CONCEPTUALIZING EMOTIONS THROUGH DISCOURSE: A PRAGMATIC VIEW ON THE READER’S INTEREST

The paper adopts a sociopragmatic approach to the study of emotion processes and investigates discursive traits of the reader’s interest. The field of written popularization was examined to establish how it conceptualizes the reader’s interest through discourse structures. The text materials were obtained experimentally. They consist of 104 pairs of expository text; each of the pairs includes a text published in an academic source and a popular science text created by the participant for provoking the reader’s interest. The comparative methods of empirical discourse analysis are used to identify and describe popularisation strategies. The results show that participants employed four strategies to transform academic texts: reduction N = 94), simplification (N = 81), contextualization (N = 58), and concrete elaboration (N = 17). The strategies tend to present the most significant text ideas, reduce reader’s efforts for processing, and introduce the reader into the discourse-world. The findings suggest that the strategies aim to enhance the optimal relevance and conceptualize reader’s interest through the communicative dimension of relevance.


Introduction
Emotional interest (or curiosity) is a crucial variable affecting the reader's text processing: it motivates the reader to spend more time on the text and put more cognitive efforts into its processing, focuses and sustains reader's attention, as well as specifies reader's evaluations of text content (Fulmer et al., 2015;Silvia, 2006, pp. 66-73;Putro and Lee, 2017;Springer et al., 2017).According to research, interest has a positive impact on reading outcomes, including comprehension, text memorization, and learning from texts (Clinton and van der Broek, 2012;Clinton-Lisell, 2022;Fitria, 2019;Naceur and Schiefele, 2005).This effect is particularly significant for reading expository or informational texts that introduce new concepts and knowledge to readers.Therefore, generating interest in such texts is crucial for successful reading outcomes.
In the present paper, we will expand this research area by taking a pragmatic perspective on interest.A wide range of experts and professional authors have pointed out that linguistic (rhetorical) techniques make up the underlying resource for increasing text-based interest (Gendenshtein, 2005;Odintsov, 1982;Piotrovskaya andTrushchelev, 2019, 2022).In support of this view, discourse studies show that expository discourse employs specific verbal strategies to present content most effectively for acquiring knowledge (see (Calsamiglia and van Dijk, 2004;Khoutyz, 2019;Odintsov, 1982;Tokareva, 2006;van Dijk and Atienza, 2011)).In this way, the strategies for increasing text-based interest could serve as a key to the pragmatic understanding of the reader's interest.

Theoretical framework
Our approach draws on the sociopragmatic view of emotion processes and regards them as variables embedded in discourse and social practices (see (Alba-Juez, 2021;Langlotz and Locher, 2013;Piotrovskaya and Trushchelev, 2022)).As Wetherell (2012) has noted, "Discourse tames and codifies affect" (p.52).Building on Wetherell's ideas about the social nature of emotions, the sociopragmatic approach appeals to the conception of affective practice, which "focuses on the emotional as it appears in social life and tries to follow what participants do" (p.4).According to this conception, emotions are inextricably linked with meaning-making activity, and patterns of affective and discursive practices constantly intertwine to varying extents within social fields (pp.20-52; see also (Koschut, 2020;Moisander et al., 2016;Olson et al., 2020;Wetherell, 2013)).Similarly, Social Semiotics engen-ders reflection on affect as a multimodal practice that is deduced from semiotic actions and artefacts people use to communicate (Westberg, 2021).In this sense, social interactions, most of which are verbal, are important sources for gaining information about emotion processes.
Emotiogenicity (Russian wording эмоциогенность) is an attribute of the discourse with regard to the reader's processing (Piotrovskaya, 2009;Piotrovskaya and Trushchelev, 2021;Shakhovsky, 2008, p. 181).It derives from three communicative factors that define a vast range of emotional responses.These factors are context (the settings of communication, the participants, the type of activity, and others), text characteristics, and the recipient's personality (e. g., recipient's expectations, knowledge, goals, individual interests, and others) (Bohn-Gettler and Kaakinen, 2022;de Saussure and Wharton, 2020;Shakhovsky, 2008, p. 218;van Berkum, 2018).Renninger et al. (2018) suggest that a reader's interest can be triggered by various factors, including (1) contextual factors such as the reading environment, such as working with computers or reading in a group setting, (2) features of the text itself, such as relatable characters or coherent plotlines, and (3) personal relevance to the reader, such as prior knowledge or a personal connection to the topic.Emotiogenicity is thus a core of emotion-evocative communication ("affective communication" in (Hayakawa, 1977, pp. 117-136); "talk evoking emotions" in (Burdelski, 2020, p. 30)), where multilevel features construct emotional impact and induce recipient's emotions in separate ways.Strongly speaking, any discourse manifests emotion-evocative communication because any discourse "calls forth some kind of emotional response -including indifference -on the part of listeners" (Katriel, 2015, p. 58).In this respect, Hayakawa (1977) has argued that any word has affective connotations, that is, "the aura of personal feelings" the word arouses according to the uses to which it is put (p. 84).
Many scholars have been highlighting the strategic nature of emotionevocative communication.In this line of thinking, the founder of the Linguistic Theory of Emotions Viktor Shakhovsky (2008, pp. 217-224) has pointed towards a distinction between emotiogenicity and emotive pragmatics.He has made an important observation that recurrent emotional responses appearing in the given communicative settings could be typified.Therefore, the author can predict the reader's emotional responses and construct emotiogenicity of the discourse (p.219).In this way, emotive pragmatics is grounded in the author's intentions that underlie strategies of using discourse means to bring the emotional impact to the recipient.
Consider an example.The speaker tells a funny story that includes vivid details surprising to the listener.Imagine that the storyteller conveys the details just to either clarify the plot of the story or arouse the listener's interest.The surprisingness can provoke either the unintended or intended emotional response.In both cases, the surprisingness increases the emotiogenicity of the story in terms of the listener's personality -his/her expectations and knowledge (the actual effect of communication).But only in the second case, the surprisingness is related to emotive pragmatics according as the storyteller's goal.The storyteller decides to arouse the listener's interest by communicating surprising content and using the appropriate strategy.
Since the reader's interest is a prerequisite for successful interaction to some degree, it is an ever-present concern of authors in any communication and social interaction (see, e. g., (Kintsch, 1980;Kneepkens and Zwaan, 1994;Lane and Kent, 2018;Piotrovskaya and Trushchelev, 2022)).Undoubtedly, the reader's interest is crucial for science popular communication, where affective practices of managing interest are intertwined with expository practices that aimed to convey and explain unfamiliar information.To facilitate the formation of new knowledge, authors stimulate the reader's interest and motivation.It is reasonable to assume that emotive pragmatics occupies a prominent point in the pragmatic space of popularization and conceptualizes the reader's interest.

Aim of the study
In this study, we make the assumption that popularization strategies for increasing text-based interest conceptualize the reader's interest.Our purposes are (1) to inspect linguistic ways in which the popularization discourse provides emotive pragmatics and constructs the interest-evoking impact and (2) to identify discursive traits of the reader's interest.

Materials
The expository texts to be analyzed here are obtained experimentally.The data was collected in the spring of 2021.We asked first-year students at the Herzen University (St.Petersburg, Russia) to select academic (Russian) expository texts (primary texts) and, on this basis, create popular science texts (secondary texts) that interest non-specialist readers.The students were not limited in time.They performed on their own and were able to use literature on texts popularization.
We received 104 anonymous works, each of which includes both primary and secondary expository texts (208 texts in total).Only students of non-philological departments passed the works.The composition of the material base is summed up in Table.

The material base for the study
The subject of expository texts The number of works The size of primary texts (tokens) The size of secondary texts (tokens)
In order to analyze text structures, we have employed comparative methods of empirical discourse analysis in conjunction with methods of observation, systematisation, and classification.To detect all cases of text transformation, the application TextCompare (available at: https://textcompare. ru/app), which is based on the measurement of Levenshtein distance, has been employed.

Reduction strategies
First of all, there were conspicuous differences in the size of primary and secondary texts.As is shown by Table 1, most total and mean values for the primary texts exceed the same values for the secondary texts.Only 18 works (17 %) showed the opposite tendency.The study found that among the other 86 works analyzed, there was a quartile distribution of size differences.Specifically, 78 participants reduced the primary texts by at least 39 %, while 43 participants reduced them by at least 58 %, and 22 participants reduced them by at least 79 %.This tendency marks strategies associated with operations of information reduction.In the words of van Dijk (1977, p. 144), such operations entail that "information is simply left out".Reduction strategies were used by 94 participants (90 %).The following passage is a case in point (hereinafter, removed text spans are presented in square brackets): (1) 'Балет «Жизель» впервые увидел свет рампы в 1841 году в Париже.The case displays two ways to apply reduction strategies, macro-structural and micro-structural.
The macro-structural way, which has been taken by 74 participants, involves the reduction of a text span equal to or greater than one sentence (as the second sentence in [1]).For instance, one participant reduced a description of the circulatory system's functions by removing one sentence; and another participant deleted nine sentences that convey information about Leonardo da Vinci's inventive activity.
Cases (1)-( 3) show that participants removed text spans that supply specific information about more significant ideas, which set the way for discourse elaboration.In this sense, the data demonstrates a special type of the macro-structural strategy -summarising strategy, which was used by 41 participants.They attempted to eliminate specific information about significant ideas and produce a written overview of the main points of a primary text.
The micro-structural way of reduction, which was used by 83 participants, involves the reduction of the sentence part(s) (see the third sentence in [1] above).The following cases are significant as well: Thus, the micro-structural way follows the same tendency as the macrostructural way: it bears the elimination of specific information about more significant ideas.This fact elucidates why 70 participants have combined macro-structural and micro-structural strategies.

Simplification strategies
Simplification strategies make a text accessible to a broader audience by facilitating text organisation and text vocabulary.These strategies have been used by 81 participants (78 %).
As far as text transformation is concerned, simplification is generally assumed as reduction (see, e. g., (Zhong et al., 2020)).So, it is safe to assume that participants deleted proper names and academic terms (see the cases [8a] and [8b] above) because these words might be incomprehensible to potential readers.Similarly, 17 participants deleted definitions of academic terms by using the macro-structural reduction strategy.
a′. 'В своих творениях архитекторам нужно совместить много качеств.' Translation: Architects need to combine many features in their creations.It should be noted that most of the participants did not simplify syntactic structures and text macrostructures.Only four participants converted one complex sentence into several simple ones; two participants divided primary texts into sections and created headings for them; and three participants segmented primary texts into paragraphs.

Contextualization strategies
In the words of Shin et al. (2016, p. 42), "contextualizing strategy elicits emotional interest by providing a situation that readers can relate to or identify with before the main text is presented".We propose to expand on this interpretation and consider contextualizing strategies with reference to the notion of contextualization.In its most general form, contextualization entails the import of context -as a "given" external to the discourse unit-into communication (Fetzer, 2018).The "given" can be thought of as a dynamic sociocognitive construct including many variables -communicative settings, participant characteristics, previous text spans, types of interaction, and so on (see, e. g., (Sperber and Wilson, 1995;van Dijk, 2008)).Leckie-Tarry (1991) held the methodological view on contextualization in terms of "differences in the emphasis at each level of context" (p.119).So, expanding on the interpretation by Shin et al., contextualizing strategies link with the level at which the text brings in readers.
First, participants used writer-oriented markers that express the author's attitude towards propositions.Second, participants used engage markers that manifest and build a connection with potential readers.For example, the following case employs a question, a question-answer pattern, and directives: The cases employ two kinds of linguistic means that refer to a reader, on the one hand, and to the reader's experience, on the other.To refer to a reader, the personal pronouns (e. g., вы 'you'), a personal verb form (знаете 'know-PRS.2PL'),and pronominal quantifiers (e. g., каждый 'everyone ' in [18b]) are employed.To refer to the reader's experience, the cases employ cognition and perception verbs (знаете 'know', видели 'seen', вспомните 'think', видел 'seen'), imperfective verb forms, and nouns that designate entities with which a reader is likely to have dealt.

Concrete elaboration
Choi (2006) defined concrete elaboration as "replacing less concrete words and phrases with more concrete counterparts and adding concrete descriptions" (p.24).According to Dual Coding Theory, this strategy affects the reader's interest by facilitating a reader to create mental images (Sadoski and Paivio, 2013, pp. 115-132).
This strategy of concrete elaboration was used by 17 participants (16 %).For example, one participant gave a detailed description of Pheidippides's running from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens: Translation: There is a legend among athletes that the Greek warrior Phidippides covered 37.5 km to Athens to report a joyful victory in the war.The marathon runner actually delivered the happy message and collapsed dead with the words, "Rejoice!We won!" The participants also created concrete analogies and comparisons to explain scientific concepts.For instance, one participant expounded a psychological notion of 'gestalt' by comparing it with a dish 'doner', the taste of which is the combination of many ingredients.Also, 5 participants used concrete elaboration along with contextualizating strategies.As an illustration, one participant explained the notion of a 'graph' by referring to the reader's experience of city walks.

Discussion
The results demonstrated that participants primarily sought to reduce concrete information and not introduce new.So, 94 participants (90 %) applied reduction strategies; while only 17 participants (16 %) used concrete elaboration.It is well known that the reader's interest is often triggered by concrete content, such as character identification, activity level, vivid description, observable comparison or explanations, and others (see, e. g., (Hidi and Baird, 1988;Odintsov, 1982;Piotrovskaya and Trushchelev, 2019;Sadoski and Paivio, 2013;Wade, 2001)).A number of previous studies on the reader's interest have shown that concretization is often employed by (Russian) school textbooks, most notably textbooks on Geography and History (see (Piotrovskaya andTrushchelev, 2019, 2020;Trushchelev, 2022)).Bornstein et al. (2020) have found that the concrete processing mode -in regard to cognition -increases the intensity of basic emotions, which include interest (see (Izard, 2007, p. 261)).In light of the findings, it appears that the strategies employed by the participants were more geared towards decreasing text-based interest rather than augmenting it.
We can assume that participants avoided significant transformations of primary text content.If so, it would be enough for participants just to insert some contextualization means (e. g., questions or directives) into primary texts.Such operations would take much less effort than operations to implement reduction strategies.However, only 6 participants did so.
Recently, several pragmatic works about emotions (de Saussure and Wharton, 2020;Wharton et al., 2021;Wharton and Strey, 2019) have appealed to the Relevance theory that is based on two principles, cognitive and communicative.Cognitive principle: "Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximisation of relevance" (Sperber and Wilson, 1995, p. 260).Communicative principle: "Every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance" (p.260).Wharton et al. (2021, p. 261) have proposed that the cognitive principle underpins not only verbal interaction but also human cognition.Following the acknowledged psychological findings, they stipulated that emotions are caused by the object that must in some way be relevant to the person (p.264).In their view, emotional relevance depends on the addressee's goals that derive from purposes, motivation, interests, desires, and so forth.In particular, epistemic emotions, which include interest, depend on the goal of acquiring knowledge; therefore, the relevance of an object can be appraised in agreement with this goal and determine epistemic emotional responses (pp.265-266; see also psychological works (Connelly, 2011;Renninger et al., 2018)).Hence, there is a cause-and-effect ratio between gearing to the maximization of relevance and emotional responses.
The communicative principle is associated with the notion of optimal relevance.According to Wilson (1998, p. 60), an object is optimally relevant to an addressee if (1) it is worth the addressee's effort to process it and (2) it is compatible with the addressee's abilities and preferences.Therefore, "An utterance, on a given interpretation, is consistent with the principle of relevance… if the speaker might reasonably have expected it to be optimally relevant on that interpretation" (p.61).As de Saussure and Wharton (2020) have noticed, speakers "should make their communicative stimuli appear at least relevant enough to be worth processing" (p.192).Thus, optimal relevance should match the reader's gearing to the maximization of relevance to some degree.
Consider now the participants' strategies in terms of relevance.First of all, the participants increased optimal relevance by removing pieces of specific information about significant ideas.The sense of reduction operations is quite obvious: significant ideas are more relevant enough to be worth the reader's efforts to process them.It was probably for the same reason that most of the participants also did not apply concrete elaboration.
Second, the avoidance of concrete elaboration might be associated with coherence, which implements optimal relevance pertained to the reader's efforts for processing (Wilson, 1998, pp. 64-73).According to Givón (2020, pp. 107-143), the ground of a coherent discourse is 'referential coherence'.It cues cognitive operations to activate and de-activate referents, search for antecedent referents, and connect new referents with antecedent referents.To minimize the reader's efforts for referent processing, participants reduced specific information and did not introduce new.
Third, participants increased optimal relevance by applying simplifying strategies.The 'simpler' text, the fewer efforts readers put into processing, and, hence, the greater the optimal relevance.Similarly, reduction strategies reduce the size of a text and consequently reduce the number of stimuli that require efforts readers put into processing.
Fourth, the participants increased optimal relevance through contextualization.Contextualizing strategies make content more familiar and accessible to readers by establishing the link between readers and the discourse world.The reader recognizes his/er position in the text and supposes that the text deserves his/er efforts for processing.

Conclusion
The present study contributes to the ongoing socio-pragmatic inquiry into emotions and advocates for pragmatic perspectives on emotion processes.Specifically, the study aimed to shed light on the discourse processes underlying the conceptualization of the reader's interest.To this end, the study investigates four common popularization strategies employed to enhance the reader's engagement.The findings demonstrate that popularization discourse conceptualizes the reader's interest with respect to the communicative dimension of relevance (this output supports and expands the pragmatic view of epistemic emotions (Wharton et al., 2021, pp. 265-266)).