Abstract
Like Van Dijk’s earlier works, this book takes a socio-cognitive approach, but, unlike them, it focuses on the awe-inspiring topic of knowledge and examines its complex relations to discourse from multidisciplinary perspectives. Arguably, the book establishes itself, both in breadth and depth, as the first monographic achievement in the new field of epistemic discourse analysis (EDA), which Van Dijk (2013) defines as ‘the systematic and explicit study of the ways knowledge is interactively managed … in the structures and strategies of text and talk’ (p. 497). The book gives readers not only a taste of nearly every aspect of Van Dijk’s ideas on discourse studies in general, but also his theoretical thinking and insights into the field of EDA in particular.
The book comprises eight chapters. Chapter 1 introduces readers to the book’s multidisciplinary study by sketching the issues to be addressed, the broad theoretical framework employed, and current studies on knowledge, discourse and their relationships. Chapter 2 lays the epistemological foundation for the multidisciplinary study. It expounds the concept of knowledge and the relations among the notions of mental models, generic knowledge and discourse, explicating why the study takes a discourse-analytical approach, and features naturalism, relativism, contextualism and cognitivism.
The next five chapters explore the relationships between knowledge and discourse from the perspectives of cognitive and social psychology, sociology, cognitive anthropology, linguistics and discourse studies, respectively. Chapter 3 argues that discourse production and comprehension are controlled by our mental models of events and situations, with situation models defining the semantic meaningfulness of a discourse and context models its pragmatic appropriateness. It specifies that while the acquisition of generic knowledge is discursively accomplishable through the abstraction and generalization of mental models, the construction of mental models is impossible without the instantiation and application of generic knowledge.
Chapter 4 examines how socially shared knowledge is related to other social beliefs including ideologies, attitudes, public opinions, prejudices, stereotypes and social representations. It discusses some studies on interpersonal, intragroup and intergroup communication, paying particular attention to the ways knowledge and other social beliefs are acquired, communicated, (re)produced and disseminated in society.
Chapter 5 emphasizes the need for systematic context analysis in the discursive sociology of knowledge. It points out that knowledge and discourse are both ‘conditions of interaction, as well as the consequences of such interaction in sharing and distributing knowledge in society’ (p. 166). It also reveals that the society–cognition link obtains in that social structures, represented in socially shared knowledge, are dialectically associated with epistemic community members’ mental models.
Chapter 6 demonstrates ‘how cultural variation in knowledge is related with similar variation and diversity of discourse’ (p. 191). It recognizes that the localness of knowledge stems from its culturally variable justification criteria, arguing that while variable cultural knowledge depends on discourse for its acquisition, (re)production and transmission, its epistemic localness underlies the discursive variation and the cultural diversity of discourse.
Chapter 7 addresses how knowledge is expressed, communicated, presupposed and indexed by the epistemic structures of text and talk, which, except for some displaying epistemic management of talk-in-interaction, are mostly from the field of epistemic discourse semantics, including macrostructure, evidentiality, presupposition, metaphor, epistemic modality and topic-focus information structure, to name just a few.
Chapter 8 concludes the book’s multidisciplinary knowledge–discourse interface explorations by summarizing the major findings, informing readers of the limitations, and reiterating the necessity of an integrated socio-cognitive approach to knowledge, discourse and their relations.
The book is well worth reading for at least four reasons. First, it affords an inspiring epistemic theory of knowledge. To theorize on knowledge, the book dwells on its definition, nature, properties, functions and structures and probes into the relation of knowledge to people’s mental models, its distinction in the system of social beliefs, its possible social management by organizations or individuals, its indigenousness in terms of the cultural heterogeneity of epistemic communities and, most importantly, its symbiotic relations to people’s discursive practice in respect of its acquisition, (re)production and dissemination. The discussions in this theorizing process may well inspire further noteworthy epistemic discourse analyses.
Second, the book abounds with informative literature reviews, which concern specific concepts, issues, research paradigms and disciplinary fields. Telling examples are found in the reviews of literature on knowledge in the above-mentioned disciplines and empirical studies on the role of knowledge in discourse processing. The reviews make massive amounts of information available or traceable about disciplines and academic domains as well as extant views and positions on issues and conceptions. This increases the book’s reference value and expands its reader spectrum.
Third, a number of epistemic phenomena of discourse are accounted for through a unitary analytical model. Chapter 7 construes the epistemic phenomena consistently in terms of Van Dijk’s triangular discourse-analytical model, although most have previously received intensive study in the fields of linguistics and discourse studies. The construals deserve particular attention in that they do not merely enrich readers’ understanding of the epistemic phenomena per se, but boost their perception of the distinctions among them, as suggested by the construals of the close relationship and non-overlapping differences between evidentiality and epistemic modality.
Finally, Van Dijk provides ample exemplary discourse analyses. The discursive data are various, ranging from everyday conversation to media and political discourse, and they are analyzed either for explaining abstract notions and terms or for legitimating arguments and interpretations. The analyses make the book’s multidisciplinary explorations less abstruse, more accessible and more engaging for intended readers.
Overall, the book is a landmark work in the new field of EDA. Its innovativeness, informativeness and inspiring qualities make it an invaluable academic resource for students and academics interested in cognitive and functional linguistics, discourse studies, social and cognitive psychology, sociology, anthropology, and even journalism and communication research.