A RT I C L E

From bad to worse: pragmatic scales and the

(de)construction of cultural models
Jean Jacques Weber, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Abstract
This article uses a cognitive-pragmatic approach to discourse which is informed by two
basic concepts: cultural models and pragmatic scales. The data consist of an essay by a
literary writer, Jamaica Kincaids A Small Place, as well as editorials and letters to the
editor published in a Luxembourgish newspaper. The analysis reveals how the authors
of the editorials and letters to the editor both rely upon and construct a particular cultural model about education in Luxembourg, and how the literary writer deconstructs
her readers (at least potentially stereotypical) model of tourism. Rather than attempt to
distinguish between different text genres on such a basis, the article focuses on cognitive aspects that are common to all discourse processing; in particular, it highlights the
key role played by pragmatic scales in linking and structuring cultural models. The
scales are invoked primarily by evaluative adjective forms such as bad, worse, etc.,
and they make possible a high degree of linguistic implicitness in the writers rhetorical and argumentative strategies. The article concludes that the consequent processes of
moving information across evaluative scales and filling in missing values are characteristic of the way human beings think, and that they work together with other processes of reasoning (such as conceptual blending) to produce the full complexity, but also
the potentially stereotyped nature, of human thinking.
Keywords: A Small Place; cognitive-pragmatic approach; cultural models; Kincaid,
Jamaica; pragmatic scales

1 Introduction
The basic premise in cognitive linguistics that there is no direct mapping between
words and the world, that each situation can be construed in different ways
depending on such experiential aspects as perspective, profiling (or
foregrounding), cognitive and cultural models, and conceptual metaphors has
been of great interest to many stylisticians working in these areas. It has led to
the development of a new paradigm, cognitive poetics, which has come of age
with the publication of such books as Stockwells Cognitive Poetics (2002),
Gavins and Steens Cognitive Poetics in Practice (2003) and Semino and
Culpepers Cognitive Stylistics (2002).1 After initially focusing almost
exclusively on the study of conceptual metaphors, cognitive poeticians have now
considerably broadened their field of investigation. According to Stockwell,
cognitive poetics is essentially a way of thinking about literature rather than a
framework in itself, which involves the study of literary reading, in both its
individual and social aspects (Stockwell, 2002: 6, 165).

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A further impetus has been given to cognitive poetics by recent advances in

conceptual integration of blending theory, which provides insights into the nature
of text processing, and accounts for human thinking and reasoning in terms of
complex cross-domain projection of information (Coulson and Oakley, 2000,
forthcoming; Fauconnier and Turner, 2002). It developed out of Fauconniers
theory of mental spaces combined with Turners notion of conceptual integration.
In a way, the theory is its own illustration: Fauconniers theory of mental spaces
is the first input space, Turners notion of conceptual integration the second one;
these two spaces are then merged or blended, and what emerges is the new
theory of blending.
In this article I examine a related aspect of human thinking which has been
somewhat neglected so far in both cognitive linguistics and cognitive poetics,
namely the important role played by pragmatic scales in structuring and setting
up links between the readers cognitive representations of discourse events and
situations. The article takes a cognitive-pragmatic approach to discourse,
presenting textual analyses which are informed by two major concepts derived
from research in linguistic pragmatics and cognitive science: pragmatic scales
and cultural cognitive models. The texts that I look at include Jamaica Kincaids
A Small Place, a postcolonial essay about Antigua, the West Indian island where
she was born, and editorials and letters to the editor published in the
Luxembourgish newspaper Luxemburger Wort dealing with the topic of
Luxembourgs poor results in the Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA), tests which are run by the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) (PISA 2000: Kompetenzen von Schlern
im internationalen Vergleich [2000]).

2 The social dimension of cognitive representations

Cognitive-pragmatic approaches to discourse see the process of understanding
and interpretation as combining both textual and cognitive aspects, both
data-driven and knowledge-driven information (e.g. Culpeper, 2001; van Dijk,
1998). On the basis of this textual and schematic information, the reader
constructs cognitive representations or mental models of what the discourse is
about. There is a distinction here between schemas and models: schemas contain
more general, socially shared knowledge, and models more personal, subjective
knowledge; schemas are more or less fixed knowledge structures and they are
stored in long-term social memory, whereas models are more dynamic
knowledge structures stored in episodic memory (van Dijk, 1988: 13847, 1998:
7981). However, recent psychological research denies the relevance of abstract,
stable conceptual structures in text interpretation, and insists on the ad hoc nature
of the comprehension process which, in this view, relies on temporary and
context-dependent constructions created during dynamic meaning construal (see
in particular Gibbs, 2003).

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As a result, the schema vs model distinction begins to collapse. For this

reason, I have preferred to avoid the term schema with its connotations of
fixedness, and instead use model. This decision is vindicated by the fact that
model is also the most widely used term in cognitive linguistics and cognitive
science. Thus, while Lakoff (1987) uses idealized cognitive model (ICM),
others (e.g. Coulson, 2001: 223; Morgan, 2001: 78) use cultural cognitive
model (CCM) or, for short, cultural model, at least for the more obviously
socially or culturally shared ones. Here I follow Coulson and Morgan in their use
of cultural model as a way of insisting on something that van Dijk, too, has
always emphasized: the unavoidably social dimension of cognitive processes and
representations (see e.g. van Dijk, 1998).
Apart from these terminological issues, a highly relevant point that Lakoff and
Turner (1989) make about cognitive models is that many of them are
hierarchically organized. Lakoff and Turners example is the Great Chain of
Being, and they argue that such a cultural model is a political issue: as a chain
of dominance (of men over women, white over black, upper classes over lower
classes, . . .) it can become a chain of subjugation (Lakoff and Turner, 1989:
213). In other words, hierarchically organized cultural models frequently embody
ethnicity-, gender- and class-based attitudes of superiority, thus corresponding to
what van Dijk (1995: 255) has called biased models. The hierarchical
organization of such a model (e.g. the Great Chain of Being) is realized through
pragmatic scales, which are important building-blocks helping to structure the
model internally, as well as establishing connections between the elements on the
scales and their associated models or submodels (in this case, men, women,
animals, plants, etc.). Before introducing and analysing my data, it will be
helpful to comment on some aspects of these pragmatic scales.

3 Presupposed pragmatic scales

There has been a long-standing interest in the study of pragmatic scales within
linguistic pragmatics. Key studies include Horns (1972) work on scalar
implicatures, Fauconnier (1975) on pragmatic scales and logical structure, and
Fillmore et al. (1988) on the meaning of the let alone construction. Recently
there has been a renewed surge of interest on the part of cognitive linguists and
scientists in how humans make use of pragmatic scales in their reasoning
processes. As Sweetser and Fauconnier (1966: 25) put it,
Pragmatic scales are perhaps the ideal example of culturally based semantic
freeloading. Basic precultural experience allows all humans to extract scales
from the physical environment: degrees of variable physical attributes such as
weight, length, and so on, are among obviously scalar phenomena. Scalar
correlations (such as lighterhotter or darkercolder in the physical world) are
extremely useful, since they allow us to reason from the degree of one aspect

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of a situation to the degree of some other aspect of the situation. However,

grammatical constructions which exploit scalar models are by no means
restricted to general experientially based scales. Instead, we construct and
constantly make use of cultural understandings that department stores exist on
a scale of expensiveness, jobs on a scale of authority within an organization
(or on a pay scale), foods on a scale of exoticness, and so forth.
The cognitive scientist who has most directly integrated pragmatic scales into her
analyses is probably Coulson. In chapter 9 of Semantic Leaps (2001), entitled
Frame-Shifting and Scalar Implicatures, she investigates the use of pragmatic
scales in discussions about the morality of abortion and shows what important
roles they play in rhetorical strategies. I mention here only those strategies of
linguistic implicitness that are directly relevant to my analyses in the remainder
of this article.
One rhetorical device in which pragmatic scales are used is the double hierarchy argument originally described by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) and
briefly hinted at in the above quotation from Sweetser and Fauconnier. Coulson
(2001: 252) explains this as follows:
In a double hierarchy argument, a speaker uses the ordering principle of a
well-established pragmatic scale to create a second pragmatic scale whose
points are ordered in the same way. Once the two scales are linked, inferences
that hold on the first scale also hold on the second. Linking two scales in this
manner affords the possibility of moving inferences generated on the less
controversial scale to parallel inferences on the more controversial linked scale.
She analyses a brief passage in which an informant describes rape as a
traumatizing case that warrants the acceptability of abortion. Asked about incest,
the informant replied that this would be an even more traumatizing case. Coulson
argues that the informant here links two scales, a relatively uncontroversial scale
of traumatic pregnancies and a more controversial one of acceptable abortions
(Figure 1).
The informants inference from the first scale (that incest is higher on the
trauma scale) is then transferred to the second linked scale, so that incest is seen
as an even stronger warrant for the acceptability of abortion than rape. To
highlight the fact that this latter inference is the product of movement of
information across scales, I have inserted it in propositional form between square
brackets in the representation of Scale 2.
But of course, instead of being linked, scales can also be severed. Coulson
shows how another informant, an advocate for the Pro-Life movement, shifts the
focus to what he sees as the most relevant: the termination of the fetus. Rather
than admit that abortion can be more or less acceptable, he presents life as
something that cannot be placed on the scale (Coulson, 2001: 2578). Though
he acknowledges Scale 1 he rejects Scale 2 and deliberately breaks all the links
between them.

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incest

[incest is an even more acceptable

reason for abortion than rape]

rape

rape

Scale 1: traumatic causes of pregnancy

Scale 2: acceptable reasons for abortion

Figure 1

In this way, pragmatic scales are important elements that help to internally
structure cultural models (such as abortion) and set up links with other models or
submodels (such as rape and incest), thus making possible a high degree of
linguistic implicitness in argumentative as well as other discourse genres. They
are evoked by presuppositional triggers: for instance, Coulsons first informant
argues that it would be more traumatizing to be raped by a member of your
family (Coulson, 2001: 254). It is the comparative construction more
traumatizing that activates a scale of highlow traumatization. In my analyses
below, similar scales will be found to be activated by change of state verbs such
as go down and, mostly, by other evaluative adjectives. The most frequently
encountered evaluative adjectives in my data are good and bad (and their
comparative or superlative forms), with bad and worse being the most common
forms. As Hunston and Sinclair (2000: 91) point out, such adjectives have a
feature of gradedness, [which] is associated with comparison against a norm
or scale, and so all the writers can be seen to rely upon implicit scales of
evaluation in their arguments, which they expect their readers to (re)construct as
part of their processing of the text.
Indeed, once constructed, the scales guide further interpretation and allow
inferences to be drawn on the basis of prior knowledge associated with the
different elements on the scales. Thus pragmatic scales and cultural models
together provide, to use Lakoffs (1987: 321) term, the conceptual scaffolding
for these discourses about education in Luxembourg and tourism in Antigua. In
the remainder of this article I will show how the authors of the editorial and of
the letters to the editor rely upon evaluative scales in order to construct a
particular cultural model about education in Luxembourg, and how Kincaid uses
similar techniques to undermine her readersmodel of tourism.

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4 (Re)constructing a cultural model for education: the PISA debates

In 2000, all 15-year-olds in the Luxembourgish school system took part in the
OECDs Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tested
their ability to apply their knowledge in the areas of reading, mathematics and
natural sciences. In all three areas, students in Luxembourg ended up in third last
position, or 29th out of a total of 31 participating countries. The data that I report
upon in this section are based on a larger study of popular reactions to the bad
results (see Horner and Weber, forthcoming). They consist of editorials and
letters to the editor published in the Luxemburger Wort, the newspaper with by
far the highest circulation in Luxembourg. I have space here to look at only a few
extracts three letters to the editor and one editorial in an attempt to illustrate
the discursive strategies used to contain the full implications of Luxembourgs
PISA results.

4.1 Dumb youths

In a letter to the editor dated 15 December 2001 (that is, shortly after the results
of the PISA tests had been made public), the author states that the
Luxembourgish system of education is not responsible or not solely responsible
for the bad results:
In the aftermath of the PISA study new questions have to be asked about
school and culture. We have all been shaken. Nobody had expected such
negative results on the part of our young pupils, as the Luxembourgish people
are generally known for their good cultural knowledge. And even in
comparison with young foreigners, the teaching of languages in our country is
not so bad/derisory.
If the intellectual level of the young is in the process of going down, it is
not only the Luxembourgish system of education that needs to be blamed.
(French original in the Appendix, text 1)
In the rest of her letter, the author argues that the real causes of the PISA disaster
are the shallowness of our materialistic and hedonistic society, and the stultifying
influence of the modern mass media. While evaluative scales are invoked in all
of these domains, contrasting the young in the past (we) with the young in the
present (they), I just want to focus here on the scale implied in the last
sentence of the above extract by the lexical items level and go down: if the
intellectual level of the young is in the process of going down.
This premise presupposes a number of interesting value assumptions: namely,
that the young in the past had a high level of intelligence, whereas the young in
the present have a lower level. The young in the past are contrasted with the
young in the present on two scales, a scale of the level of intelligence and one
concerning the nature of international test results (Figure 2).

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young in the past

[good international test results

of the young in the past]

young in the present

young in the present

Scale 1: level of intelligence

Scale 2: nature of international test results

Figure 2

These two scales need to be causally linked in order to become valid: the
young in the present have a lower level of intelligence because they got very bad
results in the PISA test; the young in the past, on the other hand, had a higher
level of intelligence, presumably because they achieved much better international
test results. However, here is the catch: the young in the past never achieved such
positive results; in fact, they never participated in any such international tests,
except once in the 1970s, when Luxembourgs results were highly similar to the
2000 PISA results (see Chambre des Dputs, 2003: 80 on the MAGRIP test).
Thus we can see how linguistic implicitness and pragmatic scales are drawn
upon to construct two related myths: the myth of the golden past and the myth of
declining standards, a combination of which we found to be ubiquitous in the
post-PISA educational discourses (see Horner and Weber, forthcoming; and
Milroy, 1998 for a general discussion of how deep-rooted and persistent these
myths are). In the words of Fairclough (2003: 82), the protasis of the abovequoted if-sentence can be said to be doing ideological work: i.e. the work of
making contentious, positioned and interested representations a matter of general
common sense, and indeed by May 2003 this representation of todays youth
as dumb has been naturalized to such an extent that the writer of the following
letter to the editor can present it as a matter of community-wide agreement:
Todays youth is in part damn fresh/insolent [rotzfresch] . . . agreed; they are
also see the PISA-study not too bright . . . also agreed (21.5.2003 German
original in the Appendix, text 2). By now, the young have reached rock bottom
on the intelligentstupid scale and the author relies on (what she considers to be)
a consensual norm when referring to them with an ironic understatement as not
too bright.

4.2 Social cohesion

The Luxembourgish school system is a highly traditional one, with a clear

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division into classical and technical lyces, and with high language requirements
in French and German from primary school upwards, and some additional
languages (mostly English) at secondary level. The language requirements are
used as a mechanism of selection or exclusion, as acknowledged by the Ministry
of National Education itself: Failing in German is particularly frequent among
foreign children, whereas it is failing in French that slows down and ends up
discouraging or eliminating [sic] large numbers of Luxembourgish pupils
(Ministre de lEducation Nationale et de la Formation Professionnelle, 1998: 15;
French original in the Appendix, text 3). The situation is complicated by the fact
that the national language, Luxembourgish, is used as a medium of spoken
communication on a daily basis, and is frequently relied upon by teachers as a
medium of instruction. This complex linguistic situation creates huge problems
for the increasing number of immigrant students, the largest group of whom are
of Portuguese origin. Yet no government so far has had the political courage to
face this highly sensitive issue head-on. It might seem that a major
catastrophe(such as the bad PISA results) would be necessary to shake the oldfashioned school system to its deepest foundations and spark off a fundamental
rethinking of the whole educational structure.
However, our data show that the PISA results have not led to a new awareness
of, or general consensus concerning, the need for structural changes to the
system. In fact, just the opposite seems to have happened. The following extract
from an editorial is typical in this respect:
It is above all multilingualism that represents the real foundation of the
Luxembourgish school system. Language skills are still the key to success
both in higher education and in the workplace for most young people who
have completed their secondary education in a Luxembourgish lyce.
Whoever reforms and tinkers with this solid foundation thoughtlessly, inevitably
paves the way for a second PISA disaster. Presumably much worse, because
of a structural nature. (11.4.2002 German original in the Appendix, text 4)
The mixing of metaphors could perhaps be seen as a sign of confused thinking
on the part of the author. First, the Luxembourgish school system is compared to
a building with multilingualism a highly specific and restrictive version of
multilingualism consisting of Luxembourgish, French and German as its
foundation, which is simply assumed to be a solid one. There is a non sequitur
here: not reforming the foundation has led to the first PISA disaster but,
according to the author, reforming it will lead to a second, hypothetical and much
worse one. The idea is then set out in the familiar scenarios of somebody
tinkering with the foundation thoughtlessly, and as a result pav[ing] the way for
a second PISA disaster which might undermine the whole Luxembourgish
school system (and/or society). This is the discourse of threat, which we also
found to be quite widespread in our data, warning that any structural change will
lead to social conflict (see Horner and Weber, forthcoming).
The two linked scales in this reasoning are shown in Figure 3.

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1st PISA disaster

bad

[?]

2nd PISA disaster

worse

of a structural nature

Scale 1

Scale 2

Figure 3

The implication is that the first PISA disaster unlike the second hypothetical
one is not of a structural nature; presumably, for the author, it is of a
methodological nature since, at the end of his editorial, he advocates a change
in teaching methods which according to him should be more innovative: what
matters are not extensive structural reforms but rather new pedagogical concepts.
Another implicit assumption underlying the suggestion that any structural
change will lead to social conflict is the following one: at present in
Luxembourg, social cohesion is a reality, though under threat. With its vague
discourse of threat, the editorial belongs to a genre that could almost be referred
to as apocalyptic or what Fairclough (2003: 96) has termed hortatory report:
it is concerned more to persuade people that these are indeed the only
practicable policies than to open up dialogue. This form of report is what we
might call hortatory report: descriptions with a covert prescriptive intent,
aimed at getting people to act in certain ways on the basis of representations
of what is.
The editorial is also ideological in the sense of plastering over contradictions
which, I believe, come out into the open in another letter to the editor, to which I
now turn.
At the beginning of this letter, the author talks about the extreme difficulty of
achieving literacy in their third or even fourth language faced by many
Portuguese children living in Luxembourg, and then concludes by arguing that a
change in teaching methods will not be sufficient to solve this problem:
[1] New methods on their own, such as student-centred or team teaching, or
alternative methods of assessment, are only of limited help, if we do not want
to make utter fools of ourselves again in the next PISA study.
[2] Unfortunately they are nothing but patchwork, which may help us get over
certain short-term obstacles, but which cannot solve/remove the fundamental
problems caused by our special linguistic situation.

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[3] If one wants to improve the existing system, in order to offer every
pupil educational opportunities corresponding to their abilities, so that they
can survive in the highly competitive struggle with neighbouring areas, then
the only way is a radical change in our multilingualism. [4] However, such a
change might not be without influence upon our social cohesion: in return, we
would be forced to give up an essential integrative aspect, namely the
German or the Luxembourgish language as the case may be.
[5] Thus PISA retrospectively turns out to be a two-edged sword:
integration or highest possible qualifications? (26.1.2002 German original in
the Appendix, text 5; I have numbered the sentences for ease of reference.)
This writer is convinced that the existing system is in need of improvement, and
that the only effective solution would be a structural change, namely an
adaptation of Luxembourgish trilingualism. However, he then uses integration
(integrative) in a counter-intuitive sense as synonymous with assimilation: after
all, Luxembourgish and German can only be seen as the elements that bond
together autochthonous Luxembourgers, and it is precisely these languages that
exclude many immigrant children. His somewhat illogical argument is combined
with the vague discourse of threat to social cohesion (might not be without
influence, forced to give up) and the discourse of declining standards, so that
the final choice becomes one between integration/social cohesion and high
qualifications.
The ideological contradictions referred to above become explicit here. A first
contradiction is that we have both integration and social cohesion now (since
they could be threatened by structural changes to the school system see
sentence 4) and we do not have them now (since highest possible
qualifications rather than integration/social cohesion is the ultimate aim of the
educational system as is implied by sentences 3 and 5). The second, related
contradiction is that throughout the letter integration is assumed to be the
ultimate goal, but when faced with the clear need for structural changes, they are
rejected in the name of high standards. In other words, the discourse of declining
standards is relied upon as a way of resisting demands for change.
Moreover, sentence 5 is based upon a dubious assumption: namely, that the
Luxembourgish school system offers at least those students who are successful
the highest possible qualifications. Again, an evaluative scale is implied here by
the superlative construction: since the highest end-point on the qualifications
scale has been reached by the Luxembourgish school system, it follows that any
change, such as greater emphasis on integration as the ultimate goal, would
necessarily lower the standards and lead to less than optimal qualifications for
the students. In other words, integration and high qualifications are presented as
mutually exclusive objectives; the needs of the immigrant students and those of
the autochthonous Luxembourgish ones are presented as being incompatible,
and the metaphor of the two-edged sword suggests that empowering the former
can only be done by disempowering the latter (after all, such a sword is

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something that simultaneously helps and hurts see Fauconnier and Turner,
2002: 306).
These analyses have revealed the ways in which the writers rely on linguistic
implicitness and, more particularly, on presupposed scales of evaluation in their
arguments. Implicit assumptions and pragmatic scales form the basis for the
construction of a number of related myths: on the one hand, the myths of the
golden past and of declining standards and, on the other hand, the myth of threat
to social cohesion. These can be seen as the pillars of a cultural model which
seems all-pervasive in both official and popular discourses about education in
Luxembourg. Together they constitute the essential elements of an educational
ideology which is usually referred to as classical humanism. In Horner and
Weber (forthcoming) we show to what extent the classical humanist ideology
dominates thinking about education in Luxembourg and how it has kept out
alternative paradigms such as progressivism or social reconstructionism,2 and it
is because this ideology is so dominant that arguments about education can be
couched in such highly implicit ways, with writers expecting their readers to be
able to retrieve or construct effortlessly the missing values, however questionable
or discriminatory they may be.

5 Deconstructing the readers cultural model of tourism: Jamaica Kincaids

A Small Place
In this section I discuss Kincaids highly controversial essay about the West
Indian island of Antigua. Its theme is the encounter between two worlds: she
feels that Antigua has been raped by both colonialism and tourism. In order to
get this point across as forcefully as possible, she juxtaposes a multiplicity of
discourses and perspectives, and turns the colonial gaze back upon the (implicitly
male) tourist and colonizer, thus in turn objectifying and dehumanizing him, until
eventually he becomes an ugly thing (1997 [1988]: 17). In this way, what
initially looks like a travelogue or a tourist guidebook gradually turns into an
angry denunciation of tourism and colonialism.3
At the very beginning of the essay, the first-person narrator addresses you as
a tourist spending his vacation in Kincaids native Antigua. In order to make the
reader feel good about identifying with the position of tourist, she distinguishes
between two types of tourists:
If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by
aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall
(V. C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist
who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an airport named after
him why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public
monument? You are a tourist and you have not yet seen a school in Antigua,
you have not yet seen the hospital in Antigua [In the taxi from the airport,

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y]ou pass a building sitting in a sea of dust and you think, Its some latrines
for people just passing by, but when you look again you see the building has
written on it PIGOTTS SCHOOL. You pass the hospital, the Holberton
Hospital, and how wrong you are not to think about this, for though you are a
tourist on your holiday, what if your heart should miss a few beats? (1997
[1988]: 3, 78)
Just like the writers of the newspaper texts, Kincaid relies upon presupposed
scales of evaluation. There are implicit scalar oppositions here between better
prime ministers, who care about schools and hospitals (and so might want a
school or hospital named after them), and worse prime ministers such as the
Prime Minister of Antigua who chose to have an airport named after him; and
between the better type of tourist who wonders about this and a worse type who
does not think critically (Figure 4).
Presumably we feel that we are the better type of tourist, the type that
wonders. However, the reader is quickly forced into admitting that the amount of
wondering that even the better type of tourist is prepared to go through is
strictly limited: for example, from our highly selfish perspective, we want no rain
to spoil our vacation, but the thought that to the local people no rain means
drought must never cross [our] mind (1997 [1988]: 4). The ironic overstatement
(must never) suggests an almost conscious repression of thoughts: as soon as
we slip into the role of tourist, we also don a very superficial way of life which
does not bear very much critical thinking.
Kincaids narrator emphasizes again and again the difference in perspective
between the tourist and the local people. From the tourists perspective the bad
roads are a nice change from European or American highways (1997 [1988]: 4);
the tourist imagines himself meeting lots of new people during his vacation, but
they are not local people, only other tourists, people just like you (1997 [1988]:
13); he looks upon the local peoples way of living in harmony with nature as a
better prime ministers
(who care about schools and hospitals)

better type of tourist

(who wonders about this)

worse prime ministers

(who do not care about schools or hospitals)

worse type of tourist

(who does not wonder)

Scale 1

Scale 2

Figure 4

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form of backwardness (1997 [1988]: 1617). There is thus an almost

unbridgeable gap separating the tourist from the local people, which allows him
to feel superior, though this feeling of superiority is based on a lack of ethical
values and critical thinking.
The clash of perspectives is enacted through a very special aspect of Kincaids
narrative technique, her frequent use of brackets:
rain is the very thing that you, just now, do not want, for you are thinking of
the hard and cold and dark and long days you spent working in North America
(or, worse, Europe), earning some money so that you could stay in this place
(Antigua) where the sun always shines [. . .] You are feeling wonderful, so
you say, Oh, what a marvellous change these bad roads are from the splendid
highways I am used to in North America. (Or, worse, Europe.) (1997 [1988]:
4, 5)
The reader is taken aback here by the repetition of one word. Why is Europe
worse? Whose perspective is this? Gradually the reader becomes aware that the
material between brackets is presented from the perspective of the autochthonous
Antiguans or the author (who is also an autochthonous Antiguan), and so
provides an ironic counterpoint to the main-text perspective of the tourist. The
comparative form worse again implies a pragmatic scale: being a tourist from
the US is bad, being a tourist from Western Europe is worse. Presumably those
who would be classified as good would be the autochthonous Antiguans, and so
we end up with the evaluative scale shown in Figure 5.
But why would the Antiguans see American and European tourists as bad?
Could it have anything to do with Antigua having suffered from European
colonialism and now suffering from American neo-colonialism? Such reasoning
(which will be confirmed later on by the text) might lead the reader to set up a
second, related scale (Figure 6).
The second scale is implicit in the text at least at this stage and has to be
good

autochthonous Antiguans

bad

North American tourists

worse

Western European tourists

Scale 1
Figure 5

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good

colonized Antiguans

bad

North-American neo-colonialists

worse

(former) Western European colonialists

Scale 2
Figure 6

inferred by the reader. Gradually, however, the connection between the two
scales is made more explicit, mostly through the authors use of the adjective
free. On page 5, we are told that the tourist feels free, for things seem so
cheap in Antigua. The emphasis on the tourists materialistic concerns is
achieved through a semantic narrowing of free, which is somewhat reminiscent
of Orwells Newspeak in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1969 [1949]).4
Interestingly, the same materialistic concerns are associated a little later in the
text with the former colonialists who got rich from the free (free in this case
meaning got-for-nothing) and then undervalued labour, for generations, of people
like me you see walking around you in Antigua (Kincaid, 1997 [1988]: 10).
In cognitive-linguistic terms, what the author does here is not simply link the
above scales but actually blend them: the two scales constitute the input spaces,
while in the blended space the tourist merges with the colonizer, his values being
equated with colonial values, since both sets of values are based on materialism
and a feeling of superiority. The tourist has thus become a shallow materialistic
creature with the same attitudes as those of the former colonialists, and so it is
not surprising that by the end of Part 1 of A Small Place the tourist is described
as being ugly. The colonial gaze has been turned back upon the
colonizer-tourist and it is he who is seen as the despised Other:
An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty
thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this
and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the
place in which you have just paused cannot stand you, that behind their closed
doors they laugh at your strangeness. (1997 [1988]: 17)
As a result, the readers who at the beginning might have felt comfortable about
identifying with the tourist position are now shaken out of their complacency
and jolted into thought, as they stand accused of shallow materialism and, worse,

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complicity in colonialism. Kincaid has led her readers up the garden path, as it
were, in the process subverting and deconstructing their cultural model of
tourism and she has achieved this through a highly specific narrative technique,
including in particular the use of brackets, perspective shifts and the blending of
evaluative scales.
Kincaid here inverts the colonial hierarchies by putting the colonized
Antiguans at the top and the Europeans at the bottom. She does this again on the
last page of A Small Place, where she inverts the stereotyped view in much
colonial discourse of the noble and exalted colonizers doing their best to
civilize the barbarian natives and/or slaves:
[Antigua] was settled by human rubbish from Europe, who used enslaved but
noble and exalted human beings from Africa (all masters of every stripe are
rubbish, and all slaves of every stripe are noble and exalted; there can be no
question about this). (1997 [1988]: 80)
But she now also realizes the need to go one step further, to transcend all
oppressive oppositions and to eradicate hierarchical structures of master vs slave,
oppressor vs oppressed. And so she closes A Small Place with the following
words:
Of course, the whole thing is, once you cease to be a master, once you throw
off your masters yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are just a
human being, and all the things that adds up to. So, too, with the slaves. Once
they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and
exalted; they are just human beings. (1997 [1988]: 81)
This is Kincaids hope for the future: a world of equality, of just human beings,
where difference is respected and not turned into subordination, a world which
unlike the colonial world is not structured by hierarchical thinking and ideologies
of superiority, and as a first step in this direction she hopes to substitute a more
critical model of tourism for the complacent view of many of her North
American and Western European readers.

6 Conclusion
I trust that these analyses have revealed the full extent to which pragmatic scales
contribute to discourse understanding. They are important elements that help to
internally structure cultural models (such as education, tourism, colonialism) and
to define the links between the elements on the scales (e.g. between the education
of young Luxembourgers in the past and young Luxembourgers in the present, or
between European and North American tourists in Antigua). As we have also
seen, they are invoked by specific lexical items or grammatical constructions (in
particular, presuppositional triggers such as change of state verbs and
comparative constructions). Thus, in order to interpret the texts discussed above,

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it was felt necessary to construct particular cultural models and pragmatic scales.
However, the examples also show that pragmatic scales and the hierarchical
thinking associated with them inform a lot of racist, sexist and classist attitudes
and prejudices. Therefore it is important to study this fundamental aspect of our
cognitive architecture in order to understand better how it works and to be in a
position to combat its more pernicious effects.
Moreover, the analyses illustrate how very different authors writing very
different texts use these strategies of hierarchical organization and linguistic
implicitness in their argumentation, whether it is ordinary people writing letters
to the editor, journalists writing editorials, or literary authors writing essays. All
of them can be seen to be linking scales, usually with one end-point left implicit
on the second, related scale. Readers are then prompted to fill in the missing
values both by transferring inferences from one scale to the other and by
constructing the relevant cultural models.
In cognitive linguistics and cognitive science, a major research emphasis at
present is on blending processes. While blending has been found to play a key
role in at least one of these analyses, the focus of the present article has been on
the processes of moving information across evaluative scales and filling in
missing values. All these aspects of reasoning processes are characteristic of the
way human beings think, and they work together to produce the full complexity
of human thinking. Conceptual blends, cultural models and pragmatic scales are
all in the words of Coulson (2001: 266) tools we use to construct and
reconstruct a cultural understanding of the world we both inhabit and create.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Kristine Horner, Paul Simpson and two anonymous
reviewers for their very perceptive comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes
1
2

See also my review of these three books (Weber, forthcoming a). For other overviews of the
cognitive turn in literary studies, see e.g. Crane and Richardson (1999), Richardson and Steen
(2002) or Freeman (forthcoming).
The classical humanist ideology is based on the transmission of knowledge and a cultural
heritage which combines moral and aesthetic values. According to Ho (2002: 2945), this
ideology is concerned with the preservation of the social order as well as conformity to accepted
standards of linguistic and moral correctness. Its proponents therefore favour an authoritative
approach to language teaching which emphasizes formal correctness and accuracy of writing
conventions (Ho, 2002: 2989). The progressivist ideology, on the other hand, is concerned
with individual child growth and development (Skilbeck, 1982: 10); hence, it stresses such
aspects as exploration, investigation, choice, creativity, enjoyment, confidence and
independence (Ho, 2002: 285, 292). Finally, in a school system informed by reconstructionist
ideology, the prevailing social norms and practices are analysed, criticized and reconstructed
according to rationalistic, democratic, communitarian values (Skilbeck, 1982: 11). The

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4

61

keywords here are equality, tolerance, acceptance of diversity, as well as a critical awareness of
how language works (for example) to include or exclude others (Ho, 2002: 285, 293), and the
aim is to form independent and critical learners who are able to challenge the status quo in
order to improve it (Ho, 2002: 299).
For a detailed discussion of A Small Place, see Weber (forthcoming b).
In Orwells Newspeak, there is no way of referring to political or intellectual freedom any
longer. Free can only be used in such sentences as this field is free from weeds (Orwell, 1969
[1949]: 2412).

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Address
Jean Jacques Weber, Department of English, University of Luxembourg, 162A av. de la Faiencerie,
L-1511 Luxembourg. [email:jjweber@cu.lu]

Appendix
1 I. Schmit-Mines: A qui la faute?, Luxemburger Wort 15.12.2001
Aprs ltude PISA de nouvelles questions se posent en ce qui concerne lcole
et la culture. Nous avons tous t secous. Personne ne stait attendu un
rsultat si ngatif de la part de nos jeunes lves, puisque les Luxembourgeois
sont en gnral connus pour leur bonne culture gnrale. Et mme en
comparaison aven de jeunes trangers, lenseignement des langues dans notre
pays nest pas si drisoire.
Si le niveau intellectuel des jeunes est en train de baisser, il ne faut pas
seulement accuser lcole et lenseignement au Luxembourg.
2 L. Hoschet: An den Prgel-Lehrer, Luxemburger Wort 21.5.2003
Die Jugend von heute ist teilweise rotzfresch [sic] . . . einverstanden; sie ist auch
siehe die Pisa-Studie nicht allzu gescheit . . . auch einverstanden.
3 Ministre de lEducation Nationale et de la Formation Professionnelle, 1998: 15
Lchec en allemand est surtout frquent parmi les enfants trangers, alors que

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cest lchec en franais qui retarde et finit par dcourager ou liminer bon
nombre dlves luxembourgeois.
4 M. Glesener: Aus der schulpolitischen Mottenkiste, Luxemburger Wort
11.4.2002
Da wre vor allem die Mehrsprachigkeit, die das eigentliche Fundament des
Unterrichts la luxembourgeoise darstellt. Die Sprachgewandheit ist noch immer
fr die meisten Absolventen der luxemburgischen Schule der Schlssel zum
Erfolg in Studium und Beruf. Wer leichtfertig an dieser soliden Grundbasis
herumbastelt und reformiert, macht unweigerlich den Weg frei fr ein zweites
PISA-Debakel. Vermutlich viel schlimmer, weil struktureller Natur [Sie haben
erkannt, dass] es nicht auf umfangreiche Strukturreformen ankommt, sondern
vielmehr auf neue pdagogische Konzepte.
5 R. Brachmond: Die wahre Ursache der Bildungsmisere?, Luxemburger Wort
26.1.2002
Neue Methoden allein, etwa offener Unterricht oder Team-Teaching, sowie
alternative Bewertungskriterien helfen nur bedingt weiter, wenn wir uns bei der
nchsten PISA-Studie nicht wieder grndlich blamieren wollen. Sie bleiben
(leider) nichts als Flickwerk, das vielleicht kurzfristig ber gewisse Durststrecken
hinweghilft, die grundlegenden Probleme, ausgelst durch unsere besondere
Sprachensituation, aber nicht zu beseitigen weiss.
Will man das bestehende System verbessern, um allen Schlern die ihren
Fhigkeiten entsprechenden Ausbildungsmglichkeiten anzubieten, damit sie im
harten Wettbewerb mit ihren Konkurrenten aus dem nahen Ausland bestehen
knnen, dann fhrt kein Weg an einer radikalen Erneuerung (sprich: einer
Relativierung der Mehrsprachigkeit) vorbei, die nicht ohne Einfluss auf das
gesamte hiesige soziale Gefge bleiben drfte: Wir wren im Gegenzug
gezwungen, ein wesentliches integratives Moment, nmlich die deutsche bzw. die
luxemburgische Sprache, preiszugeben.
So entpuppt sich PISA im Nachhinein als zweischneidiges Schwert:
Integration oder bestmgliche Qualifikation?

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