Article published in:

The Conversation Frame: Forms and functions of fictive interaction
Edited by Esther Pascual and Sergeiy Sandler
[Human Cognitive Processing 55] 2016
► pp. 3–22

Fictive interaction and the conversation frame

An overview

Esther Pascual | Zhejiang University, China

Sergeiy Sandler | Independent scholar, Israel

We deal with the notion of fictive interaction, namely the use of the conversation frame in order to structure cognition, discourse, and grammar (Pascual 2002, 2006b, 2014). We discuss how thought and the conceptualization of experience are partly modeled by the pattern of conversation, and present the kinds of fictive interaction on different levels: the discourse, the inter-sentential, the sentential, and intra-sentential level, down to the morpheme. We also provide a list of its defining characteristics (conversational features, non-actual and non-token interpretation, metonymy), and discuss what makes this ubiquitous phenomenon, widespread across languages, discourse genres, and sociolinguistic groups, worth studying, and what its theoretical implications are. The chapter closes with an overview of the structure and content of this volume.

Keywords: metonymy, intersubjectivity, non-token reading, fictivity, conversationalization

Published online: 01 November 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.55.01pas

References

Bakhtin, M.M.

[1963] (1984) Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics (trans. C. Emerson). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

[1979] (1986) Speech genres and other late essays (trans. V.W. McGee). Austin: University of Texas Press.

Baynham, M.

(1996) Direct speech: What’s it doing in non-narrative discourse? Journal of Pragmatics, 25(1), 61–81.

Brandt, L.

(2008) A semiotic approach to fictive interaction as a representational strategy in communicative meaning construction. In T. Oakley & A. Hougaard (Eds.), Mental spaces approaches to discourse and interaction (pp. 109–148). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

(2013) The communicative mind: A linguistic exploration of conceptual integration and meaning construction. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Bråten, S.

(Ed.) (1998) Intersubjective communication and emotion in early ontogeny. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Bruner, J.S.

(1983) Child’s talk. New York: Norton.

Budwig, N., Užgiris, I.Č., & Wertsch, J.V.

(Eds.) (2000) Communication: An arena of development. Stamford: Ablex.

Cicourel, A.V.

(1974) Interviewing and memory. In C. Cherry (Ed.), Pragmatic aspects of human communication (pp. 51–82). Dordrecht: Reidel.

Cienki, A., & Giansante, G.

(2014) Conversational framing in televised political discourse: A comparison from the (2008) elections in the United States and Italy. Journal of Language and Politics, 13(2), 255–288.

Clark, E.V.

(2003) First language acquisition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Clark, H.H.

(1992) Arenas of language use. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

(1996) Using language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Clark, H.H., & Gerrig, R.J.

(1990) Quotation as demonstration. Language, 66(4), 784–805.

Cooren, F.

(2010) Action and agency in dialogue: Passion, incarnation and ventriloquism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

(2012) Communication theory at the center: Ventriloquism and the communicative constitution of reality. Journal of Communication, 62(1), 1–20.

Cooren, F., & Sandler, S.

(2014) Polyphony, ventriloquism and constitution: In dialogue with Bakhtin. Communication Theory, 24(3), 225–244.

Coulson, S., & Pascual, E.

(2006) For the sake of argument: Mourning the unborn and reviving the dead through conceptual blending. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 4, 153–181.

Dancygier, B., & Sweetser, E.

(2012) Viewpoint in language: A multimodal perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Demeter, G.

(2011) Explicit apologies in English and Romanian: A construction grammar approach. PhD dissertation, Oklahoma State University.

Fairclough, N.

(1994) Conversationalisation of public discourse and the authority of the consumer. In R. Keat, N. Whiteley, & N. Abercrombie (Eds.), The authority of the consumer (pp. 253–268). London: Routledge.

Gallese, V., & Cuccio, V.

(2015) The paradigmatic body: Embodied simulation, intersubjectivity and the bodily self. In T. Metzinger & J.M. Windt (Eds.), Open MIND (pp. 1–23). Frankfurt: MIND Group.

Geluykens, R.

(1992) From discourse process to grammatical construction: On left-dislocation in English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Givón, T.

(1979) From discourse to syntax: Grammar as a processing strategy. In T. Givón (Ed.), Discourse and syntax (pp. 81–112). New York: Academic Press.

(1993) Coherence in text, coherence in mind. Pragmatics & Cognition, 2, 171–227.

(Ed.) (1997) Conversation: Cognitive, communicative and social perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Goffman, E.

(1963) Behavior in public places, Notes on the social organization of gatherings. New York: Free Press.

(1981) Footing. In Forms of talk (pp. 124–159). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Goodwin, C.

(1995) The negotiation of coherence within conversation. In M.A. Gernsbacher & T. Givón (Eds.), Coherence in spontaneous speech (pp. 117–135). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Haspelmath, M.

(1997) Indefinite pronouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Herman, V.

(1999) Deictic projection and conceptual blending in epistolarity. Poetics Today, 20(3), 523–541.

Herring, S.C.

(1991) The grammaticalization of rhetorical questions in Tamil. In E.C. Traugott, & B. Heine (Eds.), Approaches to grammaticalization (pp. 253–284). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Jarque, M.J., & Pascual, E.

(2016) Mixed viewpoints in factual and fictive discourse in Catalan Sign Language narratives. In B. Dancygier, L.Wei-lun Lu, & A. Verhagen (Eds.), Viewpoint and the Fabric of meaning: Form and use of viewpoint tools across languages and modalities (pp. 259–280). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Langacker, R.W.

(1987) Foundations of cognitive grammar, Vol. I. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

(1999) Virtual reality. Studies in Linguistic Sciences, 29(2), 77–103.

Lehmann, C.

(2008) Information structure and grammaticalization. In M.J. López-Couso & E. Seoane Posse (Eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization 3 (pp. 207–229). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Li, C.N., & Thompson, S.A.

(1976) Subject and topic: A new typology of language. In C.N. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 457–489). New York: Academic Press.

Linell, P.

(1998) Approaching dialogue: Talk, interaction and contexts in dialogical perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

(2009) Rethinking language, mind and world dialogically: Interactional and contextual theories of human sense-making. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Pang, K.-Y.S.

(2005) ‘This is the linguist in me speaking’: Constructions for talking about the self talking. Functions of Language, 12(1), 1–38.

Pascual, E.

(2002) Imaginary trialogues: Conceptual Blending and fictive interaction in criminal courts. Utrecht: LOT.

(2006a) Questions in legal monologues: Fictive interaction as argumentative strategy in a murder trial. Text & Talk, 26(3), 383–402.

(2006b) Fictive interaction within the sentence: A communicative type of fictivity in grammar. Cognitive Linguistics, 17(2), 245–267.

(2008) Text for context, trial for trialogue: An ethnographic study of a fictive interaction blend. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 6, 50–82.

(2010) El concepto de interacción ficticia en español: De la conversación a la gramática. [Fictive interaction in Spanish: From conversation to grammar]. Dialogía, 5, 64–98.

(2014) Fictive interaction: The conversation frame in thought, language, and discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Pascual, E., & Królak, E.

(2015) The ‘listen to characters thinking’ novel: Fictive interaction as narrative strategy in literary bestsellers and their Spanish and Polish translations. Ms. http://estherpascual.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/PascualKr%C3%B3lak-LanguageLiteratureCognition.pdf

Pascual, E., Królak, E., & Janssen, Th.A.J.M.

(2013) Direct speech compounds: Evoking sociocultural scenarios through fictive interaction. Cognitive Linguistics, 24(2), 345–366.

Pascual, E., & Versluis, C.

(2006) Verbale demonstratie als strategie van functionele adaptatie bij Broca-afasie: Een gevalstudie. Voortgang, 24, 169–182.

Rhee, S.

(2004) From discourse to grammar: Grammaticalization and lexicalization of rhetorical questions in Korean. LACUS Forum, 30, 413–423.

Sacks, H.

(1992) Lectures on conversation. Oxford: Blackwell.

Sankoff, G., & Brown, P.

(1976) The origins of syntax in discourse: A case study of Tok Pisin relatives. Language, 52, 631–666.

Sandler, S.

(2012) Reenactment: An embodied cognition approach to meaning and linguistic content. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 11(4), 583–598.

Singer, S.W.

(1826) Notes. In The dramatic works of William Shakespeare, Vol. 3. Chiswick: Charles Whittingham, College House.

Streeck, J.

(2002) Grammars, words, and embodied meanings. Journal of Communication, 52(3), 581–596.

Talmy, L.

[1996] (2000) Fictive motion in language and ‘ception’. In Toward a cognitive semantics: Concept structuring systems (Vol. 1, pp. 99–175). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Tomasello, M.

1999 The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

(2003) Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Trevarthen, C.

(1979) Communication and cooperation in early infancy. A description of primary intersubjectivity. In M. Bullowa (Ed.), Before speech: The beginning of human communication (pp. 321–347). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

(2011) What is it like to be a person who knows nothing? Defining the active intersubjective mind of a newborn human being. Infant and Child Development, 20(1), 119–135.

Trevarthen, C., & Hubley, P.

(1978) Secondary intersubjectivity: Confidence, confiding and acts of meaning in the first year. In A. Lock (Ed.), Action, gesture and symbol: The emergence of language (pp. 183–229). London: Academic Press.

Verhagen, A.

(2005) Constructions of intersubjectivity: Discourse, syntax, and cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Voloshinov, V.N.

[1929] (1986) Marxism and the philosophy of language (trans. L. Matejka, & I.R. Titunik). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Voort, H. van der

(2013) Fala fictícia fossilizada: O tempo futuro em Aikanã. [Fossilised fictive quotation: Future tense in Aikanã] Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi (Ciências Humanas), 8(2), 359–377.

Vygotsky, L.S.

[1934] (1962) Thought and Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Zlatev, J., Racine, T.P., Sinha, C., & Itkonen, E.

(Eds.) (2008) The shared mind: Perspectives on intersubjectivity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Cited by

Cited by other publications

Assimakopoulos, Stavros, Fabienne H. Baider & Sharon Millar

2017. In Online Hate Speech in the European Union [SpringerBriefs in Linguistics, ], ► pp. 25 ff.

Igl, Natalia

2019. In Experiencing Fictional Worlds [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 32], ► pp. 97 ff.

Sandler, Sergeiy & Esther Pascual

2017. In the Beginning There Was Conversation: Fictive Direct Speech in the Hebrew Bible. SSRN Electronic Journal

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 04 may 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.