CONCEPTUAL ADAPTATION IN THE ASPECT OF INTERCULTURAL
SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION
Barasheva D.E.
Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Education “Sevastopol
State University”, Sevastopol, Russian Federation, e-mail:
varvaraverevkinaV@yandex.ru
Abstract. The purpose of the study was to distinguish certain theoretical
regularities of the conceptual adaptation in intercultural scientific communication
problem and infer a principle of its conceptual analysis. Theoretical analysis method
is used. The following theoretical regularities were concluded.
1. Understanding regularity. Understanding is stipulated by general cognitivediscoursive regularities of knowledge acquisition and use. These regularities refer to the
general cognitive organization of human knowledge and the specific organization of
collective scientific knowledge that forms definite general ground for all people of
science and for the members of a scientific community understanding.
Difficulties of understanding are revealed when certain specific cognitivediscoursive features come to a contradiction. Some discrepancies are revealed within
particular specifics of content, compositional, and modus features of a scientific text,
lexical representation of some scientific concepts as terms, linguistic similarities that
cause conceptual interferences, and particular discoursive traditions.
2. Sociocultural regularity. Sociocultural commitment of cognitive linguistics
(N.N. Boldyrev and O.G. Dubrovskaya) logically comes from other commitments
and principled fundamentals, takes the account of language as cognitive and social
one, and individual knowledge as an individual configuration of collective
knowledge, and states that cognitive and sociocultural regularities influence cognitive
contexts formation and function in the dimensions as static vs dynamic, collective vs
individual, and metaconceptual structure.
3. Conceptual adaptation regularity. Understanding in communication is
concerned with adaptation. The adaptation demands consistencies and inconsistencies
detecting, is ensured by language interpretation, demands mutual participants’
conceptual alignments, in particular the alignments of dominant cognitive structures,
and is manifested on conceptual and linguistic levels. Consistencies ensure
consonance; inconsistencies further cognitive activity. Interpretation ensures
conceptual adaptation accomplishment.
4. Conceptual adaptation in intercultural scientific communication. That is
specific within two cross-related contexts. They are science and culture. Both must
ensure conceptual consistencies and cause inconsistencies. The former is grounded by
the general regularities of encyclopaedic and scientific knowledge and language
acquisition and use, and cognitive-discoursive activity in communication. The latter
concerns with their specifics that are determined by the factors of a cultural language
used in communication by the participants, national-cultural traditions manifested in
their scientific knowledge, and their individual knowledge.
General knowledge of science must contribute understanding as it is the
participants’ collective knowledge but a language may cause conceptual
interferences. Subjective knowledge may cause inconsistencies but that is a factor
motivating the communicators’ cognitive-discoursive scientific activity.
Since communicators share a language, that language activates the conceptual
domains in their cognitions. Since that language is native either only for one of them
or neither of them, the interlocutors have to adapt their conceptual systems to the
means of that language, considering the need of adaptation to the set of other
discourse context conditions. Since a language influences how its users
conceptualize, categorize, and interpret information, and how they perform the
acquired knowledge in discourse, then consistencies and inconsistencies are expected
within all these processes.
From the above mentioned it follows: understanding in intercultural scientific
communication, as in any other kind of social verbal communication, is achieved by
conceptual adaptation which is ensured by consistencies and inconsistencies
detecting, and interpreting them adequately to a communicative context; external
contexts and cognitive contexts, and collective and individual language knowledge
“what” and “how” influence the success of that; in intercultural scientific
communication these contexts are science and culture.
To study the specifics of conceptual adaptation in intercultural scientific
communication practically, the levels of that adaptation should be considered within
the conceptual analysis principle “from discourse performance to conceptual sense”.
The levels are assumed: text or utterance format within its thematic context, lexicalgrammatical categorization, lexical-semantic conceptualization, cognitive contexts
content and structure formation, modus interpretation, sense inference.
Keywords: intercultural scientific communication, understanding, the context of
science and culture, conceptual adaptation, interpretation.
Introduction
Optimization of intercultural scientific communications is objectively a crucially
important actual necessity of the global world, and all and each interacting states. The
Strategy of scientific and technical development of the Russian Federation includes
the urgent objective to elaborate effective technologies of intercultural scientific
communication (Part 2, p. 2.2).
Definite problems in that sphere have been distinguished by recent scientific
investigations, in particular from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. In either
event they all come to the problem of understanding that concerns with conceptual
adaptation of the communicators who are all the members of a scientific community
but come from different cultures and speak different languages.
In spite having some problems revealed, a definite systematized theoretical
conception that would explain a conceptual basis of intercultural scientific
communication has not been introduced.
The study does not claim to introduce a complete conception though to
contribute a principle of conceptual adaptation in understanding the problem of
intercultural scientific communication.
The purpose of the study is to distinguish certain theoretical regularities of the
conceptual adaptation in intercultural scientific communication problem and infer a
principle of its conceptual analysis. The theoretical analysis method is used.
1. Actual problems of intercultural scientific communication from cognitive
linguistic perspective
Any scientific cognition is related to subjective dimension; a socially-culturally
determined subject is the source of any knowledge, including scientific knowledge
(Чернякова Н.С., 2001). Scientific knowledge may be kept and conveyed by the
means of different languages; cultural type influences the specifics of content,
compositional and modus features of a scientific text (Емузова Э.А., 2004). National
specifics of scientific knowledge influences subjects’ mutual understanding; there are
both universal and national specific features in lexical representation of some
scientific concepts (Копылова Т.Р., 2007). Science transforms the meanings of a
natural language into scientific terms (Сорокина Э.А., 2007). General scientific
traditions stipulate different language discourses equating, which causes interferences
that obstruct it (Нотина Е.А., 2007). The language collective knowledge of a
community serves a starting point for scientific cognition; the elements of everyday
knowledge are the mediators of the scientific knowledge and thus reveal the property
of cognitive potential (Дроздова Т.В., 2008).
There are a few contradictions in intercultural scientific communication between
cognitive bases of different cultures representatives, individual cognitive spaces of an
addresser and addressee, cognitive spaces of a society in different cultures, and
communicative competences of different cultures representatives (Хомутова Т.Н.,
2008). Everyday cognition and scientific cognition are interrelated and
complementary; their specifics concern terms bases (sensual reflection vs rational
acquisition) (Новодранова В.Ф., 2009). There are general and some national-cultural
features of styles of thinking in forming terms, structuring material, and representing
precedent discourse (Томская М.В., 2011). There is a problem of language
asymmetry in intercultural scientific communication that concerns with the scientificcognitive activity variant traditions in different cultures (Чернявская В.Е., 2017).
Thus, the identified features depend upon socially and culturally determined
cognitive contexts (science and culture) and must correspond with the specifics of
participants’ conceptual adaptation in communication.
2. “Sociocultural commitment of cognitive linguistics” in the aspect of
communication
There are a few basic prerequisite grounds for “sociocultural commitment”.
Cognitive commitment states that language and linguistic organization “reflect general
cognitive principles” (Evans V., 2007: 19). Generalization commitment states that there
are “common organizing principles across different language ‘systems’” which include
“common” conceptual mechanisms (ibid: 88-89). The “embodied cognition”
fundamental considers human ability to construe the world from what is perceived
psychic-physiologically, e.g. in (Lakoff, G., Johnson M., 1999), (Wilson, A. D.,
Golonka S., 2013); humans are “bodies in the mind” (Dirven R., Wolf H-G.,
Polzenhagen F., 2007: 1217). Dependence of meaning upon a context is a principled
condition of a discourse interpretation and understanding (Kamp H., Genabin J., Reyle
U., 2011). Sociocultural environment influences not the general principles of cognitive
organization but the specifics of how humans conceptualize, categorize, and objectify
their knowledge in the formats of language and culture in the process of adaptation to
life conditions (Кубрякова, Е.С., 2008). Since a subject as a source of knowledge is
always socially-culturally determined, knowledge is precisely socially-culturally
determined (Чернякова Н.С., 2001). Culture, language and thought are “basic patterns
of behaviour, discourse, and reasoning in a given community”; they “co-occur” in
ongoing experience of community members; “the cultural and linguistic forms express,
and are in turn interpreted on the basis of, cultural models”; collective knowledge is
“acquired and stored in the individual minds of the community’s members” (Dirven R.,
Wolf H-G., Polzenhagen F., 2007: 1216-1217).
“Sociocultural commitment of cognitive linguistics” is precisely introduced in
(Boldyrev N.N., Dubrovskaya O.G., 2015). It takes the account of language as
cognitive and social, and follows from the theoretical concept of context dimensions
elaboration. The commitment represents the view on cognitive contexts as static vs
dynamic, collective vs individual, and the metaconceptual structure. In static aspect
they “represent conceptual and thematic domains as cognitive models encoded by
language”; in dynamic aspect “they profile meanings” which are made by participants
“as the result of the process of selection, classification and evaluation that constitute
the cognitive-discoursive interpretant” (ibid: 181-182). Encyclopaedic and
sociocultural knowledge is presented by collective vs individual dimension; the
metaconceptual structure “encompasses ROLES, STEREOTYPES, VALUES,
NORMS, SPACE, TIME, LANGUAGE, PERFORMANCE as metaconcepts that
establish language use and discourse construction” (ibid: 182). Subject’s individual
knowledge is a collective knowledge configuration represented by a language
(Болдырев Н.Н., 2017: 11), (Дубровская О.Г., 2017: 90).
Thus, general cognitive regularities and collective knowledge contribute
understanding in communication; specific features determined by different cultural,
social, and individual experiences influence the character and degree of
understanding.
3. Conceptual adaptation from a perspective of cognitive linguistics
Understanding is stipulated by certain consistencies between language
repertoires and cognitive schemas of communicators (Филлмор Ч., 1983: 111). Similar
cognitive models of discoursive events ground the similarity of communicative
discourse prognostication, which ensures a success in communication (Цурикова Л.В.,
2003: 174-175). A principled regularity of taxonomy is that from three levels of
semantic categorization the basic one is “salient” (Taylor J.R., 2008: 48), is “the
cornerstone” (Roach E., 1978: 14) as it is “appropriate for using, thinking about, or
naming an object in most situations in which the object occurs” (ibid: 43).
Communicators’ common world views further a collective intention to an action (Kaal
B., 2014).
Verbal communication considers the use of all acquired by men knowledge
about the world and refers thus to the conceptual interaction of communicators that
means mutual adaptation of actual conceptual content by the participants (Болдырев
Н.Н., 2017 (a): 13). The latter concerns conceptual and linguistic levels. The
interaction on the conceptual level considers: consistency between participants’
structural-content dominants and between their concrete cognitive contexts; adequate
evaluation of each other’s conceptual systems and knowledge; possession of
collective knowledge and language experience of structuring and representing it;
knowledge of meaning forming principles and mechanisms (Болдырев Н.Н., 2012),
(Болдырев Н.Н., 2017 (a)). Linguistic level considers an adequate use of the lexical
and grammatical means appropriate to a particular discourse, which would ensure
necessary cognitive contexts activation and prevent wrong or multiple interpretation
(Болдырев Н.Н., 2017 (a)).
Success of human interaction in verbal communication in particular depends
upon the mutual alignment of interlocutors’ dominant cognitive structures (Болдырев
Н.Н., Григорьева В.С., 2018: 23). Five cognitive dominants are argued as main
principles of verbal interaction organization: thematic (the choice of mental structures
and language representations), subjective (the roles of communicators and the
individual configurations of their collective knowledge), sociocultural (collective
knowledge formed in the context of a definite society or culture), instrumental (the
choice of types of utterances and language means for strategies and tactics), and
intentional (interlocutors’ intentions).
Interaction and structure are introduced as two main principles of human
communication understanding (Beebe S.A., 2015). Both are inherent: the former
makes communication as “the process of acting information” possible; the latter
organizes information in a message (ibid: 19-20). In correspondence to the message,
structure determines general collective knowledge, and interaction reveals its
specifics (ibid: 21). Successful communication needs a balance between the structure
and interaction (ibid: 20). That depends upon identifying similarities and differences.
Similarities in communication (principle of structure) determine the needed
predictability and lead to more symmetry; differences (the principle of interaction)
determine the predictability decreasing and lead to more asymmetry (ibid: 21-22).
“Meaning, then, results when human interpret the structure and interaction of
communication message” (ibid: 22).
Interpretation as a process refers to the gradual extension or constriction of a
current set of interpreter’s hypotheses as for a conceived structure (a resulting
interpretation) of an object interpreting (e.g. an utterance); the extension results from
a single hypothetical interpretation splitting, and the constriction results from a
hypothetical interpretation failing to match the alternatives correctly (Демьянков
В.З., 1981: 369). Construal and interpretation should be distinguished for they have
their specifics. Construal is a human “ability to conceive and portray the same
situation in alternative ways” (Langacker R.W., 2010: 31) or “our manifest capacity
for conceptualizing the same situation in alternative ways” which is “inescapable”
(ibid: 34). It inherently concerns with any knowledge occurring. A unique function of
language is interpretation; that ensures any operations with knowledge can be
performed by an individual in the purpose of further communicative conveying or
activating that knowledge in an addressee’s cognition; in that sense interpretation
refers to the language cognitive activity of an individual that makes his subjective
understanding of an object be revealed in its results (Болдырев Н.Н., 2011: 11). It is
stipulated by the direct dependency on cognitive processes of conceptualization and
categorization and consists of variable relations of encyclopaedic and language
knowledge, and interpreting and interpreted concepts, on systemic and functional levels
of language representation (ibid: 16).
Findings
1. Understanding regularity. The above represented problems of intercultural
scientific communication come to the general problem of understanding. Understanding
is stipulated by general cognitive-discoursive regularities of knowledge acquisition and
use. These regularities refer to the general cognitive organization of human knowledge
and the specific organization of collective scientific knowledge that forms definite
general ground for all people of science and for the members of a scientific community
understanding.
Difficulties of understanding are revealed when certain specific cognitivediscoursive features come to a contradiction. Some discrepancies are revealed within
particular specifics of content, compositional, and modus features of a scientific text,
lexical representation of some scientific concepts as terms, linguistic similarities that
cause conceptual interferences, and particular discoursive traditions.
2. Sociocultural regularity. Sociocultural commitment of cognitive linguistics
formulated by N.N. Boldyrev and O.G. Dubrovskaya logically comes from other
commitments and principled fundamentals. They are cognitive commitment,
generalization commitment, the principled “embodied” cognition, context
dependence of meaning, sociocultural determinacy of our knowledge. Sociocultural
commitment takes the account of language as cognitive and social one, and individual
knowledge as an individual configuration of collective knowledge, and states that
cognitive and sociocultural regularities influence cognitive contexts formation and
function in the dimensions as static vs dynamic, collective vs individual, and
metaconceptual structure.
3. Conceptual adaptation regularity. Understanding in communication is
concerned with adaptation. The adaptation demands consistencies and inconsistencies
detecting, is ensured by language interpretation, demands mutual participants’
conceptual alignments, in particular the alignments of dominant cognitive structures
(thematic, subjective, sociocultural, instrumental, and intentional), and is manifested
on conceptual (cognitive contexts and dominants, conceptual evaluation, collective
knowledge “what” and “how” possession) and linguistic (lexical-grammatical means
adequate to a context) levels. Consistencies ensure consonance; inconsistencies
further cognitive activity. Interpretation ensures conceptual adaptation
accomplishment.
Discussion
Conceptual adaptation in intercultural scientific communication regularity
concerns the following. Conceptual adaptation in intercultural scientific
communication is specific within two cross-related contexts. They are science and
culture. Both must ensure conceptual consistencies and cause inconsistencies. The
former is grounded by the general regularities of encyclopaedic and scientific
knowledge and language acquisition and use, and cognitive-discoursive activity in
communication. The latter concerns with their specifics that are determined by the
factors of a cultural language used in communication by the participants, national-
cultural traditions manifested in their scientific knowledge, and their individual
knowledge.
General knowledge of science must contribute understanding as it is the
participants’ collective knowledge but a language may cause conceptual
interferences. Subjective knowledge may cause inconsistencies but that is a factor
motivating the communicators’ cognitive-discoursive scientific activity.
Since communicators share a language, that language activates the conceptual
domains in their cognitions. Since that language is native either only for one of them
or neither of them, the interlocutors have to adapt their conceptual systems to the
means of that language, considering the need of adaptation to the set of other
discourse context conditions. Since a language influences how its users
conceptualize, categorize, and interpret information, and how they perform the
acquired knowledge in discourse, then consistencies and inconsistencies are expected
within all these processes.
From the above mentioned it follows: understanding in intercultural scientific
communication, as in any other kind of social verbal communication, is achieved by
conceptual adaptation which is ensured by consistencies and inconsistencies
detecting, and interpreting them adequately to a communicative context; external
contexts and cognitive contexts, and collective and individual language knowledge
“what” and “how” influence the success of that; in intercultural scientific
communication these contexts are science and culture.
To study the specifics of conceptual adaptation in intercultural scientific
communication practically, the levels of that adaptation should be considered within
the conceptual analysis principle “from discourse performance to conceptual sense”.
The levels are assumed: text or utterance format within its thematic context, lexicalgrammatical categorization, lexical-semantic conceptualization, cognitive contexts
content and structure formation, modus interpretation, sense inference.
References
Болдырев, Н.Н. 2011. Интерпретирующая функция языка. Вестник
Челябинского государственного университета 33 (248): 11–16.
Болдырев, Н.Н. 2012. Проблемы концептуального взаимодействия в процессе
вербальной коммуникации. Когнитивные исследования языка 11: 39–45.
Болдырев, Н.Н. 2017. Интерпретирующая функция когнитивного
контекста. Язык, сознание, коммуникация 57: 32–42.
Болдырев, Н.Н. 2017 (а). Проблемы вербальной коммуникации в
когнитивном контексте. Вопросы когнитивной лингвистики 2: 5–14.
Болдырев, Н.Н. Григорьева, В.С. 2018. Когнитивные доминанты речевого
взаимодействия. Вопросы когнитивной лингвистики 4: 15–24.
Демьянков, В.З. 1981. Прагматические основы интерпретации высказывания.
Изв. АН СССР. Сер. литературы и языка 4: 368–377.
Дроздова, Т.В. 2008.Элементы обыденного знания в научном
экономическом тексте. Когнитивные исследования языка 3: 94–103.
Дубровская, О.Г. 2017. Социокультурная когниция и концептуальные
основания метадискурса: что может предложить когнитивная лингвистика в
изучении человека и его среды. Язык, сознание, коммуникация 57: 85–96.
Емузова, Э.А. 2004. Межкультурная коммуникация в сфере науки:
Автореферат дис. ... канд. филол. наук : 10.02.19. Кабард.-Балкар. гос. ун-т им.
Х.М. Бербекова, Нальчик, 24 c.
Копылова, Т.Р. 2007. Национальная специфика научного знания (на
примере концепта КОММУНИКАЦИЯ в русской и испанской лингвистике).
Вестник Челябинского государственного университета: 8: 26–31.
Кубрякова, Е.С. 2008. О соотношении языка и действительности и связи
этой проблемы с трактовкой понятия знания. Когнитивные исследования языка
3: 11–24.
Новодранова, В.Ф. 2009. Репрезентация научного и обыденного знания в
научной терминологии. Когнитивные исследования языка 2: 72–76.
Нотина, Е.А. 2007. Межязыковая научная коммуникация и
сопоставительное изучение языков (переводческий аспект). Вестник
Российского университета дружбы народов 4: 55–58.
Сорокина, Э.А. 2007. Когнитивные аспекты лексического проектирования
(к основам когнитивного терминоведения). Изд-во МГОУ, Москва, 234 с.
Томская, М.В. 2011. Национально-культурный аспект научной
коммуникации. Вестник МГЛУ 19 (625): 49–57.
Чернякова, Н.С. 2001. Наука как феномен культуры. Изд-во РГПУ им. А.
И. Герцена, Санкт-Петербург, 104 с.
Чернявская, В.Е. 2017. Научный дискурс. Выдвижение результата как
коммуникативная и языковая проблема. URSS: ЛЕНАНД, Москва, 144 с.
Хомутова, Т.Н. 2008. Научная коммуникация: межкультурный аспект.
Вестник Челябинского государственного университета 23: 143–150.
Цурикова, 2003. Л.В. Анализ межкультурной коммуникации: когнитивнопрагматический подход. Вестник ВГУ. Серия Гуманитарные науки 2: 162–182.
Филлмор, Ч. 1983. Основные проблемы лексической семантики. Новое в
зарубежной лингвистике 12: 74–122.
Beebe, S.A. 2015. Structure-Interaction Theory: conceptual, contextual and
strategic influences on human communication. Russian Journal of Linguistics,
Vestnik RUDN 4: 17–32.
Boldyrev, N.N., Dubrovskaya, O.G. 2015. Sociocultural Commitment of
Cognitive Linguistics via dimentions of context. Ilha do Desterro 69 (1): 173–182.
Dirven, R., Wolf, H-G., Polzenhagen, F. Inc. 2007. Cognitive Linguistics and
Cultural Studies. In The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. D. Geerarts and
H. Cuyckens (Eds.), Oxford University Press, pp. 1203–1221.
Evans, V. 2007. A Glossary of Cognitive Linguistics. Edinburg University Press.
239 pp.
Kaal, B. 2014. Cross-cultural Discourse-Space Analysis. Discourse and Practice
conference: Russia 2014. Moscow.
Kamp, H., Genabin, J., Reyle, U. 2011. Discourse Representation Theory. In
Handbook of Philosophical Logic. D. Gabbay and F. Guenthner (Eds.), Springer
Science+Business Media B.V., Volume 15. pp. 125–394.
Lakoff, G., Johnson, M. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh: embodied mind and its
challenge to Western thought. G. Lakoff, M. Johnson (Eds.), Basic Books, New
York, 590 pp.
Langacker, R.W. 2010. Conceptualization, Symbolization, and Grammar. In
International Journal of Cognitive Linguistics. Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
Hauppauge, New York, Volume 1, Issue 1, pp. 31–63.
Roach, E. 1978. Principles of Categorization. In Cognition and Categorization. E.
Roach, B. B. Lloyd (Eds.), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, Hillsdale, New
Jersey, pp. 27–48.
Taylor, J.R. 2008. Prototype in cognitive Linguistics. In Handbook of Cognitive
Linguistics and SLA. P. Robinson, N.C. Ellis (Eds.), Routledge, New York, pp. 39–65.
Wilson, A.D., Golonka, S. 2013. Embodied cognition is not what you think it is.
Frontiers in psychology 4: 58.