Towards A Narrow Construal Of Linguistic Subjectivity

Based on reflections upon the tendency that subjectivity seems to "go rampant" in contemporary linguistic studies, we come up with the notion of a narrow construal of linguistic subjectivity. Against the background of the naissance of non-objectivist meaning theory, subjectivity turns out to be the most potent weapon in antithesis to Objectivism, thus wins more and more attention in contemporary linguistic studies, and comes to be a pivotal concept in cognitive linguistics, functional linguistics as well as pragmatics. One of the central themes of contemporary linguistic theories lies precisely in the importance attached to the agent of language use. Currently, there spring up multivariate and competing studies on subjectivity, with commitment to different schools, such as functional-discourse studies, pragmatic studies, and cognitive linguistic studies.However, these heterogeneous theoretical perspectives have led to highly distinct conception of the object of study. With each school sticking to its own argument, they are unable to achieve consensus on some important issues, which brings up some unavoidable problems. Overall, there seems to be three major problems in current theoretical studies on subjectivity:1) lack of unified and explicit characterization of subjectivity, implicit about its import; 2) lack of consensus on the level it functions; 3) the case-by-case and reductionist approach in methodology. Nuyts (2012) once deplores three major difficulties in subjectivity study:1) difficult to give a definition of subjectivity without any vagueness; 2) difficult to delineate the boundary of subjectivity categories; 3) difficult to identify the extension of subjectivity categories. This speaks for the fact that current studies on subjectivity are still in a disorderly state, and our aim in this dissertation lies precisely in seeking order in this disorderly field.Firstly, we glean various loose readings of subjectivity, and diagnose the root causes of its rampancy. Our next move is to seek for qualification for the notion of subjectivity from both concept-external and concept-internal perspectives.Concept-externally, we attempt to reassess the position of subjectivity in language, disclosing the subjective-objective paradox in language and the sensitivity of subjectivity to language use. Concept-internally, we distinguish the speaker’s’self’ on different levels, anchor the core of subjectivity to speaker as attitudinal subject and, with an eye to the duality of classic definitions of subjectivity and subjectification, we give a restriction on the level at which they are at work. This is followed with further qualification of the conceptual import of subjectivity, by differentiating subjectivity and other semantic properties, attributing subjectivity to non-propositional category, and drawing the borderline between subjectivity and other non-propositional meanings. On this basis, we make a stratification of the notion of subjectivity:firstly, we distinguish non-linguistic subjectivity, pre-linguistic subjectivity and linguistic subjectivity, by the role language plays in subjectivity reading; secondly, within linguistic subjectivity, we further distinguish four levels of subjectivity:1) on the langue level; 2) on the parole level; 3) on the discourse level and; 4) on the metalinguistic level.With dual commitment to meaning and form, we confine our scope of study to subjectivity on the langue level, thus coming up with the notion of narrow linguistic subjectivity. By so doing, we find a way out of the three dilemmas confronted by Nuyts. We demonstrate the sensitivity of subjectivity to syntagmatic context and, starting from three reputed subjectivity markers, we succeed to show that there is no single category intrinsically linked to subjectivity. Acknowledging this, we come up with our basic assumptions of narrow linguistic subjectivity:I) conceptual import: syntagmatic implicature, i.e. a feel "between the lines"; 2) level at work:syntagmatic context; 3) manifestations:the interplay between structure and meaning; 4) semantic axis:epistemic assessment; structural axis:a structure pointing to the proposition. This is followed by a proposal of four criteria for judging subjectivity markers:1) the structural criterion,2) the semantic criterion,3) the functional criterion and finally,4) the truth-conditional criterion, by which we are able to differentiate different subjectivity categories. Next, with reflections on the subjectivity model of Langacker, we make a revision of the "concept vs. construal" model, in the hope of giving cognitive reading to all subjectivity categories. Our position is that subjectivity is manifested in the subjectively construed elements immanent in the conceptual content, and that there is a see-saw effect in the weight of conceptual content meaning and subjective meaning among different categories. Lastly, we make a further stratification of subjectivity categories, by yardstick of propositional boundary, with additional reference to category type and levels at work.Based on a reassessment of the case-by-case approach in standard subjectivity studies, combined with the narrow construal of subjectivity proposed here, we come up with the word-construction interaction approach to subjectivity, arguing that the reading of subjectivity is irreducible either to the properties of words or to those of construction. We take up the word-construction interaction approach as proposed in Cognitive (Construction) Grammar as the guiding framework, and take directionality issue also into consideration, by distinguishing the way construction acts upon words and the other way round. Approaching from words, we find that construction serves to foreground the subjectivity potential immanent in them and, approaching from construction, we find that the subjective color in word meaning serves to contribute to the subjectivity reading of construction. We also discuss the effects of this interaction, as shown in the cluster effects and the coercion effects, concerning semantic compatibility and incompatibility respectively. Under these two effects, there may spring up subjectivity constructions.Lastly, we sketch the structural spaces of subjectivity, echoing the "from-language-and-back-to-it" spirit. We explore five issues concerning the structural dimension of subjectivity:1) the structural selectional restrictions of subjectivity; 2) subjectivity and leftward distribution; 3) the internal structural scope of subjectivity; 4) the macro-structural features of subjectivity; 5) the macro-distributional features of subjectivity. As to selectional restrictions, subjectivity elements tend to be non-autonomous in terms of semantic structure, exhibiting dependence on subjective structural contexts, with inverse correlation. In terms of linear structure, subjectivity exhibits clear leftward distributional tendencyies on the structural cline:the stronger the subjectivity, the more likely to occupy leftward positions in the structure, and vice versa. Transformed into scopal terms, there is fairly positive correlation between scope and subjectivity:the higher the scope, the stronger the subjectivity, and vice versa. In terms of macro-structural features, subjective expressions tend to be marked in relation to non-subjective expressions, which dovetails the meta-iconic principle, and there is a positive correlation between subjectivity and markedness. Last but not the least, in terms of macro-distributional features, subjectivity tends to lead to a subjective-objective division of labor in language, and subjectivity-objectivity forms an important motivation not only for differentiation among words, but also among constructions.