Toward the stochastic nature of the concept and its embeddedness in cognitive paradigms

The present article is a build-up on “The Concept as the Mental Representation of a Text” published earlier. It establishes the stochastic or probabilistic nature of the concept, its multi-dimensionality and embeddedness in cognitive paradigms. The article also emphasizes the validity of text and discourse data for a cognitive linguist. The universal or macroverbalization of a concept / cultural category will be, according to the logic of the article, the supertext resulting from the convergence of all the texts on the given topic, i.e. texts containing the verbalizations of the concept. The article assumes that the concept lacks a precise structure - any of its features can either be actualized or neutralized in a particular communicative situation. It is also suggested that the concept cannot be structured in terms of nucleus-periphery, has diffused boundaries and can link to an indefinite number of other concepts. The concept is viewed as a mental construction built on intersemioticity principles. Particularly stressed is the importance of the cognitive context for the realization of a concept - it cannot be verbalized out of frame structures. Consequently, any concept is essentially an encyclopedia of its epoch, as entering a particular cognitive paradigm, it acquires additional meanings depending on the social and cultural reality. Contiguous paradigms are thus actualized. The text where the concept is verbalized is not the result of linguistic activity only and is subject to analysis from the perspective of diverse codes forming it. The article suggests using rigorous semantic procedures for singling out conceptual features, which will permit reconciling the difference between the semantic-cognitive and linguistic-cultural approaches in cognitive linguistics, as such analysis will take into account both intra-textual and broad encyclopedic knowledge, and will not construct interpretation upon the linguistic code exclusively.