Discourse of Drug Information for Experts and Patients
37day. Do not take a double dose to make up for forgotten individual
doses. If you have any further questions on the use of this medicine,
ask your doctor or pharmacist.Perspective
The prominence view as well as the frame-and-attention approach in
Cognitive Linguistics is based on the concept of perspective (Ungerer and
Schmid 2006: 344), which is of substantial relevance for the categorization
of objects and events in the real world. Speakers have different lexical and
grammatical means in order to describe the same event. Cognitive-
linguistic research into perspectivization showed that the selection of
categories (general vs. specific), the allocation of the syntactic figure
(subject) and ground and the opening of windows of attention determine
how the scene will be conceived (Talmy 2000/I: 258-309; Ungerer and
Schmid 2006: 222). As described by Langacker (2007: 436) the vantage
point, i.e. a subjet’s perspective is the most obvious aspect in order to
explain aspects of conceptualization by means of construals.^13
Langacker (1990; 1991; 2007: 434) distinguishes basic domains (such
as space, time, and domains associated with senses such as color vision),
which provide the experiential ground for conceptualizations, and also
more complex domains (so-called non-basic domains). Both domain types
represent the conceptual matrix evoked by linguistic expressions.
Importantly, the different matrix domains represent specific aspects of a
language user’s encyclopedic knowledge of the entity designated by the
expression (in Langacker’s terms this is the expression's “profile”). This
entity is simultaneously manifest in different domains, but which domain
is activated depends both on the conventional semantic value of the
expressions and contextual factors. Whereas the domains activated by an
expression present its conceptual content, the overall meaning of an
expression depends on the way how this content is linguistically construed.
In Cognitive Linguistics’ terms the various linguistic realizations are
called construals. The different construals from which language users can
choose express according to Langacker (2007: 435) “our multifaceted
capacity to conceive and portray the same situation in alternate ways”
(Section 4).
As mentioned earlier, perspective (being one dimension of construals
next to specificity, prominence, and dynamicity; see Langacker 2007: 435;
Verhagen 2007: 48) has already been investigated in PILs applying
(^13) See also Verhagen (2007: 53) who argues that perspective can be assumed to be
a central part of the entire range of possible construal relations.