“Now that the magic is gone” or toward cognitive analysis of verbal/co-verbal communication

Abstract

The paper addresses the problem created by the gap between Cognitive Linguistics usage-based theoretical commitment and the lack of empirical cognitive research on live communication. Its primary objective is to analyse advanced models of cognition in an attempt to outline basic methodological principles of cognitive analysis of verbal/co-verbal communication and, building on these principles, define the workable units and instruments of such analysis. I propose the key unit of cognitive analysis of verbal/co-verbal communication: an inter-subjective act, i.e. an inter-action including at least two verbal / co-verbal utterances (one initial and the other responsive) embedded in the complex dynamic psychic experiential context ‘shared’ by the communicants focusing attention on the same utterance as a perceptual stimulus. Such perceptual stimulus triggers parallel conscious / nonconscious inference processes involving cognition, volition, and affect to issue a command of a motivated, goal-oriented communicative and/or (immediate or postponed) social action. I also suggest analysing the process of the generation of meaning in communication in terms of inference. An inference is viewed as both a natural emergent product of conscious / nonconscious interplay of volition, cognition, and affect, triggering a communicative and/or social action, and also a tool of discovering this key structure of human psychic experience in cognitive linguistic analysis of communication.