Cognitive Analysis Scheme

1. This is an extract / fragment of a novel (short story) …. by a famous

English/American writer / The extract under consideration is a part of the well-known novel
….
This is a piece of literary narrative / a sample of literary discourse.

2. The title creates in the mind of the reader a horizon of expectations. It contains a
compressed message that this text is about …

3. The composition
The compositional patron of the extract may be as follows: The exposition is the beginning
of the story when we first read about the protagonist … The rising action starts with the
sentence … and ends up with the sentence … The climax of the extract is … The falling
action can be seen in the sentence: … The resolution of the extract is …
The text of the excerpt is not homogeneous. The author’s narration is interrupted by the
dialogues of the characters. For example, ….
4. The time and place of events
Deixis serves to introduce a new referent into the discourse, on the basis of certain features
of the context of utterance.
The zero vector is expressed by the deictic markers/elements (now, then).
e.g. “…We intend to record the guest speakers, so these will be available to participants at
the end of the Conference…” – the word these is the deictic expression, as it refers to the
records of the guest speakers that will be given to the participants at the end of the
conference.
5. If narration goes on behalf of the 1 st person, it is approximation and inclusive
narration. If narration goes on behalf of the 3rd person, it is distancing and exclusive
narration. Voice switching may go from the 1st person to the 3rd or vice versa.
e.g. The story is being told in the third person narration, which indicates that we deal with
exclusive narrative / The extract under consideration goes on behalf of the 3 rd person,
which presupposes the distancing and exclusive narration.

6. Figure-ground relations.
Figure-ground alignment can be illustrated the following expressions:
7. Topicality
If a noun proper name is mentioned 6 times, the topicality of the referent is high.
8. Iconicity; the break of the principle of iconicity
e.g. Iconicity of complexity appears in the extract in order to emphasize …
In this extract the iconicity principle is not observed, it’s broken, because the succession of
actions in the text is not observed in the same succession of events in the objective reality.

9. Cleft constructions (the change of perspective)

e.g. It was she who left home at 3 o’clock.
e.g. What was said really ruined me.
e.g. Who told me that is not important.
To foreground/highlight/make the information salient/prominent, the writer uses cleft
constructions.
10. Prototype hierarchy; categorial group
In the excerpt the members of the category …. are organized hierarchically according to the
prototype theory.
11. Cognitive metaphors and cognitive metonymies
The general tone of the narration is amusing/sad ….
It is achieved by the use of such conceptual metaphors as …. /
The number of conceptual metaphors are employed by the writer/narrator to describe the
characters of the novel…/ the narrator’s description of… /
The character’s behavior is also revealed through the metaphors /
The following metaphoric expression highlights the emotional tension which is showed by
the usage of …
e.g. Cognitive metaphor HAPPINESS IS UP presupposes several metaphors…
The linguistic metaphoric expression …., according to Lakoff’s typology is classed as (type
of) metaphor, as it implies the mechanism of mapping from one conceptual image onto
another. The image of the source domain …. is projected onto the target domain …. . So,
the underlying conceptual metaphor is ….. .
The following expressions are instances of conceptual metonymy:
12. Frame structure.
The frame occurring in the narration is a ……. (e.g. room), including a countless number of
different slots in it.
… might be regarded as a slot in the frame of the …
The author draws reader’s attention to a …
With the help of the numerous slots mentioned in the extract it is possible to create an exact
description of …, atmosphere of … and foreground ….