Content and formal cognitive operations in construing meaning: 2689
Year: 2003
Type: article
Abstract: ion) and in that it neatly separates formal from content operations. Still, we have one further refinement to make. In our view, integration operations may be of two kinds: integration by schematic enrichment and integration by combination. We discuss each mode of integration in turn. Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibanez & Francisco Santibanez Saenz 310 Figure 2. Ruiz de Mendoza & Pena’s Combined Input Hypothesis. 3.3.1. Integration by schematic enrichment The notion of schematic enrichment (not to be confused with Sperber & Wilson’s notion of enrichment as strengthening or completion, discussed in section 1 above) was first proposed by Fornes & Ruiz de Mendoza (1998) in the context of image-schema interaction. It was initially applied to cases in which an image-schema incorporated into its structure other image-schemas of a subsidiary nature or even propositional cognitive models which fleshed out part of the generic conceptual structure of the image schema. A clear example of image-schematic enrichment is provided by the expression She was led into a depression, where the conceptual structure of the ‘path’ schema underlies the figurative motion of the protagonist into a certain state conceptualized as a location. The ‘path’ schema is enriched by the container schema filling in the end-of-path structural slot. In this operation the ‘container’ schema becomes subsidiary to the ‘path’ schema. The notion of image-schematic enrichment has been developed by Pena (2003: 216-220) who has distinguished three possibilities: (i) The integration of basic and subsidiary schemas, as in our previous example. (ii) The convergence of image-schemas, whatever their status as basic or subsidiary, into a linguistic expression which invokes at least one of them, the other remaining implicit. For example, in He has more and more love inside him; in fact, he’s full of love, the explicitly invoked ‘full-empty’ schema is enriched by the implicit ‘verticality’ schema, which is necessary for the figurative quantity-height correlation to take place. (iii) The merging of image-schematic structure with any other kind of cognitive model, whether propositional, metaphoric, or metonymic, as in He’s way ahead of himself, where the protagonist is seen as racing against himself along a path and therefore as losing control over himself; here there is a metaphor that has been called by Lakoff (1996) ‘the divided self ’, whereby the person is seen as made up of a rational part (called the subject) and a bodily and/or emotional part (called the self). In the ideal state the rational self keeps his/her other self under control. The notions of subject and self are part of a metaphorical model that enriches the path-schema, i.e. it fills in the structural slots corresponding to the moving entities which travel towards a common destination. Pena’s analysis is very useful for our purposes since it allows us to derive a principle of conceptual integration by enrichment: the Content and formal cognitive operations in construing meaning
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W74068362