30.2598, Review: Cognitive Science; Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics: Browse (2018)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-2598. Mon Jul 01 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.2598, Review: Cognitive Science; Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics: Browse (2018)

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Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2019 15:40:59
From: Kim Jensen [ebensgaard at hum.ku.dk]
Subject: Cognitive Rhetoric

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36495177


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-4487.html

AUTHOR: Sam  Browse
TITLE: Cognitive Rhetoric
SUBTITLE: The cognitive poetics of political discourse
SERIES TITLE: Linguistic Approaches to Literature 31
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Kim Ebensgaard Jensen, Københavns Universitet

SUMMARY

As a result of the growing popularity of cognitive linguistics (e.g. Croft &
Cruse 2004) at large, the spin-off disciplines, as it were, cognitive poetics
(e.g. Bröne & Vandaele 2009; Gavins 2007; Gavins & Steen 2003; Gavins & Lahey
2016; Stockwell 2006, 2009, 2014) and cognitive discourse studies (e.g. Hart
2014) have themselves grown into quite influential fields. In Sam Browse’s
monograph Cognitive Rhetoric (henceforth, CR), which was published in 2018 on
John Benjamins as the 31st installment in the, in my opinion, important book
series Linguistic Approaches to Literature. In CR, Browse presents a somewhat
complex three-dimensional model of political discourse reception – that is,
Browse aims to provide a model for the cognitive processes that recipients of
political discourse engage in. It may seem strange that a monograph on
political discourse should be part of a book series on language and
literature, but what makes it highly relevant to the book series is that
Browse applies insights and theoretical models from the field of cognitive
poetics.

The volume contains eight chapters and is divided into three thematic parts:
Part I: Ethos, Part II: Logos and Part III: Pathos. The first chapter
‘Preliminaries’ offers a general introduction to the book and positions it as
covering a gap in the literature on political discourse – namely, the
perspective of the recipient – emphasizing that “[t]he way audiences respond
to the arguments presented in political texts, what they think about the
authors, and their feelings as they participate in the discourse have largely
been neglected in this body of research” (p. 1). Furthermore, the main purpose
of the book is presented – namely, “to present a reception-oriented account
which examines how identity, argument, and emotions shape audience responses
to the language of political discourse” (p. 1). The chapter also introduces
the main sources that the author draws on: political discourse, critical
discourse analysis, classical rhetoric (in particular the three types of
appeal – namely, ethos, logos, and pathos), stylistics, and cognitive poetics.

Chapter 2 ‘Layers of Ethos’ presents the three main components, according to
Browse, of ethos. The three components, which are borrowed from narrative
theory, are the implied author, the orchestrating narrator, and the speaker.
Using a range of examples, including fictional depictions of political
speeches, real political speeches, interviews, and social media comments, the
author presents a rich discussion of the three-layered model of ethos. Chapter
2 lays the ground for Chapter 3, “The conceptual ecology of ethos”, in which
Browse presents his model of the cognitive processes and structures involved
in the audience’s reception and construction of the speaker’s ethos. The
author draws extensively on insights from social cognition research and
sociolinguistics, as he discusses how dialectal and stylistic features link up
with social cognitive processes in the audience. A complex process, ethos
construction involves character schemata (stereotypes assigned to speakers by
audiences), performance models (conceptual structures created in recipients in
response to speakers’ stylistic performances), and attribution of features to
the speaker, narrator, and/or implied author. This process is ultimately an
instance of the socio-cognitive process of mind-modeling (Stockwell 2009).

In the first chapter of the second thematic part – namely, Chapter 4, ‘Logos
as representation’, the author discusses enthymemes (logos-based oblique
arguments) and proposes a cognitive-rhetorical approach to the analysis
thereof. Key, in the perspective of senders in political discourse, is the
notion of the idealized common ground – knowledge that a sender shares with
their implied or idealized audience – which is contrasted with the actual
common ground (shared knowledge between a sender and the actual audience).
Turning to the actual audience, the author proposes a framework for addressing
when recipients in political discourse resist or reject claims made in
political speeches. This framework is a model of construal processes which can
be identified in audience members’ verbal responses to political speeches and,
in line with what seems to be a trend in cognitive poetics, draws extensively
on Langacker’s (1987, 1991) cognitive grammar. The main processes proposed by
the author are respecification (the assignment or removal of detail in the
construction of a text world), rescoping (the expansion or reduction of the
scope of predication), reprofiling (challenging the trajectory-landmark
alignment imposed by a speaker), and rescanning (changing from summary
scanning to sequential scanning and vice versa). Chapter 5 ‘Logos as
conceptual mapping’ proposes that logos in arguments-by-example is a matter of
conceptual mapping between conceptual structures – more specifically mapping
past experiences onto new ones. Browse first explores the usability of
Conceptual Integration Theory (Fauconnier & Turner 2002) but discards it due
to it being too simple. Instead, the author applies Gavins’ (2007) text word
theory (see also Gavins & Lahey 2014 and Werth 1999), which allows for
fine-grained mappings across complex conceptual structures (called text-worlds
in text word theory).  

Chapter 6 ‘Rhetorical ambience’ is the first chapter of Part Three and, after
touching upon the psychological underpinnings of affect and emotions, Browse
briefly discusses the place of emotion (or rather the lack thereof) as a
research object in critical discourse studies. Then the author presents a
model of pathos, which is based on Stockwell’s (2014) notion of literary
ambience, dubbed ‘rhetorical ambience’. Ambience is defined as “the cloud of
connotative meanings and feelings … that the text evokes in the minds of
audience members” (p. 162), and its main components are atmosphere (“the
emotional quality we associate with representations of situations” (p. 164))
and tone (“a property of the orator’s voice … the way they position themselves
in relation to their audience” (p. 163)). ‘Component’ is perhaps not the best
choice of words here, as the two serve to generate, so – rather than being
building blocks of ambience – they are, in a way, stimuli that prompt
emotional responses in people. The eighth chapter ‘Political resonance’ also
borrows from the work of Stockwell, as Browse proposes the idea of political
resonance, which is inspired by Stockwell’s (2009) attention-resonance theory
as a means of addressing emotional responses to political communication in
audience members.

Lastly, Chapter 8 ‘Conclusion’ briefly sums up some of the main points made in
the book. More space, however, is devoted to discussing six areas where
Browse’s three-dimensional model could be expanded theoretically and
empirically: 1) experimental methods in eliciting response data, 2)
applications of ethnographic methods in identification of social groupings in
responses, 3) use of corpus-methodology, 4) spread of interpretative
strategies in political discourse, 5) the persuasive reconfiguration of
recipients’ conceptions of reality, and 6) the role of space in political
discourse, 

EVALUATION

The monograph is indeed an impressive piece of work which covers a lot of
ground and has, quite frankly, an incredible breadth theory-wise. The main
premise of the model presented in CR is that recipients in political discourse
are not merely passive recipients and, moreover, that “political discourse is
emotional, visceral even”, such that “[o]ur responses to political discourse
are embodied in the sense that the knowledge we bring to the discourse event
is produced by our experience and interaction with the world around us, but
our reactions are often more directly embodied” (p. 209). This is very much in
line with main tenets in cognitive linguistics at large as well as in
cognitive poetics and cognitive discourse studies.

While work has been done on the intersection between language and cognition in
connection with political discourse (e.g. Lakoff 2003), this body of work has
mostly focused on encoding. This, I would argue, has resulted in valuable
knowledge, but we need to also consider the perspective of the decoder. This
is what CR does, and this is why it is, in many ways, groundbreaking.

Needless to say, discourse reception is a complex affair which is likely to
involve several layers of cognitive processes and structures. This is
reflected in the necessary complexity of Browse’s own model. The adherence to
the Aristotelian forms of appeal as dimensions of political discourse makes
the model somewhat manageable, as it were, but the amount of terms and
theoretical concepts might still strike some readers – in particular novice
academic readers such as, for instance, undergraduates – as quite
overwhelming.

Of course, the volume is a research monograph and not a textbook, and I am
sure that Browse’s main audience are fellow researchers within cognitive
science and not undergraduate students. That said, the book often reads like a
textbook in the sense that – despite the heavy terminology – it is written in
a very clear and succinct language, which definitely is a strength. However, I
would not recommend using the book or parts of it as reading material in a
university course. The terminology is quite heavy and, understandably, the
content is not presented in a pedagogical manner. While there are several
illustrative examples to support theoretical concepts presented in the
monograph (which is another strength), there are very few simple and
straightforward definitions of theoretical concepts and terms in the book.
That is, definitions are of course offered, but they are often intertwined
with lengthy discussion of examples and theoretical content. Now, this
approach makes the book a stimulating read and offers interesting,
multifaceted perspectives on the topics addressed in CR, but it also means
that CR is not a book that you can quickly browse through and quickly identify
terms and theoretical notions. Given the complexity of the model and the
heaviness of the terminology presented, a glossary of terms would have been
very useful.

While possessing the necessary complexity, Browse’s model somehow seems
incomplete. Browse himself acknowledges this in the last chapter in his
discussion of ways in which it could be expanded. Another indicator that
Browse has more work to do is that, while his discussions of the dimensions of
ethos and logos are rich, and the submodels presented are detailed, the
treatment of pathos seems less developed. Does that mean that the publication
of CR was premature? No. Firstly, it is not uncommon that theoretical models
with some underdeveloped parts are published. This is not a problem, as it
feeds into the scientific discourse and other researchers in the field might
contribute to the further development of the model. Recent events in the
global political landscape (e.g. Brexit, the election of Donald Trump as the
President of the United States of America, and – if I may use an example from
my own backyard, so to speak – the ongoing witch hunt on the humanities in
Danish educational politics) make CR not only a relevant publication but also
a very important one.

Despite the few points of criticism presented above, Sam Browse’s “Cognitive
Rhetoric” is an important contribution to cognitive poetics, cognitive
discourse studies, and political communication studies; it should be of
interest to researchers and postgraduate students working within these fields,
as well as researchers working within cognitive linguistics, critical
discourse studies, and political science respectively. Chapters 2 and 3 should
be of particular interest to sociolinguists and cognitive sociolinguists.
Professionals in the field of communication – political and otherwise – should
also find the book interesting. The monograph will, I think, complement Lakoff
(2003), Fairclough & Fairclough (2012), and Carteris-Black (2016) very well as
a key publication in this field.

REFERENCES

Brône, G. & J. Vandaele, eds. (2009). Cognitive Poetics: Goals, Gains and
Gaps. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Carteris-Black, J. (2014). Analysing Political Speeches: Rhetoric, Discourse,
and Metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Croft, W. & D. A. Cruse (2004). Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Fairclough, N. & I. Fairclough (2012). Political Discourse Analysis: A Method
for Advanced Students. London: Routledge.

Fauconnier, G. & M. Turner (2003). The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and
the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.

Hart, C. (2014). Discourse, Grammar and Ideology: Functional and Cognitive
Perspectives. London: Bloomsbury.

Gavins, J. (2007). Text World Theory: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.

Gavins, J. & G. Steen, eds. (2003). Cognitive Poetics in Practice. London:
Routledge.

Gavins, J. & E. Lahey, eds. (2016). World Building: Discourse in the Mind.
London: Bloomsbury.

Lakoff, G. (2003). Moral Politics (2nd ed.). Chicago: Chicago University
Press.

Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar – Vol 1: Theoretical
Prerequisites. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Langacker, R. W. (1991). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar – Vol 2: Descriptive
Application. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Stockwell, P. (2003). Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. London: Routledge.

Stockwell, P. (2009). Texture: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.

Stockwell, P. (2014). Atmosphere and tone. In P. Stockwell & S. Whiteley, eds.
The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
360-374.

Werth, P. (1999). Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse.
London: Longman.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Kim Ebensgaard Jensen is Associate Professor of English linguistics at the
University of Copenhagen. His research falls under the rubric of cognitive
linguistics, and he has also contributed to the fields of stylistics, corpus
linguistics, and cultural linguistics.





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