Research On Cognitive Attributes Of Deviated Rhetoric

Based on the generalized rhetoric, this thesis is to discuss the cognitive attributes of deviated rhetoric through the application of cognitive theories and measures. In this thesis, the cognitive attributes of deviated rhetoric will be analyzed and explained from four main aspects respectively, namely, cognitive mechanisms, context cognition, psychological cognition and rhetorical effects.Firstly, a discussion is made focusing on the cognitive mechanism which influences the generation of deviated rhetoric expressions, holding that the occurrence of deviated rhetoric is mainly due to two factors, which are linguistic factor (internal systematic factor) and non-linguistic factor (external social factor), in which the latter is emphasized. The study of the generative motivation of deviated rhetoric can never be isolated from the study on the non-linguistic factors, which includes social cognition, Spatio-temporal cognition and psychological cognition. Social cognition factor can be further divided into five branch factors, which respectively are social strata and professions, educational level, race, gender and age. Each of the five branch factors may independently and jointly influence the adoption and the use-pattern of deviated rhetoric. Spatio-temporal cognition factor of deviated rhetoric can also be divided into spatial cognition and temporal cognition. Moreover, the spatial cognition can be further divided into two dimensions of physical (formal) level and psychological (conceptual) level. From the perspective of psychological cognition, the generation of a deviated rhetoric expression is mainly due to the aesthetic psychology which is actuated by emotion, psychological motivation to pursue novelty and personality and social psychology of majority-following.Secondly, this thesis produces an exposition on the important role of context in the deviated rhetorical communication, holding that context cognition plays an especially important role during the interpretation process of the meaning of a deviated rhetoric expression. Context is decisive at the time to choose between regular and deviated rhetoric devices, and context must be taken into consideration when we are deciding whether deviated rhetoric is needed for a communication and meets the requirement of a given context. Once a rhetorical choice is made, context functions as a test equipment to confirm the feasibility of the rhetorical choice. The context cognition includes external context cognition (or say social context cognition) and internalized context cognition (or say linguistic context cognition). The external context refers to the identical and physical context, which is shared by both of the communicative parties, and it is a context that can be positively perceived by all the communicative parties; while the internalized context refers to the psychological and sealed context, which is emerged in the brain of communicative subject during his deviated rhetoric creation process. When creating a deviated rhetoric expression, the communicative subject focuses on his own language world in brain, thus the communicative object can never perceive the subject's cognitive context during his creation process thoroughly. Even after a fully analysis of the work of communicative subject, the communicative objects may only perceive the subject's cognitive context in his brain utmostly but not perfectly.Thirdly, the discussion on the generation and interpretation of a deviated rhetoric expression comes next from the perspective of psychological cognition, holding that the generation process of a deviated rhetoric expression is actually a psychological cognition which can be manifested as: stimulate—react—psychological motivation—choose—decide; meanwhile, the interpretation process of a deviated rhetoric expression, on the other hand, is also a psychological cognition which can be shown as: stimulate—react—psychological motivation—choose—understand. In either process, the link of psychological motivation plays a key role.Finally, this thesis points out that the application of deviated rhetoric will aggrandize the communicative effects by means of cognitive foregrounding, cognitive prominence and violating the conventional expressions. Foregrounding, as an important measure for deviated rhetoric to aggrandize the communicative effects, will enable an expression to possess the features of defamiliarization and novelty. Generally in a communication process, foregrounding assists the communicative object to acquire association to infer the unknown information in the communication; cognitive prominence refers to the defamiliarized language application of deviated rhetoric. During a communication process, prominence will facilitate the communicative subject to attract much attention of the communicative object. The higher the degree of defamiliarization is, the higher the degree of cognitive prominence will be. Violating the conventional expressions is actually a violation on the conventional rhetorical devices, which creates a projection of defamiliarized information intentionally. The violation of the conventional expressions aims to strengthen the communicative effect through making the communicative object to focus on the deviated rhetorical expressions.