<\/p>\n
George Lakoff\u2019s world-renowned works on political communication advocate a neural account of the political mind<\/em> (Lakoff 2004, 2008). Taken for granted the neural evidence of frames, and the ubiquity of unconscious cognitive processes, this approach ends up being a dead-end, reducing communication to a trivial brain-bound mechanism. Accordingly, individuals once again become Cartesian automata<\/em> brainwashed by a media system whose main function is framing, and eventually reframing, their brains\/minds.<\/p>\n Yet, the political arena is a potent example of the social essence of semiotic activities, which cannot emerge but from \u201cusers\u201d in flesh and blood, given their disposition<\/em> to constantly (re)negotiate sign meanings (De Mauro 1982). Hence, a neural theory of semiotic\/semantic processes results both obsolete, evoking an old propaganda\u2019s theory of behaviorist taste, and inconsistent with the current neuroscientific outcomes.<\/p>\n Halfway between psychoanalysis and neuroscience, investigations show that complex cognitive processing may<\/em> occur at the unconscious level. However, neuroscience itself is only now beginning to understand how this occurs on the neural level, suggesting that (1) a clarification of the controversial notion of \u201ccognitive unconscious\u201d would require an account of the neural mechanisms underlying both conscious and unconscious thought, and their dynamic interaction (Berlin 2011); (2) certain types of information processing, especially those involving symbol manipulation, seem to take place exclusively in conscious thought; specifically, being a normative system which embroils the individual as well as the collective mind, language requires some sort of access to consciousness (Zlatev, 2011); (3) there are different kinds of unconsciousness, and different degrees of consciousness.<\/p>\n Along these lines, my contribution aims at scrutinizing the interplay of unconscious and conscious processes underlying semiotic activities, believing that a clear-headed account of communication should \u201cget out of the brain\u201d to embrace a semiotic-phenomenological perspective (Sonesson 2015; Zlatev & Blomberg 2019). Re-elaborating Saussure\u2019s conception of linguistic sentiment<\/em>, which already related linguistic activity to both unconscious and conscious procedures (Siouffi 2021), I will discuss the challenging hypothesis of a collective cognitive unconscious<\/em> in order to give reasons of the intuitive clarity<\/em> of that semantic core<\/em> without which no meaningful utterance is possible (Smirnov 2017). Here \u201cunconscious\u201d brings into play a normative system which provides for the meaningfulness of the human Lifeworld. Such a hypothesis, given a preliminary distinction between introspection<\/em> and intuition<\/em>, appears consistent with Merleau-Ponty\u2019s sedimented practical schema<\/em> of subjective being in the world (Kozyreva 2016), opening a fruitful pathway to achieve a matter-of-fact clarification of semiotic practices.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n References<\/p>\n Berlin H.B., \u201cThe Neural Basis of the Dynamic Unconscious\u201d, Neuropsychoanalysis<\/em>, 2011\/13(1), 5\u201371.<\/p>\n De Mauro, T. (1982), Minisemantica dei linguaggi non verbali e delle lingue<\/em>, Roma\u2013Bari: Laterza.<\/p>\n Kozyreva A. (2016) \u201cNon-representational approaches to the unconscious in the phenomenology of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty\u201d, Phenom Cogn Sci<\/em>, 199\u2013224.<\/p>\n Lakoff G. (2004) Don’t think of an elephant! Know your values and frame the debate<\/em>, White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing.<\/p>\n Lakoff G. (2008) The Political Mind. A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics<\/em>, New York: Penguin Books.<\/p>\n Merleau-Ponty M. (1945\/2012), Phenomenology of Perception<\/em>, London: Routledge.<\/p>\n Siouffi G. (2021) (\u00e9d.), Le sentiment linguistique chez Saussure<\/em>, ENS \u00c9ditions.<\/p>\n Smirnov A.V., (2017) \u201cThe Collective Cognitive Unconscious and Its Role in Logic, Language, and Culture\u201d, Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences<\/em>, Vol. 87, No. 5, 409\u2013415.<\/p>\n Sonesson, G. (2015) \u201cPhenomenology meets Semiotics: Two Not So Very Strange Bedfellows at the End of their Cinderella Sleep\u201d, Metodo. International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy<\/em>, Vol. 3, n. 1, 41\u201362.<\/p>\n Zlatev J. & Blomberg J. (2019) \u201cNorms of language. What kinds and where from? Insights from phenomenology\u201d, in A. M\u00e4kil\u00e4hde, V. Lepp\u00e4nen & E. Itkonen, Normativity in Language and Linguistics<\/em>, John Benjamins, 69\u2013101.<\/p>\n Zlatev, J. (2011) \u201cFrom Cognitive to Integral Linguistics and Back Again\u201d, Intellectica. Revue de l\u2019Association pour la Recherche Cognitive<\/em>, n. 56\/2, Linguistique cognitive: une exploration critique<\/em>, pp. 125\u2013147.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Filomena Diodato, Sapienza University of Rome George Lakoff\u2019s world-renowned works on political communication advocate a neural account of the political mind (Lakoff 2004, 2008). Taken for granted the neural evidence of frames, and the ubiquity of unconscious cognitive processes, this approach ends up being a dead-end, reducing communication to a trivial brain-bound mechanism. Accordingly, … <\/p>\n