S
E S = space
E = point of integration for S
E = other elements in S which are related to E
E E
E E
coherence: even when one processes discourse unit b, there is nothing which gives internal coherence to a.
2.2.3 Points of conceptual integration and intrinsic interest
A fundamental conceptual configuration for understanding discourse topics and themes is a
POINT OF CONCEPTUAL INTEGRATION
for a conceptual region or space. If a space has a conceptual point of integration which I will often simply call a “point of integration”—that is, if the space is conceptually
INTEGRATED
around that element—that is a property of the space’s global structure: all other component elements of the space are in some relation to the point of integration, based on their role within that
structure. This is illustrated in Figure 2.
Figure 2: A space with a point of integration
One example of a space with a point of integration would be a basketball team with its coach: the role of each player in the team structure involves a coach-player relation with the coach. A space may have more
than one point of integration: for a basketball team itself, without the coach, each player could be said to be a point of integration if the structural relation is that of teammate. That would be a trivial type of
integration, based simply on the relation of co-belonging to the space. A basketball team could have a different point of integration—the tallest player—if the relation is “shorter than,” but if two players are
equally tall, there would be no point of integration at all: in such a space, the notion “point of integration” would not be well defined. In Figure 2, the dotted-line integration arrows pointing to E
can be taken as suggestive of the fact that a particular relation can focus attention on the point of integration and make it
in some sense special, regardless of what other construals might be possible. A further example of a space with a point of integration is what Langacker 2000:173f., 194 calls the
DOMINION
of a referent or a nominal expression: a “conceptual region or the set of entities to which [the expression] affords direct access,” that is, a range of concepts that the referent can evoke.
15
The dominion of a nominal “type” is a conventional “frame”—a structured chunk of encyclopedic knowledge about the
concept which is commonly triggered by a lexical expression of the concept Croft and Cruse 2004:7– 16.
16
For example, the expression poor man and its accompanying ungrounded concept POOR MAN, as in Aesop’s story “Stone soup” Appendix D, can be expected to evoke or give access to other concepts:
15
Langacker uses the notion of dominion primarily to talk about “reference point phenomena” Langacker 1998, 2000 ch. 6, 2001b: possessor is a reference point for its possessed referent, subject is a reference point for its
predicate, and topic is a reference point for its comment or the discourse unit which it integrates. In general, a reference point provides conceptual access to elements in its dominion.
16
According to Wierzbicka 1986:362, a fundamental way that nouns differ from modifiers is that, whereas modifiers designate one specific property, nominals evoke a rich array of properties and conventional knowledge
about the referent. One can say that nouns come with ready-made dominions for their referents.
suffering hunger
rejection by better-offs
very low social status
shabby clothes unkempt
appearance
POOR MAN
D
R R = referent
D = dominion of R C = other concepts in D
= gives access to
C C
C C
Figure 3: The dominion of POOR MAN
Clearly, the dominion of a referent is very much a product of culture and world view. A more abstract dominion is shown diagrammatically in Figure 4.
Figure 4: The dominion of a referent
In Figure 4, the dashed centrifugal arrows from the referent to the concepts indicate the relation “accesses,” in accordance with Langacker’s interest in “reference point phenomena” loc. cit.. The
opposite relation, “accessed by,” symbolized by reversing the arrows, would portray POOR MAN as a point of integration in Figure 3 and R as a point of integration in Figure 4.
17
The point of integration for a space is one of possibly many ways of construing a structure for the space.
In the dominion of POOR MAN in Figure 3, the access relation derives from general conceptual and not from the story “Stone soup” Appendix D. Even if we were to consider the specific poor man in that
story and consider the fact that he is a participant in all of the different events in that story, the relation “referent in” would still be a mere semantic fact about the participant in that story. For that same story we
could consider a different referent, the house, and note that the house also has a constant role as the location of the various events. If we were to think of a conceptual space for the story with its events, we
could construe either the poor man or the house as a point of integration for that space. The relation of the events of the story with either of those two points of integration would, however, be merely semantic:
either the poor man or the house could give
SEMANTIC INTEGRATION
to the story. More than that is involved in discourse topicality and thematicity, because there appears to be a sense in which the poor
man is a topic of “Stone soup” but the house is not. The difference seems to have to do with the fact that the speaker expresses interest in the poor man for his own sake, that is, in the text the speaker has an
INTRINSIC
or focal
INTEREST
in the poor man, whereas his interest in the house is only an
INSTRUMENTAL
or peripheral
INTEREST
: it is a mere location where something more interesting happens. It appears to be the notion of intrinsic interest to which Strawson 1964:97 appeals when he describes
topical aboutness as involving “what is a matter of standing current interest or concern.” Lambrecht discusses this notion and subsequently incorporates it in his definition of sentence topic 1994:119, 127.
In the present treatment I will try to give substance to the idea that in a discourse space, a discourse topic or theme is a point of integration, of a particular kind, for its component elements: the way each one is
related to the theme expresses the speaker’s intrinsic interest in the theme. I call this
THEMATIC INTEGRATION
, which includes semantic integration but goes beyond it in requiring that the integrating relation express the speaker’s intrinsic interest. According to Murray n. d., cited in Giora 1997:21f.,
something that the interlocutors “care about deeply and intensely, even though its cognitive consequences
17
Fauconnier and Sweetser 1996:2 speak of R as a “trigger” and C as a “target.”
are small … is almost what every line of their argument is relevant to, it is what the whole discourse is about.”
18
It is commonly recognized that certain conceptual properties—such as humanness—tend to attract intrinsic interest; this will be discussed further in §3.5.1.
Sperber and Wilson 1986:216 recognize that discourse topicality involves semantic integration: “To the extent that an utterance is relevant in our sense in a homogeneous context derivable from a single
encyclopaedic entry, it will be topic relevant in a derivative sense, the topic being simply the conceptual address associated with that encyclopaedic entry.” However, in speaking of topic relevance as a derivative
subtype of relevance, they do not acknowledge that it also requires intrinsic or focal interest on the part of the speaker. Discourse topicality and thematicity may be a relevance relation, but it is one of a
qualitatively distinct kind.
I close this section with two examples which illustrate intrinsic interest. The first one is the poem “Trees”:
Example text 4: “Trees” Kilmer 1914
I think that I shall never see A poem as lovely as a tree.
A tree
whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree
that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree
that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who
intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
A discourse space for this poem, with its different descriptive parts as components of the space, would be integrated around the generic concept TREES; references to that concept are highlighted in the display
above. TREES is an object of the speaker’s intrinsic interest, since the poem, beginning with the title, is structured as a description of that concept. On that account, the discourse space would be thematically
integrated by TREES as a global discourse topic.
This text can be compared with the folowing narration of a hockey game:
Example text 5: Narration of hockey game, excerpt Tomlin 1997:166 Puck
knocked away by Dale McCourt,
Ø picked up again by Steve Shutt. Now Shutt coming out,
into the Detroit zone. He played it out in front….
Example text 5 narrates the initial part of a “play,” that is, an attempt on the part of one team to score a goal. In the “play,” different players on that team manipulate the puck, references to which are
highlighted in the example. The turns of different players in handling the puck can, in fact, be analyzed as component steps in the “play,” A discourse space of the narration of the “play” would thus be populated
by these turns with the puck and would be integrated by the concept THE PUCK. But this is mere semantic integration unless it could be shown that the speaker has intrinsic interest in the puck. That,
however, does not seem to be expressed. The speaker is indeed interested in the puck, but it is an
18
The topic analysis found in de Beaugrande 1980 and de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981, in which “node-sharing is a graphical correlate of Topic” de Beaugrande 1980:94, does not include intrinsic interest.
instrumental interest in expressing the possibility that the team will score a goal. The high referential frequency of the puck in this narration §3.5.3 is not a reflection of intrinsic interest as was the case of
TREES in the descriptive text of Example text 4, but rather it is a consequence of the fact that goals a scored by manipulating the puck in certain ways. It is a simple reflection of the content being narrated and
the true interest of the speaker in the possibility of the team scoring a goal. For that reason, THE PUCK in Example text 5 is not analyzed as a discourse topic.
In ordinary language, it would be natural to say that the poem of Example text 4 is about trees but that the narration of the hockey game in Example text 5 is not about the puck. That difference appears to
captured by the distinction between thematic integration and semantic integration, in which the differentiating factor is intrinsic interest.
2.2.4 Schemas
