Complexity of Mental Representation: A Cognitive Pragmatics Perspective

Abstract

This article attempts to elucidate the meaning construction process, mental states and mental relations, communicative intentions, and action plans and thereby to explore the complexity of mental representations from a purely cognitive pragmatics perspective. It also attempts to reevaluate the violations of cooperative principle and maxims. Cooperation, mental states and intentionality are the three basic tools for any communication process. Mental states are either conscious or unconscious. They are emotional and cognitive which include common attention, shared belief, and consciousness. Three different types of beliefs are differentiated: individual, common and shared. Intentionality is the relationship between mental acts and the external world. Every mental phenomenon has content and it is directed at an object. Two fundamental distinct meanings are attributed to the concept of intentionality: direction and deliberateness. Intentionality can be conceived of through communicative intentions and action plans. The main concepts of communication, namely, cooperation, sharedness and intentionality are indispensable concepts to understand the process of comprehension and reconstruction of response in communication. Without rich shared knowledge, the inferential chain in non-standard communication becomes lengthy and laborious. Other possibilities arise due to the absence of the fundamental concepts, one of which is failure of communication. Any mental process can be envisaged in terms of steps starting with the expression of an act, moving through speaker meaning, to the communicative effect, then to the reaction it creates and finally the production of overt communicative response. The paper examines the scale of complexity of mental representation and shows the underlying processes required in meaning construction. Additionally, the difference between standard and non-standard communication is presented in terms of complexity of inferential processes needed for each two different cases in communication.