A Cognitive Linguistic Study of Visually Shaping Abstract Words

Abstract

The current study qualitatively addresses concept as the main theoretical problem in cognitive linguistics on the one hand, and the abstract nature of things on the other. In this regard, scholars maintained that the issue with concept is still controversial and to deal with abstract nouns is also difficult, let alone when dealing with the concept of abstract noun. Of course the problem will be doubled as the nature of both concepts and abstract nouns is invisible, perspectivised, and changeable. Accordingly, the objective of the present work is to examine  the semantic range of the abstract word BLACKMAILING from the perspectives of a number of talented participants in drawing. That is, the researchers are to address the following research question: What is the semantic range of the selected abstract word (blackmailing) from the participants’ perspectives who are talented in drawing? The researchers adopted Fillmore's (1976/77) theory of Frame Semantics. As for the data, one abstract word (blackmailing) has been selected based on the juror’s opinion to be applied on a number of six college students, who are talented in drawing. The study has concluded that: there is no fixed referential connection between an abstract word and its concept; the participants anchored their understanding of abstract nouns in pictures that represent minimized scenes or events of reality using concrete referents and associations. Finally, one might encounter a similarity in terms of using some the frame elements; however, their employment is different. Finally, the semantic range of BLACKMAILING is between four to 10 elements.