The construction of meanings in a textual space: cognitive-lexical and cognitive-synergetic aspects

Abstract

The article presents the results of cognitive-synergetic and lexicological research of the meaning formed in the text. The research is based on the “meaning and sense” dichotomy of cognitive lexicology, as well as cognitive semantics position on the close connection of cognition and communication, relying on the principle of multilevel analysis, the unity of language and speech. The unity of cognition and communication manifests in the need to examine text meanings within a cognitive-discursive paradigm, which allows analyzing the dialogue between the author and reader, mediated by the text. It is in the process of interaction between the author (addresser) and reader (recipient) that the author’s ideas (intentions), as well as various shades of the author’s modality meaning, are transmitted, and new senses come forth in the course of the reader’s interpretation of the narrative. The paper used a combination of cognitive-synergetic methods (discursive, conceptual, interpretive methods, fractal analysis, conceptual integration, and associative experiment). The purpose of the study is to identify the meanings of the author’s and reader’s fields in the text semantic space, to determine their types and to analyze the ways of their formation. The article considers three main meaning formation models based on the analysis of the literary text semantic space of I. Esenberlin’s novel “Nomads”: 1) the author’s meaning model; 2) a model of the meaning formed in the reader’s interpretative activity; 3) invariant meaning, formed in the recipient’s mind as different from the author’s. The author shows that the processability of meanings, i.e., that they generate new meanings in the discursive activity of the author and the reader, is common to all these models. The article also focuses on cognitive integration, when the reader’s sense is formed by taking into account social factors of other eras, the new assessment and the development of the author’s text meaning from modern positions. The novelty of the conducted research lies in the fact that, for the first time, an attempt is made to identify and describe the author’s and reader’s meanings, formed in the context both of the historical period and current times, based on the material of a literary text. In addition, the novelty of the research consists of the author’s attempt to apply a cognitive-synergetic approach to the analysis of the text semantic space. This approach is used in the process of analyzing the discourses of the author and the reader, aimed at the formation of various types of meanings (conveying the author’s ideas and evaluation of implicit meanings in the reader’s perception). As a result of the analysis, it was established that the semantic space of the text is a dynamic field in which various meanings generated by the author and the reader interact. In order to review them, a set of methods were used to unfold new word meanings in the text.