Abstract
Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science reflects an interdisciplinary trend in linguistic studies. Incorporating Evolutionary Psychology and Cognitive Linguistics, which are currently neglected in mainstream Critical Discourse Analysis, Hart presents a new model for undertaking critical discourse analysis. ‘Evolutionary Psychology can provide an explanatory framework for studying discursive strategies and their effects, while Cognitive Linguistics offers a framework for modeling the interpretation of structures in text’ (p. 29).
According to Evolutionary Psychology, human behaviors are evolved adaptations in response to Darwinian selection pressures, and language is used to promote representations that suit people’s own interests. Hart argues in Chapters 2 and 4 that communication for manipulation and coercion is an almost inevitable evolutionary result, which is particularly true in political discourse. For instance, the intention in immigration discourse within the United Kingdom press is very often to influence the beliefs, emotions and behaviors of text consumers and to persuade them to support policies formulated by policy-makers. Coercion, as a principal goal of, and a macro-strategy in, political discourse, is achieved by means of micro-level strategies, representation and legitimizing strategies, which are further realized across language levels in grammar, lexis and pragmatics. Those semantic categories which have been extensively analyzed in Cognitive Linguistics are Hart’s main concerns, including metaphor, force-dynamics, evidentiality and epistemic modality.
Three representation strategies used coercively in immigration discourse are identified: referential, predicational and proximization strategies, which may all be realized in metaphor, force-dynamics and/or deixis, as shown in Chapters 3, 4, 7 and 8. Based on the belief that humans are evolutionarily ready to construct dichotomous categorizations of social groups, Hart explores the linguistic realization of referential strategies in immigration discourse in terms of deictic pronouns and metaphor. For example, ‘we’ and ‘they’ are used to mark speakers as in-group and immigrants as non-group members, while the CONTAINER metaphor for Britain and WAR and WATER metaphors for immigrants and immigration may realize referential strategies of de-spatialization and dissimilation because immigrants are metaphorically referred to as intruders and flood.
These referential expressions can realize predicational strategies through their semantic prosody and recurring topos of number, burden, danger, etc. Humans are also evolutionarily ready to attach qualities and attributes to social groups, in particular threat-connoting cues to out-group members, thereby constructing negative attitudes towards immigrants. Predicational strategies can be intensified by proximization strategies, relying on a spatiotemporal deictic construal operation to present threats as close and imminent and therefore warranting immediate reaction.
Chapters 5 and 8 investigate how text-producers implement legitimizing strategies to persuade text consumers that representations are true and reliable. Hart argues that legitimizing strategies ‘involve an intention to overcome text-consumers’ logico-rhetorical module through displays of both internal and external coherence’ (p. 91), which are manifested respectively through grammatical cohesion, evidentiality and epistemic modality. Grammatical cohesive devices, also known as logical connectors, are adaptive devices for persuasion and legitimization. For instance, the interpretation of causal conjunctions for coherence in immigration discourse usually invites ideological assumptions about immigrants, which are taken for granted by text-producers and which text-consumers are forced to entertain for communicative purposes.
Evidentiality and epistemic modality realize legitimizing strategies of objectification and subjectification respectively, but both of them are bound up with concepts of authority. Evidentiality means that ‘text-producers may provide evidence for the truth of their assertions by acknowledging the basis of their assertion or by attributing the assertion to an alternative source’ (p. 95). Objective sources of empirical authority including ‘specialists’ and ‘experts’, for example, are often attributed to assertions, which is referred to as source-tagging. Based on evidentiality and authority, epistemic modality displays text-producers’ commitment towards the truth and probability of assertions. When using epistemic modal markers such as modal adverbs certainly, probably and possibly, text-producers imply evidence and lay claim to authority. In addition, Hart argues that epistemic evaluations may be conceptualized metaphorically in terms of force-dynamics.
In general, the book is a successful exemplar of interdisciplinary studies. In addition to the main disciplines mentioned above, it also draws on insights from pragmatics, specifically speech act theory and relevance theory. For instance, coercion can be seen in relation to the perlocutionary effects of speech acts, and cognitive coercion involves producing cognitive effects in text-consumers which is in the sense of relevance theory.
Moreover, the book provides a more tangible link between Cognitive Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis. Unlike previous research on metaphor-based discourse analysis, Hart relates metaphor use to ideological persuasion via certain discursive strategies instead of directly displaying the ideologies underlying metaphor use and forcing readers to accept those subjective and far-fetched inferences. Personally, it is relatively objective and valid to first judge what strategy metaphors may realize, and then to make resulting inferences based on the explanation of strategies.
However, the book is methodologically controversial. (Critical) Discourse Analysis usually starts with description of linguistic properties of texts, but Hart first presents discursive strategies on the level of social cognition and then attempts to illustrate each strategy with linguistic evidence. Probably his preference for a top-down approach is determined by his purpose to introduce a theoretical model. Without quantitative analysis and empirical methodology, his argumentation seems less convincing against the background of an empirical turn which is increasingly widespread in discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics.
Hart argues in Chapter 6 that Conceptual Blending Theory is more appropriate than Conceptual Metaphor Theory in accounting for the dynamic process of conceptualization in discourse, but he simply enumerates the correspondences between the source and target concepts and possible ideological inferences. He fails to give readers a clear picture and operational procedure for how various blending processes and resulting emergent structures help to realize discursive strategies.
Overall, the book contributes in theory to researching metaphor in discourse, and in practice to a social turn in Cognitive Linguistics and a cognitive turn in Critical Discourse Analysis.