Van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach to context

Fergal Treanor
fergal_treanorhotmail.com

1. Overview
2. Theoretical issues
3. Practical issues
4. A note on intentions
5. Conclusion
6. References

1. Overview

Van Dijk (2006; 2008; 2009) presents a sociocognitive perspective on discursive context. His
multidisciplinary approach draws on findings from cognitive science and social psychology. At
the heart of his theory is the idea that context should be understood as an ongoingly updated
participant construct of the relevant contextual features of text and talk. He criticises traditional
sociolinguistic accounts of the discourse-context relationship as unnecessarily superficial, and
argues that the dynamics of this relationship are most usefully analysed in terms of the subjective
cognitive representations – “context models” – which discourse participants have of salient
contextual knowledge. These involve episodic and semantic memories, personal and
sociocultural knowledge, and procedural competencies that make interaction possible.

Van Dijk also postulates a “K-device” – a special knowledge-management function, whose

existence is consistent with empirical research on the innate interactive abilities of interlocutors,
and which as a theoretical concept can help analysts account for idiosyncratic variation in
discourse production. After all, if there were a stable causal relationship between contextual
factors and discourse production, language users in identical circumstances would produce
identical utterances; and that is manifestly not the case.

2. Theoretical issues

The conceptualization of context models as participant constructs rests on a constructivist

assumption, which stresses the primacy of the subjective cognitive processes of discourse
participants. This assumption is already present in van Dijk and Kintsch’s theory of discourse
comprehension strategies (1983). The ubiquity of construction and the co-constructive role of the
analyst is widely problematised in the interdisciplinary study of language and discourse (see
especially Duranti, 2005; but also Wodak and Meyer, 2009; Verschueren, 2001; 2012). Van Dijk
acknowledges this issue (2006: 164) thereby perhaps anticipating a misreading of the theory as
scientific realism.

Van Dijk’s writing, however, does have a distinctly scientific tenor, and an analyst working in
the sociocognitive paradigm would certainly observe the tenets of constructive empiricism (van
Fraassen, 1980; 2001): study empirical data, draw inferences (about the phenomenology of other
minds), and present theoretically justifiable postulates (about what can be found there). Van Dijk
rightly rejects the empiricist fallacy in its narrow sense: unobservability is not seen as a limiting
principle (2006: 161). The ‘reality’ of these postulates can be accounted for by empirical testing
(2006: 164; 2008: 95,99).

Context models and the K-device, it seems, are understood to be ontologically anterior to their
detection via inference. They are hypothetical objects, whose existence can be inferred from their
correlates, and then tested for by means of specially designed experiments. To access context,
van Dijk argues, we should

systematically study its ‘consequences’, that is, discourse variations, in different situations, as we
do more generally in the study of unobservable phenomena in any science. (van Dijk, 2008: 107)

He highlights the need for empirical research:

… without detailed experimental (and other empirical) studies I can only speculate on the ways
context models are formed, activated, updated and applied in actual discourse processes … what
follows are merely general hypotheses (van Dijk, 2008: 99)

This calls to mind the scientific ‘discovery procedures’ used, for example, in the discovery of the
planet Neptune, whose existence was first postulated, based on observed anomalies in the orbit
of Uranus, and then tested for by direct (telescopic) observation. This scientific approach aligns
van Dijk with the critical rationalism of Popper (2002), as it seeks to test hypotheses using
systematic empirical observation. Van Dijk does not explicitly call for falsificatory testing, but
presumably he would accept revisions to his model based on adequate empirical
counterevidence.

It seems unusual, then, that van Dijk likens the ontological status of these unobservable
phenomena to that of sociocultural abstractions, such as politics, society, etc. (2006: 163). This
comparison is slightly misleading, as while the subjectivities of other minds are taken to be at
least phenomenologically given, the other constructs mentioned here rely for their ‘existence’ on
the ontological primacy of observation, i.e. they are entirely our own constructs, for which the
analyst – or community of analysts – can claim full responsibility.
The phenomenological reading situates van Dijk’s postulates alongside Levinson’s “interaction
engine” (Levinson, 2006), as theoretically plausible components of our natural cognitive
makeup. It is analogous to the generativist idea of linguistic competence as a

“biological endowment … the innate component of the mind/brain that yields knowledge of
language when presented with linguistic experience” (Chomsky, 1986: xxvi)

It can in fact be argued that the K-device is a nativist concept; models of learned sociocultural
knowledge are emphasized throughout van Dijk’s theoretical elaborations, but of course, the
ability to develop subjective knowledge can be seen as objectively present in every (non-
pathological) human mind. Levinson (2006: 91) makes a similar point; regardless of how
relevant this “cognitive machinery” may or may not be to a given research programme, we can
acknowledge that it is there. To this extent, the theory is essentialist and universalising.

An important difference, however, is that van Dijk makes no claims about biological reality. He
makes it clear (2008: 65) that context models and the K-device are psychological, not
neurological objects:

“ … our analysis of the internal organization of mental models is framed in terms of schemas and
their categories, and not in terms of network structures, links, and the strength of such links – a
representation that might be closer to the neurological basis of mental models, but about which I
have nothing to say here.”

Presumably there is a structural correspondence between the lifeworld experience of

psychological phenomena and the “real” world of electrochemical synaptic processes. One could
therefore object that van Dijk’s argument for participant constructs as a

“crucial missing link that relates discourse processing to communicative situations and social
structures”

is unsatisfying, as it does not address the next question: where do participant constructs come
from? What is the foundation on which they are built? If the relationship between social structure
and discourse structure is superficial, surely psychological phenomena are also superficial in that
they are simply a manifestation of the underlying neurological reality. As our ‘next trick’, we can
argue that neurons and synapses are simply a manifestation of the interactions of molecules, and
so on, recurringly applying the principle that there is ‘something missing’ from our analysis – the
next level – something deeper – something more real. Luhmann (2009: 260-261) reduces this
argument to absurdity when he asks whether he must understand the cardiovascular function of
his critics before understanding their work.
To remain fair, however, van Dijk does not propose to depart from lifeworld phenomena or
ultimately to describe discourse in terms of particle physics. His essentially psychological
approach aims for the fundamentals of the lifeworld, the ‘atoms’ of experience. If we assume
that he intends to ‘get off’ there, then the ad absurdum criticism appears less relevant.

I do not share Luhmann’s dogma of irreducibility (Bohnen, 1994), but his perspective provides a
possible point of entry for the development of emergentist ontologies, which hold that while the
existence of lifeworld phenomena is predicated on beating hearts and an ‘m-class’ planetary
environment, these things do not saliently constitute the higher-order construct we call
“meaning”. In other words, “that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or
absence is no real part of the whole” (Aristotle, cited in Givón, 2005: 179). Levinson (2006)
also posits three orders of discourse analysis – cognitive, interactive and sociocultural – which
can be understood as irreducible, and analysed accordingly in suitable ways.

My reference to critical rationalism is therefore not meant as a term of abuse, though in some
quarters of critical discourse studies, it might be regarded as such; it simply needs to be made
clear that the cognitive approach to discourse studies, while highly plausible, and heuristically
valuable, risks being paradigmatically and methodologically incommensurable (in the sense of
Kuhn, 1996) with more interpretative approaches to research; van Dijk’s constructive empiricism
is at quite a remove from the hermeneutic circle, and leaves less ‘scientific’ forms of thought to
the discourse participants under analysis. The approach is new, and the methods as yet
underdeveloped. Irrespective of this, I can agree fully with van Dijk’s premises, and concur with
his assessment:

“Although my proposals do not pretend to present a complete psychological theory of context

models and of their role in discourse processing, and although they especially need detailed
empirical testing, they do claim to represent a plausible mental interface between discourse and
social situations.” (van Dijk, 2008: 57)

3. Practical issues

As objects of inquiry, macrophenomena like ideology are arguably more at home in an

interpretative paradigm. Analysts producing such research acknowledge explicitly that we are
engaging in a subjective process of hermeneutic interpretation – charting our own intellectual
journey through the confusion of data to present an empirically grounded but subjective picture
of reality. Constrained by data and by descriptive theoretical terms, e.g. grammar, discourse
structures, genre, context, etc., we can construct an anylysis which, while not ad hoc, is not part
of the natural or cognitive sciences either. When addressing more scientific topics, it is more
difficult to acknowledge the interpretative role of the researcher. Verschueren (1999: 90) is
sceptical of the value of cognitive theorizing in pragmatic research which places linguistic data
in the foreground.
Even interpretative research work should be ‘falsifiable’ to the extent that this is possible.
Researchers can always engage in falsificatory reasoning. They can and should reflect critically
on their own findings. Empirical data should always be fully accessible, and units of analysis
should recognisably be part of a larger body of data. Verschueren (2012: 22) calls these checks
“counterscreening”.

In case studies involving highly-constrained institutional practices of literacy, it is doubtful that

the sociocognitive approach will find practical application. This does not say that other forms of
research into institutional discourse cannot be informed by the sociocognitive approach;
ethnographic studies of the conditions of textual production, for instance, in which interviews are
designed to elicit the kinds of personal construals and interpretations which do not appear in
institutionally sanctioned texts, could benefit greatly from this perspective; how do bureacrats
talk in private about their roles in the workplace?

Levinson (2006: 89) points out that no linguist would argue for the absurd idea that language
does not require mentation; the question does arise, however, of what form of analysis is best
suited to what ontological level of discursive context. Van Dijk himself mentions that context
models may vary only minimally when the activity type is institutionally constrained.

Indeed, we may assume that the more situations are formal, normative and institutional, the more
the context models of participants will be similar and overlapping, whereas those in informal
situations may be much more idiosyncratic. (van Dijk, 2006: 172-173)

Furthermore, as all the texts we are looking at are the products of institutions, or, where they are
written by individuals, by representatives of institutions, we can presume that the content of the
texts carries the approval of the institution-as-actor (Saarinen, 2008). This entails a
heterarchically distributed conception of agency, which is more usefully analysed as the
relationship between institutional structure and discourse, even if this relationship is
acknowledged in theory to be mediated by the confluence of the context models of many
different participants at many different times. Here, Husserl’s social ontology of mind provides
an illuminating theoretical backdrop:

“ …society, which we experience in a common consciousness, may be reduced not only to the
intentional fields of the individual consciousness, but also by the means of an inter subjective
reduction, to that which unites these, namely the phenomenological unity of the social life.”
(Husserl, 1927: 5)

Where the relationship between social context and discourse is concerned, I do think careful
empirical procedures will bring us a good part of the way; well-documented correlations and
certain minimal assumptions about the impact of extralinguistic structures, e.g. institutional
governance architecture, on linguistic action have proved quite useful in my own work so far.
What Levinson calls “the long-term sedimentation of interaction patterns” (2006: 92) is not
necessarily a question of cognition. Blommaert’s concept of “Orthopraxy” (2005) is quite an
elegant shorthand here, but needs to be elaborated. Interdisciplinary borrowing can help in
defining context, depending on one’s area of research. In my own current project,
neoinstitutionalist approaches to ideas and policy promise to be quite useful.

4. A note on intentions

Van Dijk’s definition of intention is more categorical than scalar:

“ … the formation of the intention of the current action… may be a fast and largely automatized
process, but that does not mean that cognitively it does not take place. Indeed … breaks in the
fluency of talk are also to be interpreted as manifestations of ‘ongoing thought’ within and
between turns at talk. There is more direct evidence when speakers actually refer to such ongoing
thoughts in conversation, e.g., when they say things like “Oh, I thought you meant . . . .” The
notion of intention is relevant for a theory of context because as a speaker or recipient I need to
construct myself as intentionally engaging in a communicative act… . That many of the aspects of
communicative acts are ‘automatized’ and barely conscious only means that mental models are
partly processed in the background, as is also the case for context models.” (2008: 82)

This appears to imply that ‘it’s intention all the way down’; that the quality of being intentional
always applies to a communicative act as long as it was not a typo or a slip of the tongue. But
can we truly characterize intentions simply by awarding a one or a zero in this way?

The kind of metapragmatic phenomena van Dijk refers to here furthermore indicate that
interlocutors do not, in the normal flow of discourse production, have conscious control of their
choice of formulations. To pause and actively reflect is to move, mentally, to a different level of
awareness of one’s own intentions. I argue that in institutional contexts, the unnamed authors of
texts are situationally constrained in that they are not at liberty to engage in such metapragmatic
activity; at any rate, they cannot reproduce it in official documents.

So much idiosyncratic, ‘strongly’ intentional mental activity is prevented by institutional

constraints from saliently affecting the production of discourse, that it seems that the relationship
between discourse and context, though admittedly remaining ‘superficial’ in the formal sense
that human cognitive operations still play a mediating role, is in this case the meaningful
relationship to be foregrounded.

5. Conclusion

This paper explicitly accepts the value of the sociocognitive perspective, and is far from being
‘anti-mentalist’. I do however call into question the value of the sociocognitive research
paradigm in tightly constrained institutional settings.
In other words: while I can share van Dijk’s ontological assumptions about psychological objects
in the lifeworld, I am not fully convinced that these assumptions need lead us to a radically new
methodology.

This view applies only to discourse analysis in settings with stable contextual factors; the
cognitive view could prove very useful in designing research programmes that are more strongly
focused on individual subjectivities, e.g. verbal interactions, experiments in social psychology.

It can be objected that my reluctance to adopt the sociocognitive approach is a license for
fogginess; instead of being guided by a strong scientific theory, I am simply embracing the
relativity of the postmodern world view, and thereby failing to make progress towards scientific
truth, or even towards increased empirical adequacy.

In answer I can only restate that interpretation is not ad hoc, but driven by data and theory.
Subjectivity does not preclude rigour. Even in the most scientific disciplines, subjectivity is
always present. By acknowledging this explicitly, analysts invite readers to participate in the
joint construction of intersubjectively sound interpretations, the best of which will harmonize in
productive ways with findings from adjacent disciplines.
 6. References

Blommaert J. (2005) Discourse: A critical introduction: Cambridge Univ Pr.

Bohnen A. (1994) Die Systemtheorie und das Dogma von der Irreduzibilität des Sozialen.
Zeitschrift für Soziologie 23: 292-305.
Chomsky N. (1986) Knowledge of language: Its nature, origin, and use: Praeger Publishers.
Duranti A. (2005) On theories and models. Discourse Studies 7: 409-429.
Givón T. (2005) Context as other minds: The pragmatics of sociality, cognition, and
communication: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Husserl E. (1927) Phenomenology. Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
Kuhn TS. (1996) The structure of scientific revolutions: University of Chicago press.
Levinson SC. (2006) Cognition at the heart of human interaction. Discourse Studies 8: 85-93.
Luhmann N. (2009) Einführung in die Systemtheorie, 5. Auflage, Heidelberg: Carl Auer Verlag.
Popper KR. (2002) The logic of scientific discovery: Routledge.
Saarinen T. (2008) Persuasive presuppositions in OECD and EU higher education policy
documents. Discourse Studies 10: 341-361.
van Dijk TA. (2006) Discourse, context and cognition. Discourse Studies 8: 159.
van Dijk TA. (2008) Discourse and context: A sociocognitive approach, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
van Dijk TA. (2009) Society and discourse: How social contexts influence text and talk:
Cambridge Univ Pr.
van Dijk TA and Kintsch W. (1983) Strategies of discourse comprehension: Academic Press.
van Fraassen BC. (1980) The scientific image: Oxford University Press, USA.
van Fraassen BC. (2001) Constructive empiricism now. Philosophical Studies 106: 151-170.
Verschueren J. (2001) Predicaments of criticism. Critique of Anthropology 21: 59.
Verschueren J. (2012) Ideology in Language Use: Pragmatic Guidelines for Empirical Research,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wodak R and Meyer M. (2009) Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Agenda, Theory ansd
Methodology. In: Wodak R and Meyer M (eds) Methods of critical discourse analysis.
Sage Publications Ltd.