Discourse Coherence:a Cognitive Frame Approach

Speech activities require both sides of communication to express ideas clearly and coherently so as to avoid incoherence."Coherence", a requirement in speech activities, is a shared topic for philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and artificial intelligence. Even if the study of discourse coherence in such speech activities as reading and writing has enjoyed quite a long history, what really causes a widespread concern begins at the publication of Cohesion in English by Halliday and Hassan (1976). Since then, coherence has become a major topic in systemic functional linguistics and discourse analysis, abundant research articles and monographs have come out. However, these studies have only partially solved such basic issue as "What is coherence?" and a universally acknowledged research model does not exist. With the rapid development of cognitive linguistics in recent years, quite a few scholars have begun to employ its concepts or methods to interpret discourse coherence. The present study, inspired by such a movement, delves into discourse coherence on the basis of "cognitive frame" by constructing a new interpretation model.Hypothesis:Discourse coherence, the interpretation of textual meaning, is meaning association in the interpreters’mind on the basis of micro-, meso-, and macro-cognitive frames after activating the concepts and conceptual relations represented by morphemes, words, clauses and paragraphs.Cognitive frame (shortened as "frame") is the conceptual structures built on top of human experience, the schematic representations of beliefs, social practices, systems and intention, background knowledge for concepts, the cognitive basis of speech exchange in a particular speech community, consisting of micro-, meso-and macro-cognitive structures.The main contents and ideas for each chapter are as follows:Chapter I introduces the reason for choosing the topic, the research objectives and methods, the main ideas and innovations. Chapter Ⅱ begins with the definition of discourse, discourse coherence and its classifications, and then sums up the research methods of discourse coherence as form-functional, pragmatic, cognitive-psychological and multidimensional ones, which necessitates the study of discourse coherence from cognitive frame perspective. Chapter III constructs a trinity research model (micro-, meso-, and macro-cognitive frames) for discourse coherence after observing cognitive frame’s defining features and existing categorization.Chapters Ⅳ, Ⅴ, and Ⅵ highlight micro-, meso-and macro-cognitive frame for discourse coherence. Chapter IV points out that language units such as morphemes, words, and clauses activate concepts and conceptual fields, laying foundation for micro-cognitive frame for discourse coherence. Many conceptual metaphors and conceptual metonymies accordingly produce coherence in discourse. Conceptual metaphor is the concepts and conceptual relations from the source conceptual field systematically mapped onto the target ones, while conceptual metonymy is generated by the contiguous relations between the concepts in the same conceptual field. Chapter V contends that the logical semantic relations and image schema existing between sentences or paragraphs are conceptual foundation for meso-cognitive frames. Logical semantic relations such as causing, similarity, contiguity are intentional principles for discourse coherence in this respect; image schemas, recurring patterns in human minds, are the intermediary between language and cognition, reflecting human perception and experience. Chapter VI holds that discourse constructions, higher level of image schema and requirement of construction studies at the discoursal level, are the macro-cognitive frames for discourse coherence, reflecting the holistic and macro intentions of discourse comprehension. Argument structure and story structure are two typical discourse constructions to ensure overall discourse coherence.Chapter Ⅶ reasons out the dynamic nature of cognitive frames for discourse coherence. Cognitive frame transformation or framing is a way of discourse analysis, strategy or world view, revealing the authors’perspective as well as different ways for discourse coherence. The reports of2008’s financial crisis and the comparative analyses of Li Qingzhao’s Like a Dream and its four English versions highlight numerous ways of discourse coherence due to the authors or readers’different cognitive perspectives.Chapter Ⅷ reviews this study, pointing out its innovations and limitations. Three innovations are worth mentioning:(1) cognitive frame adding to discourse coherence a new perspective or approach;(2) reconstructing a new model for discourse coherence by proposing micro-, meso-and macro-cognitive frames;(3) proposing the concept of "discourse constructions", which not only expands construction studies, but also ensure discourse coherence on the macro-level.