Article published in:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 15:1 (2016) ► pp. 63–93

Making intelligence more transparent

A critical cognitive analysis of US strategic intelligence reports on Sino-US relation

| Nanjing Normal University
This paper attempts to make a critical cognitive analysis of US strategic intelligence reports and aims at investigating language strategies and cognitive biases that occur in the reports and how the reports create the “realities” that may influence policymakers’ decisions. The data for analysis include seven reports released by US Intelligence Community which analyze, more or less, the Sino-US relations currently and in the foreseeable future as well as the implications of a rising China on US policies. The analytic framework is built up by integrating Critical Metaphor Analysis, Conceptual Blending Theory and Discourse Space Theory, each of which deal with different aspects of the discourse and on the whole provide a comprehensive analysis of it. The critical cognitive analysis of intelligence reports could disclose the views that analysts hold on particular issues, providing valuable reference for understanding or evaluating their reports’ contents, and reveal the ideology inherent in US strategic thinking, helping to estimate US strategic policies in the long term.
Keywords: conceptual blending, metaphor, discourse space theory, Cognitive Linguistics, intelligence analysis, CDA, Sino-US relation
Published online: 12 May 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.15.1.04zha
References
Beer, A. Frabcis and Christ’l De Landtsheer
2004 Metaphorical World Politics. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.Google Scholar
Berkowitz, Bruce D., and Alan E. Goodman
1989 Strategic Intelligence for American National Security. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bruce, James B.
2008 “Making analysis more reliable: Why epistemology matters to intelligence.” In Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations, ed. by George, Roger Z., and James B. Bruce, 171–190. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Cap. Piotr
2013 Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan
2004 Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chilton, Paul
2004 Analyzing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2005 “Vectors, viewpoint and viewpoint shift: Toward a Discourse Space Theory.” In Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by Francisco Jose Ruiz de Mendoza, 78–116. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
1996 Security Metaphors: Cold War Discourse from Containment to Common House. New York/Berlin: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Croft, William and Alan Cruse
2004 Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Vyvyan, and Melanie Green
2006 Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles
1994 Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1997 Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles, and Mark Turner
2002 The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and The Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Filardo Llamas, Laura
2010 “Discourse worlds in Northern Ireland: The legitimization of the 1998 Agreement.” In Political Discourse and Conflict Resolution: Debating Peace in Northern Ireland, ed. by Hayward, Katy and Catherine O’Donnell, 210–229. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2012 “To live in the heart (and mind) of others: The construction of memory in Northern Irish Commemorative Plaques.” CADAAD 5(2): 152–170.Google Scholar
Filardo, Laura
2008 “A comparative study of the discursive legitimation of the agreement by the four main Northern Irish Political parties throughout time.” Ethnopolitics, 71: 21–42. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Frawley, William
1992 Linguistic Semantics. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Goatly, Andrew
1997 The Language of Metaphor. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Lene
2006 Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hart, Christopher
2007 “Critical discourse analysis and conceptualization: Mental spaces, blended spaces and discourse spaces in the British National Party.” In Cognitive Linguistics in Critical Discourse Analysis: Application and Theory, ed. by Christopher Hart & Dominik Lukes, 106–130. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
2008 “Critical discourse analysis and metaphor: toward a theoretical framework.” Critical Discourse Studies 5(2): 91–106. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2010 Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science: New Perspectives on Immigration Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2012 “Moving beyond metaphor in the Cognitive Linguistic approach to CDA: Construal operations in immigration discourse.” In Critical Discourse Studies in Context and Cognition, ed. by Christopher Hart, 171–192. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
2015 “Discourse.” In Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by Eva Dabrowska and Dagmar Divjak, 331–346. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Heuer, Richards
1999 Psychology of Intelligence Analysis. Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency.Google Scholar
Johnson, Lock. K.
(ed.) 2007 Strategic Intelligence, Volumes 1-5. Westport: Praeger Security International.Google Scholar
Kent, Sherman
1949 Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kovecses, Zoltan
2002 Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George
1993 “The contemporary theory of metaphor.” In Metaphor and Thought, 2nd edition, ed. by Andrew Ortony, 202–251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson
1980 Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George, & Mark Turner
1989 More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nuyts, Jan
2001 Epistemic Modality, Language and Conceptualization: A Cognitive-pragmatic Perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Saeed, John. I.
1997 Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Schaffner, Christina and Anita L. Wenden
1995 Language and Peace. Aldersot: Dartmouth.Google Scholar
Steen, Gerard, Aletta, G. Dorst, J. Berenike Herrmann, Anna, A. Kaal, Tina Krennmyr and Trijntje Pasma
2010 A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar