On Minimalist Cognitive Strategies From The Perspective Of Regional Stereotypes

As a distinct social cognitive schema, regional stereotype reflects people’s relatively fixed cognitive structure of a regional group. Researches on regional stereotype are very scarce at home and abroad. Moreover, the study scope is limited to psychology. However, linguistic studies of this topic are still seldom. Therefore, this research proposes to make an interdisciplinary exploration on regional stereotype from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. Construal is one approach to cognition which reflects a strategic feature of conceptualization. Scholars at home and abroad have different opinions about construal classifications, thus providing fertile theoretical resources for the study. Based on the theory of subjective construal, a detailed study on language structure of regional stereotype is made to explore its construal strategy.This research can be divided into three parts. The paper first embarks on the psychological point of view and begins with a widely-used free association test to study the subjects’ regional preferences and meanwhile use describing statistical method to collect the regional descriptions. The research results on one hand can verify the existence of regional stereotype, on the other hand provide the corpus support for descriptive analysis. An online questionnaire is applied in Experiment One to collect subjects’ regional preferences and descriptions randomly. The results reveal that regional stereotype is an objective existence. People show more preference to regions of good natural environment and advanced economy. Geographic distance also plays a significant role in people’s regional judgments. It’s obvious that the subjects have an apparent preference to their hometowns.To strengthen the reliability and validity of the experiment results and also to explore the origin and convertibility of regional stereotype, the second experiment is conducted. Experiment Two adopts a standard free association questionnaire investigating 120 university students from a university in Hubei province. The results show that the number of commendatory attributive words is far more than derogatory attributive words, which indicates subjects’ positive evaluation toward Hubei province. According to the research results, there are three main sources for regional stereotype. They are respectively personal experience, media propaganda and group effect which provide cogent evidence for its modifiability.Then this paper adopts a documentary analysis method to carry out a comprehensive research on experimental descriptions and classical documents to study the linguistic features of regional stereotype and explain its cognitive motivation in the perspective of construal theory. Finally, on the basis of the research results, this study by referring to mental cost conception in cognitive economics holds that regional stereotype is a mental cost construal model which reflects minimalist strategies of mental cost. The research results are mainly summarized as follows.(1) Regional stereotype is a reality showing up in human language obviously. Regarding to construal theory, it is mainly manifested on four aspects: specificity, perspective, salience and affect.(2) As a mental cost construal model, regional stereotype can optimize cognitive process effectively. In cognitive resource shortage situations, it can provide conceptualized cognitive impression. However, in resource-rich situations, regional stereotype can help form minimalist knowledge structures.(3) Minimalist cognitive strategies of regional stereotype are embodied as minimalist information, categorized conceptions, rubricizing labels and apriori affect.(4) Except helping avoid deliberateness, the construal model of regional stereotype may also result in over-minimization that could cause halo effect and incomplete cognition. Therefore, in concrete applications, perceivers still need to take measures to avoid its defects by increasing knowledge amount, reducing isolated association and considering with de-rubricism and rationality.(5) The simplified cognitive construal system that regional stereotype represents makes a perfect agreement with minimalism principles. Its aesthetic thinking of reduction, unity, highlight and self-perspective reflects the concise beauty, which is of great value in aesthetic appreciation.This is an interdisciplinary research which involves linguistics, aesthetics and cognitive science. By discussing cognitive strategies from the perspective of regional stereotypes, the paper explains the thought that linguistics, art and cognitive science are of the same origin. The research results intend to provide a reference for the future researches.