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Cognitive Grammar and mind attribution in the language and literature classroom Dr Louise Nuttall University of Huddersfield [email protected]

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Page 1: Cognitive Grammar and mind attribution in the language and ...… · COGNITIVE GRAMMAR AND L1 ENGLISH TEACHING • Cognitive linguistics as a means of teaching grammar that is contextualised

Cognitive Grammar and mind attribution in the language and literature classroom

Dr Louise Nuttall University of Huddersfield

[email protected]

Page 2: Cognitive Grammar and mind attribution in the language and ...… · COGNITIVE GRAMMAR AND L1 ENGLISH TEACHING • Cognitive linguistics as a means of teaching grammar that is contextualised

POST-16 ENGLISH LANGUAGE/ LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

AQA English Language

AQA English Language and Literature OCR English Language and Literature

OCR English Language

Linguistic choices as creating meanings and representations

Page 3: Cognitive Grammar and mind attribution in the language and ...… · COGNITIVE GRAMMAR AND L1 ENGLISH TEACHING • Cognitive linguistics as a means of teaching grammar that is contextualised

COGNITIVE GRAMMAR AND L1 ENGLISH TEACHING

•  Cognitive linguistics as a means of teaching grammar that is contextualised and concept-led

(Giovanelli 2014, 2016; Giovanelli and Mason 2015; Trousdale 2016; Cushing forthcoming).

•  Cognitive linguistic frameworks not explicitly taught, but used by teachers as a tool to think with in lesson planning:

‘The explicit study of the operations of language that grammatics involves becomes an opportunity for the teacher to move beyond seeing it as a tool to facilitate simple descriptions of structure or of a series of rules – it becomes ‘a way of using grammar to think with’ (Halliday 2002: 416)’.

(Giovanelli 2014: 36-7)

•  How might the basic principles of Cognitive Grammar be used by students as a tool to think with when analysing the representations created by texts?

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CLAUSE STRUCTURE IN COGNITIVE GRAMMAR

•  Linguisticchoicesattheleveloftheclausereflectdifferentconstrualsofanevent,ordifferencesintheprofiling,specificity,dynamicityandprominenceofparticipantsinanactionchain(Langacker2008).

AGENT PATIENT

Mrs Verloc attacked her husband.

AGENT-LIKE

PATIENT-LIKE

Mrs Verloc heard her husband.

AGENT-LIKE

PATIENT ‘a clenched hand holding a carving knife’

AGENT-LIKE

‘it flickered up and down’

PATIENT ‘The knife was already planted in his breast’.

‘Mrs Verloc is somehow not really responsible for what she does’ (Kennedy 1982: 86) ‘There seems no connection between her physical actions and the mental processes involved, as if she is driven by a force which she is unable to bring under control’ (88)

Canonical event construal

Page 5: Cognitive Grammar and mind attribution in the language and ...… · COGNITIVE GRAMMAR AND L1 ENGLISH TEACHING • Cognitive linguistics as a means of teaching grammar that is contextualised

MIND ATTRIBUTION IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

•  ToM, mentalizing, mind reading, mind attribution..

Our capacity to attribute mental states such as intentions, desires, beliefs and emotions to other entities.

Influenced by our perceptions of entities: ‘mind is in the eye of the perceiver’ (Waytz, Morewedge and Epley 2010).

What kinds of cues trigger/inhibit this capacity?

Page 6: Cognitive Grammar and mind attribution in the language and ...… · COGNITIVE GRAMMAR AND L1 ENGLISH TEACHING • Cognitive linguistics as a means of teaching grammar that is contextualised

FACTORS AFFECTING MIND ATTRIBUTION:

Features of participants

Perceived similarity to ourselves Group membership (individual vs. member)

Objectification (whole vs body part)

Features of action •  Nature of energy source (self-propelled vs. caused)

•  Presence of a goal (goal-directed vs. non-goal directed) •  Nature of trajectory (irregular vs regular)

•  Pace of trajectory (humanlike vs. non-humanlike)

(Premack & Premack, 1997; Kozak et al., 2006; Morewedge et al., 2007; Lougnan et al., 2010; Waytz & Young, 2012; Morewedge et al., 2013…)

Schematic knowledge Motivations

(Waytz, Morewedge et al., 2010; Waytz, Gray et al., 2010)

TOP-DOWN

BOTTOM-UP

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MIND ATTRIBUTION AND INTERPRETATION

Moral judgements of participants:

•  The attribution of mental states such as intentions and planning to individuals correlates with judgements of their blame/responsibility as moral agents.

•  The attribution of mental states such as feelings and conscious awareness to individuals correlates with judgements as to their rights as moral patients.

(Waytz, Gray, Epley and Wenger, 2010; Gray, Young and Waytz, 2012)

Page 8: Cognitive Grammar and mind attribution in the language and ...… · COGNITIVE GRAMMAR AND L1 ENGLISH TEACHING • Cognitive linguistics as a means of teaching grammar that is contextualised

CLASSROOM APPLICATION: PILOT STUDY

•  Workshop for mixed ability group of 26 Y12 and Y13 students (aged 16-18).

•  Studying A-level English Language (AQA), with previous experience of analysing texts as representations and grammatical analysis.

•  Invited to take part as enrichment and extra practice.

Page 9: Cognitive Grammar and mind attribution in the language and ...… · COGNITIVE GRAMMAR AND L1 ENGLISH TEACHING • Cognitive linguistics as a means of teaching grammar that is contextualised

LANGUAGE AS MENTAL REPRESENTATION

Three descriptions of an event:

1.  Seagull attacks man

2.  Man viciously attacked

3.  Crazed seagulls attack

Which image goes with each description?

A

C? B? A?

C B

Page 10: Cognitive Grammar and mind attribution in the language and ...… · COGNITIVE GRAMMAR AND L1 ENGLISH TEACHING • Cognitive linguistics as a means of teaching grammar that is contextualised

DRAW YOUR MENTAL REPRESENTATION

A: The man kicked a badger.

•  Active voice - ‘The man’ = active participant as subject

B: The badger was kicked.

•  Passive voice – ‘The badger’ = passive participant as subject

C: The man kicked.

•  Active voice - ‘The man’ =active participant as subject, no object.

How did you mentally represent this event and its participants?

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MIND READING IN PSYCHOLOGY

What happened in the video?

à When we watch these moving shapes we give them thoughts, feelings, intentions and desires.

à Whenever we mentally represent the actions and events described in language, we do the same thing for the participants

H E I D E R A N D S I M M E L ( 1 9 4 4 ) ‘ A N E X P E R I M E N TA L S T U D Y O F A P PA R E N T B E H AV I O U R ’

Intentions Desires Blame?

feelings pain Sympathy?

Page 12: Cognitive Grammar and mind attribution in the language and ...… · COGNITIVE GRAMMAR AND L1 ENGLISH TEACHING • Cognitive linguistics as a means of teaching grammar that is contextualised

TV ADVERT FOR ROYAL NAVY RECRUITMENT (2013)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFuQP_4zRiI

Page 13: Cognitive Grammar and mind attribution in the language and ...… · COGNITIVE GRAMMAR AND L1 ENGLISH TEACHING • Cognitive linguistics as a means of teaching grammar that is contextualised

You’re born. You cry. You grow. You learn. You change. You change. You pull. You pull. You push. You pause. You think. You start. You learn. You fly. You chase. You fly. You save. You meet. You greet. You hush. You go. You chase. You click. You click. You pull. You pause. You help rise find hunt save shout shoot learn live. A life without limits. Search navy jobs online.

Subject (pronoun) + verb

No objects for verbs - second participant?

Change in this pattern at the end ‘You help rise find hunt save shout shoot learn live’

Verbs only!

TEXT ANALYSIS

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THE STUDENT ROOM: ‘SHARE YOUR WORST LEARNER DRIVER EXPERIENCE’

How do grammatical choices contribute to your mental representations of these driving experiences?

For each clause describing a driving incident, how are you invited to mentally represent the event and its participants?

(http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/english/AQA-77021-SIN.PDF)

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TEXT ANALYSIS 2

‘Funny or horrific stories’

•  I had a guy walk into the side of my car’…

•  ’why you would walk into the side of a moving car!’

•  They ended up being pulled over by two police cars.

•  Being stuck behind one…

•  ‘the car was sill moving’

•  ‘I braked, stalled and drifted helpless’

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INITIAL FINDINGS? Student feedback:

‘I learned not just to look at a word (e.g. modal verb). I feel a lot more confident.’

‘I understood very well and liked the use of diagrams to explain active and passive voice.’

‘It helps me to analyse texts on a deeper level that allows me to have a stronger analysis.’

‘It helped me to think more deeply about how representations can be created.’

‘It was easy to create a mental picture.’

The basic ideas underpinning cognitive linguistics might be usefully applied to help teach existing curricula and to help students engage with the effects of grammar in context.

Page 17: Cognitive Grammar and mind attribution in the language and ...… · COGNITIVE GRAMMAR AND L1 ENGLISH TEACHING • Cognitive linguistics as a means of teaching grammar that is contextualised

SELECTED REFERENCES

•  Cushing, I. (forthcoming) “ Suddenly, I am part of the poem”: texts as worlds, reader-response and grammar in teaching poetry, English in Education.

•  Giovanelli, M. (2014) Teaching Grammar, Structure and Meaning: Exploring Theory and Practice for Post-16 English Language Teachers, London: Routledge.

•  Giovanelli, M., & Mason, J. (2015) “Well i don’t feel that’: Schemas, worlds and authentic reading in the classroom. English in Education, 49(1): 41–55.

•  Gray, K., Young, L. & Waytz, A. (2012) ‘Mind perception is the essence of morality’ Psychological Inquiry, 23(2), 101–124.

•  Heider, F. & Simmel, M. (1944) ‘An experimental study of apparent behaviour’, American Journal of Psychology, 57: 243–259.

•  Langacker, R. W. (2008) Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.

•  Trousdale, G. (2016) Cognitive linguistics. In M. Giovanelli & D. Clayton (Eds.), Knowing About Language (pp. 114–124). London: Routledge.

•  Waytz, A., Gray, K., Epley, N., & Wegner, D. M. (2010) ‘Causes and consequences of mind perception’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences14: 383–388.