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Graded Salience Hypothesis
The Graded Salience Hypothesis is a theory regarding the psycholinguistic processing of word meaning, specifically in the context of irony, developed by Rachel Giora. It assumes that priority is given in the psychological activation and semantic retrieval of salient over less salient meanings inside the mental lexicon in the process of language comprehension. Lexical salience The meaning(s) of a word can be considered salient if the associated meanings(s) is/are coded for in the mental lexicon. That said, the degree of salience of a given word meaning cannot be viewed as a permanent, defining characteristic, but rather as a function of a number of psycholinguistic factors, such as frequency, conventionality, familiarity, and prototypicality. The more frequent, conventional, familiar, or prototypical a given word meaning is, the greater degree of salience it holds. Hypothesis The graded salience hypothesis revolves around two major assumptions: 1. A salient meaning of a wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind and brain; that is, the psychology, psychological and neurobiology, neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend, and produce language. Psycholinguistics is concerned with the cognitive faculties and processes that are necessary to produce the grammatical constructions of language. It is also concerned with the perception of these constructions by a listener. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were in the philosophical and educational fields, mainly due to their location in departments other than applied sciences (e.g., cohesive data on how the human brain functioned). Modern research makes use of biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, and information science to study how the mind-brain process ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irony
Irony, in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what, on the surface, appears to be the case with what is actually or expected to be the case. Originally a rhetorical device and literary technique, in modernity, modern times irony has also come to assume a metaphysical significance with implications for the correct human attitude towards life. The concept originated in ancient Greece, where it described a dramatic character who pretended to be less intelligent than he actually was in order to outwit boastful opponents. Over time, ''irony'' evolved from denoting a form of deception to, more liberally, describing the deliberate use of language to mean the opposite of what it says for a rhetorical effect intended to be recognized by the audience. Due to its double-sided nature, irony is a powerful tool for social bonding among those who share an understanding. For the same reason, it is also a source of division, sorting people into insiders and outsiders depending upon w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salience (language)
Salience is the state or condition of being prominent. The Oxford English Dictionary defines salience as "most noticeable or important." The concept is discussed in communication, semiotics, linguistics, sociology, psychology, and political science. It has been studied with respect to interpersonal communication, persuasion, politics, and its influence on mass media. Semiotics In semiotics (the study of signs or symbolism), ''salience'' refers to the relative importance or prominence of a part of a sign. The salience of a particular sign when considered in the context of others helps an individual to quickly rank large amounts of information by importance and thus give attention to that which is the most important. This process keeps an individual from being overwhelmed with information overload. Discussion Meaning can be described as the "system of mental representations of an object or phenomenon, its properties and associations with other objects and/or phenomena. In t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mental Lexicon
The mental lexicon is a component of the human language faculty that contains information regarding the composition of words, such as their meanings, pronunciations, and syntactic characteristics. The mental lexicon is used in linguistics and psycholinguistics to refer to individual speakers' lexical, or word, representations. However, there is some disagreement as to the utility of the mental lexicon as a scientific construct. The mental lexicon differs from the lexicon more generally in that it is not just a collection of words; instead, it deals with how those words are activated, stored, processed, and retrieved by each speaker/hearer. Furthermore, entries in the mental lexicon are interconnected with each other on various levels. An individual's mental lexicon changes and grows as new words are learned and is always developing, but there are several competing theories seeking to explain exactly ''how'' this occurs. Some theories about the mental lexicon include the spectrum t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prototype Theory
Prototype theory is a theory of categorization in cognitive science, particularly in psychology and cognitive linguistics, in which there is a graded degree of belonging to a conceptual category, and some members are more central than others. It emerged in 1971 with the work of psychologist Eleanor Rosch, and it has been described as a "Copernican Revolution" in the theory of categorization for its departure from the traditional Aristotelian categories.Coșeriu (2000) It has been criticized by those that still endorse the traditional theory of categories, like linguist Eugenio Coseriu and other proponents of the structural semantics paradigm. In this prototype theory, any given concept in any given language has a real world example that best represents this concept. For example: when asked to give an example of the concept ''furniture'', a ''couch'' is more frequently cited than, say, a ''wardrobe''. Prototype theory has also been applied in linguistics, as part of the mapping f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gradient Salience Model
The Gradient Salience model is a model of figurative language comprehension proposed by Rachel Giora in 2002 as an alternative to the standard pragmatic model. It offers a possible explanation for the results obtained in various contemporary studies, in which figurative language is processed as fast as literal language. Salient and non salient meanings The definition of saliency is included in Rachel Giora's (2002) article "Literal vs. figurative language: Different or equal?". ''Salient meanings'' are meanings which are stored in the mental lexicon. They are most prominent in language, as they are the most familiar, conventional, frequent and prototypical. ''Non salient meanings'', on the other hand, are meanings which are relatively new to language. They are novel and infrequent. Assumptions The Gradient Salience model assumes that the processing of metaphorical expressions depends on the meaning's saliency. *Salient meanings are processed faster than non salient ones, as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irony
Irony, in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what, on the surface, appears to be the case with what is actually or expected to be the case. Originally a rhetorical device and literary technique, in modernity, modern times irony has also come to assume a metaphysical significance with implications for the correct human attitude towards life. The concept originated in ancient Greece, where it described a dramatic character who pretended to be less intelligent than he actually was in order to outwit boastful opponents. Over time, ''irony'' evolved from denoting a form of deception to, more liberally, describing the deliberate use of language to mean the opposite of what it says for a rhetorical effect intended to be recognized by the audience. Due to its double-sided nature, irony is a powerful tool for social bonding among those who share an understanding. For the same reason, it is also a source of division, sorting people into insiders and outsiders depending upon w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
