The Construction Of Speech Meaning: The Subject's Cognitive Processing In Speech Communication

The construction of speech meaning is a hot topic in the studies of linguistics and lingo-philosophy. It is also a brand new subject field for psycholinguistics. From an interdisciplinary background, and especially from the view point of modern cognitive psychology, by means of combining history and theory, the dissertation discusses the construction of meaning of speech—the processing of information in speech communication. The subject is not only important theoretically to constructing cognitive linguistics and to developing cognitive psychology, but also has important practical significance to improving human speech communicative ability and promoting communication. Cognitive psychology takes speech communication as the subject's information processing, which means that human being is put in the central position in verbal communication, addresser and addressee are not the simple deliver and receiver, but creator concerning the meaning. From the cognitive point of view, different understandings can be achieved concerning the meaning in speech communication. The construction of speech meaning has much to do with language comprehension, which has been an important research subject in psychology, especially cognitive psychology. However, studies about language comprehension has been mainly focusing on words, sentences, and passages instead of directly dealing with the meaning of speech communication, especially speech meaning. By comparison, theories and methods of cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics provides us with new ideas and methodologies to further our studies about meaning in speech communication . The dissertation exploits the concept of speech meaning to refer to the meaning in the speech communication, stressing the psychological connotation contained in the speech meaning. Based on information processing theories of cognitive psychology, by borrowing research ideas from such disciplines as cognitive linguistics, analytical philosophy ,and linguistics ,the dissertation tries to reveal the attributes and internal psychological processes of the construction of the speech meaning . The meaning in speech communication manifests itself into two sides: the literal meaning and the illocutionary force. How to understand such meaning becomes an important task for the study of linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. Structuralist linguistics explains from a rhetoric and grammar point of view; philosophers from the Everyday Language School illustrate it by way of speech act and human communication, leading to J.S.Austin and J.Searl's Speech Act Theory and H.D.Grice's Conversational Implicature Theory; Pragmatics experts, Dan.Sperber and Wilson, starting from cognitive psychology ,propose the Relevance Theory, giving a cognitive explanation to the meaning of speech communication . By reviewing those relevant theories, it is not difficult to find the developing tendency of the study of speech meaning: from Structural Linguistics to Pragmatics; from the study of Linguistics and Philosophy to the study of Cognitive Psychology; from the static explanation to the dynamic explanation; from the externaldescription stressing speech communication to the analysis of the internal psychological process of the speech communication subject. Speech meaning is different from language meaning. It is not stored in the long-term memory, but constructed temporarily in short-term memory, unless it enters into the structure of the long-term memory and becomes a part of knowledge. According to the sources, speech meaning consists of the known needs and cognitive situation of subject, communication background, context of situation, linguistic structure and paralanguage. Furthermore, meanings of different sources exist complementarily. On the basis of the properties of meanings, speech meaning consists of four elements, namely, element of meaning, element of acts, element of emotion, and element of images, which permeate each other in the cognitive processing of speech meaning. Speech meaning does not form itself in advance. Rather, it is a kind of cognitive construction in speech communication act, centered around the subject's communicative intentions. Communication intentions originate from the needs of subject, serves as motivation of speech communication and the base and core in speech meaning. The structure of it is divided into two parts: intention which formulates properties of communicational intention and contents of intention which express intentions in details. The communicative intention can be expressed by the concept of schemata, mainly: Informing Schemata, Request Schemata, and Intention Schemata. The core of speech meaning is the communicative intention, around which the utterance form is constructed. During this process, derivative meaning comes up around the communicative intention. Speech meaning, is the product of cognitive processing by the subject of speech communication.The cognitive processing of speech meaning is actually conducted around communicative intention and the marks of discourse forms. The subject's cognitive processing is also related to some other elements, such as the type of communicative intention, the subject of communication himself, background knowledge, communicative context, discourse form, the cognitive capacity and experience of the subject. While the cognitive capacity and experience forms the basis, the other elements can influence the cognitive processing of speech meaning only when the utterance communication is recognized and come into part of the cognitive background of the subject. Whether the relevant elements can influence the construction of speech meaning, or what influence it will exert depends on the choice of the subject, and it is in accordance with some principles that can be viewed as the cognitive strategy of the subject's utterance. The principles concluded in this dissertation include the following. Relevance Principle, i.e., utterance form is related to communicative intention. Obviousness Principle, i.e., the more obvious the communicative intention is related to utterance form, the easier they will be processed, and the more cognitive effort the subject will put into it. Brevity Principle, i.e., the economy of speech communication, that is , the least speech form is used to signify communicative intention. This principle is related to the speed of the subject's cognitive processing. Appropriateness Principle, broadly speaking, refers to the psychological acceptability of utterance form that signifies communicative intention. The restriction of these principles is different in the cognitive processing of the subject. Based on the Relevance Principle, which must be followed, other principles are chosen. Speech meaning is the product of comprehensive balance of these principles.The construction of speech meaning is related to the paths of how discourse forms mark communication intention. The paths used to realize speech communication recognized by the dissertation include: ostensive path, in which the structurized language marks communication intention; suggestive path, appears to be inference of subject in cognition processing used to link discourse forms and communication intentions, and the inference is realized by means of logical structure of subject, the cognitive schema of relevant common sense and experiences, semantic structure as well; metaphorical path, appears to complete the construction of utterance meaning by means of metaphorical cognition subject has in common. The construction of speech meaning is completed by addresser and addressee mutually: on the one hand, addresser chooses discourse form marks based on communication intentions; on the other hand addressee finds the communication intentions by discourse form marks. Through discourse forms the two subjects are connected, and therefore, speech meaning results. Although addresser and addressee have the different direction in cognitive processing, they share the same steps of processing: activation of the relevant knowledge, formation of assumption, language choice and determination. Speech meaning is a cognitive construction centered around communicative intention. The cognitive construction is displayed as the activation connection, and reconstruction of various knowledge of the subject. That is, speech meaning is a temporary combined state of cognitive knowledge of the subject focusing on communication intention. Activation of relevant knowledge is to motivate the knowledge relevant to communicative intention in the subject's cognitive background, which is the premise for speech meaning to be produced. Connection of relevant knowledge means the...