A Construal-operation-based Approach To College English Reading

Cognitive linguistics stresses the relationship between language and human brain. Language contributes a window to cognitive function, offering insights into the nature, structure and organization of ideas and thoughts. Framing is pervasive in language which is the most normal phenomenon of conceptualization in linguistic expressions. And the range of conceptualization processes is also called construal operations which human beings employ in language. Conversely, every aspect of an expression embraces various kinds of conceptualizations, including derivational or inflectional morphology and even the basic parts of speech. An expression’s meaning includes the conceptual content it evokes and how the content is construed which the latter mostly plays the key role in language. The way language construes this is by using symbols. Every symbolic structure construes its content in a fixed way. In describing an experience, the expressions chosen mainly depends on how exactly people examine it, what they decide to look at, which elements they focus on and where they view it from. All of the aspects are identified in construal operations, which are grouped together under broad classes. On the other hand, college English reading has been regarded as the most important course for English learners. It is a comprehensive and difficult one which involves series of cognitive inner processes. College English reading requires complex abilities of English learning, such as word reciting, grammar grasping, understanding of a sentence and so on. All of these abilities concern with different ways of conceptualizations and construal operations.In this paper, college English reading will be analyzed based on the application of four elements:specificity, focusing, prominence and perspective proposed in Ronald Langacker’s construal operation theory which offers a new point of view to know the complex cognitive process when people are conducting with reading and proves that language is closely related with human mind. The analysis of college English reading based on construal operations would explain the complicated mental and cognitive reading process in a detailed way. The four aspects of construal operations:specificity, focusing, prominence and perspective demonstrate how the human beings’brains organize and work in order to associate with language. It provides an extra cognitive method to investigate and evaluate the complex development of reading.This paper aims at revealing the application of a construal-operation-based approach to college English reading. Theoretically speaking, the study is a specific application of the theory of construal operations. It helps us make deeper exploration between the relationship of the language and human brain. It is known that language is to express thoughts and ideas which means language encodes and externalizes human beings’ thoughts. Construal operations apply to conceptions in any domain and closely associate with human language. On the other hand, college English reading requires complicated mental abilities which concern with different ways of conceptualizations and construal operations. Thus to study the application of a construal-operation-based approach to college English reading can help us clearly know the conceptual process on lexical, sentence and discourse level.Practically, the study can benefit the English language teaching as well as learning. The explanation and description about the conceptual process in reading reveals the detailed mental activity of human brain. Teachers of English can go beyond these language phenomena and give the students a clear picture of the mental process in reading. And thus English language learners can acquire deeper understanding of the nature of language and the relationship between the language and human brain. At the same time, the study can help both teachers and readers improve the speed and efficiency of college English reading.Many cognitive linguists proposed many classifications about construal operations, which provide theoretical foundation for this paper. Since the investigation of various classifications has gone through long-term development, the achievements in its field also give theoretical support and enlightenment to this paper. The writer of this paper has collected a great deal of reading materials of college English reading, which will make the analysis of this paper reliable and forceful. Through the analysis of the application of a construal-operation-based approach to college English reading, many common and interesting phenomena, including word level, sentence level and discourse level of language actual uses and conceptual presentations can be found. They can further certify the basic theory of construal operations and prove that there is still wide investigation space in this field. The author sets forth these viewpoints in six chapters:The aim of Chapter One is to provide general information with the background and objectives of this study. In Chapter Two, the paper begins by looking at the basic concepts about reading. The nature of reading has been discussed from the aspects of reading as a communicative activity and a cognitive inner process. On the other hand, the construal operation theory is considered and the notion of cognitive conceptualization and conceptual semantics have been introduced in this part. Then an overview of researches on college English reading is needed in order to find the problems unsolved in this field.Chapter Three addresses the issue of theoretical foundation of the whole thesis. The three main classifications of construal operations proposed by Croft and Cruse, Talmy and Langacker have been explained and compared to make clear the differences among the categorizations. Finally, the advantages of Langacker’s classification has been proved and chosen as the basic theory of this paper.Chapter Four focuses on the application of Langacker’s construal operation theory to college English reading which is the main section of this thesis. The analysis will explore from the four elements:specificity, focusing, prominence and perspective. And the detailed explanations would demonstrate the close relationship between language and human brain.Chapter Five would discuss the major findings and problems displayed in last part and figure out the implications and feasibilities of applying construal operation theory to college English reading.Chapter Six is the concluding part of the thesis.The author summarizes the theoretical and practical significance of this dissertation, and adduces some issues that are worth studying in the field of college English reading study.