is referred to as ‘subjectification’ (Langacker 2002: 324).

It has been proposed that the concept of ‘subjectivity’ plays an important role in characterizing the meaning of causal connectives (e.g. Pander Maat &

Sanders 2000, 2001; Pit 2003; Pander Maat & Degand 2001; Traugott 1995; Keller 1995). They propose to characterize the meaning of causal connectives in terms of a relative position on a subjectivity scale. Consider the difference between the causal relations in (3) and (4)³:

(3) The neighbours suddenly left for Paris last Friday. That’s why they are not at home.

(4) The lights in the neighbour’s living room are out. So they are not at home

In (3), a causal relation is constructed between two states of affairs in observable reality. The relation between these states of affairs also occurs in observable reality.

Causal relations of this type are considered to be maximally objective. The speaker is not part of the construal of the causal relation. The causal relation in (4), on the other hand, is constructed between a ‘real world situation’ (the fact that “the lights are out”), that functions as an argument for the speaker’s conclusion that “the neighbors are not at home”. In this case, the causal relation is constructed in the speaker’s mind, there is no connection in observable reality between cause and effect. This type of causal relation is considered as subjective. The crucial difference between the two is that in the latter case, the speaker is construed as the source responsible for the construction of the causal relation (for an extensive discussion of the subjectivity approaches to causal connectives: see Chapter 4).

2 For an extensive discussion of characteristics of each of these construal perspectives, see Verhagen (2005).

3 The examples are taken from Pander Maat & Sanders 2001: 58.

2.3.2 Semantic categories and conceptual categories: content