Analysis of non-standard communication of translated Children’s Stories from the Perspective of Cognitive Pragmatics

Abstract

Stories take a leading role in influencing children’s behavior and personality as well as nurturing growth and development of their talents. By means of stories, not only do they seek out and come to know the meaning of life, but they develop different cognitive and linguistic skills. However, so far little work has been done to investigate the school-aged children’s literature from the perspective of linguistics. To fill the gap, this study set to assess and analyze three types of intriguing and new stories for the mentioned age group via adopting a cognitive-pragmatic perspective, at the intersection of linguistics and cognitive science. Further elaboration of the results based on qualitative analysis indicate that contrary to expectations, in the communication process, the five sequence standard model hardly showed up, while a non-standard format was the dominant feature; taking note of the non-standard model, research findings indicate that children relate to different elements of communication, especially abstract ones. As a result, children acquire cognitive elements—such as anger, happiness, excessive force, fear, naughtiness and so on—in the form of non-standard, non-verbal communication; it is suggested, therefore, special care is needed with regard to the elements children acquire nonverbally through stories. Finally, research findings indicate that stories inculcate children with numerous cognitive elements, the likes of fear, anger, and so forth, in a nonverbal communication.

Keywords

• children age group
• cognitive pragmatics
• translated children'
• s literature
• intriguing and new stories
• non-verbal communication