Discourse, Context and Cognition

Van Dijk, Discourse Studies, 2006, Vol,8(1):159-177

In this recent article Van Dijk develops his cognition theory and shows how this cognition which mediates between a discourse and the process of understanding/ production is different and more special than the conventional context. That is why different people in the same context might produce different discourse.

He calls this 'subjective participants' constructs'. As potential criticisms of his model he mentions two potential ones: one is that the analysis of this subjective participants' construct there is a lack of empirical proof on existence of such a thing and the other thing is that this is closely related to private or personal processes and that in the study of discursive social interaction we should attend to 'public’ dimensions of discourse. (Page 161)

To the first criticism he gives the other example of constructs that we know exist even if there cannot be any concrete empiricist knowledge about them e.g. grammar which enables us to understand and produce a language and we all agree there is such a thing.

The second criticism as far as, I could understand still holds and is not addressed. To me it is the question of how this is going to help us in our CDA analysis. I agree that theoretical level work is absolutely essential but how does existence of such construct help in short term goal oriented CDA or long run critical awareness plans. This is not accounted for in the articles.

Van Dijk asserts that in the concept of context we should go beyond just the common sense definition of it. He calls this notion of context 'traditional contextualism' he argues:

'Societal, political or cultural constraints … do not directly influence discourse at all' (162)

His example here is one of Tony Blair's speeches and says if this traditional context definition were the only objective condition for him to say what he says then all PM's in the same context would have said the same thing which is highly unlikely.

Another argument is that the analysis of context in its traditional sense is a boundless one. That is, there is no limit on how far such account of context can go in regards to a given situation. For example in his example of Blair's speech we can go on and on in accounting for political, sociological, anthropological aspects of parliamentary democracy in general and UK context in particular and as he says:

'Any sound theory of context should make explicit how such an account can be constrained' (162)

I find both these arguments every interesting and compelling. I just have a small question here when he says:

‘If these [context in traditional sense] would operate 'objectively' or even deterministically on discourse, all speakers in 'the same situation' would say the same THINGS and in the same way' (same page)

I understand 'the same way' and that not all speakers would speak in the same way however, I have a little problem as to whether they would not speak about the same 'things'. Is it not true that when you are constrained with your party, your position, your background, and all those other contextual constraints you would say the same things? I mean if some body else was there instead of Blair with exactly the same situation politically culturally etc. He would raise the same 'propositions' even though he would not talk about them in the same 'way'. I find this a bit confusing.

Van Dijk elaborates on the mental constructs and explains how these constructs act as interface of social structure and discourse and later on he incorporate the mechanism by which knowledge comes to play a role. In a section titled as context are not observable-but their consequences are' he accounts for the critic of empiricists.

Later on he asserts that mental models in psychology offer a lot of understanding and insight on the process of understanding and production of discourse;

'Mental models represents people's experience and people’s episodic memory is thus populated by mental models. These are subjective and probably biased representations of ‘reality’ and may also feature evaluations of events or situations (opinions), as well as emotions associated with such events-as is typically the case by dramatic or traumatic events of our lives’ (page 169)

He also asserts that there are a lot of common grounds for mental models. Although they are culturally based some elements might be universal. He says that Knowledge element of context models is uncountable universal. The more formal, normative and institutional a context is the more context models overlap ad understanding is possible while in informal situation there is more of idiosyncrasy and differences but this is overcome by sharing the same background and experience among friends couples etc. This is why the probability of misunderstandings is higher among intercultural informal settings rather than formal. (173)

He agrees that there is a similarity between this notion and what we can find in case grammars or semantic models. It reminds me of Chafe case grammar or functional grammars that I went through in my Masters.

Towards the end he proposes some areas that the research in context models should look into like finding more empirical understanding, deconstructing what context models consists of, which element are formed before the others, and how they control discourse.

Conclusion

‘Context models are the missing link between text and talk and their environment’ (174)