The cognitive grounding of illocutionary constructions within the theoretical perspective of the Lexical-Constructional Model

This article develops previous research carried out by Ruiz de Mendoza and Baicchi (2007) on the notion of illocutionary construction with a view to integrating this notion into the illocutionary layer of the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM; cf. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez & Mairal Usón 2008; Mairal Usón & Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez 2009; see also Baicchi 2009a, 2010; Butler, 2009; Ruiz de Mendoza & Gonzálvez-García 2010, inter alia). So far this layer has only paid attention to a limited set of directive constructions (especially Can You X?), which it discusses in terms of the restrictions of the fixed elements of the construction on the kind of conceptual material that can saturate the variable part. In order to fill this gap, the present article makes a complementary analysis of the way illocutionary meaning is modeled in our minds and studies how speakers make use of illocutionary cognitive models to motivate the conventionalized illocutionary value of linguistic expressions. We will assume, following the general trend in constructionist approaches to language (especially the Goldbergian strand, within which the LCM is circumscribed), that illocutionary constructions are form-meaning pairings like other kinds of construction. However, what distinguishes these constructions from others is the relatively fixed nature of their form (e.g. Can You X?, Will You X?, You Must X, etc.) and the special situational and generic (or high-level) nature of the meaning part of the pairing. The article will thus first introduce the LCM with a focus on its overall architecture. Then it will offer an overview of previous proposals of the treatment of illocutionary meaning from a Cognitive Linguistics perspective, which will include the developments in Ruiz de Mendoza and Baicchi (2007), since they are of special interest for the LCM. We will further discuss cognitive model types and argue that illocutionary meaning is based on the activation of high-level situational cognitive models or illocutionary scenarios. Finally, we will describe the traditional speech acts of requesting, ordering, advising, offering, warning, thanking and apologizing in connection to their corresponding illocutionary scenarios and we will argue that it is possible to generalize further and use the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model, as developed by Ruiz de Mendoza and Baicchi (2007), to account for all essential aspects of illocutionary interpretation