The Cognitive Illusion as a Mechanism of Communicative Accommodation (An Analysis of the English-Language Commemorative Discourse)
https://doi.org/10.18384/2949-5075-2025-2-53-68
Abstract
Aim. To reveal means of verbalizing the cognitive illusion as a mechanism of social consolidation in commemorative discourse, i.e. a combination of language-mediated social practices of collective remembrance.
Methodology. The research material is 800 small-format online texts of English-language commemorative discourse published from 2019 to 2024 by British, American, and Canadian politicians. The methods of the componential, conceptual, categorial, and cognitive-matrix analysis are used to model the “collective memory” as the central conceptual structure of commemorative discourse. The functioning of the mechanism of the cognitive illusion in commemorative discourse is described within the framework of Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT).
Results. It is found that the cognitive illusion is the key mechanism of consolidation in commemorative discourse in that it helps to create and maintain a “virtual museum of collective memory” essential to the social group’s identity. The “collective memory” can be represented as a matrix centred around the “otherness – sameness” conceptual opposition. The matrix brings together two main cognitive contexts with a permeable boundary between them – that of “Past/Future” and that of “Present”. The cognitive illusion helps to transcend the boundary between the two cognitive contexts through a system of “biases” (perspectives of interpretation), whose functioning gets explained in terms of CAT, in particular convergence and divergence.
Research implications. The article suggests a methodology for a joint cognitive-linguistic and communicative analysis and modeling of a virtual space which facilitates transmission of socially significant ideas in institutional discourse.
About the Author
E. P. Murashova
Moscow State Linguistic University; National Research University “Moscow Power Engineering Institute”
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Ekaterina P. Murashova – Cand. Sci. (Philology), Assoc . Prof ., Department of Linguistics and Professional Communication in the Sphere of Political Science; Department of Foreign Languages
Moscow
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