Cognitive prosodies, displacements, and translation

Abstract

Abstract This article introduces the cognitive prosodies model as a way to explain how some rhetorical features in persuasive texts differ across languages and rhetorical traditions, which may inform the process of translating highly rhetorical, persuasive texts. By drawing on a multidisciplinary framework grounded in comparative rhetoric, the semiotics of advertising, cognitive linguistics, and studies of rhetorical phenomena based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and event-related potential (ERP), it first describes persuasion as a textual process that weaves specific ‘static’ versus ‘dynamic’ rhetorical mechanisms. These activate varying cognitive efforts and speeds in semantic processing that differ between languages and textual genres. The second half of the article presents a corpus-based study of six English and Spanish presidential speeches on immigration – and their translations – by three consecutive Mexican and US presidents. Through the lens of the cognitive prosodies model, the analysis quantitatively and qualitatively scrutinizes how source and target texts behave and how the model can inform rhetorical awareness in translation practice.