ê.ô.í. Øèíãàðåâà Ì.Þ., ìàãèñòðàíò Êàëèåâà Ã.À.
Ðåãèîíàëüíûé ñîöèàëüíî-èííîâàöèîííûé óíèâåðñèòåò
The
process of conceptualization: case study of “happy” and “happiness”
The process of
conceptualization is to be regarded as a community conceptualization for a
specific term. Wierzbicka’s (1996) notion of conceptual definition goes well
with the community conceptualization view. She defines concepts in terms of
other concepts and claims that there is a common core for each concept which
makes it able either to be reflected through other concepts or through which
other concepts and terms can be mirrored, i.e. a definition in terms of basic
concepts; these basic concepts do not necessarily have to be defined, they can
be used to define other concepts. The defined concepts in a public sense would
be known as community
achievements. She also talks
about semantic primitives which are referred to as fundamental concepts or
undefinable terms: “the elements which can be used to define the meaning of
words (or any other meanings) cannot be defined themselves; rather, they must
be accepted as ‘indifmibilia’” [Wierzbicka 1996: 10]. These elements can be
understood by themselves as primary notions. Descartes
and Pascal had also pointed to this issue in a similar way:
“Since they are very simple and
clear, we cannot know and perceive them better than by themselves.” [Descartes
1701/1931: 324]
“We can use those words with the
same confidence and certainty as if they had been explained in the clearest
possible way.” [Pascal 1667/1954: 580]
Although these
conceptual primitives are to be taken for granted as they are, they could be
used to define and to clarify other concepts. As a result, because there are
varieties of concepts defined through semantic primitives which are strictly
context or situation- dependent, meaning construction in such a way is a very
dynamic and on line process that is referred to as mapping by
Fauconnier (1997).
The process of conceptualization is thoroughly based on the human mind
in interaction with the outside world. As Evans and Green (2006) explain, such
a process is investigated within the area of cognitive semantics. Cognitive
Semantics as a division of Cognitive Linguistics studies the conceptual
structures of a language. Saeed elaborates this when he says “cognitive
semantics is the way language use reflects the conceptual frameworks of human
mind” [Saeed, 2003: 344]. In th Emotional states needs to be revealed by the
emotion language. Happiness and happy are terms of emotion language. In the continuation, the
different dimensions of emotion language (in relation to the current study) are
examined.
Words like love, grief, sadness and so on are not categorized as isolated terms or facts;
rather they represent something innate. Their importance comes from their
implications and because they are functioning at an abstract level, they emphasize conceptual cores of the states they represent. They are also
considered as the secondary
impressions which emerge from
the original ones (see Hume 1952). Emotions are the fruits of the interaction
between human mind and the objective world, i.e. impressions come from the
outside world, and then, mind produces the related
emotion. That is why they are considered as secondary. Emotions reveal issues like
social values and beliefs, etc., but they are not equivalent to them. Rather
they are signs of them.
Emotion concepts are very complex notions and they are interconnected
with other conceptual issues, like object, cause, goal, disposition to action, bodily manifestations,
reasons, belief, and implication (see Hirsch 1985). These conceptual issues get their senses through
the different contexts in which the interaction between human mind and the
outside world takes place. They are all different kinds of context the examples
of the words happiness and happy being studied in this text.
As Kovecses (2000) argues, emotion terms are, in high degree, based on
conceptual frameworks. As a result, their meanings gets constructed through
something which Wierzbicka (1996) calls semantic primitives i.e. core meaning;
“the kind of meaning that really matters, is typically thought to be core
meaning,” [Kovecses 2000: 7]. But, Kovecses [2000: 23,26] claims that there are
cases where emotional concepts could be regarded as conceptual metaphors; like the sight filled her with fear or she was overflowing
with love, Kovecses categorizes these
sentences as emotion is a liquid
in a container. In such cases,
emotions seem as if they happen to us (implicitly like an event). The person
who experiences (feels) this event (state) is considered to be a container of
the emotion.
The
concepts happy and happiness are important notions in that
they have lots of consequences (social, economical, behavioral, political,
etc.). These different consequences are because the terms happy and happiness can emerge in a variety
of contexts. This potentiality makes happy and happiness be regarded as complex
notions. Although there is a general core for the meaning of the concepts happy and happiness - they are considered as
positive and good notions, they are interconnected with other concepts. This
interconnection results in conceptual complexity; a common feature in the
shaping of an emotion.
As the
concepts happy and happiness are very close (both
syntactically and semantically), people normally perceive them as the same
concept. But these two concepts have a point of differentiation, either. Happy is an adjective;
accordingly, it can occur before a noun or with an infinitive, like happy boy, happy to give. This potentiality causes
the sense of the term happy to be more concrete and tangible than the sense of
the term happiness. Consequently, the term happy is more determinant of
the term happiness. Happiness is a noun; it cannot attach to
the other elements in the sentence as in case for happy. Hence, it plays its role
individually and this highlights the degree of being abstract, like illusory happiness. As a result, one can
conclude that the concept being happy is thingier than the concept happiness.
The
notions happy and happiness are multi-dimension. This
multidimensionality arises from their conceptual complexity. Happy and happiness can emerge through a
variety of concepts; this means the speech community can have various
conceptual frameworks of these notions. On the other hand, emotions are
revealed through the interaction between human being and the surrounding world.
Literature
1.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1996) Semantics Primes and Universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2.
Descartes, Rene (1701/1993) The
Search after Truth by the Light of Nature. In The Philosophical Works of Descartes. Trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross. 2 vols. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. i. 305-27
3.
Pascal, Blaise (1667/1954) De
l’esprit geometrique et de l’art de persuader, In ttuvres completes. Ed. J.
Chevalier, Paris: Gallimard 575-604.
4.
Fauconnier, Gilles (1997) Mapping in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6.
Saeed, John I. (2003) Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
7.
Hume, David (1952) A Treatise of Human Nature. Part II. London: Everyman.
8.
Kovecses, Zoltan (2000) Metaphor and Emotion Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.