具身认知观对语言理解的新诠释——心理模拟:语言理解的一种手段

New Annotation to Language Comprehension by Embodied Cognition View——Mental Simulation: A Means of Language Comprehension

具身认知观(Embodied Cognition)试图对心-身-世界之间的交互方式给予系统的理论说明,主张:"认知是一种高度具身的、情景化的活动"(Micheal L.Anderson,2004);认知是从身体与环境的相互作用中产生的,依赖于某种类型的经验。从具身认知观来看,心理模拟是语言理解的一种手段,通过再入情景(re-situating)来实现。本文根据上述逻辑考察了词、句、语篇不同信息加工层面的实验研究进展,证实了人们在语言加工过程中感知、肌肉运动以及其他的经验印痕被激活,支持了语言理解是运动感觉以及其他相关经验的心理模拟过程。这种语言理解的心理模拟需要人们再入情景,与已有的听读说写的语言经验发生共鸣,从而为语言理解提供了新的诠释,丰富和发展了认知语言学的理论与实践。

The Embodied Cognition View tries to provide a systematic description of the interactions of mind-body-world. It argues： ＂Cognition is a high embodied and situated action＂ （Micheal L. Anderson, 2004）. Depending on some kind of experience, cognition generates from the interaction between person and environment. From the Embodied Cognition View, mental simulation that is realized via re-situating oneself is a means of language comprehension. Based on the above logic, this paper reviewed the advancement of experiments at different information processing levels, namely, word, sentence and discourse levels, and verified the activation of perceptual, motoric, and other experiential traces in language comprehension process, thus supporting that language comprehension is a process of mental simulation of sensorimotor and other related experience. This kind of mental simulation in language comprehension requires re-situating oneself and involves the resonance of experiential traces of having heard, read, spoken, and written the language in use, which provides a new annotation to language comprehension enriches and develops cognitive linguistics both in theory and practice.