Научная статья на тему 'Метафоры и когнитивная экономия'

Метафоры и когнитивная экономия Текст научной статьи по специальности «Языкознание и литературоведение»

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Ключевые слова
МЕТАФОРА / METAPHOR / ПРИСВОЕНИЕ / МЕТАФОРИЧЕСКОЕ МЫШЛЕНИЕ / METAPHORICAL THINKING / ЦИТИРОВАНИЕ / КОГНИТИВНАЯ ЭКОНОМИЯ / COGNITIVE ECONOMY / ДИСКУРС / DISCOURSE / ФОНОВЫЕ ЗНАНИЯ / BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE / МОДЕЛИРОВАНИЕ / MODELING / ACQUISITION / CITATION

Аннотация научной статьи по языкознанию и литературоведению, автор научной работы — Калашникова Лариса Валентиновна

Статья раскрывает роль метафоры и метафорического мышления в процессе познания и установления реальных связей в процессе мироздания, акцентирует внимание на действии закона когнитивной экономии в процессе репрезентации индивидуального опыта и фоновых знаний. Автор подчеркивает особую значимость метафор в осуществлении связи между инкорпорированными присвоениями: описание сновидений, цитирование отдельных высказываний и фрагментов произведений, использование идиоматических выражений и мифов, облегчающих процесс понимания дискурса.

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METAPHORS AND COGNITIVE ECONOMY

The article discovers the role of metaphor and metaphorical thinking in the process of cognition and maintaining interrelations in the world creation process. It concentrates attention on cognitive economy law in the process of representation of individual experience and background knowledge. The author stresses special importance of metaphors to realize the connection between incorporated acquisitions: description of dreams, citation of separate utterances and pieces of work, usage of idiomatic expressions and myths, making the discourse understanding process easier.

Текст научной работы на тему «Метафоры и когнитивная экономия»

II. КОНЦЕПТОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ И ЛИНГВОКУЛЬГУРОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ

метафоры и когнитивная экономия

л. в. КАЛАШНИКОВА

Статья раскрывает роль метафоры и метафорического мышления в процессе познания и установления реальных связей в процессе мироздания, акцентирует внимание на действии закона когнитивной экономии в процессе репрезентации индивидуального опыта и фоновых знаний. Автор подчеркивает особую значимость метафор в осуществлении связи между инкорпорированными присвоениями: описание сновидений, цитирование отдельных высказываний и фрагментов произведений, использование идиоматических выражений и мифов, облегчающих процесс понимания дискурса.

Ключевые слова: метафора, присвоение, метафорическое мышление, цитирование, когнитивная экономия, дискурс, фоновые знания, моделирование.

metaphors and cognitive economy

L. V. KALASHNIKOVA

The article discovers the role of metaphor and metaphorical thinking in the process of cognition and maintaining interrelations in the world creation process. It concentrates attention on cognitive economy law in the process of representation of individual experience and background knowledge. The author stresses special importance of metaphors to realize the connection between incorporated acquisitions: description of dreams, citation of separate utterances and pieces of work, usage of idiomatic expressions and myths, making the discourse understanding process easier.

Keywords: metaphor, acquisition, metaphorical thinking, citation, cognitive economy, discourse, background knowledge, modeling.

Many scientists investigating the problem of creation of artificial intellect, according to Quillian M. R, development of methods of using the semantic networks for knowledge presentations, referred to investigation of methods of presenting natural language semantics, taking into consideration the importance of generalized and abstract knowledge for natural language understanding [11].

According to our supposition if it is true that metaphor in general sense should be understood not as a definite speech phenomenon but as one of the constitutive conditions of a language existence, then to understand it is necessary to return to the basic form of conceptualization in a language [2:137]. They appear from the act of concentration, compression of sensitive experience, creating the necessary conditions to form every language concept [5]. Cassirer E. believed that all that is not named do not exist in a language and all that is named in a similar way seems to be absolutely the same. Myth comes to live and is enriched due to language and language - due to myth. In this continuous interaction and interpenetration the entity of inwardness from which they both originate and are considered different expressions and stages is proved. Another power acts in a language. It is a power of logos [5].

Such intentional identification of two differently perceived and differently thought contents - is the main way of mythological thinking and experience. But this metaphor usage obviously assumes that linguistic content of separate elements and this content linguistic correlates are set as already known quantities. The elements can be interchangeable only after they are defined and fixed in a language.

n. B. KAnAWHHKOBA

The simplest mythological images appear only due to the transformation by means of which the impression from the conventional and ordinary sphere grows into the range of "sacramental", mythologically and religiously "important" [5]. Linguistic form of metaphor correlates with mythological. One interferes with other and conditions its content. This dependence can be considered as mutual. Language and myth from the very beginning are in unbreakable connection from which they are gradually differentiated as independent elements. They are various shoots of one and the same branch of symbolic formation. They are the results of one and the same act of spiritual processing, concentration and rising of common understanding [5]. In the language sounds as well as in primary mythological images the similar internal process finds its completion. Both of them remove inner stress; express emotional stress in objectified forms and figures.

In linguistic and first of all in mythological thinking the following tendency is dominated. Here there is a power of a law that can be called a law of leveling and specific features dissipation. Each part is equivalent to the whole, each exemplar to the type. Each part does not only represent whole and an individual or type - class but they appear to be themselves. They represent not only their indirect reflection but also just inspire the power of the whole, its meaning and functionality. All magic thinking is subjected to this principle. Whoever musters some part of the whole gets in the magic sense the power over the whole. This main feature of a mythological metaphor allows precisely define and understand the meaning and action of what is usually called metaphorical function of language [3].

Thus, in the process of cognition we use not only our knowledge but also knowledge of other people. The acquired knowledge is assigned, processed and structured according to the modalities that the definite subject possesses. This knowledge becomes the subject's property, part of his conceptual system [2:168]. Intertextuality: dream description, citation of certain utterances and fragments of various writings, usage of idiomatic expressions and myths that define the discourse formal logical parameters, is examined as representation variety of individual experience and background knowledge (acquisition) [2: 168].

Our subjective perception of events is "me" being thought with reference to the reality. This is a specific reference point that is considered as "me" of individual consciousness in reference to "not-me" of the external world. Every individual has his own "me" that differs from other people, other worlds, other ways of thinking. As soon as we start to speak about "Another" and imagine him in our speech (or some other sign vehicle), "Another" appears to be captured with the language system being written into our categorical network and our experience of existence, thus, it loses his self and turns out to be a part of our discourse. This situation is called acquisition [10]. Representation is a key cultural practice no matter what its negative essence is, practice of translation from one language into another or including pre- and ex-semiotic phenomena into cultural world: nothing exists out of representation. From the cognitive point of view writing into our own categorical network of knowledge about world, subjects, phenomena, we acquire mental knowledge schemes and fill in the emptiness of not "lost object" but more likely of missed one.

Discourse is a unity or so to say a complex of several discourses, bounded with the author's will. It contains obvious or hidden "acquired" citations because it is created not in the blank space but in the text environment which has been formed before him. Intertextuality is considered as a kind of representation of the individual experience and

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background knowledge. It can be manifested as description of dreams, citation of certain utterances and fragments of various writings, usage of idiomatic expressions and myths. Our ability to metaphoric thinking allows realizing the connection between incorporated acquisitions in the structure of the main discourse. Metaphors function in the culture body as organizing, collecting and directing origin. They really promote cognition and maintaining of real connections between of universe elements [2: 138] [4].

By virtue of "ostensibility" of the inner space metaphor is permitted to be considered as analogue to image-bearing "inoreality" of artwork (its content actually is art world), the existence of fixed "points" allows it to be an organizer of art unity structure not only in the frames of the certain text or cultural phenomenon but also in one cultural context, meta- or super text [2: 132].

Citations, idioms, myths as metaphor as well have suggestive power; connect objects of different order and maintain relations of equivalency and not of equality.

Notional field being formed at citation is completed with meanings. The usage of citations defines the strong positions in discourse. Interaction of semantic code and connota-tive component allows activating the corresponding structure [2: 132].

Idioms are property of our background knowledge. In the process of memorizing idioms the human mind shows outstanding abilities. It must not compare them with well-known situations or understand how they work [1: 7-20] [6]. Human brain is able to understand the mentioned idioms from the first time. Metaphor is very strong and powerful tool using dangerous weapon of human mind - the ability to draw logical conclusions. From the other point metaphor is understood by the subject that can not possess knowledge or logical abilities necessary to commit identification. Metaphors are nor responsible how they are understood. Sometimes magic works sometimes does not. Webster dictionary defines intuition as "a natural ability or power that makes it possible to know something without any proof or evidence" [12]. It is obvious thinking is not mentioned. Person intuitively understands things comparing them in mind with those that he already knows. Using idioms the author reaches the 100 % effect of understanding.

Idioms are not ambiguous in length and lexical composition. In condensate form they contain multidimensional conceptual world with open variety of realizations in various cognitive and communicative contexts. Besides the topical and formal logical parameters discovered by Permyakov G. L., idioms, proverbs and sayings conceal the most powerful mechanisms of image metaphorics [11] that are to be subjected to cognitive linguistic analysis [4].

It is believed that image metaphorics is the central spring that provides cognitive and communicative power combining language and speech. Collocation, idioms do their specific function in the integral cognitive mechanism of language.

Cliched metaphorical utterance serves as a measure to fix the generalized knowledge about integral and at the same time perfectly structured cognitive communicative situation in the language memory in the form of extended situational image. From one side the author gets the possibility to identify the situation comparing it with the corresponding image and easily verbalize his language reaction to it. Percipient of discourse can easily recognize in the situation the generalized knowledge reminded or conveyed by the author. This model takes into consideration three global dimensions of "linguistic phenomena" - linguistic cognitive system, the processes of genesis of discourse and comprehension [10].

n. B. KAnAWHUKOBA

Without denying metaphorical role of "keywords" it is necessary to concentrate on modeling of the whole metaphorical utterance. This modeling is based on a number of discovered features. The most important of them are image orientation, situatedness, pro-totypicality, procedurally. In other words in the course of utterance production the real situation of physical, social or mental world is subjected to interpretation procedure (se-mantization, verbalization) on the base of image of prototypical situation. In the course of utterance interpretation, on the contrary, transition from semantic world into real world takes place: image of prototypical situation is considered to be a base for identification of real situation, conforming to the requirements of the specified type of verbal metaphor.

Now it is reasonable to pay attention to the demonstration of the capabilities that can be called in ideal as "cognitive economy". Cognitive economy is a notion that can be referred to any process allowing reducing intellectual energy expenses and does intellectual operations less labor-consuming [7].

For all national cultural socium and for all its generations there are relatively small number of preset cliched expressive utterances being applied to infinitely many definite situations which interpretation is defined with small number of rules of inter-frames links.

Metaphorical transformation can be examined as a procedure of filling the positions of image frame with nodes of specific occasional frame. Cognitive power of live metaphorical transformations is supported with their globality. Many of them reflect image transfer of knowledge from the natural world into the world of human being.

Understanding of metaphorical statements requires involvement of personal experience. Cognitive economy reduces the intellectual energy expenses and does the interpretation more effective. Reference to background knowledge facilitates the process of discourse understanding, because it helps to overcome individual differences in images that percipient or reader can have to understand specific metaphor.

References

1. Baranov A. N., Dobrovolsky D. O. Typology of formal operations at idiom actual meaning generation // in Linguistische Arbeitsberichte 75. Universitat Leipzig, 2000. P. 7-20.

2. Kalashnikova L. V. Metaphor as a mechanism of cognitive-discourse modeling of reality: Doctoral thesis. Volgograd, 2006. 409 p.

3. Kalashnikova L. V. Metaphor and myth. Metaphorical thinking // Philological Sciences. Questions of theory and practice. Tambov. "Gramota" 2009. №1 (3) P. 96-98. ISSN 1997-2911. Access mode: www.gramota.net/materials /2/2009/1/

4. Kalashnikova L. V. Metaphor is an instrument of cognition and maintaining of real connections between of universe elements // Philological Sciences. Questions of theory and practice. Tambov. "Gramota", № 1(12) 2012. P. 75-77.

5. Cassirer E. Power of metaphor. / Philosophy of symbol forms (Theory of metaphor. M., 1990. P. 33-43) - Access mode: http://lacan.narod.ru/ind_met/Default_2.htm#me1 (25.09.2013).

6. Cooper А. Myth of metaphor // Usable program center. Access mode: http://www. usability.ru/toader/articles/myth_of_metaphor.htm (15.01.2014).

7. Halpern D. Critical thinking. 2000 / Terms. National psychological encyclopedia. Access mode: http://vocabulary.ru/dictionary/792/word/kognitivnaja-yekonomija (25.09.13).

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8. Usmanova Á. R. Representation as acquisition: to the problem of existing of "Another" in discourse. Access mode: http://do.gendocs.ru/docs/index-234485.html (25.09.2013).

9. Permyakov G. L. Foundations of structural paramiology. M.: Nauka, Chief editorial board of east literature. 236 p. Access mode: http://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic. php?t=4249197 (25.09.2013

10. Shherba L. V. About triple aspect of linguistic phenomena and about experiment in philology / Language system and language behavior. M., 1974. P. 24-39.

11. Quillian M. R. Semantic memory. In Semantic Information Processing (Minsky M., eds.), 1968. P. 227-270. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

12. Webster's 1913 Dictionary. Access mode: http://www.webster-dictionary.org/defi-nition/intuition (19.12. 2013).

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