A Cognitive Study On English Illocutionary Construction

Illocutionary construction is the product of the combination of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics.To be more specific,it is the product of the combination of construction grammar and speech act theory.Illocution generally refers to indirect speech act(ISA)which is one of the traditional classical topics of pragmatics.Since the late 1990 s,the studies of illocution shift into cognitive direction.The most prominence of the study lies in the foundation of the illocutionary scenario by Thornburg and Panther(1997)and Panther and Thornburg(1998)to analyze the indirect speech act.Under the influence of the illocutionary scenario,more and more scholars begin to pay attention to the study of conventionalization and constructionalization of illocution.Thus the study of illocutionary construction was born at the right moment.In the process of studying the Lexical Constructional Model,Spanish scholars regard the third level of this model as illocutionary construction and define it as linguistic configuration which is used to convey a given illocutionary value(Ruiz de Mendoza & Baicchi,2007;Mairal & Ruiz de Mendoza,2008,2009;Baicchi & Ruiz de Mendoza,2011;Perez &Ruiz de Mendoza,2011;Del Campo,2013).For a long time,as an aspect of the linguistic study,illocutionary construction has obtained the wide attention of cognitive linguists.However,most of these studies pay attention to the theoretical one under the framework of LCM and few studies concern about the empirical study(Del Campo,2013).In the existing empirical study,especially the study of the realization procedure,Perez(2001)does not take the realization procedure as construction,and the method to extract illocutionary construction in Del Campo's(2013)work is too subjective.Therefore,it is necessary to use a more subjective method to study the realization procedure.Moreover,few studies involve the study of the internal mechanism,especially the generative mechanism and the cognitive basis of illocutionary construction.In order to solve the above problems,this paper will deeply study the realization procedure,generative mechanism and cognitive basis of illocutionary construction.Since the construction can be divided into three types according to the sentence types,thus based on the work of Del Campo(2013),we choose three speech acts(ordering,advising and offering)which have a high frequency and are expressed by the basic sentence types as the object.The analysis takes the Lexical Constructional Model as the theoretical framework,the COCA(Corpus of Contemporary American English)as the corpus resource and the performative verbs as the search item to extract examples of illocutionary acts.Illocutionary constructions extracted from the examples,after which analyzed by using a qualitative and quantitative method.This paper attempts to solve the following questions.1)What are the realization procedures of ordering,advising and offering? 2)What is the characteristic of these constructional realizations? Do they have similarity or/and difference? If they do,what is the generative motivation of the similarity or/and difference? 3)What is the cognitive basis of these illocutionary constructions?In order to solve these questions,under the guide of LCM,based on the principle of explanatory adequacy(Mendoza,2014),this study first analyzes the semantic features of the three speech acts then explores the realization procedure and finally systematically explains the generative motivation and the cognitive basis of illocutionary construction.The study shows that:(1)Since the semantic condition of the imperative sentence type is compatible with the imposition nature of ordering,thus in performing ordering,imperative constructions can instantiate the defining feature of ordering.The declarative sentence type can present a proposition for realization,which provides the addressee more optionality to choose in advising.The open nature of the interrogative sentence type provides the addressee more freedom to choose to accept the offer or not in the offering.Thus the interrogative sentence type can perform high codified constructions.Besides,as to the illocutionary constructions with a low degree of specification,linguistic mechanisms can be used to encode them.The study of the realization procedure verifies that construction is a pairing of form and meaning where the form gives access to the meaning and the meaning is realized by form.Furthermore,the realization procedure of speech act is the result of metonymic activation of the relevant parts of its corresponding high-level situational cognitive model.And the different degrees of conventionalization are based on the numbers of the constructions instantiate theparameters of the situational cognitive model.(2)The study of the realization procedure shows 1)one linguistic function may have more than one realization procedure.The reason behind this phenomenon is the work of cognitive construal.The cognitive subject takes different perspectives to observe the same situation or event would give rise to different ways of construal with different expressions.2)Each illocutionary construction type has different degrees of the specification.Based on the weak version of LFH,each sentence type can express different illocutionary values.The compatibility between sentence types and the illocutionary acts leads to default interpretation.Without changing the illocutionary meaning,each sentence type can use different linguistic mechanisms to present and this leads to different degrees of the specification.3)Compared with the declarative construction and the interrogative construction,the imperative construction has the least number of constructions.According to the weak version of LFH,the open degree of the declarative and interrogative sentence type is higher than the imperative sentence type,thus the latter can use more linguistic mechanisms to present illocutionary acts and the latter only can use limited linguistic mechanisms.4)The use of mitigation and strengthening in each type of construction are different.The rationale behind this phenomenon is the polite principle.In order to protect the addressee's feeling,declarative constructions and interrogative constructions tend to use more linguistic mechanisms to mitigate the force of the sentences.Although,imperative constructions prone to use linguistic mechanisms to strengthen the force of the sentences;due to the polite principle,there are still constructions use mitigating devices.(3)In the process of the interpretation of illocutionary construction,as for cases of inferred illocution,there is a metonymic expansion and reduction pattern.Metonymic expansion and reduction provide specific information for the understanding and interpretation of illocutionary construction.Metonymy expansion makes the illocutionary construction activate the whole scenario and the metonymic reduction makes the illocutionary construction activate the prominent part and produce the illocutionary meaning.As for conventional constructions,accessing to the intended illocutionary interpretation is direct,thus there is no metonymy.Similarly,for constructions with performative verbs,there is also no metonymy,since there is no inferential requirement,only direct access.Moreover,the correlation in metaphor enables to explain the metonymic relationship between the non-event elements and the event elements.And the parameterization in the process of the metonymic reductionmakes the prominent point to the specific action.This study takes the LCM as the theoretical framework,explores the realization procedure of ordering,advising and offering,summarizes the characteristics of illocutionary construction and explores the generative mechanism and the cognitive basis of illocutionary construction.The study of illocutionary construction is a benefit to dig out the application ability of construction grammar which can promote the benign development of the subject ecology.The comprehensive study and explanation of speech act is a benefit to the development of the traditional classical topic of pragmatics.Meanwhile,the study of the realization procedure is a benefit to the variety of the communication which is helpful in daily communication.