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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2024

Lexical Priming: Evolution, Evaluation, Extension

Résumé

Michael Hoey’s (2005) Lexical Priming (LP) theory was revolutionary in a number of ways. It was the first lexis-driven theory of language to combine large quantities of authentic ‘usage-data’ (in corpora) and psycholinguistic/cognitive research to explain the functioning, acquisition and (re)production of language in appropriate contexts. At the same time, it married the study of micro-contexts, typical of CL, with the macro-textual vision of the experienced discourse analyst that Hoey was. According to the 2005 version of LP theory, during any encounter with a word (or a combination of words), we subconsciously note the words and the structures it commonly occurs with (its collocates and colligations), the semantic sets with which it normally co-occurs (its semantic associations) and the communicative functions it conveys (its pragmatic associations). We also note discourse patterns that operate within a longer distance from the word in focus (such as problem-solution, cause-effect, etc.). The more frequent the encounters with the word the more fixed in memory these associations, that is, primings, become. With the aid of a series of Hoey’s last unpublished lecture slides (numbering 1,499, 2014-2017), which he requested his family leave to us to work on and the Japanese language written corpus of online communication Yahoo! Chiebukuro Data, we examine current LP theory, some of the ways it has evolved, some of its unresolved issues and add a suggestion or two of our own (Hoey himself stresses repeatedly that this is a theory in development). Some issues that remain unresolved in the 2005 version include some confusion about the status of word as against the morpho-phoneme, as well as some scepticism about the Sinclairian notion of lexical item (Sinclair 2004). What is the precise distinction between semantic and pragmatic associations – why for instance is UNCERTAINTY pragmatic but UNEXPECTED semantic? If pragmatic meanings are codified and conventionalised in the collective minds of a community of speakers, do they not, as many argue, belong in the realm of semantics? And most significant of all is the lack of attention paid to evaluation (i.e., the appraisal of an entity as essentially good or bad; Hunston & Thompson 2000) at both the micro and macro (cohesion) levels of analysis. Using Hoey’s own favourite examples (consequences, in broad daylight, NOT hear a word against , a blind eye to , etc.), we show how evaluative meanings are pervasive at all levels and primed in speakers’ minds in the same way as the other phenomena Hoey pays attention to. We then add our own thoughts on evaluative cohesion (Partington 2017). Finally, the most striking novelty in Hoey’s late unpublished slides is his desire to have LP theory tested on languages other than English to accumulate evidence to corroborate the fact that LP is a universal theory of language (with local adaptations). This talk is part of a project to test LP on a particular discourse type of Japanese (of which the first speaker is a fluent speaker) in an attempt to carry out Michael Hoey’s wishes. References Hoey, Michael. (2005). Lexical priming: A new theory of words and language. Milton: Taylor & Francis. Hunston, Susan and Geoff Thompson. (2000). Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and the construction of discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Partington, Alan. (2017). Evaluative clash, evaluative cohesion and how we actually read evaluation in texts. Journal of Pragmatics 117: 190-203. Sinclair, John. (2004). Trust the text: Language, corpus and discourse. London: Routledge.
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hal-04653877 , version 1 (19-07-2024)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04653877 , version 1

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Eugenia Diegoli, Alan Partington. Lexical Priming: Evolution, Evaluation, Extension. 7th Corpora and Discourse International Conference, Jul 2024, Innsbruck, Austria. ⟨hal-04653877⟩
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