Models of Social Situation Concepts in the Scope of Perceptual Designations

Abstract.

MODELS OF SOCIAL SITUATION CONCEPTS IN THE SCOPE OF PERCEPTUAL DESIGNATIONS

Oleh Demenchuk

Department of Romance and Germanic Philology, Rivne State University of Humanities, Rivne, Ukraine.

Abstract

Background: Focusing on a dynamic conceptualization of the world of discourse (of a certain situation or its fragment), the approach declares a new conception of linguistic items’ semantics modelling. It is posited that the content of a linguistic item is arranged through a sampling of a polycentric model, structured as a set of alternative, hierarchically established semantic dimensions. The approach accords with the assumption on a multidimensional nature of cognition modelling, as well as with the theoretical premises on how multidimensional situations are modeled.

Purpose: The article focuses on linguistic conceptualization of person’s social space. The study aims at characterizing the models of social situation concepts, represented by perceptual designations in the Ukrainian, Polish and English languages. The elaborated models are supposed to corroborate the thesis that perceptual space categorization is determined by social space parameters.

Results: The analysis provided in the paper proceeds from the assumption that a social situation is construed based on the conceptualization strategies a designator resorts to in their «elaborating» (identifying, estimating, associating, etc.) the situation. Each strategy determines the resultant confi­guration of a situation concept, revealing various aspects (characteristics) of the situation participants. Such an approach accords with an extended interpretation of conceptualization, which is supposed to include both entrenched and new concepts, sensory-motor experience, social context, etc. It provides for five models of social situation concepts to be singled out: psychological, temporal, taxonomic, axiological and semiotic.

Discussion: Social situation concepts are distributed within the dimensions of lexical, sentential and discourse perceptual designations. Within the scope of perceptual items, social concepts reveal gnoseological (focusing on participants’ cognitive values), situational (focusing on the nature of parti­cipants’ relations), communicational (focusing on participants’ positional activities) and derivational (focusing on the extension of participants or their properties) designation strategies. It is expedient to carry out further research into semantic modeling of person’s social space, social concepts from cross-linguistic perspective, and social situations in the structure of discourse. The choice of the aspects is determined by the tendency of modern semantic studies to cognitive and functional approaches.

Keywords: model, conceptualization, categorization, perceptual, concept of social situation, person’s social space.

Vitae

Oleh Demenchuk is Doctor of Philology, Professor, Head of the Department of Romance and Germanic Philology at Rivne State University of Humanities. His areas of research interests include contrastive and typological linguistics, cognitive linguistics, functional linguistics, and linguistic semantics.

Correspondence: oleh.demenchuk@gmail.com

Article.

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