6. The ‘Levels of Investigation’ Theoretical Framework In developing a broader theoretical framework for use in Cognitive Linguistics (see table 2.1), I have made use of Posner and Raichle’s (1994) schematization of the levels of investigation in cognitive science. The most basic organizing criterion of this theoretical framework is the scale of the relative physical sizes of the phenomena which produce the different kinds of social, cognitive, or neural events to be studied. Physical size (expressed in meters) is mapped vertically in the rows of the table, providing a relative distribution of the ‘‘higher to lower’’ levels of cognitive pro- cesses. The first column presents examples of what the relevant physiological structures are at a given physical scale, while I give a general name to each level of investigation in the next column. For instance, at the communicative, cultural, and social level, we primarily study language as it is used between people, and hence at a physical size scale of roughly 1 m and up when we make observations as to the emergence or frequency of a particular metaphor in a videotaped or written corpus, and so on. Alternatively, it is possible to focus on a single individual’s performance on linguistic tasks via measures which focus on the individual’s body, such as the reaction time elapsed or the galvanic skin response conducted when the individual reads an emotionally salient metaphor. Similarly, we could also conduct experi- ments designed to measure either neuroanatomic regions or single-cell activity in response to analogous linguistic tasks. Thus, I describe the level of investigation in accordance with the kinds of cognitive processes measurable given the method- ologies used at that order of physical size. In order to preserve Posner and Raichle’s insight that it is profitable to con- sider how the inquiries into similar questions change at various levels of investi- gation due to the constraints of the observational apparatus and method, the ‘‘Tasks’’ column of this theoretical framework specifies for Cognitive Linguistics in particular some typical relevant experimental or explanatory tasks. The next col- umn lists some of the relevant theoretical constructs operative at each level of investigation, while the final column presents some of the various methods used to study phenomena at each level. This framework can be used to situate the wide methodological array of stud- ies on various topics of interest to cognitive linguists, such as metaphor, mental imagery, categorization, frames of reference, emotions, and so on. This type of theoretical framework is now fairly common within much of cognitive science, but Cognitive Linguistics has been slow to give explicit attention to the problem of how we are to theoretically situate and reconcile these different levels of investigation. I have explicitly included a level of cultural and communicative analysis. By choosing to include a level situated at the ‘‘1 m and up’’ physical size scale, I mean to highlight that human language should be considered not just in terms of the physiological size of the central nervous system, but also in terms of the standard scale of the interactional distance we use in speaking with one another. Language is 40 tim rohrer Table 2.1. Theoretical framework for the embodiment hypothesis in cognitive science as applied to Cognitive Linguistics Size (in m) Physiological Structures Level of Investigation Typical Cognitive Linguistics Theory Explanatory Tasks Sample Operative Theoretical Constructs Sample Methods of Study 1 and up Multiple central nervous systems Communicative and cultural systems in anthropology, language, science, and philosophy Uses of widespread cultural metaphors in interpersonal communication; syntactic and semantic change Complex conceptual metaphor, conceptual blends, disanalogy, subjectification Linguistic analysis, cross-linguistic typology, discourse analysis, cognitive anthropology .5 to 2 Central nervous systems Performance domain: Cognitive, conceptual, gestural, and linguistic systems as performed by individual subjects Understanding metaphors, extending metaphorical inferences to novel cases, facilitation of related information; use of slang; testing choice of syntactic form given extralinguistic semantic task Complex conceptual metaphor, conceptual blends, disanalogy, primary metaphor, metaphor mappings, inference generalizations Verbal report, observational neurology, and psychiatry, cognitive, and developmental studies examining reaction time (RT) (continued) Table 2.1. (continued) 10 À1 to 10 À2 Gross to medium size neural regions (anterior cingulate, parietal lobe, etc.) Neural systems Activation course in somatosensory, auditory, and visual processing areas when processing conceptual metaphor or multimodal perceptual experiences Conceptual metaphor mappings, primary metaphor, conceptual blends, disanalogy, image schemas, topological maps Lesion analysis, neurological dissociations, neuroimaging with fMRI and PET, ERP methods, neurocomputational simulations 10 À2 to 10 À4 Neural networks, maps and pathways Neuroanatomy: Neural circuitry in maps, pathways, sheets Neuroanatomical connections from visual, auditory, somatosensory regions to language areas Image schemas, primary metaphor, topographic maps, convergence zones Electrocellular recording, anatomical dyes, neurocomputational simulations 10 À3 to 10 À6 Neurons, cortical columns Neurocellular systems: Cellular and very small intercellular structures Fine neuroanatomical organisation of particular structures recruited in lang. processing Orientation-tuning cells; ocular dominance columns Electrocellular recording, anatomical dyes, neurocomputational simulations Less than 10 À6 Neuro-transmitters, ion channels, synapses Subcellular systems: Subcellular, molecular, and electrophysical None—beyond theoretical scope Neurotransmitter, synapse, ion channels Neuro-pharmacology, neurochemistry, neurophysics not learned in isolation nor are words uttered in a vacuum, and research in Cog- nitive Linguistics should include this level of investigation. Investigations at the cultural level are occasionally given short shrift by some strains of cognitive science, but this has been and should remain a strong point of Cognitive Linguistics. While this table representing the framework gives a good overview of the re- lationship between body, brain, and culture, it is not as illustrative for issues pertaining to evolutionary, historical, and developmental time scales, which may be considered at any of these levels. For example, both diachronic semantic change and the evolution of the larynx are important to Cognitive Linguistics. However, this failing is more a limitation of the imagery of a two-dimensional table than of the theoretical framework itself. If we were to add another axis for time perpen- dicular to the surface plane of the table, we could then imagine this framework as a rectangular solid. I have omitted representing this dimension because such an illustration would make it difficult to label the levels, but I make it explicit here because both the developmental and evolutionary time courses of these phenomena are crucial components of understanding how studies at these levels interact. An obvious example in language research is the fact that a study on second-language acquisition at one of these levels of investigation done at one point in stage of development would likely differ from a very similar study at the same level, but at another developmental stage. Such temporal concerns are an important, if some- times neglected, dimension of variability. Elsewhere, I have discussed the details of the pragmatic application of this framework to issues such as spatial frames of reference (Rohrer 2001), but for a briefer example of its application, consider some of the research done on the em- bodiment and conceptualization of anger. Ko ¨ vecses (1986, 1995) has argued that the conceptual metaphor anger is the heat of a fluid in a container has a phys- iological basis in universal bodily experiences such as the elevated skin tempera- tures of the anger response, as measured by Ekman (1982, 1999). However, in a more experientialist vein, Geeraerts and Grondelaers (1995) critiqued Ko ¨ vecses’s research as ahistorical and acultural, arguing that historical lexicography shows that these metaphors have been inherited from the humoral theory of medieval Western science. Yet their critique seems at least partially rebutted by several cross-cultural analyses of the metaphors for anger in non-Indo-European languages, such as Matsuki’s (1995) study of Japanese, where somewhat similar heated fluid meta- phors have been found. Note that this controversy, centering on the question of change across time and culture, evokes the ‘‘universalist-relativist’’ philosophical debate on objectivity; however, and as the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey (1917) noted, such debates are notoriously unhelpful to the continued inquiry that characterizes a genuine objectivity. A more pragmatic response might be to see these studies as the result of using differing methodologies at different levels of investigation to study the embodiment of anger. Applying this theoretical framework, we could seek to identify questions which investigate multiple dimensions. We might then expand the scope of the inquiry from the bodily and performative level of the framework to embodiment and experientialism 43 the communicative and cultural level: Was the humoral theory also physiologically motivated? Does this metaphor exist in any Indo-European linguistic evidence which predates the appearance of humoral theory? Did the Japanese metaphor arrive via Western contact, or did it emerge independently? And, to what extent does the Japanese conceptualization rely on shared underlying conceptual meta- phors such as the body is a container? Alternatively, a cognitive psychologist might frame a further inquiry at the performative level by measuring, via reaction times, heart rates, and/or skin temperature, whether Japanese and Indo-European language speakers exhibit similar physiological responses to differing variants of this metaphor. Or one might also measure whether subjects who were recently taught humoral theory would be quicker to use (or comprehend) passages containing this anger metaphor than other anger metaphors. Thus, this controversy, along with many others in Cognitive Linguistics, is not simply a matter of ‘‘either-or,’’ with one position being correct to the exclusion of the other. Instead, and from the perspective of this theoretical framework, the controversy results from measuring different but equally important dimensions of human embodiment. Once we recognize this fact, we can take concrete steps to investigate how these dimensions interact on a particular question. We are as unlikely as ever to resolve the ‘‘relativism-universalism’’ debate, so it is better to situate our questions, specify the scale and scope of our investigations, and look at how the conscious, experiential embodiment and the physiological embodiment interact in language. 7. Conclusions If the answer to the basic problem of language—How do we share meaning?— could only be as simple and childlike as the question, then there might be no controversy about defining, in precise and narrow terms, what exactly the term ‘‘embodiment’’ means. The actual details of science are rarely neat and tidy, how- ever, and even the most widely accepted scientific maxims are only incontrovertible so long as serious attention is placed elsewhere. We have barely begun to investigate the mechanics of how embodiment shapes and constrains meaning, of testing and validating the claims made by Cognitive Linguistics at the psychological and neurophysiological levels, of examining how embodiment shapes cultural artifacts such as watches, dials, and gauges, and of how the social and cultural context alters what embodied source is being used by a particular speaker. This project has necessarily enlisted anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists to work alongside linguists. The complexity of the survey that I have given will only be deepened by the details in the chapters which follow. 44 tim rohrer REFERENCES Bailey, David. 1997. 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Introduction A fundamental principle in Cognitive Linguistics is that semantics is, indeed, pri- marily cognitive and not a matter of relationships between language and the world (or truth conditions with respect to a model). This principle becomes especially manifest in the research into facets of meaning and grammatical organization which crucially makes use of notions such as ‘‘perspective,’’ ‘‘subjectivity,’’ or ‘‘point of view.’’ What these notions have in common is that they capture aspects of conceptualization that cannot be sufficiently analyzed in terms of properties of the object of conceptualization, but, in one way or another, necessarily involve a subject of conceptualization. A strong incentive for this type of research stems from the awareness that the more linguistic problems can be solved by making use of these notions, the more (heuristically) successful the fundamental princi- ple is; in addition, this research is motivated by the awareness that the best way to make these notions relevant for linguistic analysis is not given a priori and thus requires empirical investigation. It is therefore not surprising that there is in fact quite a large body of research into such nonobjective facets of linguistic meaning. The cover term that has come to be used for different ways of viewing a par- ticular situation is ‘‘construal.’’ At a very elementary level, construal is a feature of the meaning of all linguistic expressions, if only as a consequence of the fact that languages provide various ways for categorizing situations, their participants and features, and the relations between them. Speaking thus always implies a choice: A speaker who accurately observes the spatial distribution of certain stars can describe them in many distinct fashions: as a constellation,asacluster of stars,as specks of light in the sky, etc. Such expressions are semantically distinct; they re- flect the speaker’s alternate construals of the scene, each compatible with its objectively given properties. (Langacker 1990a: 61) The fact that a particular situation can be construed in alternate ways should, from a cognitive linguistic perspective, not come as a big surprise or require extensive justification. What is more important linguistically is that languages systematically provide means for different kinds of construal. For instance, the distinct descrip- tions of a single phenomenon given in the quotation from Langacker above differ in (among other things) the frames of knowledge with respect to which the con- ceived situation is characterized: a particular distribution of stars is only consid- ered a constellation in a culturally shared traditional frame of knowledge about the structure of the sky, while this framework is not required for conceptualiz- ing it as a cluster. So one type of construal involved in these examples crucially involves frames of knowledge (or ‘‘Idealized Cognitive Models’’). Another type, also involved here, focuses on the compositionality of the conceptualization: both a cluster of stars and specks of light in the sky evoke their objects of conceptuali- zation by combining several elements into a whole in some particular way, while the lexical item constellation does not. Then again, specks of light in the sky (with the plural noun specks as its head) focuses on the multiplicity of the phenome- non observed, whereas constellation and a cluster of stars impose the construal of a coherent unit (with the cluster constituting a ‘‘multiplex’’ one in the sense of Talmy 2000a: 59). This simple example already shows that there are several dimensions along which construals may vary. Cognitive linguists, most notably Langacker and Talmy, have proposed a number of classification schemes for construal phenomena, in at- tempts to organize them into a relatively small number of basic types. However, these classificatory systems seem to exhibit a substantial amount of arbitrariness. This is partly due to the fact that research into construal phenomena, while ubiq- uitous in ordinary language and therefore highly important, has at the same time led to a large increase in the number of known distinct construal operations. Therefore, it is useful to consider a few more types of construal before considering the clas- sification proposals. It should be evident, though, that this cannot be a compre- hensive list of construal phenomena. construal and perspectivization 49 . schematization of the levels of investigation in cognitive science. The most basic organizing criterion of this theoretical framework is the scale of the relative physical sizes of the phenomena which. various levels of investi- gation due to the constraints of the observational apparatus and method, the ‘‘Tasks’’ column of this theoretical framework specifies for Cognitive Linguistics in particular. might then expand the scope of the inquiry from the bodily and performative level of the framework to embodiment and experientialism 43 the communicative and cultural level: Was the humoral theory