The Context of Experience & Memory Systems |
ABSTRACT There are various terms for the context of a communication. Communication requires a shared field of experience. Two people cannot have the same experience. To what extent can experiences be shared? Experiences are stored in memory as mental models. The working memory combines experiences in mental spaces. Contexts require contextualizing. |
There are various terms for the context of a communication.
Modern linguistics is said to begin with Ferdinand de Saussure who introduced the terms signifier/signified for a word and its "referent." In linguistic discourse, "referent" is commonly used to name our experiences of the world.
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As Pierre Guiraud (following Roman Jokobson's conception of it) believes that the referential function of language is "the basis of all communication" (6). The referent is sometimes called the "world" or "experience." In many communication texts, the phrase "field of experience" is used.
Communication requires a shared field of experience.
That communication requires a shared field of experience is generally regarded as axiomatic as is the acknowledgement that experiences are only partially shared. But what counts as sharing an experience? If a person tells someone that "The Cubs lost yesterday," the sentence can only be understood if the person addressed knows that the Cubs are a baseball team. The sentence can be understood by someone who never went to a baseball game. David Lee uses the word "wicket" in a parallel example:
If one were asked by a non-native speaker of English what the word wicket meant, one might consult a dictionary for help. The Concise Oxford Dictionary gives the following definition: 'wicket: one set of three stumps and two bails'. But how much would this mean to a non-native speaker of English who knew nothing of the game of cricket? (Cognitive Linguistics, 8)
In other words, experiences are shared only to the extent that they are parts of persons' cognitive frameworks.
Two people cannot have the same experience.
An important factor in thinking about sharing experiences is that two people cannot have exactly the same experience. Pursuing the baseball example a bit further, we can consider two ardent Cubs fans attending a game together. They would not have the identical experience of that game. Their perspectives would necessarily differ to some degree. For example, one fan may have played professional baseball. His experience of the Cub's game would differ in many respects from his wife's. Adding that the second fan was a woman to whom the first was married suggests more than minor differences in their perspectives on the game.
In An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method, James Paul Gee contends that
When we speak or write we always take a particular perspective on what the "world" is like. This involves us in taking perspectives on what is "normal" and not; what is "acceptable" and not; what is "right" and not; what is "real" and not; what is the "way things are" and not; what is the "ways things ought to be" and not; what is "possible" and not; what "people like us" or "people like them" do and don't do; and so on and so forth, again through a nearly endless list. But these are all, too, perspectives on how we believe, wish, or act as if potential "social goods" are, or ought to be, distributed.
In his view, "the context of an utterance (oral or written) is everything in the material, mental, personal, interactional, social, cultural, and historical situation in which the utterance was made" (54). This is consistent with the concept of framing in cognitive linguistics (see David Lee's delineation of "perspective" (2ff.) and "frame" (8ff.) in his Cognitive Linguistics.)
To what extent can experiences be shared?
If we ask: "to what extent can experiences be shared?," one answer is to the extent that the interlocutors share cognitive frames. Considering encoding and decoding in the context of research on memory, it becomes apparent that these cognitive processes are active in sharing experiences. In "Encoding and Retrieval of Information," Scott Brown and Fergus Craik invoke Paivio's conception of dual-coding in the formation of a "memory code" which in their view includes the physical features of an object or scene and a symbolic code linked to verbal expressions about similar objects or scenes. What is shared, in this view, is the aspects of the mental model (frame) in the individual memories of the interlocutors that match to a sufficient degree that comprehension is possible by "reference" to the mental models invoked and evoked by the expressions. (Brown & Craik, 93ff.)
Experiences are stored in memory as mental models.
From the perspective of cognitive science, our ability to comprehend experiences depends upon the "mental models" of it that we store in our memories. "The models are constructed in working memory as a result of perception, the comprehension of discourse, or imagination" and they can be revised to take into account subsequent experiences (Johnson-Laird, "Mental Models," The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, 525.) Our understanding of experiences "appears to depend on the construction of mental models" (526).
Ruth M. J. Byrne in her Blackwell Dictionary of Cognitive Psychology, "mental models," notes that "Discourse rarely provides us with a fully explicit description of a situation; instead we appear to make 'bridging' inferences whose conclusions have their source in a model of the situation" (224).
The working memory combines experiences in mental spaces.
"Mental spaces theory focuses on the subtle relationships among elements in the various mental models that speakers construct" The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences on Fauconnier's "mental spaces" (134). In Fauconnier's view, mental spaces are built up during an ongoing discourse and revised as the discourse proceeds (Mental Spaces, 16). The persons participating in the discourse construct mental models of the experiences which are "referents" in the conversation in working memory (in a mental space).
In their "foreword" to Mental Spaces, George Lakoff and Eve Sweetser write that "Fauconnier posits a theory in which reference has a dimension of structure all its own, which is simply representable using mental spaces, connectors across the spaces, and a few general principles" based on "the capacities of the human mind" (ix).
In the light of these studies, we can conclude that "referents" are mental models of experience.
Contexts require contextualizing.
To sum up the conclusion of the argument in this entry, we can say that "contexts require contextualizing," a cognitive ability.
jjs
Notes:
.David Holmes has a convincing argument that in mediated communication the contexts are not experiences of the world, they are virtual experiences that do not match face-to-face communication. (Communication Theory: Media, Technology, and Society, 139-140.) However, the circumstance that in mediate communication the experiences are virtual rather than actual does not alter the view of context offered in this entry other than to add the distinction virtual/actual.
.Byrne cites A. Garnham's 1987 Mental models as representations of discourse and text (Chichester: Ellis Horwood) as support for her assertion. .
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September 4, 2007
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