The media and the mental models

The media have an important role in creating social and cognitive distinctions rather than reflecting them. As mentioned before, the students involved in the research are also trained in translation and interpreting. In the process of interpretation word recog-nition is paramount. Professor Philip Hofmeister from Stanford University, in a lecture in Introduction to Psycholinguistics held on April 7, 2011 discusses the issues of word recognition in general and semantic priming in particular. According to him, in word recognition the question is to what extent are frequency, priming and other effects subject to automatic processes versus attentional processes. In semantic decoding nowadays associative priming seems to be more frequent. In automatic processing word recognition is fast, not preventable and not available to consciousness. In atten-tional processes word recognition is slow, strategic and available to consciousness.

Hofmeister also underlines that ambiguity provides information on the organization of our lexicon and allows us to test how meanings are accessed when in competition.

Interestingly lexical decision is faster for words with multiple senses. Perhaps surpris-ingly, when we see or hear a word, we activate all its possible meanings, but context will constrain the interpretation (stanford.edu).

Currently in language research, focus has been shifted from rules to words. Elman (2011) claims that language research results suggest that the lexicon is representation-ally rich, that it is the source of much productive behaviour, and that lexicrepresentation-ally specific information plays a critical and early role in the interpretation of grammatical struc-ture; therefore, he suggests an alternative approach, which provides a way to account for lexical knowledge without a mental lexicon.

152

There are several trendy metaphors on how the media is viewed these days. We def-initely live in a media saturated world where our culture is a huge supermarket of me-dia messages. If in the past the main issue was how to gain information at all, nowa-days the major problem is how to protect ourselves from the flood of information. In order to protect ourselves quite often we put our mind onto “automatic pilot”, which might not be the best decision, as the danger in the automatic processing of messages allows media to condition our thought processes. As we have mentioned before, the daily media diet of the students explores the lexis found at the strategic intersection between business, politics, infotainment and Hollywood. When developing students’

media literacy skills we need to consider that the strategic and tactical use of specific words and phrases can change how people think or behave. We already have experi-ence related to how in a multinational joint project the working language (be it Eng-lish, French, German or any other language) influences the narratives and communica-tion strategies people are using while negotiating, drafting documents, disseminating the end-products of a project. Therefore we consider it of paramount importance to develop the young generation’s conscious awareness to decoding the language of the media. In this highly digitalized world we are experiencing a phoneticization of mes-sages. Therefore we also have to train our students to develop skills to hear and decode not only “text speak” but also the new voices present in the media, as “voices point to the possibility of a more readerly and reflexive appropriation of the language of the media by lay actors” (Myles 2010: 51).

5. Conclusion

Language creates and reflects the world; nevertheless we all dissect the world along different lines. Nowadays these differences can also stem from the fact that language is often under the dominance of the media, as a powerful institution. Actually lan-guage is often dominated by elite discourses that may generate alternative views and particular conceptualizations of the world. In addition to the re-conceptualization of already existing entities, new unknown, unfamiliar or abstract events are difficult to define. Whenever a new concept is created, linguistic strategies operate to create a mental model which is stored as a new element in our mental lexicon. The media, which encompass discourses and narratives situated at the intersection of virtually all walks of life ranging from private to public sphere, from lay to professional, are strongly influencing the creation of the mental model, as all depends on the discourse that is created to embed the concept.

Above we have seen the role of the media in building a relevant lexis used by most post-modern discourses, almost irrespective of the languages which employ them. It is true that lexicalization is highly conditioned by the particular interests that influence personal word selection, but quite often discourses select lexical items to express ideo-logies rather than meaning in itself. The scope of the next phase of the research on the most representative words dominating the media will focus on creating the conceptual-ization maps of the analysed database.

153 References

Auberger, O. 2008. Un site pour investir sur le futur président américain. Le Figaro.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/patrimoine/2008/10/13/05001-20081013ARTFIG00475-un-site-pour-investir-sur-le-futur-president-americain-.php

Elman, J. L. 2011. Lexical knowledge without a lexicon? The Mental lexicon. 6/1: 1–33.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/ml/2011/00000006/00000001/art00001

Hofmeister, Ph. 2011. Intro to Psycholinguistics. http://www.stanford.edu/~philiph/teaching/2011 /ling170/lecture2-words.pdf

Hortobágyi, I. 2010. Aspects of Glocalized Popular Culture in Hungary. Bulletin of the University of Transylvania. Vol. 3(52). Series IV. Philology. Cultural Studies. Brasov: Transylvania University Press. 217–228.

Luntz, F. Dr. 2007. Words that Work. It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear. New York: Hype-rion.

Mihelj, S. 2011. Media Nations. Communicating Belonging and Exclusion in the Modern World.

London: Palgrave–Macmillan.

Myles, J. F. 2010. Bourdieu, Language and the Media. London: Palgrave–Macmillan.

Potter, J. W. 2008. Media Literacy. Sage Publications.

Szöllősy, J. 2007. Hunglish into English. The Elements of Translation from Hungarian into English.

Corvina.

http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20110323/NEWS/703239985/1002&parentprofile=1001129 http://www.financiarul.com/articol_46863/admiterea-la-facultate-investitie-in-viitor.html

154

II. BESZÉDKUTATÁS