Candidates construct vantages

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Candidates Construct Vantages ADAM GŁAZ

A major tenet of Cognitive Linguistics is the perspectival nature of language. Given a sample of linguistic usage plus information about the pertinent circumstances in which it was produced, one should be able to reconstruct the mental position of the speaker, assumed for making a projection of a given scene or event, as well as correlating this position with the circumstances. I attempt to perform such reconstruction by couching an analysis of two political speeches within the terms of Robert E. MacLaury’s (1995, 1997, 2000, 2002) Vantage Theory.

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Vantage Theory

At a time when there is no shortage of descriptive models, to propose one more may seem superfluous. Yet, Vantage Theory (henceforth also VT), an off-mainstream cognitivist account of categorization mainly in the color domain, is a model that gives one hope for substantial gains from the endeavor. Although in a preliminary form it has been available in print for almost a quarter of a century (MacLaury 1986; application to specific data but with little theoretical apparatus in MacLaury 1991), and in a more complete form for about fifteen years (roughly since MacLaury 1995), its impact on linguistics has been relatively inconspicuous. Admittedly, it has been used, often with substantial modification, in a variety of linguistic analyses (cf. especially a special issue of Language Sciences, 2002, vol. 24 (5–6), as well as another, forthcoming special issue of the journal), but remains largely unknown and possibly unattractive to a wider community of cognitive linguists because of its rather complex theoretical side and non-

Meaning, Form & Body. Fey Parrill, Vera Tobin, and Mark Turner (eds.). Copyright © 2010, ATE CSLI Publications.

ADAM GŁAZ

obvious application to domains other than color.1 The aim of the present proposal is to show that VT can shed light on questions of the speaker’s/conceptualizer’s perspective or point of view (for the sake of the discussion at hand I use the two terms interchangeably; cf. end of this section for more comment). More specifically, I will attempt to show the connection between two aspects of discourse, its content and form, and the processes of conceptualization (derivable from those of categorization). The processes are modeled in specific ways as constructs called vantages (cf. below). Although space limitations prevent me from comparing VT with other cognitivist accounts of perspectivization, I do not necessarily view the latter as worse or inadequate. Rather, VT is claimed to be compatible with other cognitivist models, though enriching them with novel observations 2 and more directly linked with what it views as the very essence of categorization. It allows the researcher to attribute linguistic behavior to independently established cognitive processes of non-discrimination, synthesis and analysis, and those to yet more fundamental processes of recognizing and emphasizing similarity and difference (cf. below). In short, it models links between linguistic and cognitive behavior. X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X

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Data

In the remainder of the paper I attempt to apply the descriptive framework of VT3 to specific data, namely to one speech delivered by each of the US presidential candidates in the 2008 elections: by Barack Obama on January 29, 2008 in El Dorado, Kansas, and by John McCain on May 15 the same year in Columbus, Ohio. More precisely, I will concentrate on the central parts of each speech, which have the same function: to sketch the policy of the given candidate when and if he is elected president (see Appendix). After the analysis I will try and relate its results with the social makeup of the communities in the two places. X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.

1A list of these applications can be found in Głaz and Allan forthcoming. 2A comparison of Vantage Theory and Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar is offered in Głaz 2009. Some ideas on how VT can enrich our understanding of certain processes typically explained within the theory of blending are offered in Głaz 2007. 3In fact, only a small portion of the theory is used for immediate purposes here.

CANDIDATES CONSTRUCT VANTAGES

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Final Comments

The two cases discussed here are relatively straightforward examples of the viewing modes and their arrangements. However, because a huge proportion of language data is “messy,” a more complex VT formalism is required to accommodate the “messiness.” Indeed, I have presented the framework in a rather skeletal form and omitted for reasons of space such notions as types of the dominant–recessive pattern, frames, coordinate stress, and many others (for details see MacLaury 1997). Besides, the model has had a history of adaptation and modification, various authors proposing such ideas as, among others, multidirectional vantage development (Preston 1993; Fabiszak forthcoming), a feeding relationship between vantages (Głaz 2006), or complex configurations of subvantages, tables and frames (Allan 2002). While it is essential to spell out the details of a linguistics-adapted descriptive apparatus of Vantage Theory, it is perhaps more imperative for us at this stage to pinpoint what VT contributes to our understanding of perspective and point of view in discourse. I believe that the analysis above, sketchy as it is, sheds light on three areas. First, a VT-based analysis provides tools for linking the content of discourse to perspectival projections of the speaker (called vantages) as complex arrangements of cognitions. This involves, as a component that is as vital as it is insufficient, an account of the speaker’s mental point of view. It also links vantage construction to the social context of the speech event. Second, it shows how the projections (vantages) are structured internally and how their components (viewing modes) arise through the dynamics of the similarity–difference cline. It shows how the mental operations involving non-discrimination, synthesis, and analysis coexist in a coherent manner. Third, VT links categorization to linguistic behavior and the latter to our fundamental experience of spatiotemporal orientation. Thus, we are offered a framework which is multidisciplinary, cognitively grounded, and deeply embodied. The present analysis is an attempt to take a practical step by applying the framework to language.

References Allan, K. 2002. Vantage Theory, VT2, and Number. Language Sciences 24, 5– 6:679–703. Einstein, A. 2000. Relativity: The Special and General Theory. Transl. Robert W. Lawson. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

ADAM GŁAZ Fabiszak, M. forthcoming. An Application of MacLaury’s Vantage Theory to Abstract Categories: Identity and the Process of Categorisation. Language Sciences. Special issue on Vantage Theory: Developments and Extensions. Głaz, A. 2006. Beyond Colour: Modelling Language in Colour-like Ways. Progress in Colour Studies. Volume I. Language and Culture, ed. C. P. Biggam & Ch. J. Kay, 73–87. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Głaz, A. 2007. Vantage Theory: A Newcomer to the Cognitivist Scene? Language and Meaning, ed. M. Fabiszak, 91–112. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Głaz, A. 2009. Cognition, Categorization and Language: Cognitive Grammar Meets Vantage Theory. Rice Working Papers in Linguistics 1:242–59. www.ruf.rice.edu/~rls/workingpapers.html Głaz, A., Allan, K. forthcoming. Introduction. Language Sciences. Special issue on Vantage Theory: Developments and Extensions. MacLaury, R. E. 1986. Color in Mesoamerica. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. MacLaury, R. E. 1991. Social and Cognitive Motivations of Change: Measuring Variability in Color Semantics. Language 67–1: 34–62. MacLaury, R. E. 1995. Vantage Theory. Language and the Cognitive Construal of the World (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 82.), ed. J. R. Taylor & R. E. MacLaury, 231–76. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. MacLaury, R. E. 1997. Color and Cognition in Mesoamerica: Constructing Categories as Vantages. Austin: University of Texas Press. MacLaury, R. E. 2000. Linguistic Relativity and the Plasticity of Categorization. Explorations in Linguistic Relativity (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 199.), ed. M. Pütz & M. Verspoor, 251–93. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. MacLaury, R. E. 2002. Introducing Vantage Theory. Language Sciences 24, 5–6: 493–536. MacLaury, R. E. 2003. Vantage Theory: Categorization as Spacetime Analogy. Ms. Preston, D. 1993. The Uses of Folk Linguistics. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 3:159–259. Rosch, E. 1978. Principles of Categorization. Cognition and Categorization, ed. E. Rosch and B. B. Lloyd, 27–48. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Zadeh, L. 1965. Fuzzy Sets. Information and Control 8:338–353.