ECHOICITY AND COGNITION:  EXPLORING THE METAREPRESENTATIONAL  DIMENSION OF RESEMBLANCE

Beyond the Frontiers: Perspectives on Pragmatic Theory and Practice (2026) [pp. 55-86]  

AUTHOR(S) / АУТОР(И): Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Carla Ovejas Ramírez
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.46793/BeyondFront.055MI
ABSTRACT / САЖЕТАК:

This paper provides a unified cognitive-pragmatic account of echoic mention by integrating the taxonomic framework of Cognitive Linguistics with the inferential mechanics of Relevance Theory. First, building on the taxonomic foundations proposed by Ruiz de Mendoza and Barreras (2025ab), we refine and extend their initial distinction between descriptive properties and strategic mechanisms in echoic construction. Our account shows how the higherlevel characterizing dimensions of an echo (its strength, degree of explicitness and epistemic/ attitudinal pragmatic orientation) emerge from speakers’ deliberate exploitation of lower-level contingent underlying parameters. These include partiality (selective reproduction), inaccuracy (purposeful modification), and complexity (layering of echoes). These operations allow speakers to determine the communicative impact of an echo with remarkable precision. Second, we present a generalized inferential procedure based on chained reasoning schemas, showing how epistemic and attitudinal outcomes arise from the interaction between resemblance-based strategies and interpretive reasoning. Speakers exploit resemblance through operations such as focalization and cumulation, which shape the hearer’s task of reconstructing an echoed premise and evaluating its validity. This dual-stage process (i.e., premise identification followed by attitude inference) accounts for the continuum from explicit reported speech to implicit evaluative echoes. By introducing concepts like echoic density and examining borderline cases, we move beyond static classification to explain how strategic manipulation of resemblance feeds into inferential chains, demonstrating that echoicity is not a peripheral rhetorical device but a core cognitive resource for metarepresenting thoughts. The resulting integrated model offers a principled basis for typological refinement and empirical testing.

KEYWORDS / КЉУЧНЕ РЕЧИ:

echoic mention, metarepresentational resemblance, inferential schemas, partiality, accuracy, cognitive pragmatics

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT / ПРОЈЕКАТ:

This publication is part of the project PID2023-146582NB-I00 funded by MCIU/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE.

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