Table of Contents - The First International Conference of Cultural

Transcription

Table of Contents
Abstracts Day 1……………………………………………………………………………….1
Abstracts Day 2……………………………………………….……………………………..26
Abstracts Day 3……………………………………………..……………………………….54
Abstracts
DAY 1 (Wednesday 20 th July)
9:30 – 10:30 Keynote presentation
Cultural Linguistics and Linguistic Relativity
Farzad Sharifian
Monash University
This keynote aims to contribute to scholarly attempts to clarify the claims made by the early proponents of
linguistic relativ ity. It also presents an account of the recently developed area of Cultural Linguistics and
outlines how the scope of this multidiscip linary area of research differs fro m that of studies dedicated to
linguistic relat ivity. For examp le, wh ile linguistic relat ivity has been viewed as presenting a ‘hypothesis’ or a
‘theory complex’ regarding the relat ionship between thought and language , Cultural Linguistics offers a
theoretical and analytical framework that focuses on examining features of language that encode
conceptualisations rooted in the cultural experiences of speakers. The basic premise underlying the approach of
Cultural Linguistics is that certain features of hu man languages are entrenched in such cultural
conceptualisations as cultural schemas, cultural categories, and cultural metaphors.
Parallel presentations
11:00 – 11:30
Language, Culture, and Embodiment in Paamese Kinship Relations and Inalienability
Simon Devylder
This paper investigates the morphosyntax and semantics of kinship relations in Paamese (Vanuatu) fro m a
cognitive and cultural linguistic point of view. Crowley (1996) exp lains that in Paamese, inalienable
morphosyntactic constructions are to be found in the domains of body parts (1), aspects of individuality (2), or
kinship relations (3) to cite a few. Th is paper exclusively focus on the latter. So me Paamese kin terms are
always inalienable (3), some always alienable (4), and others have both forms (5-6).
(1)
(2)
vatu-k
(4)
ona-k
head-1SG
daughter-in-law POSS-1SG
‘my head’
‘my daughter-in-law’
iso-k
(5)
name-1SG
(3)
ahineli
āso-k
spouse-1SG
‘my name’
‘my wife’
tu-k-ahin
(6)
1
ahin ona-k
sibling-1SG-female
female POSS-1SG
‘my sister’
‘my wife’
Under the light of new cu lturally-specific information I recently documented, I test the prediction according to
which the morphosyntax of (in)alienability of kinship terms in Paamese is semantically motivated. This
prediction entails that some family members are conceptualized as ‘more’ part of the ego’s personal domain
than others1 . Johnson (1987, 124-125) considers that a center-periphery image schema is recru ited to structure
an individual’s social sphere and that some relations are situated at different degrees of distance fro m the core. I
argue that this conceptual notion of distance 2 in the semantic do main of kinship relations is grammatically
encoded and has been metaphorically extended fro m physical d istance. This physical distance is
institutionalized by a co mplex set of rituals, social p ractices, kinship organizat ions, worldview, and ethos, which
are maintained cognitively salient by Paamese society. More generally I therefore argue that cognition and
culture are two necessary dimensions to include in a grammatical analysis.
Key words: Paamese, embodiment, kinship relations, cultural cognitive linguistics
References
Cro wley, Terry. 1996. “Inalienable possession in Paamese grammar.” In The Grammar of Inalienability: A
Typological Perspective on the Part–Whole Relation edited by Hilary Chappell, and William McGregor,
383-432. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason . Chicago :
University of Chicago Press.
Mind the cultural gap? Emotion recognition by British and American English native speakers
watching a British actress
Dewaele Jean-Marc, Lorette Pernelle & Dino Petrides
University of London, University of London, & University College London
This article focuses on individual differences in emotion recognition ab ility (ERA ) of 301 British and American
first language (L1) users of English (151 females, 150 males). Recognizing emotions in spontaneous speech in a
different language can be challenging (Rintell 1984; Dewaele 2015a). The question addressed in the present
paper is whether recognising emotions in a different variety of one’s L1 is equally difficult. Individual
differences in ERA has been linked to linguistic, cultural and psychological profile of indiv iduals (Lo rette &
Dewaele, 2015; Shao, Doucet & Caruso 2015).
An online survey was used in which participants had to identify the emotion portrayed by a native Englishspeaking actress in six short video clips. Statistical analyses showed no differences in the ERA scores of the 151
British and the 150 A merican part icipants. Participants who scored higher on proficiency and trait emo tional
intelligence were better at recognising emotions. Surprisingly, the American part icipants scored higher on
emotional intelligence (but not proficiency), which might exp lain why they were ab le to overcome a cultural gap
and perform as well as the British participants.
Keywords: Emotion recognition, English, trait emotional intelligence, proficiency, culture
1 Co mparatively to body parts which are either conceptualized as separable ( metat ona-k ‘my p imple’) or not
(vatu-k ‘my head’) from the Self and respectively marked as alienable or inalienable.
2
The notion of conceptual distance I refer to here is therefore considerably different fro m Haiman ’s “iconic
expression of conceptual distance” (1983: 782).
2
Text world models of folktales: a view from the Eastern Caucasus
Wolfgang Schulze
University of Munich
Prop (1928) has shown that the construction of fairy tales in a cultural co mmun ity is strongly controlled by a set
of structural patterns that organize the narrative layout of such texts. Turning Propp’s model that is strongly
related to the tradition of Russian Formalis m into a cognitive perspective, it can be hypothesized that these
structural patterns represent larger symbolic units related to specific world models represented by ‘rhetorical
genres’ (Miller 1984). Genres are embod ied in conventionalized sets of hu man actions that are p rocessed as
symbolic un its the signifié do main of wh ich is related to corresponding models (Clot 2008). In case this type of
action is marked by linguistics activities, the resulting rhetorical genres represent correspond ing text world
models (TWMs) that control both the internal structure of text production and text processing (Werth 1999,
Gavin 2007, Schwarz-Friesel, and Consten 2011).
Just as it is true for most types of human action, hu man beings cannot linguistically interact by act ivating
corresponding TWMs that are highly conventionalized and hence cultural knowledge unit in the given speech
community. Due to their specific typology, folktales can serve as a starting point when developing analytic
tools for accessing the semantics of such TWMs. St ill, it is argued that many of the corresponding tools can
also be used unveil other types of TWMs represented by rhetorical genres, such as advertisements, journalistic
texts, political speeches, literary texts, specialized texts, screenplays, oral co mmunicat ion and so (just to name a
few).
Typically, text world models related to folktales are activated in the audience either by situational aspects (e.g.
role o f person who functions as a storyteller, situation of story telling etc.) or by linguistic means (,intrada’, e.g.
Slovak kde bolo, tam bolo, za horami, za dolami, English once upon a t ime, German es war ein mal, Hungarian
egyszer volt, hol nem vo lt, volt egyszer egy etc.). Such situational contexts or intradas not only direct the hearer
toward a specific type of attention in terms of exp licit genre identifiers), but also pre -fo rmat their knowledge
expectations about the text internal macro-strcutures in coherence with the activated world model.
It can be assumed that corresponding text world models are not only encoded by role semantics and interaction
of (pro/ant)agonists acting in the story, but also by expectations about the givenness of certain lexical units and
of text-prag mat ic as well as of mo rphosyntactic patterns. In my talk, I want to illustrate this approach by
reconstructing and comparing the internal structure of symbols of ‘fo lktale world models’ in three fo lktales fro m
Udi, Lak, and Chechen (distantly related East Causcasian languages in Northern Azerb aijan, Daghestan and
Chechnya respectively).
After b riefly reviewing the ro le of storytelling in the eastern Caucasus
(Chechnya/Daghestan) and classifying linguistic intrada types typical esp. for the ‘Oriental’ world, I will
analyse the texture as well as the lexical, prag matic and mophosyntax layout of these three tales
(šükürbakala p’urio ‘The grateful Dead’ (Ud i), č:itul arx:I ‘The Cat’s Travel’ (Lak), and staggiy laħiy ‘The
Man and The Snake’ (Chechen)) assuming the presence of corresponding rhythmic patterns that represent
relevant genre types. These patterns will be illustrated with the help o f so -called ‘part iturs’ (textual ‘scores’)
that represent the texture of the given tale. Co mmonalities between the individual ‘part iturs’ of the three text s
hint at a common Text World Model underlying the rhetorical genre of folk narrat ives in East Caucasian. The
peculiarities of the rhetorical genre represented by these tales can thus be attributed to a specific world model
that blends corresponding societal, cultural, pseudo-historical, and interactional knowledge (‘Ecotypes’ in terms
of van Sydow 1934) and thus culturally ‘dyes’ more general types of fo lk narratives. Grounded in strong
Contextualis m (Price 2008), and starting from ideas articularted for instance by Werth (1999), the paper argues
(in favour of a top-down interpretation) that much of what shows up on the linguistic micro -level (‘grammar’,
‘lexical units’) is controlled or even conditioned by larger symbolic units (‘texts’ in their co mmun ic ative context)
the signifies of which are marked for stereotyped and conventionalized models of corresponding worlds.
3
References
Clot, Yves 2008. Travail et pouvoir d’agir. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Gavins,
Joanna 2007. Text World Theory: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Miller, Carolyn R. 1984. Genre as Social Action. Quarterly Journal of Speech 70,2: 151– 167.
Price, Anthony W. 2008. Contextuality in Practical Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Propp, Vladimir 1928. Morfologija skazki. Leningrad: Academia.von Sydow
Schwarz-Friesel, Monika and Manfred Consten 2011. Reference and anaphora. In: Wolfram Bublitz and Neal R.
Norrik (eds.), Foundations of Pragmatics, 346-372. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter.
Werth, Paul 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman.
Black or white? A contrastive analysis of colour metaphors in English and Italian business
discourse
Vanessa Leonardi
University of Ferrara
Cultural Linguistics can enhance Foreign Language Learn ing (FLL), especially in the case of Languages for
Special Purposes (LSP). Cultural Linguistics views culture as a source of cenceptualising experience through
cognitive structures such as schemas, categories and metaphors, among others. In Cu ltural Linguistics a great
deal of attention has been devoted to the explorat ion of conceptual metaphors that are culturally constructed and
linguistically realised. Metaphors are used in all languages and language learners, even those with an advanced
level of proficiency, may find it hard to deal with them. Although the use of metaphors is universal, the choice
of metaphors for interpreting the world may be culture-specific and, as such, it may be difficult to find an
equivalent in a d ifferent language. This work argues that metaphors cannot always be avoided, especially in the
case LSP. In business discourse, for instance, metaphors seem to be particularly useful to make concepts more
easily accessible and even persuasive to readers. This work is aimed at showing how Italian learners of business
English can handle metaphors without necessarily using dictionaries. The methodology is based upon an
integrated approach of cognitive linguistics and pedagogical translation within the framewo rk of cu ltural
linguistics. Due to time and space restrictions, only examp les of colour metaphors in business discourse between
English and Italian will be analysed. Colour terms are extensively used both literally and metaphorically in all
languages although, as it will be shown, colours may convey different messages to people of different cultures.
Fro m a cu ltural linguistic perspective, a contrastive analysis of colour metaphors used in business discourse can
help Italian learners identify whether similarit ies and differences can be related to cultural differences between
English and Italian.
“Jumping loves”. Conceptualization of arm (’love’/ ’mercy’) in the Estonian runic songs
Ene Vainik
Institute of Estonian Language
The feeling of love is claimed to be universal (Fisher 2004) but it’s conceptualisations might be specific to a
culture. The content and imagery related to the feeling may vary also across different time periods in the course
4
of cultural history (cf. Kövecses 2005 and his references to Stearns 1994; for a cultural-anthropological
overview see Karandashev 2015).
In the present paper I will tackle the historical and derivational predecessor of the concept armastus ‘love’ of
standard Estonian – the root arm ‘love’/’mercy’ – as it occurs in archaic language preserved in the fixed verses
of the old Estonian runic songs. This is a died out oral genre practiced for appro ximately 2000 years, which was
documented in the end the 19th century, extensively. Today, the texts (N = appro x. 70000) are accessible in the
Estonian Runic Songs database.
The presentation will focus on a song type “Mother and the loves”, which describes the funeral of a mother
whereas the “loves” of the dead mother acco mpany the coffin on its way to the g raveyard by running, ju mping,
fly ing, wrestling and performing other kinds of physical and dynamic act ivities. The contradiction between the
passivity of the dead body and the dynamicity o f its “loves” has been tentatively explained by imposing a
pluralistic set of animistic “spirits” (Kama, to appear).
I will propose a different exp lanation for the appearance of the plural form armud ‘loves’ that relies on the
cognitive linguistic framework (Langacker 1987, Lakoff & Johnson 1980). I will argue for the exis tence and
differentiation between two kinds of arm ‘love’: the unbounded, limitless concept of arm ‘mercy’ that is used
only in singular form and the bounded concept of arm ‘an act of caring’ that occurs in plural.
The cognitive motivation of the “ju mping loves” will be further explored, rely ing on the occurrences of arm in
other song types, and, explained by referring to the ICM of motherhood (Lakoff 1987), the metonymy
EXPRESSION OF EMOTION STANDS FOR EMOTION, personification, and – surprisingly – also the
conceptual metaphor LOVE IS AN ECONOMIC EXCHANGE (Kövecses 2000). Besides the cognitively rooted
motivation, one must also consider the cultural impact of the Christian concept of maternal love (Setälä 1996).
Keywords: emotion conceptualisation, diachronic perspective, folklore, cognitive motivation, Estonian.
References
Estonian Runic Songs database: http://www.folklore.ee/regilaul/andmebaas.
Fisher, H. (2004). Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. Henry Holt.
Kama, Pikne (to appear). How old are the runo songs? To appear in Folklore
(https://www.folklore.ee/folklore/)
Karandashev, V. (2015). A Cu ltural Perspective on Ro mantic Love. On line Readings in Psychology and Culture,
5(4). http://dx.doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1135
Kövecses, Z. (2000). Metaphor and Emot ion. Language, Culture, and Body in Hu man Feeling. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Kövecses, Z. (2005). Metaphor in Culture. Universality and Variation. Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind. University of
Chicago Press.
Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar I. Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Stearns, P. (1994). American cool. New York: New York University Press.
Setälä, P. (1996). Keskiajan nainen. [The medieval woman]. Helsinki: Otava.
11:30 – 12:00
5
Idiomatic expressions featuring body parts: a comparison between Turkmen and Italian
Ruben Benatti
Most emotions of everyday life are exp ressed using body parts. The study of idio matic exp ressions becomes
therefore vital for an adequate understanding of the relationship between language and culture.
The aim of this paper is to analyze and compare exp ressions featuring lexical items related to body parts in
Italian and Turkmen. Turkmen istan is a very peculiar country, where an ano malous sociopolitical system, and
the bilingualism (Tu rkmen/ Russian) of the inhabitants have a great impact on such expressions of emotions. The
theoretical framewo rk adopted is that of cultural linguistics, “a mu ltid isciplinary area of research that exp lores
the relationship between language, culture and conceptualization […] for Cu ltural Linguistics, many features of
human languages are entranced in cultural conceptualiztions, including cultural models” (Sharifian, 2015: 473).
I aim to examine the id io matic expressions of feelings and emotions as entranced in the conceptual system of
speakers of Italian and Turkmen. With this paper I will explo re the role o f various bodily and cultural factors,
focusing on the two different cultural models. Emotions often arise fro m bodily experiences, and with this pape r
I wish to analyze how different body parts become the source of different emotions according to the cultural and
linguistic systems examined (Italian and Turkmen).
The data of this study have been obtained from interviews with students of the courses of Italian I am currently
running in Turkmenistan. The contrastive analysis shows, besides certain similarit ies, some remarkable
differences in the way Italian and Turkmen use different body parts to conceptualize emotions.
Keywords: cultural linguistics, idiomatic expressions, Turkmen and Italian.
Anger metaphor in Japanese
Ren Imai
Lakoff – Johnson (1980) demonstrated the importance of metaphor in language and culture. Kövecses – Lakoff
(1987) stated that emotional metaphors are structured in american english. Based on their work Matsuki (1995)
explained the concept of anger in the japanese language. In Kövecses' works the universality of metaphor and
cultural variety is analyzed. Kövecses (2010) co mpared the cognitive metaphors of eight languages (english,
hungarian, japanese, chinese, zulu, polish, volof and tahitian) and showed that the following two metaphors
cannot be found in japanese: the cause of anger is physical annoyance and causing anger is trespassing. All the
mentioned works are based on the lexical method, but Kövecses et al. (2015) used the corpus method to locate
the most important metaphors in the anger conceptualization of american english, spanish, turkish and hungarian
languages/cultures, and with a qualitative and quantitative examin ation helps defining the prototypical scenario
of anger.
In my presentation, using both the lexical and the corpus method, I will show wh ich metaphors of anger
motivate the japanese expressions. During my lexical research, I used six japanese dictionaries, t wo synonym
dictionaries, and four ety mological d ictionaries, where I searched ikari 'anger' (noun), ikaru 'be angry' (verb) and
okoru 'get angry' (verb) and highlighted the singularity of the japanese anger. For the corpus analysis I searched
the ikari 'anger' word in the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese and found 4331 exp ressions. I
analyzed which of these sentences are metaphorical or metonymical, and wh ich cognitive metaphors lie beyond
them and show the frequency of type and token of the source domains. I would like to use both methods to
prove wether the above mentioned cognitive metaphors can be also found in japanese (especially the following
two the cause of anger is physical annoyance and causing anger is trespassing), which are th e most frequent
6
metaphor and are there differences in the comparison with american english, spanish, turkish and hungarian.
This reinforces the theory of the great importance of the container metaphor in japanese. In my opinion, this is
because this metaphor expresses not only the intensity and control of anger, but also it's state.
References
Kövecses, Zoltán (2010). Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. New York: Oxford Un iversity Press. (Kövecses,
Zoltán (2005). A metafora. Budapest: Typotex Kiadó.)
Kövecses, Zoltán. Szelid, Veronika. Nucz, Eszter. Blanco-Carrion, Olga. Arica Akkök, Elif & Szabó, Réka
(2015). “Anger Metaphors across Languages: A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective”. In Heredia, Roberto
R. & Cieślicka, Anna B. (Eds.), Bilingual Figurat ive Langu age Processing (2015). Cambridge
University Press. pp. 341-367.
Lakoff, George & Johnson, Mark (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, George & Kövecses, Zoltán (1987). “The cognitive model of anger inherent in A merican English”. In
Holland, Dorothy & Quinn, Nao mi (Eds.), Cultural models in language and thought (1987). New York
and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 195 - 221.
Matsuki, Keiko (1995). “Metaphors of anger in Japanease”. In Taylor, John R. & MacLaury, Robert (Eds.),
Language and he Cognitive Construal of the World (1995). Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 137 151.
Marriage between Japan and France? Cultural metaphors in Japanese graphic novels as a casestudy on conceptualization of emotions in wine culture
Nadine Normand-Marconnet & Jason Jones
Monash University
A reputed expert, M. Dovaz co mposed the foreword for the French translation of the Japanese graphic novel,
Kami no Shizuku (2005), released in France as Les Gouttes de Dieu (2008). Therein lies the complexity of the
situation: A renown French oenologist writes the introduction to a French translation of a Japanese manga on
wine in wh ich cultural metaphors (Lakoff, 1980) p lay a crucial ro le in distinguishing ‘expert’ fro m ‘novice’
(Amoraritei, 2002; Casamayor, 2002; Coutier, 1994, 1997; Peynaud, 1980; Valentin et al., 2003) .
The crit ical narrative arc of wine manga actually lies in the mastery of cultural knowledge (Jones, 2015), a
posture also shared by most French experts (Dovaz, 2008) . It is well d isplayed by such Japanese oenologists as
Tasaki Sh inya in his Plaisirs du So mmelier (1997) and Ken -ichi Hori in The Libery of W ine (1998), which
includes a foreword by well-known oenologist Robert Parker.
These manga were translated and “glocalised”—a term first popularised by sociologist Roland Robertson (1995)
but which has since been used by scholars such as Koichi Iwabuchi in exp laining the “global localisation” of
Japanese culture (2002)—for the Korean and Ch inese markets. The main impact was the spread of accessible
knowledge for Asian readers of so-called ‘French wine culture’.
In line with princip les of cultural linguistics (Sharifian, 2014), the authors will reflect on categorisation of
emotions related to wine as a cultural schema. We wish to show that despite the strong proclivity to default
toward the French in the wine cu ltural space, there is an interplay occurring between French and Japanese media,
producing a cultural space that is no longer exclusive, but bridged through wine le xicon. For this, we will
conduct a comparative analysis of metaphors used in Japanese and French versions of the two manga series,
Sommelier and Les Gouttes de Dieu.
Keywords: cultural metaphors, emotions, French, Japanese, wine.
7
References
Amoraritei, L. (2002). La métaphore en œnologie. Metaphorik.de, 3, 1-12.
Casamayor, P. (2002). Le language du vin, histoire et développement moderne. DOURO - Estudos &
Documentos, VII (14)(4), 7-13.
Coutier, M. (1994). Tropes et termes: le vocabulaire de la dégustation du vin. Meta: Journal des
traducteursMeta:/Translators' Journal, 39(4), 662-675.
Coutier, M. (2007). Dictionnaire de la langue du vin. Paris: CNRS.
Featherstone, M., Lash, S., & Robertson, R. (1995). Global Modernities. London: Sage Publications.
Hori, K. (1998). Wain no jiyū [The Liberty of Wine]. Tokyo: Shūeisha.
Iwabuchi, K. (2002). Recentering globalization. Durham: Duke University Press.
Jones, J. (2015). Delightfully Sauced: Wine Manga and the Japanese Sommelier’s Rise to the Top of the French
Wine World. Japan Studies Review XIX. Miami: Florida International University.
Lakoff, G. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
Peynaud, E. P. J. (1980). Le goût du vin. Paris: Dunod.
Sharifian, F. (2014). Cultural Linguistics. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of language and
culture, (pp. 473-492): Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, New York, NY : Routledge.
Tasaki, S. (1997). Somurie no hirameki [Plaisirs du Sommelier]. Tokyo: Kawade.
Valentin, D., Chollet, S., & Abdi, H. (2003). Les mots du vin: experts et novices diffèrent -ils quand ils décrivent
des vins? Corpus, (2), 183-200.
Cultural Schemas in East Coast Bajau Folktales
Siti Nur Syafiqa Mazlan, Kamila Ghazali, Sakina Sahuri Suffian Sahuri, Yvonne Campbell
University of Malaya, Malaysia
The Bajau language is a subgroup of the western Malayo-Polynesian branch of Austronesian languages (Ruhlem,
1987). Although it is spoken in various parts of Southeas t Asia, the focus of this study is on the language spoken
on Omadal Island as Yap (1993) stated that it is the first place where the Bajau people inhabited after liv ing
offshore. As it is a language without a written form, the best way to study the Bajau c ultural schema may well
be through their folktales. According to Patpong (2013), folktales are traditional narratives or stories created to
explain or understand the world. A cultural schema is a sub -class of schemas which are constructed culturally
(Sharifian, 2011). Sharifian states that a schema could be recognized as a mental structure which is made up of
preconceived ideas. By using an aspect of Cultural Linguistics, the cultural schemas derived fro m the East Coast
Bajau folktales, or kissah, include relationship issues with humans, animals and mystical beings.
Keywords: Bajau, Austronesian, Cultural Schema, Folktales
8
Scenarios, ideology, and the Cultural Linguistics heritage from Generation X
Gary B. Palmer
University of Nevada at Las Vegas
While the Millennial generation of cultural linguists was maturing, Boo mers and Generation Xer's were
developing a theory of cognitive linguistics in an environment hostile to both induction and science. Two
decades of mechanical deductive models on the intellectual (not polit ical) right were fo llo wed by two more
decades of linguistic subversion of science on the postmodernist left. In spite of these astringent intellectual
currents, inductive linguistic science thrived in the latter part of the 20th Century and attracted attention from
other disciplines, including anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and ESL. The branch that we call cognitive
linguistics, did so largely by investigating imagery, usage, symbolic networks, a nd systems of metaphor. So me
researchers fro m the social sciences found it useful to shift the focus away fro m the universal imag istic
attentional processes emp loyed by cognitive linguists and over to culturally defined sources of imagery. Th is
resulted in the cognitive retooling of linguistic relativ ism under the rubric of cultural linguistics just as the first
Millennials were entering grad schools at the advent of the 21st century. In addition to motivating cross linguistic and cross-cultural studies of metaphors and cultural models, the shift has been productive in revealing
lin ks between culture, ideology, and grammar. It is argued that the single most pregnant and distinguishing
concept in cultural linguistics is that of the scenario, and it is hoped that the Millennial generation will continue
to develop and employ it in cross -linguistic studies.
9
14:00 – 14:30
Proper names: linguistic conceptualization of cultural continuum
Nataliia Gach
Being the embodiment and the reflection of culture actualized on the semantic level o f linguistic units, a
language represents and conceptualizes reality. The conducted research presupposes the analysis of cognitive
and pragmatic potential of proper names representing America, which are regarded as semantically meaningful
linguistic units with in literary d iscourse. It is proved that proper names may serve as referents to the conceptual
sphere of a linguistic co mmunity, and impersonate different aspects of its historical, economic and c u ltural
development. As the question of the proper names’ semantics is widely discussed both in linguistic and
philosophical circles, the study is based on the works of J. Searle (1958), S. Krip ke (1980), K. Donnellan (1966;
1970), P. van Inwagen (1983; 1997), D. Braun (1993; 2005) and others. The aim of the research implies the
analysis of the usage of references to the objective reality in literary d iscourse, the determination of functions
performed by proper names in literary works, and the study of their semantic, prag matic and cognitive potential
by means of the linguistic-cultural interpretation of texts. The research is carried out within the analysis of the
American literary works of 17th -20th centuries. The diachronic scope of the study helps to trace the emergence
and the evolution of the conceptual sphere of the A merican society within the framework of literary wo rks of
different epochs. The method of the cognitive d iscourse analysis enables the interpretation of knowledge behind
the mean ing of proper names. Thus, the results of the research show that proper names may represent the
elements of the cultural-historical continuum of a linguistic community on a text level.
Keywords: cognitive d iscourse analysis, conceptual sphere, cultural continuum, literary d iscourse, proper names.
References
BRAUN, DAVID. 2005. Empty Names, Fictional names, Mythical Names. Noûs 39:596-631.
DONNELLAN, KEITH S. 1970. Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions. Synthese, 21 (3/4):335-58.
INWAGEN VAN, PETER. 1997. Creatures of Fiction. American Philosophical Quaterly, 14 (4):299-308.
KRIPKE, SAUL. 1980. Naming and Necessity. Lectures Given to the Princeton University Ph ilosophy
Colloquium. <http://www.class.uh.edu/phil/garson/NamingandNecessity.pdf>.
SEARLE, JOHN R. 1958. Proper Names. Mind 67:166-73.
Intentionality versus embodiment: Where linguistic functionalism goes wrong
Anneliese Kuhle
Freie Universität Berlin
The linguistic representations of our real-world experience are only crude. The word red fo r ex-ample covers a
wide spectrum o f physical sensations we might have of the environ ment, but lin -guistically we treat all of these
under one linguistic label. Moreover, such labeling differs across languages; some do not distinguish between
different color terms for ‘red’, ‘b lue’ or ‘green’, but subsume all of these under expressions roughly equivalent
to something like dark o r shaded. De-spite such vagueness and cross-linguistic variation of linguistic encoding,
various positions in cognitive linguistics and typological studies of language maintain the hypothesis of a close
lin k between prelinguistic (universal) dispositions of behavior and the functional categories displayed by natural
languages (Gallese & Lakoff 2005; Majid et al. 2011). Especially by scholars adopting a functionalist view of
10
language development, this embodied cognition hypothesis is seen as mandatory even if language is otherwise
studied as a cultural phenomenon.
Although I contend that functionalism is the only plausible approach when it co mes to explaining language
structure, I argue that the embodied cognition hypothesis is not. My claim is that current thinking in this debate
does not adequately integrate the notion of intentionality into the consider-ation of linguistic functionalism –
intentionality as for instance treated in works by Grice (1968), Wittgenstein (1953) and Ingold (1993). By
introducing the example of intelligent tool use, I illus-trate how functional categories emerge in the light of the
pursuit of individual intentional frames and how these emerging functional propert ies of ‘tools’ are d isconnected
and removed fro m our physical sensations of the world. If language use, too, c an be based on such intentionality
in speaker-addressee interaction, there is really no point in anchoring linguistic “tools” - and their functions - to
such prelinguistic semantic fields either.
Keywords: Intentionality, semantics, functionalism, language use, embodiment
References
Gallese, V. and Lakoff, G. (2005), The b rain’s concepts: The role of the sensory -motor system in reason and
language. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 22: 455-479.
Grice, H. (1968), Utterer's Meaning, sentence-meaning and word-meaning. Foundations of Lan-guage, 4: 225242.
Ingold, T. (1993), Tool-use, sociality and intelligence. In: K. R. Gibson / T. Ingold (eds.), Tools, Language and
Cognition in Human Evolution, pp. 429-445. Cambridge University Press.
Majid, A., Evans, N., Gaby, A., and Levinson, S. C. (2011), The grammar of exchange: A co m-parat ive study of
reciprocal constructions across languages. Frontiers in Psychology, 2: 1-15.
Wittgenstein, L. (2001) [1953], Philosophical Investigations. Blackwell Publishing.
The conceptualization and lexicalization of HAPPINESS. From Old to Early Modern Romanian
- a cultural-historical perspective
Gabriela Stoica
University of Bucharest
The presentation deals with the d iachronic evolution of the conceptualization and lexicalization of HAPPINESS
in Ro manian (fro m Old to Early Modern period, the 16th – the 19th centuries) and of its cultural imp lications,
fro m an interdisciplinary (both linguistic and cultural-anthropological) perspective. Accordingly, based on
corpus relevant for the period under consideration, we shall describe the basic Ro manian lexicon of
HAPPINESS and its salient semantic characteristics. Giving the co mplex nature of th e emotional meaning and
also the specific contextual variations, we shall co mbine methodological tools of the cognitive lexical semantics
and of the textual semantics, as well as of the conceptual metaphors theory. We shall highlight the particu lar
conceptual-semantic facets of happiness that are predominantly conceptualized and lexicalized within the
Romanian cultural affective pattern during the process of transition towards modernity.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the Romanian cu ltural space undergoes a so-called “crisis of sensibility”;
Ro manian society gradually adopts a new cultural (Western European) model, in wh ich the affectivity and the
individual feelings are focused on and predominantly exhib ited. In this context, happiness is rediscovered and
re-evaluated as an indiv idual, hypercognite feeling. The texts of this period bring forward many passages where
the concept of happiness is strongly lexicalized. Two basic dimensions of happiness can be delineated: (a)
happiness as an individual-subjective feeling, frequently associated with love, and (b) happiness as a socialcollective feeling (happiness as a value, as a moral goal, as well-being), a conceptual innovation, distinguished
11
as such as a consequence of the intersection with the Western European principles and philosophical ideas of the
En lightenment. In this context, happiness is frequently associated with patriotism and with the recently valued
concepts: naţiune (nation), patrie (country), bine obştesc (common, collective well-being).
Keywords: happiness, emotion words, conceptualization, cognitive model for emotions, cultural model
References
Fontaine, J. F.R., Scherer, K. R., So riano, C. (eds.), 2013, Co mponents of emotional meaning. A sourcebook,
Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Kitayama, Sh., Markus, H. R. (eds.) 1997, Emotion and Culture. Empirical studies of mutual influences,
Washington, American Psychological Association.
Kövecses, Z., 2012, „Emotion Concepts in Cu ltural Contexts: the Case of Happiness”, in Wilson, P. (ed.), 2012,
Dynamicity in emotion concepts, Paris, Berne, Peter Lang, pp. 159-182.
Palmer, G. B., Occhi, D. J. (eds.), 1999, Language of sentiment: cultural constructions of emotional substrates,
Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins.
Wierzbicka, A., 1999, Emotions across languages and cultures: Diversity and Universals, Cambridge,
The Conceptualization of Silence in Japanese Language and Culture
Natsuko Tsujimura
Indiana University
The perception and conceptualizat ion of what constitutes silence seems to differ across cultures, and this has
linguistic manifestations in the expressions that a language allows to embody silence. In English expressions
like “It ’s so quiet that you could hear a feather drop”, the presence of silence and its intensity are described by
the (metaphorical o r hypothetical) ability to hear a sound that is not normally audible to the human ear. On the
other hand, Japanese can describe the presence of silence and its intensity by referring to what is generally
understood to be background noise; such reference signifies the silence, rather than nullify ing it. In English, in
contrast, it could be contradictory. Expressions that are equivalent to “It’s so quiet that a ll we hear is the
chirping of birds” are, thus, perfectly effective and common to describe silence in Japanese. Secondary or
background sounds like b irds’ chirping, the noise that insects and small animals make, and the ticking of a clock
frequently appear as a means to depict silence in the surroundings. In this paper, drawing relevant samples
particularly fro m literary works and poetry, I will demonstrate that in Japanese expressions of silence,
background sounds become foregrounded, whereby a description of silence or its heightened degree is achieved
by promoting the secondary sound as a “surrogate” for silence. This type of linguistic strategy seems to face
varying degrees of restriction when crosslinguistic or crosscultural co mparisons are made. It the n potentially
points to some culturally bound differences in perceiving, conceptualizing, and exp ressing silence in broader
terms. That is, the cultural conceptualizat ion of silence is indeed reflected in language by what is possible, what
is not, and what is preferred in our linguistic portrayal of how language users render silence in their cultures.
Keywords: silence, secondary sounds, perception of silence, description of silence, Japanese
Metaphor of thread as Korean cultural metaphor
Youngsoon Cho
12
Chonnam National University
The aim of this research is to show that the metaphor of thread or string is a Korean cultural metaphor in the
sense of Sharifian (2014:482). A lthough the string metaphor is reported to exist in English and to have a central
status in Hmong (Riddle :362), this research suggests that, in Korean, it is not only found popularly in a variety
of target domains, but also shows unique and systematic conceptualizations of thinking.
The metaphor of thread is diversely found in the Korean language. Sil (실, ‘thread’) is widely used as a prefix to
describe a variety of physical things which are lengthy, and thin, as in silkaychen (실개천, ‘thin streamlet’) and
silphiscwul (실핏줄 ‘cap illary vessel or minute blood vessel’); Silnath(실낱 ‘outer end of ball of yarn ’) is used
to describe a tiny amount of physical or abstract things as in silnath -kathun moksoli (실낱같은 목소리/희망
voice/hope like silnath). The conceptual domains of language, life, and event are understood in terms of the
domain of thread: Cutting a thread maps onto interrupting a talk or ending a life, and knotting a thread maps
onto finishing a talk or a situation, to name a few. Thread metaphor is also found in life as well: A baby’s
selection of a spool of thread out of four types of presents on its first birthday is understood as signifying the
baby's long life.
The critical part of the Korean cultural model of thin king is constituted of the metaphor of thread. Korean has a
conceptual metaphor of [Th inking Is Spinning A Thread], which conceptualizes the process of thinking like the
universal metaphor of [Thin king Is Moving] does. Although the latter constitutes an universal conceptualizat ion
of thinking which is based on physical functioning, in Korean it lacks a crit ical mapping which Lakoff and
Johnson (1999:236) present: [Rational Thought Is Motion That Is In Accord With The Force Of Reason]. This
means that rational thought is not conceived of as critical and that reason is not conceived to be a force driving
the process of thinking. Instead, Korean has a mapping, [Good Th inking Is Sp inning A Thread Smoothly],
which shows that good thinking is conceptualized as spinning without stopping with due to a tangled or cut
thread.
The unique trait Korean culture has with regard to emot ion also draws on the metaphor of thread. As cultural
psychology research reveals that interdependent east people tend to suppress the ir feelings and adjust to others
as opposed to independent west people (Markus & Kitayama 1991), Korean culture represses emotion so
strongly that the language has unique terms han (한 ‘feeling akin to sorrow, but, differently, stored deep and
long in one’s heart without being resolved’) and hwapyeng (화병, ‘d isease which results fro m containing anger
in one’s heart for a long time without release’). Knotting a thread(or string) and untangling a knotted thread are
frequently and widely used to refer to the repressing or tolerating feeling inwardly and resolving a suppression
in a hard way, respectively.
References
Sharifian, F. 2015. Cultural Linguistics. In F. Sharifian (ed.), the Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture.
473-493. New York/London: Routledge.
Markus, H. R. & S. Kitayama 1991. Culture and the Self: Imp licat ions for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation,
Psychological Review vol. 98/2. 224-253.
Riddle, E. 2000. The "string" metaphor in life and language in Hmong, paper presented in the International
Pragmatics Conference in Budapest.
Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson 1999. The Philosophy in the Flesh. New York/Basic Books.
14:00 – 14:30
13
What's in a name – universality or cultural peculiarities?
Draženka Molnar & Vlatka Ivić
University J.J. Strossmayer, Croatia
It is generally agreed among linguists that proper names are a universal linguistic category. They can offer a
valuable insight into the fruitfu l interplay between language and culture. The aim of this study is to show that
phraseological units concerning universal concepts present less of an obstacle to the EFL learners than those
expressions that are culturally specific. Using a targeted corpus of English PUs containing proper and
geographical names, we will investigate EFL learners' co mprehension of these expressions and the role of
culture in their selection of the translational equivalents. Concerning their potentially dual character, expressions
will be divided into two categories: the universal (presumably transparent) ones - related to common European
culture and civ ilisation, and culturally specific (opaque or potentially unknown) - related to Eng lish language
culture and civilisation. The study includes a questionaire wh ich requires respondents to give a definition as well
as Croatian t ranslation equivalent for the same idea and concept. The analysis rests on the assumption that most
PUs are conceptually motivated and therefore fo llo ws in the footsteps of Barcelona (2004), Brdar and BrdarSzabó (2007), and Brdar (2007) in exploring proper names within the cognitive linguistics framework. The
hypotheses we are try ing to confirm are: a) PUs concerning universal concepts present much less o f an obstacle
to the EFL learners than culturally loaded expressions; b) successful translation depends on EFL learners' age,
language and cultural competence and study programme c) understanding of the proper names to a great extent
depends not only on the activation of similar cognitive mechanis ms (conceputal metaphors and metonymies),
but also on cultural competence and more general knowledge structures.
Keywords: phraseological units, proper and geographical names, cognitive theory of metaphor and metonymy,
universality, cultural peculiarities
Non-literal uses of motion verbs in Ancient Greek: Constructional and cultural motivations in
semantic extension
Georgakopoulos Thanasis, Nikiforidou Kiki, PiataAnna & Selimis Stathis
Freie Universität, Berlin, University of Athens, & University of Geneva
Motion verbs have been a popular topic o f investigation in linguistics; they encode a fundamental do main of
experience, they are frequently used in different types of texts and contexts, and are extensively used non literally (e.g. time goes by). Ancient Greek, in part icular, has been studied in regard to literal uses of mot ion
verbs (e.g. concerning its typological grouping; see Skopeteas 2008; Nikitina 2013), but not regarding the
semantic extension fro m literal/physical motion to more abstract, non -literal one. Espousing cognitivelyoriented approaches to language, the present study aims to contribute to how metonymic and metaphoric uses of
motion verbs have emerged; we thus assume a continuum fro m literality to non -literality. We analy ze four verbs:
the source-profiled pheúgō (‘leave/flee/escape/take flight’) and leípō (‘leave/quit’), as well as the goal-profiled
(ap)hiknéomai (‘arrive’) and hḗkō (‘have co me’). The data are extracted fro m d ictionaries, grammars and the
Perseus digital library (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/; last access May 2016). Our investigation covers
two diachronic stages of Greek, i.e. Ho meric and Classical Greek, and five text types, i.e. epic poetry, comedy,
tragedy, history, and philosophy. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses of data fro m d ifferent sources
and text types, we aim at charting the polysemy networks of the above mentioned verbs and to a lso address the
underlying motivations for the observed extensions. We identify two types of influences: a) the constructional
context of verbs, including syntactic, semantic and textual/discursive features (see, e.g., Goldberg 1995; Fried &
Östman 2004); and b) socio-cultural aspects of meaning, related to the cultural models of concepts that are
systematically coded via motion verbs such as Time, Death, and Life. We finally argue that the cultural
14
perspective (in the sense of Sharifian 2015) is compatib le with, and can greatly benefit fro m, constructional
analyses in offering insights to research on polysemy and diachrony.
Keywords: motion verbs; Ancient Greek; non-literal; constructions; cultural models.
References
Fried, M irjam & Jan-Ola Öst man (eds.). 2004. Construction grammar in a cross -language perspective.
Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Go ldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure . Chicago:
Nikitina, Tatiana. 2013. Lexical splits in the encoding of motion events from Archaic to Classical Greek. In:
Goschler, Juliana & Anatol Stefanowitsch (eds.), Variation and change in the encoding of motion
events, 185-202. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Sharifian, Farzad. 2015. Cultural linguistics. In: Sharifian, Farzad (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of language
and culture, 473-92. New York & London: Routledge & Taylor and Francis.
Skopeteas, Stavros. 2008. Encoding spatial relat ions: Language typology and diachronic change in Greek.
Language Typology and Universals 61(1), 54-66.
Comparing the conceptualization of emotions in European and Brazilian Portuguese
Augusto Soares da Silva
Catholic University of Portugal
This study investigates the similarities and divergences regarding the conceptualizat ion of emotions in the two
national varieties of Portuguese, namely European Po rtuguese (EP) and Brazilian Po rtuguese (BP). The starting
point is the idea that emotions have a biological basis, but are socially and culturally constructed. Brazilians are
stereotyped as more emotionally expressive than other cultures. According to Hofstede’s (2001) measuring
model of cu ltural indiv idualis m and collectiv ism, Portugal and Brazil are both collectivistic societies, but
Brazil’s score on individualism (38) is higher than Portugal’s score (27). Another difference concerns the degree
of indulgence: Portugal scores 33 having therefore a cu lture of restraint, whereas a high score of 59 indicates
that Brazil is an indulgent society.
Within the perspective of Cultural Linguistics (e.g. Sharifian 2011) and Cognitive Linguistics (e.g. Geeraerts &
Cuyckens 2007), three dimensions of emotion will be investigated: (i) d ifferences in conceptualizing emotions
between EP and BP; (ii) the ro le of linguistic categories in emot ional experience; and (iii) the impact of emot ion
concepts in Portuguese as a pluricentric language (Soares da Silva 2014). A corpus -based and mult ifactorial
analysis will be developed as to the usage of ANGER (raiva, fúria, ira, cólera, irritação) and of PRIDE (orgulho,
vaidade) emotions in a corpus of blogs fro m the two national varieties. Blogs are particularly apt for the study in
question because emotions are frequently discussed at a personal-experiential level. An analysis of a 1500
examples sample of these emotions will be conducted, taking into account the different conceptual factors that
are associated to the arguments of ANGER and PRIDE event-frames, namely Emoter, Cause, Responsible and
Receiver. The analysis is, in part, inspired by work in social psychology (Fontain e et al. 2013). So me features of
both the Brazilian and the Portuguese cultures will be analy zed, as they determine d ifferent conceptual
structures of ANGER and PRIDE and make them specific cultural conceptualizations.
Keywords: emotion, cultural conceptualization, Portuguese, pluricentric language
References
15
Fontaine, Johnny R. J., Klaus R. Scherer & Cristina Soriano (2013). Components of Emotional Meaning. A
Sourcebook . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Geeraerts, Dirk & Hubert Cuyckens (eds.) (2007). The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Hofstede, Geert (2001). Cultureʼs Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and
Organizations across Nations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Sharifian, Farzad (2011). Cultural Conceptualizations and Language: Theoretical Framework and Applications.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Soares da Silva, Augusto (ed.) (2014). Pluricentricity: Language Variation and Sociocognitive Dimensions.
Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
On tactful balking at grammatical honorification: A case of audience-blind forms of Korean
Hyun Jung Koo & Seongha Rhee
Sangmyung University & Hankuk University
Korean is a language in which the relat ionship between the speaker and the addressee is reflected in verbal
morphology to indicate the speaker's attitudinal, emot ional, ep istemic and evidential stance toward the addressee
or proposition, involving various levels of honorification. Th is so-called 'speech-level' has been grammaticalized
to such an extent that any violation of proper honorificat ion would render the utterance not only pragmatically
unacceptable but often ungrammatical. Th is elaborate system of honorification (at 4 to 6 d ifferent levels) is an
exemplar par excellence for long-maintained hierarchical relationship and the emphasis on decorum in the
ambient culture being reflected on language and grammar.
There is, however, one distinct style called 'audience-blind style' (and 'audience-blind forms' for individual
markers in it). Audience-blind fo rms (ABFs) are those intended for unspecified audiences, lacking any sentence final grammatical trappings that signal the speaker-addressee relationship (e.g. honorification, politeness,
formality, etc.). Since marking these interpersonal relations, as indicated above, is fully grammaticalized and
thus obligatory in Korean, ABFs constitute a special category in speech/writing styles, making a sharp contrast
with the regular 'audience-sensitive' fo rms. Such A BFs are found across modalities of sentence-type markers, i.e.
declarative (-ta ), interrogative (-na ) and imperative (-la ), but not hortative (*-ca ).
This paper addresses strategic uses of ABFs in discourse, especially in audience-sensitive contexts, contrary to
its characteristic usage. By strategically emp loying ABFs, the speaker is feigning the utterance as monologual,
i.e., it is directed to the self, not the addressee. Fro m the viewpoint of d iscurs ive strategy, the speaker is showing
either aloofness that the person present in the scene is not his/her social equal, or gentleness by not imposing
any direct burden of response to the intended addressee. The development ABFs thus shows how language users
may opt out of grammatical requirements as warranted in the given context and strategically emp loy new forms
for d iscursive effect. Drawing upon historical data, this paper analyzes how such non -conforming fo rms emerge
and consequently create their own g rammat ical paradig m, and, at the same time, illustrates how culture interacts
with language use.
16
The role of context in the formation of hijab metaphors in Persian pro-hijab billboards
Mohsen Bakhtiar
Eotvos Lorand University
The proper hijab observance has been a serious demand of political-religious conservatives in Iran who, in
recent years, have resorted to metaphorical language, among other measures, to persuade Iranian wo men to
dress modestly in public. The present paper, based on Kövecses’s (2015) account of metaphor in context,
explores the role of contextual factors involved in the formation of hijab linguistic metaphors used in pro -hijab
billboards and posters. The frame analysis of HIJAB demonstrates a tripartite classification (hijabwearing/improperly dressed/non-hijab wearing wo men) on the basis of which the hijab status of women is
evaluated. Moreover, analy zing the h ijab metaphors has shown that their persuasive power lies in
conceptualizing wo men positively (as FLOWERS, PEARLS, and BIRDS) and in h ighlighting the p rotective function
of hijab by conceptualizing corrupt men as FLIES or DEVILS. The negative indiv idual and social consequences of
not dressing modestly are highlighted by viewing immodestly dressed women as SWEET S and DYSFUNCTIONAL
OBJECT S. The HIJAB IS A PROTECTIVE COVER is shown to be the metaphor which hijab billboards and posters
unanimously rely on and the one instantiated in almost all cases. Finally, the metaphorical p atterns represent the
contextual ro le of political and religious ideology, key cultural concepts, and entrenched conventional
conceptual metaphors and metonymies in the production of novel metaphors.
Keywords: hijab, conceptual metaphor, conceptual metony my, context, Iranian culture
References
Ameli, S. R., & Merali, A. (2006). Hijab, meaning, identity otherization and politics: British Muslim women .
London: Islamic Human Rights.
Charteris-Black, J. (2004). Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Charteris-Black, J. (2007). The communication of leadership. London & New York: Routledge.
Kövecses, Z. (2015). Where metaphors come from: Reconsidering context in metaphor. New Yo rk: Oxford
University Press.
Pragglejaz Group (2007). MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and
Symbol, 22(1), 1–39.
15:30 – 16:00
Culture and construal in Japanese numeral classifiers
Hiroko Komatsu & Nerida Jarkey
University of Sydney
The topic of numeral classifiers (NCs) is of considerable interest to Cultural Linguistics. NCs are grammatical
elements used in many languages whenever the number of referents is counted. Typological studies show that
their use is semantically motivated, referents being matched with classifiers according to features such as
animacy, shape, and size (A ikenvald 2000, p. 117). Such matching reveals a lot about the ‘cultural
categorization’ o f entities (Glushko et al. 2008, p. 129; Sharifian 2015, pp. 480-481). Lakoff (1987) d iscusses
this categorizat ion fro m a cognitive perspective, illustrating its relevance not only when NCs are matched with
concrete nouns but also with abstract nouns, through metaphorical extension.
17
This study concerns Japanese NCs that are characteristically used for animate beings: nin for hu mans, too for
large animals, and hiki for small animate beings. It identifies tokens of these NCs in a large corpus —the
Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese—analysing both prototypical and non-prototypical uses.
The study reveals that the metaphorical extension of the meaning of NCs, observed with abstract nouns, also
occurs when they are matched with non-prototypical concrete nouns. Non-prototypical uses of hiki, for examp le,
include its occasional co-occurrence with androids, croissants, and sisters -in-law. These extended uses relate not
to the nature of the referent itself, but to the construal of the referent that the speaker wishes to portray in a
particular context.
By considering such non-prototypical uses, the study identifies co mponents of the meaning o f the target NCs
that are not apparent when the focus is only on p rototypical instances. It also shows how the use of NCs relates
not only to objective features of the referent classified but also t o the perspective of the speaker, as a human
being, as a member of a cultural group, and as a subjective individual.
Keywords: numeral classifiers, Japanese, semantic components.
References
Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2000). Classifiers: A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices. Oxford: Oxford Un iversity
Press.
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind . Chicago:
Sharifian, F. (2015). Cu ltural Linguistics. In F. Sharifian (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and
Culture. New York/London: Routledge.
Glushko, R. J., Maglio, P. P., Mat lock, T., & Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Categorizat ion in the wild. Trends in
Cognitive Sciences, 12(4), 129-135.
Caregiver attitudes and beliefs about child-language acquisition in two remote Aboriginal
Australian
Jill Vaughan, Gillian Wigglesworth, Sophie Nicholls & Caroline Jones
University of Melbourne, University of Melbourne, University of Western Sydney , & University of Western
Sydney
Language socialisation plays a crucial ro le in children’s cognitive, social and cultural develop ment, and the
child-careg iver relat ionship is a fundamental site in this process. As in any study of language socialisation, a key
focus is to gain insight into the underlying values and beliefs that govern social interaction with in a g iven
community. In th is paper we report on the design, imp lementation and find ings of an interv iew based study into
caregiver attitudes and beliefs about child-language acquisition in t wo remote Aborig inal Australian
communities.
The two communit ies featured represent very different language ecologies, but together exemp lify the
sociolinguistic variation that typifies Aboriginal Australia. The first is Barunga, a s mall co mmunity in Central
Northern Australia where Kriol is the predo minant language spoken. The second is Maningrida, a co mmunity of
around 2000 people in Arnhem Land where (at last official count) fourteen distinct languages are spoken, with
most individuals able to speak between two and six. Both communities featured have recently undergone/are
currently undergoing distinct configurations of language loss, and they differ significantly in the levels of
multilingualism observable.
18
This paper discusses the development of an appropriate methodology for undertaking a language socialisation
study with sensitivity to cultural and individual differences in t wo co mmunit ies in Aboriginal Australia, through
interviews targeting parents’ and caregivers’ attitudes and beliefs about ch ild-language development. Also
explored are shared co mmunity ideologies, and indiv iduals’ beliefs and values that guide language socialisation
routines.
We also discuss the findings from the study, revealing distinct beliefs and ideologies in these commun ities
around the themes of: (i) the develop ment of learning/ milestones; (ii) mult i-party vs. dyadic input and
competence; (iii) acco mmodation to the infant (verbal and environ mental); and (iv) autonomy of the infant.
Finally we discuss implications of the findings for the ongoing maintenance of creoles and endangered
languages in Australia and beyond.
A different taste of mind: Taste terms and emotion in seediq
Amy Pei-jung Lee
National Dong Hwa University
As semantic domains PERCEPTION and EMOTION are th e experiences accumulated through the interaction
between a liv ing physical entity and the outside world. Hu mans’ senses correlate with their thoughts, which are
represented through language of perception and emotion (e.g. Adolphs 2006; Tanaka et. al. 2010). Linguistically
speaking, there is a tight connection between perception and emotion. Emot ion is often involved when
perception is expressed by language.
This paper exp lores the cross -modal connection between gustatory perception and emotion in Seed iq, an
Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan, suggesting that the former modality serves as linguistic sources for
the latter in forming new conceptualization. Languages vary in terms of conceptualizing emot ion in relation to
gustatory perception. The Seediq data show that tastes are associated with different emotions, such as SWEET
for pleasant feelings and BITTER/SOUR for the opposite. ENDURA NCE and SUFFERING tend to be
figuratively represented by BITTER in English and Mandarin Chinese, while they are repres ented by SALTY in
Seediq. Furthermore, in Seediq SPICY and BITTER are verbally conflated and metaphorically extended to
RANCOR and DISGUST, or to depict the emotion of being recalcit rant and unwilling to reconcile to the current
situation. SOUR and SALTY are associated with SADNESS in this language.
In this paper the conceptual link between gustatory perception and linguistic correlat ion of emotion in Seediq is
analyzed fro m a cognitive approach (Wierzb icka 1996, 1999; Ye 2007). As taste metaphors elicit s tronger
emotion than literal exp ressions (Citron and Goldberg 2014), a cross -linguistic comparison offers insight into
universality and variat ion (Ko vecses 2000) of the metaphorical relat ion between emotion and gustatory
perception, and how the relation can be defined by culture-specific factors.
Keywords: gustatory perception, emotion, metaphor, variation, universality
References
Adolphs, Ralph. 2006. Perception and emotion: How we recognize facial exp ressions. Current Directions in
Psychological Science 15.5: 222-226.
Citron, Francesca, and Goldberg, Adele. 2014. Metaphorical sentences are mo re emotionally engaging than their
literal counterparts. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 26: 2585-2595.
Kovecses, Zoltan. 2000. Metaphor and Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tanaka, A., Koizu mi A., Imai H., Hiramatsu S., Hiramoto E., and de Gelder B. 2010. I feel your vo ice. Cu ltural
differences in the multisensory perception of emotion. Psychological Science 21.9: 1259-1262.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1996. Semantics: Primes and Universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
19
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1999. Emotions across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals. Cambridge:
Ye, Zhengdao. 2007. Taste as a gateway to Chinese cognition. Mental States Vol. 2: Language and Cognitive
Structure, ed. by Andrea C. Schalley and Drew Khlentzos, 109-132. A msterdam/Ph iladelphia: John
Benjamins Publishing Company.
The importance of cultural conceptualizations in developing cultural literacy
Gabriel Garcia Ochoa & Sarah McDonald
Monash University
Cultural Literacy is an emerging field of research. It is defined as “the ability to read and interpret culture in its
many manifestations (cultural artefacts) by applying skills and knowledge inherent to Literary and Cu ltural
Studies (LCS), opening up the possibility to modify such artefacts, or one’s attitude toward them” (García
Ochoa, McDonald, Monk, forthcoming). Whilst Cu ltural Literacy and Cu ltural Linguistics are two distinct areas
of study, there is common ground between them, and Cu ltural Literacy can draw immense benefit fro m the
crosspollination of ideas with the more established field o f Cu ltural Linguistics. Amongst other consonances,
the notion of “cultural conceptualisations” (Sharifian, 2003) as art iculated by Cultural Linguistics is particularly
germane to Cultural Literacy. Cultural conceptualisations are defined as ways of representing experience that
are “‘distributed’ across the minds constituting a cultural group” (Sharifian, 2003). Ignorance of others’ cultural
conceptualisations is often the first deterrent in efficient intercultural communication.
This paper analyses the hitherto unexplored ro le of cultural conceptualisations in Cultural Literacy. It discusses
the development of new pedagogical techniques in Higher Education that have been specifically designed to
allo w students to become aware of others’ cultural conceptualizat ions, with the aim of fostering greater “meta cultural co mpetence” (Sharifian, 2013). In particu lar, this paper focuses on the role that the techniques of
“destabilization” and “reflect ion” play in reading cu ltural conceptualisations as part of a meaning -making
process when teaching Cultural Literac
y.
The translation of body parts metaphors: a comparison of English, Russian and Italian
Erica Pinelli
University of Pavia
As suggested in Eco (2003), the translation of a text can be seen as a process of understanding theinternal
system of the source text language, and trying to reproduce the same effect in the system of the target language.
The translation of metaphors is one of the most discussed problems, and several theories of translation have
suggested different solutions.
The paper aims to show how metaphors are translated from an orig inal English text into Russian and Italian by
analyzing data from a parallel corpus of literary texts. In particular I investigate the body parts metaphors, and
highlight the similarities and the discrepancies among the three analysed languages.
Very often the metaphors used in the source text cannot be translated into the target language and translators
must use alternative linguistic strategies in order to produce the same effect. However, it also happens that
metaphors in the source text are not translated even when they exist and are used also in the target language. For
example, the English expressions fill someone’s head with ideas, wh ich is a linguistic realization of the Conduit
20
Metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), has its Russian equivalent napolnit’ č’ju -to golovu. However, very often in
the corpus the metaphorical equivalent expression is not used, and other non-metaphorical expressions occur. In
yet other cases other metaphors such as navesti kogo-to na kakuju-to misl’ ‘guide someone towards an idea’
replace the metaphor from the source language.
In this paper, I plan to investigate metaphor translation fro m mu ltiple perspectives. The analysis will point out
similarities and differences in the conceptualization of body parts in English, Russian, and Italian, and will
highlight alternative strategies used in translation of metaphors. Through this analysis, I would like to show how
the choice of metaphor translation can be language specific or culturally defined.
16:00 – 16:30
The cultural conceptualisation of collective self-representation among Chinese immigrants
Yanying Lu
Monash University
This study explores cultural conceptualisations of self as they emerge in social interactions, in particular the
performance and negotiation of collective self-representation among immigrant main land Chinese in Australia.
The analysis presented in this chapter is guided by the premise that collective self-representation is a
representational and emergent cultural conceptualisation. Exploring collective self-representation as an examp le
of cultural conceptualisation, linguistics evidence of the image schema of CULTURAL GROUP IS A CONT AINER OF
CENT RE –PERIPHERY ST RUCTURE will be presented first. Then it is followed by an examination of how the
speakers use collective terms to refer to both Chinese people and Australian people, deploying cultural
metaphors, categories and schemas flexibly and prag matically in order to fo reground particular meanings in a
manner that they would like to be understood and agreed upon by other interlocutors. These actions are essential
to the conceptualisation and negotiation of the speakers’ sense of collective self. Finally, a discussion of the
significance of the ro le schema of CULTURAL EXEMPLAR concludes the presentation. It can be argued as shaping
the participants’ conceptualisation of their collective cu ltural identity – Mainland Chinese living in Australia.
Such cultural conceptualisation evinces the continuation of Confucian and other traditional Chinese virtue ethics
in the speakers’ conceptualisation of collective sense of self. The importance of language as a collective and
cultural repertoire is highlighted, with language understood as a sustainable source for the cognition -based
creation and negotiation of socio-culturally-shaped meanings of linguistic abstractions. The study serves as an
emp irical g round for exploring collect ive self-rep resentation in terms of cultural cognition wh ich is a fluid and
dynamic process.
Keywords: Chinese immigrants, collective self-representation, cultural cognition, cultural exemplar
Exploring cultural conceptualisations of “PHẬN” (fate/destiny) in Vietnamese language
Van Le & Nga Le
Ho Chi Minh City University of Education, & Ho Chi Minh City Television
In light of cultural cognit ive perspective, linguists often use the term ‘conceptualisation’ to “refer to
fundamental cognitive processes such as schematisation and categorisation” (Sharifian, 2011: 3) Fro m this point
of view an interesting tendency is to understand how such conceptualizat ions are grounded in cultural cognition.
In cultural cognitive perspective, an interest in studying those conceptualizations is to exp lore how they have
their roots in culture and how they can be different from language to another.
21
The paper examines what “PHẬ N” (fate) means in Vietnamese culture through the analysis of metonymic and
metaphoric expressions involving the concept of “PHẬN” in cultural interactions of Vietnamese people by
using the cognitive semantics. The paper also intended to shed light on the issue that it expresses universal
experience of a person by clarify ing three different concepts as follows: (i) PHẬN refers to things which happen
and present in one’s life as inevitable, irreversible, uncontrollable and determined by earlier causes; (ii) PHẬN
denotes a person’s life including chance, luck, risk, disaster, blessin gs which does imp ly an expectation; and (iii)
PHẬN represents the existence of one’s life.
In comparison with English, the study shows that the terms used for PHẬN and FATE in both languages have
developed their figurat ive meanings with some similarities and differences. It also investigates that the concept
of FATE is ubiquitous in all cultures and how PHẬN is put into use in several compounds and idioms in Non Indo-European languages such as in Vietnamese and Indo -European one like Eng lish under the impact of
cultural differences.
The paper concludes that “fate” although is known to be a universal social-psychological concept, but the ways
it is conceptualized vary significantly depending on culture. The differences in the conceptualizat ion of “fate”
among cultures are most effectively investigated by looking at languages.
Keywords: cultural conceptualisation, cognitive perspective, cognitive semantics
References
Bargdill, Richard W. (2007). Fate and Destiny: So me Historical Distinctions between the Concepts.
\\server05\productn\T\THE\26-1-2\THE1203.t xt pp. 205-220.
Bollas, C. (1989). Forces of destiny: Psychoanalysis and human destiny. Northvale NJ: Jason Aronson .
Chen, X. (2010). Fate and Hu manity. Asian Philosophy: An International Journal of the Philosophical
Traditions of the East. Vol. 20, Issue 1, pp. 67-77.
Evans, V. (2007). A Glossary of Cognitive Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Fauconnier, G.,Turner M. (2003). The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexit ies,
A member of the Perseus Books Group.
Harrell, S. (1987). The Concept of Fate in Ch inese Folk Ideology, In Modern China, Vo l.13, No. 1, Sy mposium
on hegemony and Chinese Folk Ideologies, pp. 90-109.
Kramsh, C. (2006). Language, thought and culture. In The handbook of applied linguistics. Ed ited by Alan
Davies, Catherine Elder, Blackwell Publishing. pp.235-26.
May, R. (1981). Freedom and destiny. New York: W.W. Norton.
Nisbett, R. E., Ji L., Zhang Z. (2004). Is It Cu lture or Is It Language? Examination of Language Effects in
Cross-Cultural Research on Categorizat ion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol. 87, No.
1, 57–65.
Palmer, Gary B., Cliff Goddard, and Penny Lee (eds.) (2003). Talking about Thinking across Languages.
Special issue of Cognitive Linguistics 14 (2–3).
Sharifian, F. (2011). Cultural conceptualisations and Language. John Benjamins Publishing Company , pp. 3-17.
Sharifian, F. (2003). On cultural conceptualizations. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 3, pp. 187-207.
Wierzbicka A. (1997). Understanding Cultures through their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German,
Japanese”, New York: Oxford Univ. Press .
Cultural conceptualizations of emotion in folklore: The case of subjective motion in Hungarian
folksongs
Judit Baranyiné Kóczy
22
When exploring cultural conceptualizat ions, several aspects of cultural cognition and various features of
language are taken into account (Sharifian 2015). Th is presentation addresses the issue of the cultural
conceptualizat ions of emotions in folk cu ltural cognition, based on an in-depth analysis on Hungarian folksongs.
The specific emot ion in focus is DESIRE, which expresses rather heterogeneous kinds of NEED for various aims,
such as love, homeland, freedo m, free will or revenge, which often man ifest in the natural imagery of Hungarian
folksongs.
A crucial observation is that DESIRE is perpetually cognized metaphorically as some motion or activ ity in the
physical space and time of the natural scenarios, simu lating the desired experience via conceptual mot ion. These
phenomena, known as ‘subjective motion’ (Langacker 1987; Matsumoto 1996; Brandt 2009), incorporate
various modes of expressions and different degrees of subjectivity, featuring scalar variations fro m bodily to
more abstract forms of mot ion. The emp irical examples in the fo lksongs include (1) the embodiment of some
natural entity or fo rce (cf. Kövecses 2000: 45), (2) employing natural objects as med iators, (3) fo llowing the
conceptualizer’s hypothetical bodily movement, or (4) attention movement.
A pivotal goal of the presentation is to demonstrate that folk conceptualizat ions are an extensive potential area
of research for Cultural Linguistics, since the multid isciplinary analysis of folk literature within this framework
can offer novel observations about the cultural conceptualizations of folk cultural co mmun ities, a lesserdiscovered field for linguistics.
Key words: cultural conceptualizations, emot ion metaphor, Hungarian folksong, natural imagery, subjective
motion
References
Brandt, L. (2009) Subjectiv ity in the act of representing: the case for subjective mot ion and change. In:
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8(4), 573–601.
Kövecses, Z. (2000) Metaphor and Emotion: Language, culture, and body in human feeling . Cambridge:
Langacker, R. W. (1987) Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Volume I. Stanford, Californ ia: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Matsumoto, Y. (1996) Subjective motion and English and Japanese verbs. Cognitive Linguistics, 7(2), 183–226.
Sharifian, F. (2015) Cultural Linguistics, in Sharifian, F. (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Language and
Culture. London, New York: Routledge, 478492.
Conceptualizations of respect in business negotiations
Milene Oliveira
University of Potsdam
It is nowadays commonplace to say that business has become more and more international. This fact might point
to the understanding that business practices and values are likely to beco me progressively homogeneous.
However, p ractitioners and researchers in the area of business communication tend to overlook the fact that
speakers from different cultural backgrounds might act on contrasting cultural models of negotiation, which
might hinder mutual understanding and communication to some extent.
This paper aims at showing how German and Brazilian business people draw on their native languages and
cultures so as to conceptualize RESPECT in business negotiations. The main theoretical background for this study
includes the framework o f Cultural Linguistics (Palmer, 1996; Sharifian, 2011) and World Englishes (Kachru,
1985; Wolf & Polzenhagen, 2009).
23
Data was collected through interviews in English with German and Brazilian business people. Following
Quinn’s (2005) recommendations for an ‘organic’ approach to data, acc ording to which each analytical
procedure evolves out of the previous one, data analysis included main ly qualitative investigations of cultural
conceptualizat ions. Data was categorized counting on the concepts of situated and compound image schemas
(Kimmel, 2005) and conceptual blending (Fauconnier and Turner, 2002). Results point to differences in the
Brazilian and German interview corpus in relation to how business people metaphorically construe the cultural
model of respect in business negotiations.
Keywords: Conceptual metaphor, Business Negotiations, Cross -cultural research
References
Fauconnier; G. and Turner, M. (2002). The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden
Complexities, New York: Basic Books.
Kachru, B. B (1985). Standards, Codification and Socio linguistic Realis m: The English Language in the outer
circle. English in the World, 11-30.
Kimmel, M . (2005). Cu lture regained: Situated and compound image schemas. In: Hampe, B., & Grady, J. E
(Eds). Fro m perception to meaning: Image schemas in cognitive linguistics (Vol. 29). Walter de
Gruyter.
Palmer, G. B. (1996). Toward a theory of cultural linguistics . Austin: University of Texas Press.
Sharifian, F. (2011). Cu ltural Conceptualisations and Language. A msterdam/Ph iladelphia: John Benjamins
Publishing.
Quinn, N. (2005). Ho w to reconstruct schemas people share. Pages 33-81. In : N. Quinn (Ed ). Finding culture in
talk: a collection of methods. Palgrave Miller, New York, New York, USA.
Wolf, H.G; Polzenhagen, F. (2009). Word Englishes: A Cognit ive Socio linguistic Approach. Berlin, New Yo rk:
Mouton de Gruyter.
The left and right hand in culture and language
Ad Foolen
Radboud University
Cultural Linguistics has shown extensively that the conceptualization of hu man emotions and the human mind
vary across cultures (see Sharifian et al. eds. 2008, Maalej and Yu eds. 2011). In contrast, the human body is
generally considered as a rather stable universal given conceptual ‘source domain’.
The main goal of the present paper is to show that the conceptualization of the body itself also varies over
cultures. Such conceptualizat ions are reflected in words and expressions in language. The hand, and in particular
the difference between the right and the left hand, will be used to illustrate this claim. Languages differ in
expressions referring to the left and the right hand. In Basoeto, for examp le, right hand is letsoho le letona = the
masculine hand, or letsoho la hoja = the hand for eating; the left hand is letsoho le letsehali = the female hand,
or, alternatively, letsoho la botsoara-thebe = the hand for taking the shield (examp les taken fro m de Witte 1948).
In this paper, a collection of cross -linguistic exp ressions related to the (left and right) hand will form the basis
for discussing possible cultural explanations for the conceptualization of the hand.
Keywords: cultural conceptualization, hand, body
References
24
Maalej, Zouheir & Ning Yu (eds.) (2011) Embodiment via body parts. Studies from various languages and
cultures. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Sharifian, Farzad, René Dirven, Ning Yu, Susanne Niemeier (eds.) (2008) Culture, body and language.
Conceptualization of internal body organs across cultures and languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
de Witte, J.J. de (1948) De betekeniswereld van het lichaam. Taalpsychologische, taalvergelijkende studie . [The
meaning World of the body. Language psychological, language compa rative study]. PhD, Nijmegen.
25
Abstracts
DAY 2 (Thursday 21 th July)
Context in Cultural Linguistics: the case of metaphor
Zoltán Kövecses
Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
The issue I address in the paper is this: What is the status of context in cu ltural linguistics? The particular
cultural linguistic phenomenon I investigate here is that of the use of metaphor, especially the production (as
opposed to the comprehension) of metaphor in discourse (see Kövecses, 2015).
In a way, this very question is controversial: Culture IS often taken to be context. And if culture is identified
with context for metaphor production and comprehension, it does not make much sense to pose the question.
But I will argue that there are several different ways of thinking about the status of context in metaphor
production that is not necessarily cu ltural. To clarify the status and role o f context in metaphor production as an
eminently cultural linguistic phenomenon, I discuss various types of context, distinguish between global and
local context, and examine how context is a motivating force in the use of metaphors.
Reference:
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2015. Where metaphors come from. Reconsidering context in metaphor. New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
11:00 – 11:30
Tongan kinship terminology, socio-cultural concepts and cognitive frames
Svenja Voelkel
University of Mainz
Kinship is a topic which has been studied by different disciplines, such as social anthropology, linguistics, etc.
This paper approaches the topic fro m a mult idisciplinary perspective (including ethnolinguistics, cognitive
linguistics, language typology and contact linguistics) using different emp irical research methods (field research
including participant observation, interviews and experimental tasks; componential analysis, pile -sorting and
triad tests) to study the interrelation of language, culture and cognition in the case of Tongan kinship
terminology.
Tongan is a Po lynesian language, belonging to the Austronesian language family. Typologically, Tongan
kinship terminology can be classified as Hawaiian type, merging ‘same-sex siblings’ and emphasising the
concept of ‘extended family’. As characteristic for Polynesian chiefdo mchips, t he Tongan society is highly
26
stratified. Ethnolinguistic study shows that the status inequalities within the kin group (tu‘a/‘eiki stratification)
are conceptualised along the same parameters as the terminological categorisation. This categorisation is
frequently mapped onto English kinship terminology (as the second official language in Tonga), wh ich might be
regarded as an evidence for the dominance of this cognitive frame. Ho wever, cognitive tests and field research
show a tendency for the increasing importance of the ‘core family’, a rather Western concept underlying inter
alia the categorisation of English kinship terminology.
Altogether, this examp le demonstrates how comp lex the interrelation of linguistic forms, socio -cultural concepts
and the cognitive frames really is.
Key words: kinship terminology; interrelation of language, culture and cognition; multidisciplinary approach
and method mix; language and culture contact
The language of the beach: Tourism and transgression in Kenya
Angelika Mietzner
University of Cologne
Along the coast of Kenya, tourists encounter Kenyan beach vendors, commonly known as “Beach Boys”. These
tourism workers control a rather imp ressive linguistic repertoire, wh ich includes English as well as snippets of
German, French, Italian and Czech. They acquire such communicat ive skills locally, at the “Beach Academy” as
they refer to their working environ ment. This is the public space where they meet other Beach Boys, where
stories are exchanged and new words and phrases are circulated.
Tourist languages are used in a rather informal and sometimes offensive ways, which might be acceptable for
young European backpackers, but not for the audience main ly found along the Kenyan coast, namely the 40+
generation with enough money to buy the offered goods or tours. Usages of tourist languages tend to challenge
the notion of the beach paradise and its rules of politeness, respect and privacy. Impo lite language (Culpeper
2011) here is used in exchanges where the hosts’ presence conflicts with social expectations of guests, in terms
of how they expect to be approached, addressed, and left alone. Th is results in rather extreme emotional
behaviour as a perlocutionary effect of offence (Cu lpeper 2011) and presents the beach as a space of
transgression.
In this talk, I will present insights into Beach language as a transgressive strategy of interaction and the Beach as
a space that needs to historically and culturally conceptualized as a stage on which the Other and the foreign can
be met in ’culturally inappropriate’ terms. The beach workers’ co mmun icative behaviour doesn’t reflect the
pragmatics of the local Digo community, but reflects what people consider characteristic of the other.
Reference
Culpeper, Jonathan 2011. Impolite language: Using language to cause offence. Cambridge & New Yo rk:
Verbal erotic witticisms in Iranian cinema: A cultural linguistic analysis of Sensitive Floor
Ruben Benatti & Akram Bahramian
Magtymguly adyndaky Türkmen DÖwlet Universiteti
& Monash University
27
The impact that state censorship on Iranian cinema after the revolution 1979, has attracted attention of many
film scholars. Interestingly, the Iranian co medy films provide an important framework in terms of using creative
grammar in expressing some controversial issue. Ambiguity as a powerful tools has applied by modern Iranian
writers to challenge censorship (Kamran Talattof, 73, 2000), some Iran ian directors emp loy this device to imply
to some controversial issues like erotic issue indirectly. So a brief look at Iranian co medy cinema in the recent
years shows an increase in use of verbal sexual Witticisms in order to make the audience laughing.
Hence, this study argues that cultural and state restrictions has led to creation of a uniqu e kind of language in
Iranian cinema that can be considered as a creat ive kind of erotic dialogue. ‘Sensitive Floor’, directed by Kamal
Tabrizi and Written by Pey man Qasemkhani, is the story of a man who buries h is wife in a two -floor grave.
After a while, he finds out that a strange man has been buried in the first floor.
Although there is not clear sexual words in this film, there are some amb iguous dialogues and cultural codes that
make audience to lay aside the first mean ing of dialogues and in a sexual form try to decode the second meaning
of them.
This paper is an attempt to clarify verbal amb iguity with in film when it implies to sexual witticisms. This study
uses cultural linguistic theoretical framework (a mult idisciplinary field o f research explore s the relationship
between language and cultural conceptualizations, see Sharifian, 2011) to interpret sexual witticisms.
Textual analysis is the analytical approach wh ich is emp loyed for the current research: cause it strongly focused
on data decoding and interpreting popular cultural product by reading signs within the text. Hence, Textual
analysis provides a great tool to interpret the selected film.
Usefulness of parallel texts in studying metaphor variation across languages and cultures
Connie de Silva
Monash University
Analysis of the advertisement genre offers insights into the depth of linguistic, paralinguistic and cultural
awareness held by advertising professionals (Cook 2008, Myers 1998; Williamson 1978). This knowledge
constitutes sophisticated understanding of how language can be creatively sculpted for the purpose of
encouraging consumerism across cultural boundaries. Evidence of this specialist creativity has presented a
substantial resource for socio-cultural and linguistic research. Studies of pro motional texts indicate that
advertisements are designed to coalesce mult iple forms into a whole; and that each configuration resides within
a context of association with the world around it. Recently, the operation of figurative and pictorial devices
within advertisements, in particu lar the function of metaphor, has attracted mult i-d isciplinary research attention.
In this spirit, it is suggested here that the relatively new field of cultural linguistics via the model of cu ltural
conceptualization (Sharifian 2011) offers potential as an investigative approach to advertisement analysis.
This paper presents a preliminary report on a diachronic explo ration of Australian press advertising from the
1850s to the 1950s. The research primarily draws its data fro m one of Australia’s oldest continuously published
newspapers – The Argus (Melbourne, Vic.: 1846-1957). First, this paper describes how communicative devices
(such as slogans, figurative language, pictures and design features) work in advertisements. Next, it investigates
change over time at the macro level of d iscourse style and content; and at the micro level of patterns of
linguistic structures. Finally, it links diachronic changes with external factors fro m the Australian economic,
political and social landscape (Crawford 2008) as evidence that advertisements function as a sociocultural
index; and in this light, advertisements may be regarded as cultural artefacts.
While the research at hand relies on established methods of advertisement analysis, it is proposed that the ideas
of cultural schemas and cu ltural categories (cultural conceptualisations) present a sound approach to engender a
better understanding of how devices work in advertisements to enshrine and communicate meanings.
28
Keywords: advertisement, cultural linguistics, discourse analysis, ideology, metaphor.
References
Cook, G. 2008. (Ed.) The Language of Advertising, Four volumes. Routledge: London.
Crawford, R. 2008. A History of Australian Advertising, 1900-2000. Melbourne University Press: Melbourne.
Myers, G. 1998. Ad worlds: Brands, media, audiences. Edward Arnold: London.
Sharifian, F. 2011. Cultural Conceptualisations: Theoretical Framework and Applications. John Benjamins:
Amsterdam, Philadelphia.
Williamson, J. 1978. Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning, Marion Boyars: London.
Cultural conceptualizations in stories of Māori-English bilinguals
Marta Degani & Alexander Onysko
University of Verona & University of Venice
This study is based on ideas that have developed in the field of cu ltural linguistics and have recently been
applied to the study of world Englishes (cf., e.g., Malco lm and Rochecouste 2000, Sharifian 2006, Wolf and
Polzenhagen 2009). In particular, it adopts the theory of cultural conceptualizat ions (Sharifian 2011) for
investigating a set of stories narrated by Māori-Eng lish bilingual speakers in the context of Aotearoa New
Zealand. The data was gathered at the University of Waikato, Hamilton (NZ) and is part of a larger corpus of
New Zealand narratives that is currently in preparation (cf. Onysko and Degani 2012).
In view of the close relation between language contact phenomena and cultural conceptualizations, the paper
focuses on the analysis of a few cultural key concepts which are Māori terms and are also used as lexical
borrowings in New Zealand English (e.g. marae ‘trad itional meeting ground’; whānau ‘extended family’,
tangihanga ‘funeral ceremony’). The analysis shows that Māori-English bilingual speakers rely on a rich
culturally specific repertoire when expressing these concepts. The findings also suggest that the speakers are
flexib le in conceptualizing cultural content as categories, schemas, and metaph ors, depending on the
communicative context.
Keywords: Māori-English bilinguals, cultural conceptualizations, narratives, world Englishes
References
Malcolm, Ian G. & Judith Rochecouste. 2000. Event and story schemas in Australian Aboriginal English.
English World-Wide 21(2). 261-289.
Onysko, Alexander & Marta Degani. 2012. Introducing a project on the role of bilingualis m in English and te
reo Māori for New Zealand English, LAUD Linguistic Agency. Series A, General & Theoretical Papers,
Paper n. 781.
Sharifian, Farzad. 2006. A cultural-conceptual approach and world Englishes: The case of Aboriginal English.
World Englishes 25(1). 11-22.
Sharifian, Farzad. 2011. Cultural conceptualizations and language. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Wolf, Hans-Georg & Frank Polzenhagen. 2009. World Englishes: A cognitive sociolinguistic approach . Berlin
& New York: De Gruyter.
29
11:30 – 12:00
The messy meta: On the cultural linguistics of mimesis
Anne Storch
University of Cologne
The perspective on language as a cultural phenomenon also invites turning the gaze to metalinguistic d iscourse.
Linguistic practices that are heavily marked by claims to authenticity, identity and entitlement are not only
represented by choices of particular ways of speaking, the referra l to context, or mu lt imodalities of language,
but also – and perhaps foremost so – discourse on language itself. With the appreciation of a mo re critical
reflection of linguistics and its historical context, an interest in theories that were made in the So uth has emerged,
which intends to take epistemes existing beneath those of Northern academia more seriously (Connell 2007).
This talk presents – departing fro m African metalinguistic d iscourses – a discussion of ideas about
differentiating languages on other grounds than structure, namely agency, magic, the capacity to create
personhood, and as something that can be controlled as a powerful secret (Adefarakan 2015, Storch 2013).
These conceptualizations of language, I suggest, on the one hand correlate to language as local practice
(Pennycook 2010), but on the other hand need to be seen as expressions of subjectivity and metalinguistic
reflections of post-colonial and globalized d iscourse on language. I will argue that in terms of how language can
be conceptualized and turned into a topic of the conversation, there is no real local, but rather the experience of
entanglements of people and epistemes alike. In such a setting, metalinguistic discourse is messy and often not
so much led in terms of using specific terminologies (Hunter & Ou marou 1998), but takes place in the form of
mimet ic interpretations of otherness. The talk will therefore prov ide an analysis of mimetic performances of
language ideologies and metalinguistic knowledges, which are a recurrent phe nomenon in metalinguistic
discourse.
References
Adefarakan, T.E. 2015. The Souls of Yoruba Folk. New York: Lang.
Connell, R. 2007. Southern Theory. Cambridge: Polity.
Hunter, L., & C.E. Ou marou. 1998. Towards a Hausa verbal aesthetic: aspects of language about using language.
Journal of African Cultural Studies 11.2: 157-170.
Pennycook, Alastair. 2010. Language as Local Practice. London: Routledge.
Storch, A. 2013. Secret Manipulations. New York: Oxford University Press.
How the Cantonese cultural keyword mong reflects the culture of ‘busy’ Hong Kong
Helen Leung
Griffith University
The Cantonese cultural keyword mong, typically translated into English as busy, reflects the culture of Hong
Kong. Cultural keywords represent culturally significant, co mp lex concepts unique to the language in which
they are found. This study uses the keyword mong to expose important aspects of Hong Kong culture. Being
mong or busy is part of the self-stereotype of Hong Kong people, as well as how others view them. But many
examples of English busy cannot be translated naturally into Cantonese using the word mong. There are also
noteworthy differences in mong’s usage and meaning compared to busy. For examp le, mong is commonly used
to start a conversation, is generally used about important (not trivial) things, and can be very positive. These
differences are because mong is linked with values of Hong Kong people wh ich other cultures and languages
30
attach less importance to, such as working hard and under pressure, being competitive, having successful careers,
and earning money. So meone who is mong can seem to be impo rtant, valued, and hard working, having
responsibilit ies and doing mean ingful things. An investigation of the cultural keyword mong thus reveals
underlying cultural values of Hong Kong people.
This study draws on ethnographic observation, the rich meta-d iscourse surrounding mong, collocations and
common exp ressions, and consultations with native speakers to investigate the meaning of mong and the cultural
values associated with it. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage framework is used to give an explication of this
cultural keywo rd in both English and Cantonese. The explication states what mong means in a clear,
comprehensive, and translatable way, and shows that the word busy is an inadequate translation. The cu ltural
keyword mong provides an insider’s perspective into the typical attitudes of Hong Kong people towards work
and life, and reflects the culture of ‘busy’ Hong Kong.
Keywords: Cultural keywords, Hong Kong, Cantonese, Natural Semantic Metalanguage.
Technological context: A new pragmatic product created by smart phones and regulated by cultural
schemata
(The case of Kuwaiti students)
Hussain Al Sharoufi
Gulf University for Science and Technology
Adapting to new technologies is a land mark of today’s University life. Un iversity students are more receptive
than ever to the limit less possibilit ies of producing ever-changing senses affected by focused contextual
parameters, reg imenting as such the production of senses in a real-time technological context. Technological
devices contribute to this new era of technological senses, where interactants communicate in a unique way,
using unprecedented communication tools found in smart phones in particular. I conducted a survey at the Gulf
University fo r Science and Technology in Ku wait to investigate the existence of such a contextual realm and its
regulatory factors. The majority of my res pondents emphasized that when talking to any person using a smart
phone, they are indeed engaged in a communicative environ ment whose context has its own regulatory
parameters such as emoticons, pictures, sound files, textual files, tweets, etc. Cultural schemata define the
interlocutors’ conversational situation and determine the required elements of their interactive chatting in which
every participant uses a mult itude of emoticons, pictures, memes, and voice record ings, thus creating a unique
context. I also argue that because the facilitating environ ments are different fro m those found in the real world,
technological meanings are solely produced in a technological context.
Wine, genre, and metaphor: A communicative bridge across a global marketplace
Allison Creed
University of Southern Queensland
In wine co mmun ication and education, metaphoric exp ressions are frequently used to talk about the sensory and
affective dimensions of wine (Caballero & Suárez-Toste, 2008). This poster presents a research project
31
investigating metaphoric expressions in a sample of Australian wine reviews. The method used for the
identification of potentially metaphoric expressions was the Metaphor Identificat ion Procedure Vrije
Universiteit (Steen, Dorst, Herrmann, Kaal, Krennmayr, et al., 2010). The research exp lored meaning and
experiential potential of metaphoric expressions across wine educators from Australia and Ch ina. The research
was theoretically framed by the conceptual metaphor theory of Lakoff and Johnson (1980). A cognitive
linguistic perspective (Croft & Cruse, 2004) guided the semantic and conceptual analysis. The poster
encapsulates the aims, methods, results, and conclusions drawn fro m two sequential qualitative studies.
Research findings suggest that an understanding of the influence of metaphoric language requires consideration
of congruency in terms of intercultural and international communication.
Keywords: Metaphor, wine, intercultural communication
Gender across World Englishes: Cultural conceptualisations in British, Indian and Nigerian
English
Anna Finzel
In a global context, gender roles are very diverse, with considerable crosscultural differences, but also
similarities. Conceptual metaphors, as one type of cultural conceptualisations, should thus reflect these roles, so
that surface representations in language allow fo r in ferences about people’s mental inventory of understanding
gender. The varieties of World Englishes are pro mising for an analysis of within language variation, because
they have been influenced by numerous regional, historical or linguistic factors. As exemplary varieties, this
paper focuses on British, Indian and Nigerian English.
Conceptual Metaphor Theory (cf. Lakoff & Johnson 1980, among others) serves as the theoretical framework
for this approach, while at the same t ime taking into account the more recent suggestion that conceptual
metaphors are potentially mu ltimodal: target and source domain cannot only be exp ressed in the verbal mode,
but also in other modalities such as visual imagery or gestures (see e.g. Forceville 2009). Furthermore, this
paper embraces the claim that culture is a vital factor in the development of metaphors, as put forward by a
number of scholars (e.g., Kövecses 2005; Wolf & Polzenhagen 2009; Sharifian 2011).
The present study defines metaphors of gender as conceptual metaphors with target domains that belong to
genderrelated fields (e.g., MAN, WOMAN, SEXUA LITY). For instance, when the female co ming of age is
referred to as “coming into bloo m”, then this hints to the underlying metaphor WOMEN A RE FLOWERS,
which entails a number of mappings. Dedicated to Cognitive Sociolinguistics, a comprehensive corpus of films
fro m the United Kingdom, India and Nigeria serves as data for a mult imodal analysis. So me exemp lary findings
are presented in order to demonstrate how culture generates and shapes these metaphors through the influence of
distinct local gender concepts.
Keywords: Cognitive Sociolinguistics; Conceptual Metaphor Theory; Metaphors of Gender; Multimodal
Metaphors; Corpus Linguistics
References
Forceville, C. (2009). Nonverbal and mu ltimodal metaphor in a cognit ivist framework: Agendas for research. In
Multimodal Metaphor, C. J. Forceville & E. UriosAparisi (Eds.). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 1942.
Kövecses, Z. (2005). Metaphor in Culture. Universality and Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sharifian, F. (2011). Cultural Conceptualisations and Language. Theoretical Framework and Applications.
Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
32
Wolf, H.G. & F. Po lzenhagen (2009). World Englishes: A Cognitive Sociolinguistic Approach . Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter.
13:00 – 13:30
The Role of Mapping Principles in the Translation of Political Speeches
Kathleen Ahrens & Ivy Wing Shan Chan
Political speeches are well-known for their use of conventionalized conceptual metaphors (Charteris -Black 2004,
Ahrens 2009). When these speeches are translated, these conceptual metaphors may underg o changes between
the source and target text. The goal of this paper is to examine these changes and the extent to wh ich the
mapping princip les (Ahrens, 2010) in Chinese and English differ in the utilizat ion of the source domain of
JOURNEY in the annual addresses of two groups of politicians: three Brit ish Hong Kong Governors (19841996) and three Chinese Hong Kong Chief Executives (1997-2015). (Both the Governors’ speeches and the
Chief Executive speeches had a parallel text made available at the time of d issemination.)
In order to achieve this goal, bottom-up analyses of the two parallel English-Ch inese corpora are run in order to
search for keywo rds related to the JOURNEY source do main in both languages and then compared with their
parallel text. Next, we determine who is being referred to when the metaphor is being used (i.e. an individual, a
government, a country, or a co mbination), the time frame that that metaphor entails (past, present, future, or a
combination), and the topics that are being discussed when this source domain is invoked (i.e. social issues,
political issues and economic issues).
In line with Lu’s paper in this panel (Metaphor variation in the language of death across cultures: Ev idence fro m
English-Chinese parallel literary texts), wh ich examines how metaphors in the target domain of death shape
their readers’ conceptualization of this event, this paper to explores how each politician utilizes the JOURNEY
source domain to his linguistic advantage through the judicious use of applying a nd extending mapping
principles in order to influence his audience’s perception of a particular policy goal.
Keywords: Mapping Principles, Chinese-English Corpora, Translation, Political Speeches, Hong Kong
References
Ahrens, Kathleen. (Editor). 2009. Politics, Gender, and Conceptual Metaphors.
Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave-MacMillan.
Ahrens, Kathleen. 2010. Mapping Princip les for Conceptual Metaphors. In Cameron Lynne, Alice Deignan,
Graham Low, Zazie Todd (Eds.), Researching and Applying Metaphor in the Real World.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pp.185-207.
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2004. Corpus Approaches to Crit ical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke and New York:
Palgrave-MacMillan.
The Role of Poetic Speech in Cultural Cognition: Poetic Ideologies in Irish Performance
Steve Coleman
National University of Ireland
33
This paper investigates semiotic ideologies of poetic speech in Irish. There has been a great deal of attention to
the importance of linguistic and semiotic ideologies as sociocultural processes (e.g., Silverstein 1979,
Schieffelin et. al. 1998, Keane 1997, 2003), but less attention has been paid to ideologies of poetic speech per se,
even though these may play a privileged ro le vis -a-v is linguistic ideologies more generally (Friedrich 1979,1989,
Bau man 1992, 2004). I suggest that poetic ideologies are socioculturally and cognitively important and offer a
privileged site for the investigation of specific cultural worldviews. Using data fro m archives, the folkloric and
ethnographic record, and my own ethnographic fieldwork, I investigate the various ways that poetic ideologies
are culturally transmitted: they are p resupposed in exp licit construals of the prag matic “efficacy” of poetic
speech which are entextualised within poems themselves, in the non-explicit background of cultural
assumptions behind the folklore of poets and poetry, and they are emergent in performance itself through
participants’ acts of orientation towards unfolding texts and the “scene” of performance. I argue that poetic
performance in its widest sense involves specific acts of orientation within the cultural-cognitive universe of
Irish-speaking culture. Bu ilding on the insights of Friedrich, Hy mes, Bau man and others, I suggest that poetic
speech plays a crucial ro le in the social reproduction of this cultural-cognitive universe, and hence of Irishspeaking culture in general.
Spatial Frames of Reference in aṣ-Ṣāniˁ Arabic: The Correlation of Language, Cognition and
Culture
Letizia Cerqueglini
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Traditional aṣ-Ṣān iˁ Arab ic (TAA), a Bedouin dialect spoken in the Negev, is a referentially pro miscuous
language (Bohnemeyer 2011), using Intrinsic, Relative and Absolute Frames of Reference (FoRs, Lev inson
2003), accord ing to a domain-based and culture-specific strategy of attributing features to Ground objects.
However, in cognitive tasks aṣ-Ṣāniˁ speakers exclusively use the Absolute FoR, anchored on the four cardinal
directions (CaDs). In agreement with Bohnemeyer (2011), I assume that refere ntial pro miscuity jeopardizes
deterministic assumptions, when the FoRs used in language do not match those of cognition; I rather support the
‘Relativ ism-without-Determinis m’ hypothesis, where the nature and constraining strength of language -tocognition can vary greatly crosslinguistically. Given such differences in TAA language and cognition, the
position of culture with respect to linguistic and non -linguistic thought becomes a major issue. In TAA, CaDs
cover metaphorical and symbolic meanings in cu ltural domains, such as aesthetic and moral values (Sharifian
2015), and codification of social relations; CaDs also shape many aspects of material cu lture (orientation of
tents, organizat ion of social spaces, symmetric decoration of clothes), similarly to what Brown (2002) observed
in Tzeltal, a referentially absolute language. In TAA, cognitive and cu ltural phenomena, both associated with
CaDs, differ fro m language, which uses referential pro miscuity and extends the meaning of CaDs to other
spatial d istinctions, such as up/down; close/far; inside/outside, with no cognitive or cultural counterpart. TAA
cognition and culture, emp loying CaDs, seem thus more conservative with respect to language: the primariness
of absolute referential practices in TAA are supported by comparison with genetically related Bedouin dialects,
where CaDs are largely employed to conceptualize and verbalize spatial relat ions and to express other cultural
contents. In TAA, language seems to have undergone a process of innovation, developing referential
promiscuity. This doesn’t have or doesn’t have yet reshaped the cognitive structures, which remain absolute.
Keywords: Tradit ional aṣ-Ṣāniˁ Arab ic; Frames of Reference; Cardinal Direct ions; Language-to-Cognition
Correlation; Relativism-without-Determinis m.
References
Bohnemeyer J. (2011) Spatial FoRs in Yucatec: Referential Promiscuity and Task specificity , in C. O'Meara, G.
Pérez Báez (eds.), FoRs in Mesoamerican Languages. Language Science, Vol. 33 (6), 892-914.
34
Bro wn, P. (2002) Language as a Model for Culture: Lessons from the Cognitive Sciences. In King, B., Fo x, R.
(eds). Anthropology Beyond Culture, Oxford: Berg, 169-192.
Levinson, S.C. (2003) Space in Language and Cognition. Explorations in Cognitive Diversity . Cambridge, UK:
Sharifian, F. (2015) Cultural Linguistics. In Sharifian, F. (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Language and
Culture. New York: Routledge, 473-492.
Known, Assumed or Imagined Expressing the reliability of transmitted knowledge in Modern
Icelandic
Enrique Bernárdez
Universidad Complutense
Probably all languages have and use some tools to mark whether the informat ion transmitted to a speaker by
others is reliab le or not, how trustworthy it may be, also in cases where the provider of infor mat ion is not
expected to lie. Which are those tools and how are they used? Systematic research on the topic is relatively
recent and can be based on experimental psychology methods (Powell et al. 2015) or on the analysis of
grammatical forms which one way or other serve to mark the ‘degree of reliability’, as is also the case in
Modern Icelandic (Kress 1982, Thráinsson 2007) or on a co mbination of semantic, grammat ical and prag matic
elements (Bernárdez 2013). The present paper proposes a cultural v iew of t he topic, following some recent
proposals (among them En field 2014; De Busser & LaPolla eds., 2015; Sharifian ed., 2015) that may be seen as
representative of the ‘Cultural Linguistics’ approach to language phenomena. This paper proposes the notion of
‘conglomerate’ to cover a nu mber of d ifferent linguistic subsystems serving the common purpose of marking as
clearly as possible the degree of reliability of a speaker’s informat ion. The fo llo wing elements integrate the
conglomerate: ‘impersonal’ constructions , constructions with an ‘oblique subject’, use of ep istemic modal verbs
and expressions, evidential markers and special constructions as the one Kress informally defined as showing an
action going out from a “magical power” (p. 150), and others. The conglo merate is then interpreted in terms of
the cultural (and environ mental) conditions of traditional Icelandic culture where people mostly lived in farms
that became practically isolated during the winter months: knowing whether something one was told deserve d
credibility, and to what extent. This allowed people to behave within the socially and culturally expected
margins.
References
Bernárdez E. (2013). Ev identiality and the Epistemic Use of the Icelandic Verbs Sjá and Heyra. A Cu ltural
Linguistic View. In: The Linguistic Worldview. Ethnolinguistics, Cognition, and Culture. (Eds. Głaz
A., D. S. Danaher, P. Łozowski), pp. 415-441. London: Versita.
Burridge K. (2015). The body, the universe, society and language. Germanic in the grip of the unknown. In : De
Busser R. & R. J. LaPolla (eds., 2015). Language Structure and Environment. Social, cultural, and
natural factors. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Enfield N.J. (2014). Natural causes of language. Frames, biases, and cultural transmission . Berlin: Language
Science Press.
Kress B. (1982). Isländische Grammatik . Leipzig: VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie.
Powell D., Z. Horne, N. Á. Pinillos, K. J. Holyoak (2015).A Bayesian framework for knowledge attribution:
Evidence from semantic integration. Cognition 139: 92–104.
Sharifian F. (ed., 2015). The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture. London: Routledge.
35
Thráinsson H. (2007). The syntax of Icelandic. Cambridge: CUP.
Structural comparison of the linguistic networks of emotion conceptualization
Benedikt Perak
University of Rijeka
This paper presents a comparative study on the structure of the conceptualisation of 10 emotion words in
English and Croatian: fear/strah, anger/ ljutnja, disgust/gađenje, guilt/krivnja, joy/radost, love/ ljubav, pride/
ponos, sadness/tuga, shame/sram and surprise/iznenađenje, combining comp lementary theoretical and
methodological approaches from Cognitive linguistics (Langacker 2008), Co mponential emotional theories
(Scherer 2003, Fontaine et al. 2013) and quantitative Corpus analysis, graph th eory and network visualization.
The starting hypothesis is that emotional categories, due to its subjective ontological status, construct their
mean ing via embodied processes of conceptualizat ion that essentially facilitates recreation of the comparable
affective experience in the intersubjective communication. Th is essentialy means thatThe affective states are
categorized in terms of cognitive schematic relat ions of ENTITIES (N), PROPERTIES (ADJ/ADV) and
PROCESSES (V) that construct their semantic function organized in the syntactic constructions. The goal of the
study is to show the conceptualization structures of the emotional categories in the linguistic constructions.
Research data is based on the large contemporary corpuses of English (enTenTen 11,1 GW ) and Croatian
(hrWac 1,4 GW) for the purpose of robust cultural generalizat ion. The study examines the conceptual structure
of the target emot ions conceptualized as ENTITEIS and coded as nouns (N) by analysing syntactic structure and
distribution with a) existential verbs [N+V], b) nonprocessual equation constructions [N+V(BE) +N/ADJ] c)
spatial relations with emotion coded as figure [N+PREP] and ground [PREP+N], and themat ic processual
constructions [V N]. It is argued that these constructions form a hierarchical cognitive structure of
conceptualizat ion (Perak 2014). For each emotion word, and each construction, 50 most frequent and
statistically relevant collocations are selected and labelled according to a) the metaphorical process and cultural
model they activate (Kövecses 2000, Sarifian 2011). The structure and distribution of the constructions is
represented in an emergent hierarchical structure as a complex directed network that enables qualitative and
quantitative analysis of the distinctive semantic features in that part icular syntactic relation. Each network layer
is represented in two models of visualization, each with its distinctive function for interpretation of the usage of
cognitive models and cross -cultural co mparison.The emotion words are coded as target nodes when in thematic
semantic ro les (e.g. odagnati strahPATIENT / to chase away fearP ATIENT), and in a position of source nodes when in
agentive semantic roles (strah AGENT zavladao / fear rules AGENT). It is argued that the qualitative results,
represented in a mu lti-layered network of superimposed layers, express the structure of the conceptual
knowledge of the emotion categories and the function within dynamic appraisal process. The quantitative res ults
of the analysis is interpreted in accordance with the usage-based model of cognitive linguistics as the relative
measure of the conventionalizat ion and cognitive entrenchment of the constructions and functions (Langacker
2008).
Keywords: Emotions, cognitive linguistics, network analysis, corpus analysis, conceptual metaphor
References
Fontaine, J. R. J., Scherer, K. R. and Soriano, C. (eds) (2013) Components of emotional meaning: A sourcebook .
Oxford UP.
Kövecses, Z. (2000) Metaphor and Emotion. Language, Culture, and Body in human feeling. New Yo rk:
Cambridge.
Langacker, R. (2008) Cognitive Grammar. An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
36
Perak, B. (2014) Conceptualization of the lexical concept «strah» 'fear' in Croatian : A syntactic an d semantic
analysis. Dissertation. University of Zagreb.
Sharifian, F. (2011) Cu ltural Conceptualisations and Language Theoretical framework and applications.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Scherer, K.R. (2003) Introduction: Cognit ive Co mponents of Emot ion. In : Dav idson. R.J., Scherer, K.,
Goldsmith, H. (eds.) Handbook of Affective Sciences. New York: Oxford University Press.
Using parallel texts in research on metaphor variation in the case of European Portuguese and
Polish
Hanna J. Batoréo
Universidade Aberta
In the present study, following recent research on methodological aspects of studying metaphor in Cu ltural
Linguistics (cf. Rojo and Ibarret xe-Antuñano 2013), we defend usefulness of parallel texts (e. g. translations) in
studying metaphor variat ion in a contextualized way, regarding two typologically d ifferent languages and
cultures: European Portuguese and Polish. Given the same contextualizat ion in both texts, their p roducers
(author(s) of the original text and its translator(s)) try to get acros s highly similar (if not identical) messages but
frequently produce different, culturally dependent metaphors.
Our research shall mainly focus on AQUA-motion metaphors in European Portuguese and their Polish
contextual counterparts, following our previous studies (Batoréo 2008, 2009, and 2016), which show that in
both languages there are two metaphorization patterns to be observed: (i) AQUA -mot ion metaphor in A EROmotion do main and (ii) AQUA-mot ion metaphor in abstract domain (e.g. abundance, arts, politics, etc.). Though
in both languages AQUA-motion metaphor is mostly chosen in the same contexts, some linguistic and cultural
variation can be observed. If in Portuguese (as in English) we float, swim or navigate but also run in the liquid
med iu m (prototypically water), in Polish we mostly swim (or run), which shows that, in the same context, the
AQUA-motion metaphor can be often rendered either (i) by a different type of the same metaphor (here:
AQUA-motion metaphor, e. g. swim instead of float or navigate) or (ii) by a typologically d ifferent metaphor
(here: TERRA-motion metaphor, e.g. run instead of swim/ float/ navigate). This variation can be analyzed as (at
least partially) affected by socio-cultural environment or cultural grounding.
Keywords: Parallel texts in stydying metaphor variation; AQUA -motion metaphor; cultural embodiement;
European Portuguese; Polish.
References
Batoréo, H. J. (2008). Cognitive and Lexical Characteristics of Motion in Liquid Mediu m: AQUA -motion verbs
in typologically d ifferent languages. Psychology of Language and Communication, 2008, Vo l. 12. N.º 2,
January
2009.
3-15.
http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/plc.2008.12.issue-2/v10057-008-0006x/v10057-008-0006-x.xml
Batoréo, H. J. (2009). Quando os portugueses correm, os polacos nadam? Domínio de mov imento em água
(AQUA- motion) em Português Europeu e Polaco: Contribuição para Tipologia Lexical. (When the
Portuguese run, the Polish swim? A QUA-mot ion domain in European Portuguese and Polish:
Contribution to Lexical Typology). Diacrítica, 23-1, 2009, Revisto do Centro de Estudos Humanísticos,
55-70. http://ceh.ilch.uminho.pt/publicacoes/Diacritica_23-1.pdf
Batoréo, H. J. (2015). Co mpetência metafórica e a Linguística Cultural: Exemp lo de conceptualização das
emoções em Chinês e na cultura ocidental. (Metaphorical competence na Cultural Linguistics: the
expressiona of emotions in Chineses and occidental culture). Revista Investigações v. 28, n. 2, Julho
37
2015. 1-28. ISSN Edição Digital 2175-294X - ISSN Ed ições Impressas
http://www.repositorios.ufpe.br/revistas/index.php/INV/article/view/ 1695/1421.
0104-1320
Batoréo, H. J. (2016.) AQUA-motion domain and metaphorization patterns in European Portuguese: AQUAmotion metaphor in AERO-motion and abstract domains. Signo Journal vol. 41, n. 70. Jan. 2016.
Thematic issue – Metaphor and metonymy: Multiple perspectives, 88-100. ISSN 1982 2014.
https://online.unisc.br/seer/index.php/signo/article/view/6099.
Rojo, A. and I. Ibarretxe-Antuñano (eds.).(2013). Cognitive Linguistics and Translation. Advances in Some
Theoretical Models and Applications. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
The Body of the Poet: Oneiric Conceptions and Experiences of Poetical Inspiration among the
Tuareg (Sahara)
Amalia Dragani
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
In order to examine poetic creative processes and vernacular conceptions of 'inspiration' among Tuareg people, I
apply an ethno-biographical method and a person-centered approach to oral poetry. The result is an 'ethnography
of poets' centered on the author and not just a canonical ethnography of poetry, focused on works (analysis of
oral texts or performance). Start ing fro m b iographies of Tuareg poets collected since 2004 in different parts of
the Tuareg world (Niger, Algeria, Mali), I analy ze the role that a near death experience during early childhood
(such as chronic illness, or bereavement, both real and symbolic) takes in the development of a poet’s
temperament (tezni). Ch ildhood diseases (šiwernawen n barar) give the child an acute sensitivity, called tafrit n
oman (literally 'sensation of soul') which leads them to perceive tekma n iman (soul-ache) intensely in
themselves and feel the suffering of others (human beings as well as animals) more intensely than their own
suffering. A child beco mes a poet by inheritance of 'nerves' (izorwăn) and consanguineous poet’s 'blood' (azni),
by contagion of spirits from an older poet, or by visions of ancient poets.
Seoul uncle: Cultural conceptualisations behind the use of address terms in Korean
Hyejeong Ahn
Nanyang Technological University
This paper explores terms of address in Korean fro m a Cultural Linguistic perspective. Cu ltural
conceptualizat ions (Sharifian, 2013) are utilised as a theoretical framework to examine how the Ko rean
cultural schema o f Jangyuyuseo [There must be order between seniors and juniors] and its extension of cu ltural
categories and the cultural metaphor of “co mmunity members are kin” KIN (Wolf, 2008 p. 370) is realised in the
use of address terms, found in spoken Korean that was broadcasted in the Korean reality T.V. show, The return
of superman. A dataset of approximately 540 minutes of spoken discourse was collected fro m six episodes of
this reality television program. The findings show that a detailed explorat ion of Korean linguistic actu alizat ion
of address terms can be achieved by adopting the three analytical tools offered by Cultural Linguistics. This
study argues that Korean linguistic p ractices in address terms are closely drawn fro m Korean cu ltural
conceptualisations and there is a need for systematic and co mprehensive research which can decode various
aspects of culturally constructed Korean linguistic behaviour.
Keywords: Korean cultural schema, Jangyuyuseo, cultural conceptualisations.
38
References
Sharifian, F. (2011). Cultural conceptualisations and language (Vo l. 1). A msterdam: John Benjamins
publishing company.
Wolf, H. G. (2008) ‘A cognitive linguistic approach to the cultures of World Englishes: The emergence of a new
model’, in G. Kristiansen and R. Dirven (eds) Cognitive Sociolinguistics: Language Variation,
Cultural Models, Social Systems. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Grammar as a Mirror of Culture: A Case of Grammaticalization of Undesirability-Markers in
Korean
Seongha Rhee
Hankuk Univ of Foreign Studies
Since language and culture are intertwined and interactive often to the extent of inseparability, how cu ltural
aspects affect language and linguistic change is an object of serious research for linguists. This paper
investigates a subset of au xiliary verbs that marks the speaker's negative evaluation of the proposition they
modify. These markers were developed fro m previously fully lexical verbs such as mek- 'eat', tay- 'touch', peli'throw away', anc- 'sit', and (ca)ppaci- 'fall (back)'. These verbs are gradually gaining the au xiliary verb status
losing the original semantic content and gaining the speaker's viewpoint, an excellent exemp lar of
subjectification in language. More importantly, the development is largely due to the unique Korean culture,
albeit some having cross-cultural validity as well, in which eat ing and touching are best avoided in public;
sitting or withdrawal fro m act ivity is easily condemned for the lack of productivity; throwing away is regarded
as an act causing irretrievability; and falling back is the ultimate d isgrace where gentle demeanor is highly
prized. This paper shows how culture is mirrored in language, and how grammar is derived from culture.
Conceptions of love in Biblical Hebrew
Ruti Vardi
Radboud University
Love in Bib lical Hebrew is typically and most frequently expressed by the lexeme ‘hv, wh ich occurs in different
contexts such as divinity, kinship, ro mance, or politics. A corpus study on the distribution of ‘hv over the
different contexts, reveals general patterns of hierarchical relations between the participants of love-events (i.e.
lover and beloved). According to these patterns love is usually either unidirectional, i.e. the lover has a higher
social-cultural status than the beloved’s status, or asymmetric, e.g. the love of God for hu mans is volitional,
while that of humans for God is commanded. These general patterns imp ly the conceptualisation of love in the
Hebrew Bible as a social-cultural element. In other words, love as expressed by ‘hv seems to play a role in the
conceptual structuring of social-cultural systems that are part of the ancient scripture. In my talk, I will focus on
the occurrences of ‘hv in wisdom texts, i.e. the books Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and will show how central
social-cultural themes in Bib lical Hebrew, such as parenthood, friendship, or wisdom, are conceptually lin ked to
love, either positively or negatively. In (1) for examp le, well-instilled discipline by parents is indicated by love
for wisdom in children.
(1) iš
man
ohev
xoxma
love.3SGM.PTC
wisdom
39
yesamax
aviv
gladden.3SGM.IMPF
fathe r. G E N .3S G M
‘He who loves wisdom gladdens his father (parent).’ (Prov 29:3)
I will further argue that the links between social-cultural themes and love co mplement and support the abovementioned general social-cultural patterns. The results of my study show the applicability of corpus linguistic
methods as analogous to ethnographic studies, such as Lutz’s (1988) study of emotions in Ifaluk, for the
examining the conceptualisation of emotions when the only existing source of the language is a written text.
Keywords: emotion, love, Biblical Hebrew, cultural conceptualisation, corpus linguistics.
Spiritual searching as spatial exploration: Studying cultural conceptualizations through an
English-Czech parallel corpus
Renata Kamenická
Masaryk University
The theme-session presentation uses a parallel English-Czech corpus of spiritual quest writings to show how
parallel co rpora, together with insights from Translation Studies, may be employed to glean out knowledge
concerning cross-language differences in cultural conceptualizations otherwise not readily available for
observation. While non-deliberate metaphors (Steen) provide a natural tool for studying cultural
conceptualizat ions (Palmer, Sharifian), deliberate metaphorical use can also be explored for the same purpose.
Certain areas of hu man activ ity and thought where experience is part icularly individual and subtle – spiritual
searching not subscribing to specific relig ions doctrines with their fixed imageries among them – need to rely on
heavy use of deliberate metaphor, giving thus rise to rich metaphorical networks. The presentation explores how
discourse in transpersonal issues and spiritual non-relig ious searching in English (Almaas, A. H., The Dimond
Approach etc.) conceptualizes the quest in terms of topologies and spatial exp lorat ion and how evidence fro m
the parallel corpus can be used to identify culturally conditioned metaphorical conceptualizations. The
presentation argues that while English, as a language originally of cultures with a h istory of geographic
exploration, pioneering and imperial conquest, invites a profusion of deliberate spatial exp loration metaphors to
express meanings only to be anticipated by most readers, Czech, as a language of a small culture enclosed by
other European cultures within a limited geographical space, is less prone to draw on spatial explorat ion
metaphors. This situation is reflected by three kinds of phenomena in the corpus: (a) frequent diversions by the
translators from spatial explorat ion metaphorical networ ks; (b) less variation in spatial exp loration metaphorical
networks in the Czech translations; and (c) compro mised acceptability of some Czech translation solutions
based on spatial exp loration metaphorical networks (established through a reception -oriented questioning of a
population of Czech users). The differences in cultural conceptualizat ions of spiritual searching as spatial
exploration found through deliberate metaphor use are then related to corresponding networks of non -deliberate
metaphors available in the two languages. The presentation also highlights and demonstrates that employing an
informed Translation-Studies perspective is essential to the above-described use of parallel corpora.
Keywords: spatial exploration metaphor, deliberate metaphor, spiritual non-religious discourse, English, Czech
Poetic Cognition: An Example from Himalayan Oral Poetry
John Leavitt
Université de Montréal
40
Some passages in the work of Ro man Jakobson suggest that the use of poetic language not only produces
powerful aesthetic effects but, by focusing attention along roads laid out by distinctive linguistic forms,
reinforces or creates particular construals of parts of the world. As Caton points out ("Contributions of Roman
Jakobson", 1987), this argument, imp licit in much of the work of Sapir, links poetics to the tradition of linguistic
relativ ity. Starting with this premise, this paper works through a frag ment of a ritual text fro m the Central
Himalayas of northern India, considering the sound-patterning, the grammat ical patterning, and the images
evoked. Drawing on ethnography of the region, it asks whether and how the words may be expected to activate
the participants' stereotypical associations, both affective and conceptual.
The dialectics of linguistic categories
Lotte Dam
Aalborg University
Linguistic categories are reflections of conceptualizations of the wo rld, constructed by a society’s members
across generations. In other words, linguistic categories are based on earlier and contemporary members’ world
view and cultural models. The new members o f society integrate these categories, which influence their own
world v iew and cultural models. Afterwards, the (no longer new) members create new categories which are
handed down to new members. This means that language and culture are dialect ic my nature as they are
mutually constitutive.
When linguistic categories are seen as reflections of conceptualizations of the world, it is relevant to ask the
question “when does something become a concept and therefore a linguistic category?” It seems to be the case
that when, for some reason, a phenomenon is considered significant enough in a (part of) society, the
conceptualizat ion of it is encoded in the language. This is how new words emerge. It is not an objective process:
what someone sees as a phenomenon, others may not see as such. So concepts and words are not given by
nature, but are constructed socially between members of society. Some linguistic categories become
institutionalized; they form d irect part of a part of the society system. Examples are categories fro m the legal
system, for example crime categories, and categories fro m the medical system, for examp le diagnosis categories.
These categories are reflections of culture.
The aim o f the paper is, through a collection of selected examp les of especially institutionalized linguistic
categories, to show the dialectic character of language and culture and its imp licat ions. This is done within the
framework of cultural linguistics based on a constructivist approach to language and culture.
Ritual or volitional: The use of personal reference terms in Japanese
Yoko Yonezawa
The Australian National University
This study explores the use of Japanese personal reference terms with special attention to the intersection
between expectations of their ritualistic (default ) uses and a speaker’s marked choice of a particu lar term. The
focus is on the unique second person pronoun anata ‘you’ in Japanese.
Japanese is rich in personal reference terms, the uses of which are primarily determined by the interlocutors’
41
biographical characteristics such as social status, age and gender as well as the level of formality in the
conversational setting (Suzuki, 1973; Shibatani, 1990; Ide, 2006). A mong them, the second person pronoun
anata ‘you’ is unique in the following respects. First, the results of discourse analysis have revealed that an
indication of the degree of politeness and a speaker’s biographical characteristics are not genuine properties
of anata. In fact, the use of anata specifies the second person without indexing any social elements of the
interlocutors. Second, native speakers express a great deal of difficulty in using anata and tend to avoid it. The
avoidance of anata is evidenced in the naturally occurring conversational corpus where the use of anata is
overwhelmingly infrequent.
In this study, I adopt the notion of ‘absolute specification’ of the second person to provide the framework for my
analysis. I then attempt to systematically explain the mechanisms that lead to anata having a socially inert ro le,
which in turn creates difficult ies for native speakers to use, as well as its ability to deliver part icular metamessages when overtly used. Th is ultimately sheds light on the interaction between the use of a particular word
in culturally specific contexts and norms in a particular language.
Keywords: personal reference terms, social norms, speaker’s attitude, anata ‘you’
References
Ide, Sachiko. 2006. Wakimae no Goyooron [Pragmatics of Wakimae]. Taishuukan: Tokyo.
Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1990. The Language of Japan. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Suzuki, Takao. 1973. Kotoba to Bunka [Language and Culture]. Iwanami Shoten: Tokyo.
The Conceptualization of Sadness and Distress through Body Part Idioms in Turkish
Melike Baş
Amasya University
This study exp lores the conceptualization of two negative and conceptually related emotions – sadness and
distress – in Tu rkish id io matic expressions that contain a body part term in them. Bodies are not culture free
objects; therefore, the associations between the physiological sympto ms and the emotional experiences may
change from one culture to another, which are conveyed through language. Body part idio ms as a form of
language are the “collective memo ry banks” of the cultural cognition of a speech commu nity (Sharifian, 2015),
and are acquired subconsciously by the speakers of a language by the time they are born. Turkish frequently
utilizes body part idio ms to communicate emotions, especially negative ones. This study aims to examine how
sadness and distress are metaphorized and schematized in the minds of Turkish speakers to create a cultural
model of them. The idio ms containing body-part terminologies are taken fro m several d ictionaries, and those
that express, or are related to sadness and distress are included in the data. Metaphors and metonymies are
categorized fo llo wing the conceptual models proposed by Lako ff and Johnson (1980) and Kövecses (2000). The
findings reveal that particular body parts (e.g. heart, eye, throat, head, etc.) are productive s ource domains in
Turkish for the conceptualizat ion of these two emotion concepts. The study identifies not only generic level
metaphors, which ag ree with those found by Kövecses (2000) for the English language but also specific level
metaphors, which are culturally motivated for sadness and distress: FIRE, ECTASY, SILENCE, PHYSICA L
CONTA CT, UNPLEASANT TASTE, and MALFORMATION. Turkish data provide further support to the
‘body-based social constructionism’ view, which holds that both body and culture play a motivating role in the
emergence of conceptual metaphors and metonymies (Kövecses, 2000; 2015), and provide insights on the
embodied nature of the emotions.
Keywords: embodiment of emotions, metaphor, metonymy, Turkish, body part idioms
References
42
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. London: The University of Chicago Press.
Kövecses, Z. (2000). Metaphor and emotion: Language, culture, and body in human feeling . Cambridge:
Kövecses, Z. (2015). Where metaphors come from: Reconsidering context in metaphor. New Yo rk: Oxford
University Press.
Sharifian, F. (2015). Cultural linguistics. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and
Culture (pp. 473-493). New York/London: Routledge.
The Effects of Figurative Language and Imagery on Creating a Culturally Distinct Image of a
Destination: Conceptual Discourse Analysis of English and French Parallel Texts
Hana Kratochvilová
The linguistic possibilit ies of a given language, culture inherently related to the language and human mind are
decisive factors in conceptualizing reality (cf. Kövecses 2006). Figurative expressions and imagery are natural
parts of interpersonal co mmun ication as well as powerfu l means of persuasion in destination advertising. Usin g
the method of conceptual discourse analysis in English and French parallel texts , the aim of the present paper is
to identify and functionally explain the effects that the use of figurative language and imagery in different
language versions of the same discourse has on creating of the overall image of a destination presented to the
reader. The corpus for analysis consists of selected texts fro m English and French versions of Prince Edward
Island Visitor’s Guide, published in 2015 by PEI Depart ment of To urism and Cu lture. The analysis proceeds at
the interrelated levels of semantics, prag matics and cognitive linguistics. It is organized along conceptual
categories which reflect the actual semantic content of the discourse. Both variation in conceptualizat ions and
variation in stylistic choices within the same concepts across the parallel texts are closely examined and
qualitatively evaluated . All relevant aspects of meaning (cf. Leech 1983) are taken into account in analysing
and interpreting individual e xpressions and their impact on the reader. The results offer the main semantic
features associated with the destination as a result of the language choices made in each of the texts. These
features contribute to the distinct conceptualizations of the destination by the readers of English and French
texts, respectively. Based on the results, the paper attempts at formulat ing, co mparing and contrasting the
principal tendencies in shaping the message in anglophone and francophone destination advertising, which
necessarily reflects the interplay of language and culture.
Keywords: figurative language, imagery, destination advertising, conceptual discourse analysis, parallel texts
References
Kövecses, Zoltán (2006) Language, Mind and Culture: A Practical Introduction , Oxford: OUP.
Leech, Geoffrey N. (1983) ‘Seven Types of Meaning’ in Semantics: The Study of Meaning, 2nd ed.,
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, pp 9-23.
43
Why Should Academics Pay Scientific Attention to Poetry?
Catharine Mason
Université de Caen Normandie
As Ernst Cassirer has demonstrated in several of h is important works, language constitutes the symbolic form
that has brought forth the highest level of achievement in the construction of knowledge. With its empirical
methods and fixities, theoretical science may run a close second. However, even science requires language for
the fine-tuning and dissemination of its findings, and especially for the essential processes of making scientific
findings relevant to human life. Infographics might seem to be rep lacing verbal analysis of the concrete realities
examined by scientists. The visual summary of vast quantities of information into a geometrically relational
graphic allows for a powerfully synthetic view o f highly co mplex data. One might ev en speculate that
infographics, in our fast-paced information driven society will overtake the academic paper as primary mediu m
in scientific inquiry. Ho wever, here again, the infographic requires verbal exchange—both written and oral—
not only for its legit imacy and impact points (co mmunicative value), but also for its ultimate applicable import. I
submit therefore that language remains our main stake in human knowledge and in all potential g rowth of
knowledge. Th is paper will examine the role of poetics in maintain ing healthy responsiveness of language to the
development of other symbolic forms in the pursuit of understanding the world. We will loo k at examples of
poetic practice in speech and written fo rm as essential to successful commun icative process. These examp les
suggest that poetic speech is essential to sound operations of the human mind and to a sustainable well -being of
human knowledge and culture.
Grounding and relational schemata in Managalase, Papua New Guinea
William H. McKellin
Dept. of Anthropology, U. British columbia
Cultural Linguistics assumes that cultural cognition, conceptualized as cultural schema, emerges fro m the
interactions among members of social groups. Consequently, an investigation of the dynamics of social
relationships is central to understanding this process. In part, this requires an appreciation of the social
relationships between members of the society as speakers and audience members as they seek what is
commonly referred to as common ground for activity-oriented interaction.
This chapter examines the social and linguistic dynamics of kinship or relational terms among the Managalase
of Papua New Gu inea. It exp lores the interp lay among three cultural schemata of relatedness that the
Managalase have traditionally emp loyed to conceptualize and discuss social bonds and kinship: lineal
relationships, relationships based on shared territory, and those defined by exchange relat ionships. Traditionally,
each of these three dimensions created an individual’s uniquely embodied network of relat ional t ies that crosscut
named social groups and enabled indivdviauls to maintain affiliat ions with several named clans. Managalase
themselves recognize that relat ional terms and clans are grounded in these complex, distributed relat ional t ies,
and that knowledge of this grounding is differentially distributed throughout the community. The distributed
nature of kinship and group affiliation is augmented by another cultural schema of Managalase personhood – a
belief that it is impossible to know the intentions of others, or what is in another’s mind.
Managalase networks of relationships are also dynamic. Each marriage negotiation or feasting exchange forces
individuals to re-evaluate and publically declare their alliances by aligning themselv es with the bride or groom’s
family, or as a feast’s hosts or guests. In the interactions leading up to the exchanges, each participant assesses
the relative weight of each of the various dimensions of social relatedness that might be affected. During the
44
process, speakers and their audiences have differential access to the relational grounding of the kinship
relationships that are the subject of the negotiations.
The distributed representations of relatedness and personhood, together with the co mpetit ive relationships
among exchange partners contributes to a Managalase hesitancy to assume that joint act ion flows fro m co mmon
ground or shared understandings.
The Managalase cultural schemata of relatedness and person, when brought together in social negotiat ions,
highlight the need to clarify assumptions about the nature of co mmon ground in joint act ion and social
interaction.
Umenijaa moyoni (‘you have filled in my heart’):
Cultural metaphors of emotions in Swahili
Rosanna Tramutoli
University “L’Orientale” of Naples – University of Bayreuth
[email protected]
This study describes how emotional concepts, such as ‘love’ and ‘anger’ are codified in Swahili. Its
aim is to highlight the relationship between language, culture and conceptualization, considering the
specific Swahili cultural context in which metaphors are created and used. In particular, the paper
seeks to answer a number of questions, such as, which Swahili cultural traditions (e.g. ethnomedical
resources, performances or food traditions) give rise to the conceptual metaphors of emotions? For
instance, Swahili language is rich of expressions indicating ‘loose of self-control’ (e.g. amepandisha
mzuka! “he/she has made the ghost to come up!”), which assume a different connotation according to
the specific cultural context in which they are used (excitement during dance/music performance,
anger, sexual arousal, spirit possession…). Considering also the practice of Swahili traditional
medicine (uganga), the study highlights Swahili bodily conceptualizations (body parts, bodily liquids,
and physiological reactions) which are involved in the description of emotions and personal traits. A
recent study on the semantic description of Swahili body terminology has demonstrated that body part
terms, such as moyo (heart), uso (face) and jicho (eye) are involved in several metaphorical
expressions describing emotions. For instance, it has been shown that moyo (‘heart’) has a prominent
role being conceptualized as the seat of numerous emotional states and it has several metaphorical
meanings (e.g. love, generosity, will). Data has been collected mostly through interviews with Swahili
speakers and participant observation during fieldwork conducted in Tanzania and through the analysis
of Swahili digital corpora, containing different kinds of Swahili texts (e.g. novels, drama, political
essays).
15:30 – 16:00
Metaphor variation across cultures:
45
Evidence from English-Chinese-Czech parallel literary texts
Wei-lun Lu
Masaryk University, Czech Republic
The present paper addresses the usefulness of parallel literary texts in studying metaphor variation across
languages and cultures, which is expected to help define cultural linguistics as a mult i-d isciplinary field by
attracting scholars in contrastive linguistics, corpus linguistics, linguistic typology, cognitive linguistics,
stylistics, translation, and literary studies.
The role of cultural context has been extensively recognized in metaphor studies. Different langu ages and
cultures provide their users with different socio-cultural environ ments, with which the speakers understand,
conceptualize and interact with the world around them. Accordingly, the metaphor (or the source concept) that
different languages and cultures may utilize in talking about the same event is bound to vary.
Past research on the variation of metaphor has been methodologically based on use of introspection, mono lingual corpora and experimental methods. However, as language production is heavily influenced by all sorts of
context, there has been no way of studying the interaction of culture and metaphor by controlling for the same
linguistic, physical and social context, while keeping the language production contextualized. In view of this
problem, I believe that use of parallel texts (translations) constitute an efficient methodological opportunity for
studying metaphor across languages and cultures in a contextualized way — If we see the author and the
translator(s) as sensible text producers, then by keeping the same most other contextual factors, including
linguistic, physical, social context, production mode and genre, researchers are allowed to emp irically study the
role played by the cultural context in metaphor use in stretches of discourse where all text p roducers try to get
across highly similar (if not identical) messages. However, use of parallel texts (or translation) in studying
metaphor has not received much attention, with on ly few exceptions (Chapter 7 in Kövecses 2005; Rojo and
Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2013; Schaffner 2004; Tabakowska 1993).
Accordingly, the paper will present various parallel samp les fro m English with translations fro m and to Chinese
and Czech, in order to testify the usefulness of the methodology in cultural linguistics. With the above
methodology, I will investigate how representative text producers in different cultures take advantage of
metaphor to verbalize and shape their readers’ conceptualizat ion of certain events in the same literary scene in
radically conventional ways (Croft 2001), drawing on language-specific source domains and cultural schemas
(Sharifian 2011). It is hoped that the proposed study will testify the methodological usefulness of parallel texts
in the study of cognitive-cultural linguistics by rendering solid linguistic evidence for cu lture-specific patterns
of thought reflected in real language use in the same context.
Keywords: metaphor; cultural schemas; parallel texts; poetics; construal
References
Croft, William. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kövecses, Zoltan. 2005. Metaphor in Culture: Un iversality and variat ion. Cambridge: Cambridge Un iversity
Press.
Rojo, Ana. and I. Ibarret xe -Antuñano (eds.) 2013. Cognitive Linguistics and Translation. Advances in So me
Theoretical Models and Applications. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Schaffner, Christaina. 2004. “Metaphor and translation: Some implications of a cognitive approach.” Journal of
Pragmatics, 36: 1253-1269.
Sharifian, Farzad. 2011. Cultural Conceptualisations and Language: Theoretical Framework and Applications.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Tabakowska, Elzbieta. 1993. Cognitive Linguistics and Poetics of Translation. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
46
An Ethnopoetic Perspective on the Works of Flann O'Brien in the Irish Cultural Context
Finn O'Higgins
National University of Ireland
This paper explores fro m an ethnopoetic perspective the use of metaphor, simile and other forms of
figurative language in the works of Brian Ó Nualláin who wrote in the guises of Flann O’Brien and Myles na
gCopaleen fro m the 1940s through to the 1960s. Most notably, the paper will focus on An Béal Bocht and its
English language incarnation The Poor Mouth, The Third Policeman as well as the Irish Times newspaper
column Cruiskeen Lawn, and O’Brien’s contributions to the literary magazine, The Bell. These largely satirical
works, which appeared during the 1940s and 1950s, provide humorous and at times offbeat reflect ions on Irish
urban and rural society. Since satire can be considered heavily culturally motivated in that it behaves as a
criticis m and observation on contemporaneous events and behaviour within a culture, it provides an ideal
vehicle by which to investigate the way in which cu ltural trends and dynamics play out in society. By exp loring
thematic elements such as the recurrence of the 'flood-tide' metaphor throughout The Poor Mouth in the contexts
of emotions, drunkenness and the Irish language, I suggest that through fiction and metafiction O’Brien liberates
those aspects of Irish culture which were seen as condemned, controlled or regulated by urban and 'genteel'
society in mid 20th century Ireland. I will supplement this viewpoint by argu ing that his use of poetic and
figurative language in publications such as The Bell and Cruiskeen Lawn (a popular column wh ich featured
regularly in the Irish Times) serves to reiterate those values of the urban, middle -class and progressive Irish
society of the time. I therefore proffer that through his literary poetics O’Brien emerges simultaneously as a
guardian, a pro moter and a critic of Irish cultural trends and attitudes. As such, I endeavour to emphasise the
way in wh ich an ethnopoetic approach to literary analysis can reveal invaluable insights into cultural trends, as
well as attitudes to these trends within the psyche of a specific culture, thus underscoring the important
contribution this type of analysis can lend to cultural linguistics.
‘My dear Professor’? Cultural conceptualisations in the use of address terms in student-toacademic staff email communication
Atefeh Hadi
Monash University
Address terms play a significant part in interpersonal and intercultural co mmunication, and are closely
associated with cultural conceptualisations of politeness norms across different languages. Previous research has
revealed that the choice of address terms may be often influenced by social factors such as gender, age, and
education. The role of cultural conceptualisations in the use of address terms in academic emails has, h owever,
not been investigated. As terms of address set the tone for the interchanges that follo w, research into this area
and the way politeness is conveyed and expected through the choice of address terms in emails is of great
importance. This presentation reports on a study of the use and perception(s) of the choice of address terms in
student-to-academic staff email co mmunicat ion among a number of Persian speaking students and staff at
Monash University in Australia.
The study relies on naturalistic email threads as data, as well as semi-structured interviews with both students
and lecturers. The email co mmunication data is used to examine the patterns of use of address terms. The
interviews exp lore the participants’ perceptions of the use of various address terms. The results reveal that the
address terms that students use in their email correspondence range from being influenced by their L1 cu ltural
conceptualisations, to what they perceive to be appropriate in email co mmun ication in Australia (e.g. you can be
47
informal in your email address to staff members in Australia). For example, so me part icipants used the word
‘dear’ in their use of address term to express the Persian concept/category of aziz, which is a term associated
with a heightened degree of respect and endearment. The results reveal the potential of Cu ltural Linguistics for
investigating address terms in general, and the use of address terms in email communication in particular.
Keywords: Email Communication; Terms of address; Cultural Concep tualisations.
References
Sharifian, F. (2011). Cultural conceptualisations and language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins publishing
company.
Children, totems and social power
Lucinda Kate Davidson
The University of Melbourne
This study investigates the interactional uses of totems in spontaneous speech from children acquiring the
polysynthetic Australian language, Murrinhpatha. One of the few remaining traditional Indigenous languages
being learned by children, Murrinhpatha is spoken in Wadeye, a remote co mmunity in northern Australia. I
argue that children refer to totems in their peer interactions to achieve specific communicative and social goals,
including asserting authority, ownership, and managing social allegiances.
The relationship between people and totems in t raditional Aborig inal societies of Australia have been described
as connections of “social, religious and mag ical significance” (Elkin, 1933, p. 257). The impo rtance of totems in
contemporary Aboriginal culture amongst Murrinhpatha speakers is evidenced through the exp licit socialisation
routines that most caregivers engage in with young children. Totems appear to be central to the personae
children are coached into presenting to social outsiders. The social weight that totemic relationships carry for
children themselves can be gauged from the interactional uses they put them to in their everyday speech
amongst peers.
In this study, I draw on longitudinal speech data collected from seven Murrinhpatha speaking children, who, at
the outset of the data collection were between 2 and 6 years of age. The ch ildren were recorded at four regular
intervals over a 21 month period. Th is paper analyses the children’s speech fro m an interactional linguistic
perspective. I present stretches of the children’s dialogues to demonstrate that they evoke totemic relationsh ips
in order to assert control in social situations, includ ing claiming ownership over objects, asserting authority, and
delineating social in- and out-groups.
This study is revealing of the ways in which aspects of traditional Indigenous culture function in a contemporary
Aboriginal society. It offers a unique view of the acquisition of language, culture, and co mmunicative
competence in a complex society and an under-researched acquisition environment.
Keywords: interaction, child discourse, Aboriginal Australia, totems
Reference
Elkin, A. P. (1933). Totemism in North-Western Australia; The Kimberley Division. Oceania, 3(3), 257–296
Are marriages made in heaven? A cultural-linguistic case study on Indian-English and BritishEnglish matrimonials
48
Sandra Frey & Frank Polzenhagen
Heidelberg University
Our paper provides a co mparative cu ltural-linguistic analysis of matrimonials. Our emp irical basis is a corpus of
600 matrimon ials taken fro m four English-mediu m Indian newspapers (The Milli Gazette, The Hindu, The
Times o f India and The Statesman) and a British-English reference corpus of 150 contact adverts from the Times
(London). Matrimonials were chosen for analysis for two main reasons: (1) MA RRIA GE is a prime (and wellstudied) examp le of a concept with significant cultural variat ion and hence lends itself fo r a cultural-linguistic
investigation; (2) owing to its minimalist nature, the text type matrimonial pro mises to exemp lify the relevant
underlying cultural conceptualisations in a very condensed and straightforward way.
We provide both a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data. The latter focuses on the features given in
the self and partner descriptions. Here, the Indian matrimonials show a profile that differs fro m the Brit ish one
in several ways, in particu lar with respect to their emphasis on categories like FAMILY BA CKGROUND,
EDUCATION, PROFESSION, INCOM E and POSSESSIONS. In turn, we also found significant variat ion
within the Indian corpus; this reflects specifics of the rather dist inct cultural sub-groups associated with the
readerships of the four newspapers.
In the qualitative analysis, we focus on a set of individual cultural conceptualisations. Inter alia, the data attest to
different elaborations of the metaphor THE LIFE OF A COUPLE IS A JOURNEY. RELATIONSHIPS are
conceptualised as a JOURNEY in both cultural settings. However, MA RRIA GE is a rather late point on that
JOURNEY in the Western context, while in the Indian one it is exp licit ly the STARTING POINT of that
JOURNEY. I.e., Western matrimonials are about ideas/wishes with respect to marriage as an institution (life of
a couple, future phases of a potential joint metaphorical JOURNEY), while Indian matrimon ials are about the
conditions for a wedding (i.e. for the starting point of the JOURNEY). The latter point also manifests in the
Indian data in terms o f a p ronounced APPLICATION rhetoric. Furthermore, the data show different
elaborations of the UNITY metaphor. RELATIONSHIP is conceptualised as a UNITY OF PARTS in both
settings. However, in the Western context only the two partners are the conceptual PARTS. In the Indian setting,
the PARTS that form the UNITY include the families of the couple. This man ifests in the key notion of a
‘match’. Here, our analysis addresses both “what is said” (i.e. made exp licit ) and “what is not said” (i.e. imp licit,
taken-for-granted knowledge).
Our main reference points in the literature include Stolt (1976) and Riemann (1999) for the text type
matrimon ial, Chandra (2007), Sharma (2005), Nanda (2000), Sey mour (1999) and Uberoi (1993, 2006) on
“family” and “marriage” in India and Goody (1983, 1999) on the family in Europe. The theoretical background
of our analysis is the framework of Cultural Linguistics documented in Sharifian (2015).
We also embrace earlier, influential, notions from cultural anthropology, e.g. the distinction between “high context” and “low-context” cultures (Hall 1976). Important reference points for the immediate object of our
analysis, i.e. cultural schemas/conceptualisations/models of MA RRIA GE, include Quinn (1987) and Dunn
(2004). The cross-varietal perspective taken in our study is framed against the background of Wolf &
Polzenhagen (2009).
Keywords: cultural conceptualisations; conceptual metaphor; cultural models of MARR IA GES; matrimon ials;
Indian English
References
Chandra, K. 2007. Women Marriage in India: Past and Present. New Delhi: Cyber Tech.
Dunn, C.D. 2004. Cu ltural models and metaphors for marriage: An analysis of discourse at Japanese wedding
receptions. Ethos, 32: 348–373.
Frey, S. 2015. Cultural Models Affecting Indian-English 'Matrimonials' and British-English Contact
Advertisements with a View to Marriage: A Co rpus -based Analysis. Ph.D. Thesis, Heidelberg 2014.
[www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/archiv/18303].
49
Goody, J. 1983. The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge Un iversity
Press.
Goody, J. 1999. The European Family. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hall, E.T. 1976. Beyond Culture. New York: Anchor.
Holland, D.C. and N. Qu inn (eds.). 1987. Cultural Models in Language and Thought. Camb ridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Nanda, S. 2000. Arranging a marriage in India. In : P.R. Dev ita (ed.), Stumbling toward Truth: Anthropologists
at Work , 196–204. Illinois: Waveland Press.
Palmer, G. 1996. Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Quinn, N. 1987. Convergent evidence for a cultural model of American marriage. In: D. Holland & N.
Quinn (eds.), Cultural Models in Language and Thought, 173–192. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Riemann, V. 1999. Kontaktanzeigen im Wandel der Zeit. Opladen/Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Seymour, S.C. 1999. Women, Family, and Child Care in India: A World in Transition . Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Sharifian, F. 2011. Cultural Conceptualisations and Language: Theoretical Framework and Applications .
Sharifian, F. (ed.). 2015. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture. London: Routledge.
Sharma, U. (ed.). 2005. Marriage in Indian Society: From Tradition to Modernity. Vo l. I. New Delhi: M ittal
Publications.
Stolt, B. 1976. “ Hier bin ich – wo bist Du?”, Heiratsanzeigen und ihr Echo. Analysiert aus sprachlicher und
stilistischer Sicht. Mit einer soziologischen Untersuchung von Jan Trost. Kronberg/Ts.: Scriptor.
Strauss, C. & N. Quinn. 1997. A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge Un iversity
Press.
Uberoi, P. (ed.) 1993. Family, Kinship, and Marriage in India. New York: Oxford University Press.
Uberoi, P. 2006. Freedom and Destiny: Gender, Family, and Popular Culture in India . New Yo rk: Oxford
University Press.
Wolf, H.-G. & F. Polzenhagen. 2009. World Englishes: A Cognitive Sociolinguistic Approach . Berlin/New York:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Time-metaphors variations in (popular) scientific texts translations
(from English into Estonian and Finnish)
Elo Rohult
University of Tartu
In my presentation I will discuss how some time-bounded expressions from Stephen Hawking’s book “A Brief
History of Time” have been changed in the translations fro m English into Estonian and Finnish, with the aim to
describe how the changes on representation level affect and reflect different aspects of TIM E on conceptual
level. Because most of these examples cannot be explained by the lack of the linguistic possibilities, the
possible causes of the changes should be found in socio-cultural or even physical context.
There are probably no other conceptual metaphors in cognitive linguistics that have been explored mo re than
TIM E-metaphors; some specific cu ltural differences of TIM E-concepts are also well known, e.g. the perception
50
of time by the Aymara etc. My material does not handle this kind of exotic examples, vice versa, all three
observed languages have, for the most part, the same metaphors in their linguistic and conceptual TIME -arsenal.
Additionally, it seems reasonable to assume, that the translation of a (popular) scientific discourse demands
rather exact following of the wording of the source-text instead of its free re-creation. Thus, it seems natural to
suppose that there are the means as well as reasons for the target texts to stay so close to the source text as
possible.
Despite that, we can find in those parallel texts a lot of ‘shifts’, which are not always exp lainable just by the
different linguistic conventionality. Thus, literally the same conventional phrase it takes time and the according
conceptual metaphor TIM E IS RESSOURCE exis ts in Estonian and Finnish as well as in Eng lish, but while
explaining light’s movement, it is being translated by other conventional expressions which are rather based on
Moving Time-metaphor. I say ‘rather’, because the time-bounded terms in modern physics are often
metonymical, not metaphorical, thus this phenomenon should also be taken into account. Metonymical time terms tend to be translated with their spatial reference, e.g. the term history (of a particle) has ‘path’ as its
counterpart in Finnish. Furthermore, it would be reasonable to handle the translations of the deliberate and
non-deliberate (in G. Steen’s terminology) cases of figural language separately due to their clearly different
status for the translators. But because in the source text they form a coherent system - e.g. the deliberate
metaphor (and/or metonymy) TIM E IS LIKE EARTH’S SURFA CE is found on the non -deliberate TIM ELANDSCAPE metaphor which is therefore rather re-deliberated even if restored in conventional and thus
commutable expressions -, the problem is not as black-and-white as it seems.
In my presentation, I will concentrate on such ‘shifts’, hoping to offer some h ints for a systematic approach to
them.
Keywords: metaphor, metonymy, TIME, translation
Primary references
Hawking, Stephen. 1988. A Brief History of Time. London: Bantam Press.
––. 1989. Ajan lyhyt historia (tr. R. Varteva). Helsinki: WSOY.
––. 1992. ‘Aja lühilugu I’ (tr. E.-R. Soovik) in Akadeemia 12: 2648–2685.
––. 1993. ‘Aja lühilugu II’ (tr. E.-R. Soovik) in Akadeemia 1: 183–222.
––. 1993. ‘Aja lühilugu III’ (tr. E.-R. Soovik) in Akadeemia 2: 415–445.
––. 1993. ‘Aja lühilugu IV’ (tr. E.-R. Soovik) in Akadeemia 3: 637–669.
––. 1993. ‘Aja lühilugu V’ (tr. E.-R. Soovik) in Akadeemia 4: 865–891.
Secondary references
Dirven, R., R. Pörings (eds). 2002. Metaphor and Metonymy in Co mparison and Contrast. Berlin/New Yo rk:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Gibbs, R . (ed.). 2008. The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. New York: Camb ridge University
Press.
Lakoff, G., Núñez, R. 2000. Where Mathemathics Comes from. How the Embodied Mind Brings
Mathemathics into Being. New York, Basic Books.
Lakoff, G., Johnson, M. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. New York: Basic Books.
Moore, K. E. 2014. The Spatial Language of Time. Metaphors, metonymy, and frames of reference. John
Benjamins Publishing Company, Vol. 42.
Ortony, A. (ed.) 1998. Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pragglejaz Group. 2007. MIP: A Method for Identifying Metaphorically Used Words in Discourse. - Metaphor
and Symbol, 22(1), pp. 1–39.
51
Radden, G. 2004. The Metaphor TIME A S A SPA CE across Languages. – http://zif.spz.tu-darmstadt.de/jg-082-3/beitrag/Radden1.htm
Rojo, A., I. Ibarret xe -Antuñano (eds). 2013. Cognitive linguistics and translation : advances in some theoretical
models and applications. Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter Mouton.
Santibáñez, F. 2002. The OBJECT image-schema and other dependent schemas. – Atlantis, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp.
183-201.
Steen, G. 2011. From three dimensions to five steps: The value of deliberate metaph or. - metaphorik.de 21/2011
Viimaranta, J. 2006. Talking about Time in Russian and Finnish. Helsinki: Helsinki University Printing House.
Cultural conceptualisations and pragmatic production: Ritual refusals of offers and invitations
in Persian
Homa Babai
Monash University
This study aimed to investigate ritual refusals of offers and invitations from a Cultural Linguistics perspective.
The cultural conceptualisations underlying the production of ritual refusals in Persian were examined. The data
was collected through focus group interviews (FGI) fro m 11 male and 5 female university students doing their
Master’s degree in different fields of study at Sharif University of technology, Tehran, Iran. The results revealed
that ritual refusals in Persian are co mplex speech acts strongly lin ked to Persian cultural prag mat ic schemas
(Sharifian, in press) of tǎ’ǎrof (ritual politeness) and ru-dar-bǎyesti (feeling of d istance out of respect). The
findings also indicated that contrary to their insincere appearance, ritual refusals are sincerely insincere (Pinto,
2011, p. 230) acts arising fro m the speakers’ concern for maintain ing rapport in interpersonal relationships.
While giving a ritual refusal the speaker tries to camouflage his/her true intentions to accept the initial
offer/invitation for mult iple reasons. He/she intends to help the communication run smoothly, make her
interlocutor feel cared for as well as enhancing his/her own face by making a good imp ression. This finding is of
importance as it can help to avoid cross-cultural and intercultural miscommunication.
Keywords: Cu ltural Linguistics, Cultural conceptualisation, Ritual refusal, Cu ltural prag matic schema, tǎ’ǎrof
(ritual politeness), ru-dar-bǎyesti (feeling of distance out of respect), Persian.
References
Pinto, D. (2011). A re A mericans insincere? Interactional style and politeness in everyday America. Journal of
Politeness Research, 7, 215-238.
Sharifian, F. (in p ress). Cu ltural prag matic schemas, prag memes, and practs: A Cultural Linguistics Perspective.
In J. L. Mey, I. Kecskes, K. A llan, & A. Capone (Eds.), Pragmemes and theories of language use. New
York: Springer.
The Human Being in The Storm”: Language as “Grand Narrative”
Dorota Filar
Maria Curie-Sklodowska University
52
Language, understood here as an interpretation of the world, motivated by experiential and cultural factors, can
be analyzed as narrative. Because, I believe, language and culture are an inseparable whole, and because
linguistic meaning cannot be isolated from the cultural and experiential space, the concept of narrative is
especially noteworthy thanks to its interdiscip linary background in philosophy, philosophy of hist ory,
psychology, or cognitive science. Linguistic-cum-cu ltural meaning thus constitutes a culturally-defined
conceptual structure that includes conceptual models and cognitive representations as interpretations of the
universe we live in. These representations and interpretations, in turn, take the form of a narrative – and it is in
this sense that I use the concept here.
This study is grounded in research on scripts, scenes, and scenarios (e.g. R. C. Schank and R. Abelson 1995) or
on events, scenes and story schemata (J. M. Mandler 1984) that capture phenomena as outcomes of
spatiotemporal and causative relations. Event schemata have often been suggested in linguistics, cf. the work of
Ch. J. Fillmo re (scenes), G. Lakoff (1987, scenarios), J. R. Taylor (1995, scripts) or R. W. Langacker (2008,
covert scenarios). This broad framework, I propose, will benefit fro m a co mprehensive, holistic description of
language as “grand narrative”, built on “hu man scale” (with the relevant axiologies, v iewpoints, and belie fs). In
this way, I hope to integrate accounts of language, cognition, and culture (the three major co mponent of Cu ltural
Linguistics) with narrative theory.
For the purpose, I analyse the meaning of a lexical item as a comp lex, dynamic narrat ive structure and adopt a
“narrative procedure” for exp lain ing that meaning. This procedure remains in a certain relat ionship (either in
opposition or as a complementary option) to the taxonomic categorization of hu man knowledge, and takes the
form of NARRATIVE SCHEMA – an anthropocentric quasi-story with human protagonists.
I assume, that units of language activate micro-narrat ives “imprinted” in their meanings and I analyze a series
of examp les to illustrate the micro-narrative connected with the schema BURZA (Polish) and STORM (English).
The central element of the model, with consequences for language -entrenched conceptualisations, is the
protagonist of the story: a “homo narrator” with the “human scale” for interpreting the universe.
References
Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. What Categories Reveal about the Mind . Chicago: The
Langacker, R. W. 2008. Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mandler, J. M. 1984. Stories, Scripts, and Scenes: Aspects of Schema Theory. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbau m
Associates.
Schank R. C., Abelson R. 1995. Knowledge and Memory: The Real Story. In: Advances in Social Cognition VIII,
ed. R. S. Wyer, Jr. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1-85.
Taylor J. R. 1995. Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory. New York: Oxford Un iversity
Press.
Embedding Cultural Conceptualization within an Adopted Language: The English of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians
Ian G. Malcolm
Edith Cowan University
Although a minority of Indigenous Australians still use their heritage languages, English has been largely
adopted by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as their mediu m o f co mmunication both within and
beyond their communities.
53
In the period since English first reached Australia in 1788, a d ialect has emerged, drawing on English, contact
language and Indigenous language sources, to enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speakers to maintain
cultural conceptual continuity while communicating in a dramatically changed environment.
This presentation will illustrate the processes which have led to Aboriginal English, including selective transfer
fro m varieties of English, contact languages and Indigenous languages, accompanied by phonological,
morphological, syntactic and semantic mod ification and innovation. It will be shown how the patterns of change
have been in conformity with cultural conceptual imperatives, relating significantly, though not exclusively, to
the self-perception of the ind ividual in relat ion to the group, the environment and the spiritual domain. It will
also be shown that these imperat ives bear on the genres and speech events which typically acco mpany the use of
Aboriginal Eng lish. Implications of these findings for cross -cultural co mmunicat ion and for education will be
suggested.
Keywords: Australian Aboriginal English, cultural concep tualisations, language contact.
References
Malcolm, Ian G. (2007) “Cultural linguistics and bidialectal education.” In Farzad Sharifian and Gary B. Palmer
(eds.) Applied Cultural Linguistics (pp. 53-63). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Malcolm, Ian G. and Sharifian, Farzad (2002) “Aspects of Aboriginal English oral discourse: an application of
cultural schema theory.” Discourse Studies 4 (2):169-181.
Malcolm, Ian G. and Sharifian, Farzad (2007) “Multiword units in Aboriginal English: Australian cultural
expression in an adopted language.” In Paul Skandera (ed.) Phraseology and Culture in English (pp.
375-398). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Sharifian, Farzad (2011) Cultural Conceptualisations and Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
54
Abstracts
DAY 3 (Friday 22 nd July)
9: 00 – 10: 00 Keynote presentation
Life as Opera: Metaphorical Conceptualization in Chinese Culture
Ning Yu, The Pennsylvania State University
Lakoff and Turner (1989) suggest that LIFE IS A PLAY is an extraordinarily productive basic metaphor for life in
English. For example, the following everyday expressions instantiate this conceptual metaphor in one way or
another: This is just a rehearsal; She’s my leading lady; He plays an important role in the process; That’s not in
the script; He blew his lines; She brought the house down. It’s just curtains for him. That is, these linguistic
expressions reflect a link in our conceptual system that connects our schematic knowledge about a form of
performing arts, the source domain of theatric performance, with a mental perspective on life in general, the
target domain here. This makes perfect sense in the English -speaking culture, or Western culture in general,
where play has been a major form of performing arts, as represented and highlighted by the Shakespearean
tradition, through its history of civilization.
Kövecses (2005) proposes another conceptual metaphor, LIFE IS A SHOW , which is located at one level
higher than that of LIFE IS A PLAY and LIFE IS A MOVIE in the cluster of conceptual metaphors organized in a
hierarchical structure. It is a higher mapping in the sense that its source concept SHOW , which can be seen as
representing performing arts in general, is the superordinate concept of PLAY and MOVIE, which can be seen as
basic-level concepts. Kövecses (2005) argues that LIFE IS A SHOW is a central or foundational metaphor that lies
at the heart of American cu lture. While cultures are characterized by certain central metaphors, the study of such
metaphors and their lower-level versions can help us gain insights into a particular culture.
Along this line, Yu and Jia (forthco ming) argue that, while LIFE IS A PLAY and LIFE IS A MOVIE also
exist as sister subversions in Ch inese, the most salient instantiation of LIFE IS A SHOW as a superordinate-level
metaphor in Chinese culture is its basic-level instance LIFE IS AN OPERA, where “OPERA” refers to Ch inese opera,
with Beijing opera as its prototype. This metaphor at the basic level p lays a central role in the Chinese
conceptualizat ion of events and phenomena in various domains of life, constituting a core component of the
Chinese cultural model of life. In this chapter, I will further the argument with a shifted focus on the evidence
fro m cu ltural art ifacts and natural discourses. It is hoped that the study will lead to mo re insights into the role of
culture in shaping metaphorical conceptualization in particular, and into the relationship between languag e,
culture, and cognition in general.
References:
Kövecses, Z. (2005). Metaphor in culture: Universality and variation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Un iversity
Press.
Lakoff, G., & Turner, M . (1989) More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: Un iversity
of Chicago Press.
Yu , N., & Jia, D. (forthcoming/2016). Metaphor in culture: LIFE IS A SHOW in Ch inese. Cognitive Linguistics,
27(2).
55
10:30 – 11:00
Politeness expectations and the heterogeneous distribution of cultural schemas
Tahmineh Tayebi
Monash University
Grounded in a Cultural Linguistics approach to the study of language (Sharifian, 2011, 2015), this chapters
seeks to explain why people take o ffence. The fact that perceptions of impoliteness are differen t fro m individual
to individual has already been discussed by scholars working in the field (e.g. Cu lpeper, 2011). Yet, the
interactional dynamics of taking offence (Haugh, 2015) and the possible underlying reasons why people are
offended have not received the attention they deserve. As will be shown in this chapter, taking offence and
perceptions of impoliteness are derived fro m certain expectations which inform the course of an interaction. It
will also be argued that people’s behavioral expectations are not always based on beliefs, but rather are
informed by certain cultural schemas that provide an important clue for evaluation o f impolite linguistic
behaviour. In this chapter, the analysis of the examples will be carried out at three levels: a) metadisco urse, b)
discourse, and c) conceptual (Sharifian and Tayebi, forthcoming). At the metadiscourse level, the overt
impoliteness markers that indicate taking of offence will be identified. At the discourse level, the contexts and
the scenarios that may lead to taking of offence will be examined. The final level of analysis, or the conceptual
analysis, offers an explanatory mechanism for exp loring the possible links between taking offence and the
underlying ‘cultural’ schemas by highlighting the heterogeneously distributed nature of the latter. By drawing
on several examp les fro m Persian, the study concludes that expectations of polite behaviour vary according to
people’s level of internalization of the cultural schema in question.
References
Culpeper, J. (2011). Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haugh, M. (2015). Impo liteness and taking offence in init ial interactions. Journal of Pragmatics
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.prag ma.2015.05.018
Sharifian, F. (2011). Cultural conceptualisations and language: Theoretical framework and applications .
Sharifian, F. (2015). Cu ltural Linguistics. In F. Sharifian (Ed .), The Routledge handbook of language and
culture (pp. 437-492). London and New York: Routledge.
Sharifian, F. & Tayebi, T. (forthco ming) Cu ltural Linguistics and impoliteness: A case study from Persian. To
appear in Pragmatics and society.
Cross-Cultural Variation of Metaphorical Discourse in Pre -Modern Political Texts
Takashi Shogimen
University of Otago
The proposed paper examines the ways in wh ich the conceptual metaphor A POLITICAL COMMUNITY IS A
BODY unfolds in polit ical discourse; more specifically, a cognitive and historical approach to political
discourse (Musolff, 2009) seeks to illustrate how a particu lar examp le of the conceptual metaphor – PA RTS OF
A POLITICA L COMM UNITY A RE PARTS OF A BODY – is elaborated in medieval European and
56
Tokugawa Japanese political texts. A co mprehensive corpus of the historical uses of the metaphor in those texts
would be tremendously vast; the discussion is limited to a few historical snap -shots.
In medieval Eu rope the above scenario was interpreted sociologically and organizationally (in terms of the
target domain) and anatomically and physiologically (in terms o f the source domain). Thus, the scenario is
expounded as “functional parts of a political co mmunity are internal organs of a body” (John of Salisbury, 1990).
In Tokugawa Japan, by contrast, the scenario was interpreted geographically (in the target do main) and in terms
of external bodily members (in the source domain): that is, “geographical locations of a political co mmun ity are
bodily members of a body” (Aisawa, 1984).
Two factors at least contribute to this cross -cultural variation in the use of metaphors in the different traditions:
one is the purpose underlying metaphor use. In medieval Europe, the metaphor was deployed typically for the
structural analysis of the political organization and society, wh ile in Tokugawa Japan it was often used for
military analysis of the significance of particular locales. The other factor is cultural (Kövecses, 2015); indeed,
in the Japanese discursive tradition, it was rare even to co mpare the ruler metaphorically as the heart, which was
commonplace in both medieval European and classical Chinese philosophical texts (Yu, 2009).
Keywords: metaphorical discourse, cross -cultural variation, medieval Europe, Tokugawa Japan.
References
Aisawa, Seishisai. 1984. Shinron. In: Hashikawa Bunzo (Ed.), Fujita Toko, 293-391. Tokyo: Chuokoronsha.
John of Salisbury. 1990. Policraticus: Of the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philosophers. Ed ited
and translated by Cary J. Nederman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2015. Where Metaphors Come From. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Musolff, Andreas. 2009. Metaphor in the History of Ideas and Discourses: a med ieval version of the Body -State
Analogy. In: Metaphor and Discourse, 233-247. Palgrave MacMillan.
Yu, Ning. 2009. The Chinese HEART in a Cognitive Perspective. De Gruyter Mouton.
The relevance of cultural cognition in the conveyance of pragmatic meaning
Annalisa Baicchi
University of Pavia
This paper attempts to identify the cultural variables that regulate the successful performance of illocutions, the
type of linguistic constructions emp loyed to encode the various illocutionary forces, and the formal and content
cognitive operations that motivate them. Cultural Linguistics reveals to be an excellent framework for
examining the cultural conceptualisations that underlie the linguistic enactment of p rag matic meaning (Sharifian
2011). Utterances are the outcome of culture-specific illocutionary scenarios and for them to be felicitous the
requirements of three main interacting systems must be met: (1) the cultural system, with its socio-cultural
conventions shared in a given speech community; (2) the linguistic system, i.e. the lexico -grammat ical resources
offered by the encoding language; (3) the cognitive system, i.e. the interlocutors’ ment al operations (Baicchi
2015). While cognitive operations may be universal, the realization of illocutions is culture -specific and
language-specific. Austin’s felicity conditions are better defined as culturally-grounded conceptualizations of
experience, i.e. as co mplex adaptive systems known as ‘cultural cognition’. During linguistic interactions,
various utterances in association with different illocutions are interpreted on the basis of inferential activ ity that
depends on the “cultural cognitive schemas” that interlocutors perceive as mo re or less shared (Sharifian 2013).
And yet, cultural cognition is not homogeneously distributed, since, if it were, no misunderstandings would
occur; indeed, it is heterogeneously distributed and constant negotiation of meanings is therefore needed.
Keywords: illocutions, cultural cognition, heterogeneous distribution, complex adaptive system
57
References
Baicchi, A. 2015. Conceptual metaphor in the co mp lex dynamics of illocutionary mean ing. Review o f Cognitive
Linguistics 13 (1): 106-139.
Sharifian, F. 2011. Cultural Conceptualisations and Language. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Sharifian, F. 2013. Cultural Linguistics and Intercultural Co mmunication. In F.Sharifian & M.Jamarani
(eds.) Language and Intercultural Communication in the New Era. London: Taylor and Francis.
Investigating culture through language: a corpus -based analysis of Hong Kong English
Denisa Latic
The rise of the World Englishes paradigm in the 1980s, the concomitant development of Cognitive Linguistics
and corpus linguistic methods make up the perfect tools for the investigation of yet another variety of English:
Hong Kong English (HKE). Hong Kong culture blends paradoxes: It shows that life and death, the real and the
other world coexist in the traditions of its inhabitants, which eventually surface in language. This study takes a
(socio) cognitive-linguistic perspective and - with the electronic corpus GloWbE containing roughly 40 million
HKE tokens - examines collocational patterns in HKE fro m the domains FAMILY and MONEY. Their
conceptualizat ions in everyday life underlie a broader cu ltural cognition that is heterogeneously distributed in
society (Sharifian 2003). The gathered data show that common core Eng lish terms undergo a semantic exte nsion
by being embedded into the Hong Kong culture, a culture based on ancient Chinese tradition, Confucian
ideology paired with remnants of Brit ish colonial rule. Culturally constructed collocations such as 'hungry
ghosts', 'worship ancestors' and 'hell money' are instances of the localized vocabulary of HKE; they show how
tightly culture and language are lin ked. In fact, culture and cultural changes are the factors that influence
language and its development.
Metaphor and Cultural Cognition of National Identity
Andreas Musolff
University of East Anglia
“Cultural cognition” is a multid isciplinary concept that links anthropology, linguistics, psychology and
sociology. This study focuses on the culture-specific interpretation of collective, specifically national, identit ies,
constructed through conceptual metaphor. Its data consist of a questionnaire survey, administered in 10
countries to students from 31 linguistic backgrounds who were given the task of applying the phrase body politic
to their home nation (state).
The responses reveal four main interpretation models, i.e. (1) NAT ION AS GEOBODY, (2) NAT ION AS FUNCT IONAL
WHOLE , (3) NAT ION AS PART OF SELF and 4) NAT ION AS PART OF GLOBAL ST RUCTURE . The first two versions were
the most frequently used ones and were represented across all linguistic/ cultural c ohorts, but showed inverse
frequency patterns for Chinese v. Western cohorts (i.e. 2/3 of Chinese respondents’ answers preferred version
(1), more than 2/3 of Western respondents’ responses preferred version (2)). Such patterns can be hypothetically
linked to culture-specific discourse traditions. In conclusion, the talk discusses how such findings can contribute
to a constructivist, non-essentialising definition of cultural cognition as a central issue of Cultural Linguistics.
Keywords: Body polit ic, cultural cognition, cu ltural linguistics, discourse tradition, intercultural co mmunicat ion,
metaphor interpretation.
58
References
Kövecses, Zoltán (2005). Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Musolff, Andreas (2014). Metaphors: sources for intercultural misunderstanding? International Journal of
Language and Culture 1(1): 42–59.
Musolff, Andreas, Fiona MacArthur and Giulio Pagani (eds.) (2014).
Communication. London: Bloomsbury Linguistics.
Metaphor and Intercultural
Sharifian, Farzad (2015). Cultural Linguistics: The Develop ment of a Mult idisciplinary Paradig m. Language
and Semiotic Studies 1(1): 1-26.
Sharifian, Farzad, René Dirven, R., Ning Yu and Susanne Niemeier (eds.) (2008). Culture, Body, and Language.
Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs across cultures and languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
11:00 – 11:30
“Omae wa baka da” (You are an idiot!): Impoliteness in CMC in Japanese
Xiangdong Liu
Western Sydney University
As a new genre, computer-med iated communicat ion (CM C) is distinct fro m face -to-face co mmunication and
traditional styles of written co mmunication such as letters, by virtue of its asynchronous and, quite often,
anonymous natures. It is a general intuition that people may feel free to exp ress themselves straightforward, pay
less attention to face work, or even conduct face-attacking intentionally more often, when co mmun icating in an
online anonymous environment. This study aims to investigate strategies of intentional face-attacking (i.e.,
impoliteness) in Japanese CMC. The data of this study are drawn fro m readers’ co mments on online Japanese
news sites. Following Culpeper’s definition of impo liteness, this study takes into account both the intention of
the author and the perception or reaction of the interlocutor of each posting by investigating the flow of the
discussion in the context. Message-observation methods are also applied considering the fact that it is
sometimes difficult to identify the participants’ intentions or perceptions in a CMC context. Analysis of the data
is both qualitative and quantitative. It has been found that honorifics, wh ich normally function to express
politeness, are often used as a means of sarcasm together with abusive express ions, and therefore serve to
amp lify the effect of impo liteness. It has also been found that there are differences across discussions of
different topics in terms of targets, frequency as well as strength of impoliteness.
Journey metaphors in the US presidents’ and Spanish Prime Ministers’ inaugural speeches: a
universal conceptualization?
Hanna Skorczynska
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia
Conceptual metaphors and their role in building persuasive political discourse have attracted much attention in
the past years (Chan & Ahrens, 2015; Charteris -Black, 2005; Goat ly, 2007; Lu & Ahrens, 2008; Musolff, 2004).
Speeches of American Presidents, British Prime Min isters as well as Taiwanese politicians have been analyzed
to reveal how an intentional use of certain metaphors shapes the overall political message. Chan & Ahrens
59
(2015) specifically focused on journey metaphors in their diachronic study of the US presidential speeches and
pointed to variation in the use of related lexical items over time. In this research, I co mpare the use of journey
metaphors in the inaugural speeches by the US Presidents to those delivered by the Spanish Prime M inisters.
The main research question is whether these metaphors are used cross -culturally in political d iscourse, as a
universal conceptualization o f a country’s development and progress. Two corpora co mpiled to this end,
covered a similar period of t ime: fro m late 1970s to the present day. Two lists of lexemes associated with the
semantic field of journey, in English and Spanish, were created with the help of thesauri, as well as WordNet
lexical database. The corpora were queried with Sketchengine for the use of lexemes, and later the concordances
obtained were manually checked fo r their metaphorical uses (Steen et al., 20 10). The results show that there are
notable differences in the use of journey metaphors in the American and in the Spanish corpus: 17
metaphorically used lexemes were found in the former and 4, in the latter. An additional analysis of their
collocational patterns is hoped to reveal further variations and suggest that the use metaphors in political
discourse is culturally sensitive.
References
Chan, I. & Ahrens, K. (2015). Changes on the use of JOURNEY metaphors in American presidential speeches.
Presented at The 13th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC-13), No rthumbria
University, Newcastle, England. July 20-25.
Charteris-Black, J. (2005). Politicians and rhetoric: The persuasive power of metaphor. Palgrave Macmillan.
Goatly, A. (2007). Washing the Brain Metaphor and Hidden Ideology (Vol. 23). John Benjamins Publishing.
Lu, L. W. L., & Ahrens, K. (2008). Ideological influence on BUILDING metaphors in Taiwanese presidential
speeches. Discourse & Society, 19(3), 383-408.
Musolff, A. (2004). Metaphor and political discourse: analogical reasoning in debates about Europe . Palgrave
Macmillan.
Steen, G., Dorst, A. , Beren ike Hermann, J., Kaal, A., Kren mayr, T., & Pas ma, Trijntje (2010). A Method for
Lingusitic Metaphor Identification. John Benjamins.
A multimodal investigation into the use of discourse markers in supervision sessions: An
intercultural approach
Samira Bakeer, Draženka Molnar, & Vlatka Ivić
University of Nottingham
This study aims to exp lore differences and similarities between Ph D supervisors and international students in
terms of their mu lt imodal use of Discourse Markers (DMs). Based on corpus -based and discourse-pragmatic
approaches, both the verbal and non-verbal characteristics of these mult ifunctional items will be investigated in
a context of dyadic supervision sessions in order to provide a deeper and g reater understanding of the role these
markers and their mult imodal representations plays in the management o f intercultural commun ication. An
exploratory pilot study was conducted as an initial attempt to develop a general framework for the analysis of
one of the most frequent English DMs (i.e. so). The data was taken fro m the academic supervisions subset of
Nottingham Mult i-Modal Corpus (NMM C). Out of thirteen supervision meetings, two sessions were randomly
selected and analysed. The findings suggest that there are differentiated interactional features in the verbal and
non-verbal use of DM in relation to supervisions sessions’ participants. This, consequently, highlights the need
to develop a framework for the analysis of the multimodal aspects of DMs’ use in intercultural settings. (Study
in Progress)
Keywords: discourse markers, so, supervision sessions, multimodality, gestures
60
References
Abuczki, A. (2011). A mult imodal analysis of the sequential organization of verbal and nonverbal interaction.
Argumentum, (7): 261–279.
Adolphs, S., & Carter, R. (2013). Spoken corpus linguistics: From monomodal to multimodal. N.-Y.: Routledge.
Bezemer, J. & Jewitt C. (2010). Mult imodal Analysis: Key issues. In: L. Litosseliti (ed), Research Methods in
Linguistics. London: Continuum: 180-197.
Fraser, B. (1999). What are discourse markers? Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 931-952.
Gu llberg, M. (2010). Methodological reflect ions on gesture analysis in SLA and bilingualism research. Second
Language Research. 26(1): 75-102.
Kita, S. (2009). Cross-cultural variat ion of speech-accompanying gesture: A rev iew. Language and Cognitive
Processes 24(2): 145-167.
Schiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cultural Linguistics and Vietnamese English
Thuy Ngoc Dinh
Monash University
Recent studies in different English varieties have largely centered on linguistic features evident in literature,
med ia and language teaching materials written in English by local authors. Such a scope, according to Sharifian
(2006, 2015), should be complemented by recent advancement in Cu ltural Linguistics to explore how English
varieties encode different cultural conceptualisations.
This paper attempts to address three main issues. First, it showcases several instances of lexical innovations
including retention, semantic shift and word formation as put forth by Bohorst-Heng (2012). Second, it
demonstrates how these English lexical innovations encode the Vietnamese cultural conceptualisations. In
achieving such aim, the paper showcases a detailed analysis of the cultural schemas, cultural categories and
cultural conceptual metaphors underlying some English expressions found in the data. These expressions
indicate the Vietnamese worldview, religion, spiritual belief, myth, and cultural reality. Finally, the paper
illustrates 10 entries as an example of compiling Vietnamese English based on Cultural Linguistics approach.
Data includes a corpus of 50 English articles by Vietnamese authors accessible on the official Heritage
Magazine website fro m 2012 to 2015 and 48 read ing texts in the three locally Eng lish textbooks English 10, 11
and 12 for Vietnamese high school students. The study is the first attempt to investigate Vietnamese English and
lays the foundation for the existence of this new variety.
References
Bokhorst-Heng, W. D. (2012). Lexical Innovation in English as an International Language: Imp licat ions for
English teaching. In L. Alsagoff, S. L. Mckay, G. Hu & Willy A. Renandya (Eds.), Principles and
practices for teaching English as an international language (pp. 206-226). New Yo rk: Routledge,
Taylor and Francis Group.
Cu mmings, P. J. & Wolf, H. (2011). A dictionary of Hong Kong English: Words from the fragrant harbor.
Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Sharifian, F. (2006). A cultural-conceptual approach and world Englishes: the case of Aboriginal English. World
Englishes, 25(1), 11-22.
Sharifian, F. (2015). Cultural Linguistics and world Englishes. World Englishes, 34(4), 515-532.
61
A metaphor study of the disease awareness ads
Janet Ho
Lingnan University
Conceptual Metaphor Theory emphasizes the cognitive basis of metaphor wh ich significantly expands the
traditional interpretation of metaphor being mere literary decoration. As Lakoff and Johnson (1980) point out,
metaphor is a ubiquitous phenomenon which is grounded in our thought, and enables us to reduce abstraction to
comprehend and experience concepts better. It possesses different communicative functions such as filling
lexical gaps, explanation and modeling, reconceptualization, argu ment by analogy, decoration and hyperbole,
and enhancing informativeness, as well as expressing emotional attitudes (Goatly, 1997).
In recent years, applied linguists have started to investigate the socio-cultural factors behind metaphor use and
emphasize the relat ionship between discourse and language. Metaphor is an indispensable tool in market ing
communicat ion. According to Forceville (2008), the print and billboard advertisements widely deploy hybrid
metaphors, contextual metaphors, pictorial simile and integrated metaphor. These metaphors are widely used by
advertisers in headlines, texts and visuals to convey persuasive messages and evoke positive feelings for the
brands, products or services promoted.
There is a growing interest in metaphor research on advertising of consumer goods including cars, food and
beverage as well as perfu me. A part icular area that has been left out of said research is the study of health
awareness advertising campaigns, while they provide a fertile ground for emotional co mmunication and
therefore metaphor use. Th is paper co mpares the print advertising campaigns of a number of diseases including
breast cancer, lung cancer and Alzheimer’s d isease, and describes how they differ in deploying strategies and
types of metaphors to promote health awareness, by adopting the analytical model developed by Forceville
(1996).
Keywords: Metaphor, Advertisement, Health awareness
References
Forceville, C. (1996). Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising. New York: Routledge.
Forceville, C. (2008). Pictorial and mult imodal metaphor in co mmercials. In: Ed ward F. McQuarrie & Barbara
J. Phillips (eds), Go Figure! New Directions in Advertising Rhetoric, (pp.272-310). Armonk NY:
ME Sharpe.
Goatly, A. (1997). The language of metaphors. London: Routledge.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Metaphorical scripts of politeness and civilization in mid-nineteenth century
Mihaela-Viorica Constantinescu
University of Bucharest
Our presentation is focused on conceptual metaphors regarding politeness and civilisation in mid -n ineteenth
century Roman ian Principalities. The recurrent way of conceptualizing politeness and civilisation in European
space is also to be found in the Ro manian world. In Europe, for examp le, politeness is an aesthetic ideal (Watts
62
2011) as revealed by the conventional conceptual metaphors (see Latin politus, French poli) transferring to a
human being the characteristics of an object worked upon, smoothened.
Adopting the historical prag matics perspective, our research favours the empirical approach on politeness
(contemporaries’ stance and interpretation of situations or communicative interactions), adding insights from
cognitive theories of metaphor – conceptual metaphors (mappings between a source domain and a target do main
– Kövecses, 2006; Semino, 2008). The analysis is based on a literary corpus (prose, dramaturgy, memoirs), the
texts belonging to a generation of writers active around the 1848 Revolution. Our corpus analysis is philological
and qualitative. Our approach follows the function-form mapping (analysing the way politeness and civilizat ion
are conceived in time) in order to identify different perspectives in the context of the variation o f cu ltura l
models (Byzantine, Ottoman, Western European) in the Romanian Principalities.
Some metaphorical expressions reveal the metaphor of the individual as an object worked upon in order to be
appropriate for modern socializat ion (some of the metaphorical scripts are common in European thought).
Education is an important parameter in reaching politeness and civilisation, mimetically (consciously or
unconsciously), by imitating urban and social elite. The norms of politeness and civilizat ion vary both in time
and space, inter- and intraculturally : changing social norms involves changing “evaluative mo ments”
(Kádár/Haugh, 2013).
Keywords: politeness, civilization, conceptual metaphors, metaphorical scripts
References
Culpeper, J., Kádár, D. Z. (eds.). 2010. Historical (Im)politeness, Bern/Berlin etc.: Peter Lang.
Kádár, D. Z., Haugh, M. 2013. Understanding politeness, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kövecses, Z. 2006. Language, mind and culture: a practical introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Semino, E., 2008, Metaphor in Discourse, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Watts, R. J. 2011. “A socio-cognitive approach to historical politeness”, Understanding Historical
(Im)Politeness, Special issue of Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12:1/ 2 (2011), Ed ited by Marcel Bax
and Dániel Z. Kádár, pp.: 104–132.
Mourning or celebration? Metaphor variation on June 4 in Hungarian political discourse
Orsolya Putz
University of Miskolc
The peace Treaty of Trianon was signed on June 4 1920 by the rep resentatives of Hungary and the Allies in the
Grand Trianon Palace, Versailles. Fro m 1990 to 2010 June 4 was considered a day of mourning due to the
substantial economic, polit ical and social changes caused by the treaty in the life of the Hungarian nation. In
2010 the act on the “Testimony for national cohesion” (Act No. 45. 2010) rat ified that June 4 is the day of
national cohesion. Since then, it has been heavily debated in the Hungarian Parliament if June 4 is a day of
mourn ing, when the tragic event of signing the Trianon Peace Treaty should be commemorated on, or if it is a
day of celebration, when the joyful feeling of national cohesion should be celebrated.
My paper aims to identify the conceptual metaphors underlying the contesting framings of June 4 fro m a
cognitive linguistic viewpoint. Metaphor production is v iewed as a dynamic process since metaphors evolve
and alter in the course of debate. It is hypothesized that 1) t wo metaphor-based categories (MOURNING and
CELEBRATION) are contesting 2) the traditional T RIANON cultural model, which is determined by the MOURNING
category, is challenged by an alternative T RIANON cultural model, built on the CELEBRATION category, with the
aim of reframing the event of June 4 1920 3) the new metaphor-based category (CELEBRATION) attempts to solve
a contemporary social issue.
63
As for corpus, I use texts of parliamentary speeches (circa 20 000 words) fro m 2010 to 2015 debating on the
issue of June 4. Contesting texts enable the researcher to study the role of cultural context (beside other types of
context) in alternative and contesting metaphor production. The paper intends to demonstrate the way cultural
linguistics can contribute to the better understanding of a cultural phenomenon.
Academic Communication: Writing Research papers as a culturally conditioned activity
Irina Khoutyz
Kuban State University
Publishing in international English-language journals has become something expected fro m a modern academic
by university management and scholarly commun ity. The growing pressure on local scholars to publish in
international peer-reviewed journals can be exp lained by the need to integrate into the international scientific
community to bring an awareness of the most recent research conducted globally.
However, the academic writ ing traditions in non-English-speaking countries are often different fro m what is
expected of a research paper by international English -language journals. These differences stem fro m writers’
sociocultural backgrounds, which are reflected in their thought patterns and language use (Canagarajah, 2002;
Clyne, 1987; Khoutyz, 2013; Shen, 1989).
The aim of this paper is to determine the main d ifferences in academic writing rhetoric in research articles (RA)
published in international Eng lish-language journals and those published in local journals by Russian scholars.
For this purpose, six RAs in English and six RAs in Russian were selected. The analysis draws upon the theory
of contrastive rhetoric (Kap lan 1966; Connor 1996; 2011), which stresses the necessity of studying texts in the
contexts of society. The methodology used to unveil discursive conventions of RAs relies on a contrastive
approach, which facilitated the identification of the structural differences and linguistic features of RAs in both
English and Russian.
The analysis showed the differences in terms of how the authors perce ive and construct writer / reader
responsibility, form / content orientation, and reader engagement level. The paper makes an attempt to exp lain
these differences by exploring cultural and social patterns of thinking of the authors of the analyzed RAs. If
local authors are made aware of these differences in academic writing rhetoric, the process of their research
submission to international journals can become more effective.
References
Canagarajah, S. A. (2002). A Geopolitics of Academic Writing. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Clyne, M. (1987). Cu ltural d ifferences in the organization of academic discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 11:
211-247.
Connor, U. (1996). Contrastive Rhetoric. Cross-Cultural Aspects of a Second-Language Writing. Cambridge:
Connor, U. (2011). Intercultural Rhetoric in the Writing Classroom. University of Michigan Press.
Kaplan, R. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education. Language Learning 16/1-2: 11-25.
Khoutyz, I. (2013). Engagement Features in Russian & English: a Cross -Cultural Analysis of Academic Written
Discourse. Working Papers in TESOL & Applied Linguistics, Vol. 13 (1), 1-20.
Shen, F. (1989). The classroom and the wider culture: identity as a key to learn ing English composition. College
Composition and Communication 40/4: 93-102.
64
On ‘Jewish English’: the case of ‘Assimilated’ Jews and their languages
Anna Dziama
University of Rzeszow
This paper examines the Jewish American co mmunity in terms of their language cultural identity. It also
presents a phenomenon of ‘Jewish English’ and outlines issues in the field of Jewish languages within the
cultural linguistics framework. Especially, the art icle seeks to answer the question to what extent Yiddish and
Hebrew admixture influenced the American variety of English and served as one of the factors in the
assimilation process and as a tool of preserving communal/religious life of Jewish Diaspora in the USA.
Keywords: Jewish English, Yiddish, Hebrew, Jewish Diaspora, assimilation
References
Alba R. and Noe, V. 2003. Remaking the American Mainstream. Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration.
Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press.
Benor, S.B., 2008. ‘Towards a new understanding of Jewish language in t he 21st century’ [in :] Religion
Compass 2(6), 1062-1080.
Go ld, D.L. 1985a. ‘Jewish English’ [in :] J. A. Fishman (ed.), Readings in the Sociology of Jewish Languages.
Leiden: E.J. Brill, 280-295.
Stein metz, S. 2001. Yiddish and English. The Story of Yiddish in America. Tuscaloosa and London: The
University of Alabama Press.
Sharifian, F. 2011. Cultural Conceptualisations and Language. Theoretical Framework and Applications.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins .
Event-structure metaphors through the body: The case of English to American Sign Language
translation
Danny Roush
Eastern Kentucky University
This study characterizes the handling of Event-Structure Metaphors (ESM, Lakoff, 1993; Lakoff & Johnson,
1999) in translation between languages that use different modalities: English (a spoken language) and American
Sign Language (a signed language). Using a cognitive-descriptive framework (Samaniego Fernández, 2011;
2013; Kövecses, 2014), I examine the bilingual/bimodal translation of ESM expression s based on a small
parallel corpus built fro m published translations of English political speeches that are performed and video recorded in ASL by native signers who are Deaf.
The cross-linguistic viability of the Location and Ob ject branches of the ESM ha s been affirmed in several
unrelated spoken languages. By apply ing an iconic-metaphoric, double-mapping analysis of signs (Taub, 2001),
I provide evidence that each submapping of the Location and Object branches of the ESM is also exh ibited in
the case of ASL. Additionally, Deaf translators frequently maintain the same ESM submapping fro m Source
Text (ST) to Target Text (TT). They also shift fro m the ST ESM to another type of expression, add an ESM in
the TT, or omit an ESM.
In examining the shifts and additions of ESM exp ressions in the corpus, there are numerous event -related
expressions in the TT that do not fit the current Location or Object branch ESM paradig m. Based on a double -
65
mapping analysis of these expressions, I propose a third branch of the ESM : the Container-ESM . The ContainerESM gets its coherent structure fro m the conceptual source domain of the (BODY-AS-) CONTAINER image
schema. This image schema is central to the conceptualization of EMOTIONS in many spoken languages
(Kövecses, 2000) and in ASL (Wilco x, 2000; Taub, 2001). However, the Container-ESM branch appears to
have a wider scope of target do mains in ASL than English (Kövecses, 2005; 2014). Th is is supported by the
variation between the number of identified Container-ESM expressions in the ST and the TT.
Keywords: Event Structure Metaphor, American Sign Language, translation
References
Kövecses, Z. (2000). Metaphor and emotion: Language, culture, and body in human feeling. Cambridge, UK:
Kövecses, Z. (2005). Metaphor in culture: Universality and variation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Un iversity
Press.
Kövecses, Z. (2014). Conceptual metaphor theory and the nature of difficu lties in metaphor translation. In D.
Miller & E. Monti (Eds.), Translating Figurative Language. (pp. 25-39). Quaderni del CeSLIC, Atti di
Convegni CeSLiC – 3, http://www3.lingue.unibo.it/ceslic/
Lakoff, G. (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (Second
Ed.) (pp. 202–51). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western
thought. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Samaniego Fernández, E. (2013). The impact of cognitive linguistics on Descriptive Translation Stud ies: Novel
metaphors in English-Spanish newspaper translation as a case in point. In A. Ro jo, & I. Ibarret xe Antunano (Eds.), Cognitive linguistics and translation: Advances in some theoretical models and
applications (pp. 159-198). Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter Mouton.
Samaniego Fernández, E. (2011). Translation Studies and the cognitive theory of metaphor. Review of Cognitive
Linguistics , 9 (1), 262 - 279.
Taub, S. (2001). Language from the body: iconicity and metaphor in American Sign Language. Cambridge, UK:
Wilcox, P. (2000). Metaphor in American Sign Language. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
13:00 – 13:30
Crossing languages, reshaping identities
Paola Giorgis
Fro m the Ro mantic concept of Volksgeist, to early studies in Linguistic Anthropology, until mo re recent
investigations which have highlighted linguistic differences within the same culture, the notion that language
and culture are intrinsically connected has often risen divergent interpretation s. Given these premises, it is no
wonder that Foreign Language Education has undergone several radical shifts, ranging fro m conveying an
essentialist view of the target language/culture to a more nuanced, if not critical, view of the relat ion between
language and culture. By breaking the ‘natural’ link word-world, Foreign Language Education can unveil how
far it is cultural and situated, thus fostering the deconstruction of taken -for-g ranted individual and collective
cultural identities, and monocultural and nationalist frameworks.
I will particu larly consider the ‘strange case’ of English, both a Foreign and an International Language: at the
intersection of global phenomena and local appropriations, of norms and variations, of ho mogenization and
subversion, English language has triggered fierce debates on the linguistic, sociocultural, political and
66
pedagogical imp lications of its widespread, but also on the potentially creative and critical appropriations fro m
below that it can elicit. My assumption is that, precisely for its mult ifaceted quality and the controversies it
arises, English language(s) can represent the ideal site to observe how individual and collect ive representations
of culture and identity move through language affiliations and appropriatio ns.
In the light of Crit ical Linguistics and Pedagogy (Kramsch 1993, 2009; Pennycook 2001; Norton & Toohey
2004), Anthropology of Education (Gobbo 2011), Intercultural Education (Abdallah -Pretceille 2008; Derv in &
Liddicoat 2013) and Cultural Linguistics (Sharifian 2007, 2009, 2013), I will address this issue presenting a
qualitative field study in two educational contexts with adolescent students fro m different linguacultural
backgrounds, examin ing a) the intercultural potential of a language equally foreign for both Italian and nonItalian students (as is the case of English in the Italian context ), b) how cross -linguistic interactions and bottomup appropriations of languages remodel indiv idual and collective identities and create new belongings, and c)
the pedagogical challenges and opportunities that these phenomena advance.
Keywords: Crit ical Linguistics and Pedagogy; Intercultural Education; Foreign Language Education; English as
an International Language
Openings and closings in intercultural email communication
Hsin-chou Huang
National Taiwan Ocean University
Recent decades have shown growing interest in co mputer-mediated co mmun ication (CM C). A mong the many
kinds of CM C, the most popular application for language teaching has been email (Levy & Stockwell, 2006).
Language teachers have adopted a wide variety of email tasks with fruit ful outcomes in language development
and increased cross-cultural understanding (Appel & Gilabert, 2002). Relat ively few studies have reported on
the new stylistic and linguistic conventions of email discourse (Waldvogel, 2007), so it is necessary to
investigate the empirical valid ity of such language uses. Because greetings and closings in email p lay an
important social role in easing the strain of interacting online in a foreign language with someone from another
culture (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2003), research in this field has beco me urgent. Studies on email greetings
and closings can shed light on how learners interact with their global peers in intercultural, c o mputer-med iated
settings.
This study investigates the distinct features of email openings and closings that emerge when EFL students
interact with their global peers in cross -cultural exchanges. The data are drawn fro m two email exchange
projects—one between Taiwanese and Italian students and the other between Taiwanese and Japanese
students—which took place over the course of two years. Using conversational analysis and discourse analysis,
this study analyzed a corpus of 768 emails and revealed interaction patterns in openings and closings among the
different ethnic groups. The coding procedure was based on conversation analysis (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973)
and discourse analysis (Sinclair and Coulthard 1975) in wh ich both the sequences and the moves were the units
of analysis. The coding scheme was adapted fro m Park et al.’s (2010) and Bou -Franch’s (2011) studies. Results
showed that the most frequently used opening strategies were salutation + name, fo llo wed by greeting, question,
no opening, and gratitude. Closing strategies included signature, farewell/ending salutation, expectation, no
closing, and gratitude. Ethnic differences in the use of opening and closing strategies were also identified. By
highlighting the variability of email co mmun ications, this paper can provide a preliminary understanding of
electronic discourse in pragmatic terms.
Keywords: Computer-mediated communication; Email Pragmatics; Openings; Closings; EFL
References
67
Appel, Christane, & Roger Gilabert. (2002). Motivation and task perfo rmance in a task-based and web-based
tadem project. ReCALL, 14, 16-31.
Bou-Franch, Patricia. (2011). Openings and closings in Spanish email conversations. Journal of Pragmatics, 43,
1772-1785.
Eckert, Penelope, & Sally McConnell-Ginet. (2003). Language and gender. Camb ridge: Camb ridge Un iversity
Press.
Levy, Michael, & Glenn Stockwell. (2006). Co mputer-mediated commun ication. In CALL dimensions: Options
and issues in Computer-assisted language learning, eds. Michael Levy and Glenn Stockwell, 84-109.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Park, Jung-ran, Guisu Li, & A my Burger. (2010). Opening and closing rituals of the virtual reference service of
the internet public library. Journal of Documentation, 66, 807-823.
Schegloff, Emanuel A., & Harvey Sacks. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 8, 289-327.
Sinclair, John M., & Richard M Cou lthard. (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse. Oxfo rd: Oxford
University Press.
Waldvogel, Joan. (2007). Greetings and closings in workplace email. Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication, 12, 456-477.
Comparative study of metaphor in literary texts and their translations
Zlatka Chervenkova & Ivaylo Dagnev
Plovdiv University
In this piece of research we apply the cognitive approach to metaphors and their translations in works of
literature, in an attempt to find an answer to the question whether the literariness of a literary text, mainly
maintained by metaphor as the most powerful trope, is preserved after tra nslation. This is achieved by
identifying metaphorical expressions and clusters in the orig inal texts, identifying their conceptual grounds,
source and target domains in the respective texts and their double mean ing within the entire wo rk and beyond it,
in the tradition of close readings and cognitive poetics.
The reported study focuses on cross -linguistic analysis of metaphor in parallel texts of original and translated
excerpts from select literary works fro m the 20th century, studied at the university. Linguistic metaphoric
expressions in the original texts, and the conceptual metaphors motivating them, are analysed and compared to
their translations. Special attention is paid to these cases in which, due to linguistic and cultural d ifferences, the
translated metaphors undergo changes that are so far-reaching that they affect the aesthetic quality of the text
and contort the original message. A classification of the types of metaphor distortions found in translation is
proposed and their implication on the understanding of the text is discussed.
Three factors for the reg istered differences are accounted for: the translator’s choice, language constrictions and
cultural d ifferences. Co mments are made concerning their effect on the interpretation of all nuance s of the
literary work in translation.
Keywords: Cognitive poetics, metaphor translation, close reading
References
Gibbs, R. J., Jr. (2002b). Identifying and appreciating poetic metaphor. Journal of Literary Semantics, 31, 101–
12.
68
Ibarret xe-Antunano, I. (2013). The relationship between conceptual metaphor and culture. Intercultural
Pragmatics, 10(2): 315-339
Kovecses, Z. (2005). Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, G., & Turner, M. (1989). More than cool reason: A field gu ide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: Un iversity
of Chicago Press.
Semino, Elena (1997) Language and World Creation in Poems and Other Texts. London: Longman.
Semino, Elena (2002) ‘A cognitive stylistic approach to mind -style in narrative fict ion’, in Elena Semino and
Jonathan Culpeper (eds) Cognitive Stylistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 95‒122.
Gavins, J. and Steen, G. (eds) Cognitive Poetics in Practice, London: Routledge, pp. 83‒98.
Semino, E., Steen, G. (2008) Metaphor in Literature In: The Camb ridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought,
Gibbs, R. W. (ed.): Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sharifian, F. Jamarani, M. (eds.) Language and Intercultural Co mmunication in the New Era. Oxford : Routledge
/Taylor and Francis.
Stockwell, Peter (1992) ‘The metaphorics of literary read ing’, Liverpool Papers in Language and Discourse 4:
52‒80
Tsur, Reuven (1992) Toward a Theory o f Cognitive Poetics. A msterdam: Elsevier (North Ho lland) Science
Publishers.
The conceptualisation of ARGUMENT in writing for academic purposes
Svetoslava Antonova-Baumann
Stockholm University
Despite the long-standing tradition in research on conceptual metaphor, little attention seems to have been paid
to the use of conceptual metaphor in academic writ ing. Thus, th e present study aims to investigate how the
concept of A RGUM ENT is realized in two academic contexts: (i) L2 speakers writ ing in English and (ii) L1
speakers writing in Swedish. Following Lakoff and Johnson (1980/2003), four related conceptual metaphors
(AN A RGUM ENT IS A JOURNEY; AN ARGUM ENT IS A BATTLE; AN ARGUM ENT IS A BUILDING;
AN ARGUM ENT IS A CONTAINER) were identified and examined in a sample o f Bachelor and Master theses
written in English or Swedish by native speakers of Swedish. The main questions here are (i) to what extent the
students employed these metaphors in their conceptualization of an argument and (ii) whether there are any
differences in the patterns of conceptual metaphor depending on the language in wh ich the texts were produced.
The results suggest that while for the most part, academic texts written in English and Swedish both employed
metaphorical conceptualizat ions of ARGUM ENT, precisely which metaphors predominated differed between
the two languages. The findings have implications for (second-language) teaching, such as the development of
academic writing courses, in particu lar in the context of English for non -native writers and fo r the training of
instructors for such courses.
Keywords: Cognitive Linguistics, conceptual metaphor, academic writing, language for specific purposes (LSP)
References
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980/2003. Metaphors we live by. 2nd edn. Chicago, IL: Un iversity of
Chicago Press.
69
Health, healing, and salvation in old English
Penelope Scott
Recent work on lexical semantics has demonstrated that even concepts that are closely tied to the human
embodied condition such as pain and happiness are highly culturally specific (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014).
This paper investigates the construction of the concepts of HEA LTH and SA LVATION in Old English, based
upon a semasiological study of hǣlþ ‘health’ and hǣlo ‘hail’ in a selection of medical and relig ious texts. The
data are sourced from Ælfric’s writ ings and Bald’s Leechbook , as found in the Dictionary of Old English
Corpus in Electronic Form (Healey et al 1998). The corpus -based analysis is supported by a wider examination
of the relevant forms in the Oxford English Dictionary and in the Thesaurus of Old English (Roberts et al 2015).
Both of these nominal forms, which are derived fro m the adject ive hāl ‘whole’, show a large degree of
polysemy that crosses physical and spiritual do mains. The distribution of senses is modelled in terms of
Prototype Theory (Lakoff 1987), and I argue that the constructio n of these senses follows both from systematic
principles of polysemy such as image schemata (Brug man & Lakoff 1988) and conceptual metaphor (Lako ff
and Johnson 1980), as well as fro m cu lturally specific factors including religiously orientated metaphors. In the
final part of the paper I consider the later semantic develop ment of the forms under investigation and the extent
to which the historical conception of HEALTH remains in evidence in Present Day English.
Keywords: polysemy, health, Old English, metaphor, image-schemata
References
Brug man, Claudia, and George Lakoff (1988) Cognitive topology and lexical networks. In Steven L. Small,
Garrison W. Cottrell, and M ichael K. Tanenhaus, eds., Lexical ambiguity resolution: Perspectives from
psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence 477–508. San Mateo, CA. : Morgan
Kaufmann.
Goddard, Cliff and Anna Wierzb icka (2014). Words and Meanings. Lexical Semantics across Domains,
Languages, and Cultures. Oxford: OUP.
Healey, Antonette di Paolo (ed itor), Richard L. Venezky (d irector of co mputing), Peter Mielke (systems analyst)
& John Price -Wilkin (consultant) (1998). The Dictionary of Old English corpus in electronic form
(TEI-P3 conformant version 1998 release). Toronto: Dictionary of Old Englis h Project, Centre for
Medieval Studies, University of Toronto. Distributed by Oxford Text Archive.
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors we Live By. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press
Lakoff, George (1987). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories reveal about the Mind. Chicago:
Roberts, Jane and Christian Kay with Lynne Grundy. (2015). A Thesaurus of Old English. Glasgow: Un iversity
of Glasgow. http://oldenglishthesaurus.arts.gla.ac.uk/
13:30 – 14:00
Cultural words in English L1 and EFL in a lexical availability task
Andrés Canga Alonso
Universidad de La Rioja
Foreign language (FL) teaching and learning programmes worldwide aim to develop learners’ proficiency in
communicat ing successfully with speakers of the target language. Thus, vocabulary knowledge becomes a
70
crucial aspect in second language learning. Imp licit to this notion is the ab ility to understand and negotiate both
linguistic and cultural differences (Byram 1997), and to communicate and negotiate cultural conceptualisations
(Sharifian 2013). However, a frequent weakness of teaching programmes is that language and culture are
separated in the FL classroom, and culture becomes little mo re than an addendum which focuses on learn ing
facts about the target country. Lexical availab ility tests have been used to test the number of words that emerge
in response to a cue word in a language. Nevertheless, research on lexical availability main ly explored Spanish
as L1 or L2, leav ing aside EFL (Jiménez Catalán 2014). Thus, the goals of this paper are: (i) co mparison of
aspects of lexical availability elicited by twenty-nine Spanish EFL undergraduate students and twenty -nine L1
speakers of English in response the prompt food and drink, and (ii) analysis of the relat ionship between
sociocultural background and lexical availab ility in order to detect similarities and differences concerning the
first language. Cu ltural words were classified in terms of their frequency of appearance by means of Range and
listed according to Byram & Morgan’s (1994) and the Common European Framework of Reference (2001)
cultural topics framework. Finally, we analysed the words in terms of the culture they rep resented i.e . source
culture, target, cu lture, and international culture. Our findings reveal that the number of words related to culture
is low. As expected, most of the words students provided belong to everyday living. With regard to the culture
represented in our EFL students’ responses, the results indicate that most of the terms refer to international
culture.
Keywords: Lexical availability, L1, EFL, culture.
References
Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters.
Byram, M. and C. Morgan. (1994). Teaching-and-Learning Language-and-Culture. Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters.
Common European Framework of Reference for Language. Learning, Teaching and Assessment. (2001).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jiménez Catalán, R. M. (ed.) (2014). Lexical Availability in English and Spanish as a Second Language.
Heidelberg: Springer.
Sharifian, F. (2013). Globalisation and developing meta-cultural co mpetence in learning English as an
International Language. Multilingual Education, 3: 7, available at http://www.mult ilingualeducation.com/content/3/1/7.
Cultural linguistic Aspects of Japanese humour
Goran Vaage
Kobe College
It is only natural that Japanese and Western humour should be different considering the vast cultural differences
that exist. Correspondingly, understanding and laughing of foreign hu mour and jokes is d ifficult because it
requires both cultural knowledge and linguistic knowledge.
This paper will give an account of the cultural linguistic aspects of Japanese humour, both diachronically, and
synchronically, first through a corpus analysis of older and newer humoristic transcripts, and then by presenting
results from a survey conducted on 270 Japanese native speakers.
Japanese humour is best explained through the concepts boke (‘the silly man’ or ‘the silly man ’s lines’) and
tsukkomi (‘the straight man’ or ‘the straight man’s lines’). The main difference fro m Western humour is that in
Japanese humour, the resolution, or explanation of the joke it needs to be explicit ly uttered by the tsukkomi for it
71
to be funny, and it is the interaction between the boke and tsukkomi itself, not necessarily the content of the joke
that creates the humour.
The corpus analysis showed that interplay between boke and tsukkomi goes back to ancient performances such
as rakugo (traditional comic storytelling) and kyogen (literally ‘crazy words’), dating back to the 9th century.
The difference between these performances and modern vessels of humour is only the perspective from which
boke and tsukkomi is told.
The synchronic survey showed that boke and tsukkomi is also present in every day communication. Fu rthermore,
most Japanese people showed a preference for either the boke- or the tsukkomi role, but some were able to play
any part if called for. There was also some regional differences in that people fro m Kans ai (the greater Osaka
area), showed a higher frequency of boke and tsukkomi.
Keywords: Japanese humour, boke, tsukkomi, Osaka dialect
Cultural conceptualizations of irony versus arrogance and their figurative expression
Angeliki Athanasiadou
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
It is well known that culture--‐specific d ifferences affect cognition and are reflected in the construals of different
languages. It is also known that there exist commonalities among cultures.
In this paper focus is assigned to the commonalit ies in the construals of irony and arrogance between English
and Greek; these are founded on frames and are well--‐entrenched in cultural conceptualizations.
Two stereotypical characters fro m Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics are Eiron and Alazon. In Greek drama, eiron
(ironic man) is a clever and witty character who tells alazon (arrogant) what alazon wants to hear; eiron
reeatedly triu mphs over by using humour. Alazon is a stupid character who boasts loudly and exag geratedly.
Both men are considered “bad” characters and occupy the extreme ends of a scale: alazon is talking “more” of
oneself using hyperboles and overstatements while eiron is saying “less” using understatements or the reverse of
the evaluations provided by the alazon.
Figurative exp ressions of arrogance and irony in English will be discussed. The aim of the paper is to describe
the figurative exchanges between the two characters and to investigate how deeply cultural conceptualizations
fro m Greek are rooted and reflected in English. Moreover, the figurative expressions will reveal whether the
cultural issues of irony and arrogance have survived intact through time o r whether they have undergone
modification.
Cultural conceptualizations in Irish English
Arne Peters
Until well into the 18th century, the majority of the population of Ireland were speakers of Irish -Gaelic, the
‘native’ language of Ireland that was tightly intertwined with the traditional Celt ic cultural practic es and belief
systems (Hindley 1990, Kallen 2013; Watson 2008). As the result of a rapid language change towards English in
the 19th century and favoured by the collective, intensive and largely unguided L2 acquisit ion of English by a
large share of the population (Hickey 2007), many cultural schemas and categories got transferred quite literally
fro m Irish-Gaelic into Irish English, resulting in a conceptual system that still carries a partic -u lar Irish-Gaelic
imprint and bears witness to the uniqueness of English in Ireland even today.
72
This paper will explore cultural schemas and categories in Irish English that are unique to Irish social cognition
and, thus, are instantiated in conceptualisation patterns that appear to be ‘marked’ for everybody from outs ide of
Ireland (cf. Rosch 1978, Sharifian 2011). Based on emp irical data drawn fro m three corpora ( ICE-Ireland,
Corpus of Web-Based Global English, Corpus of Galway City Spoken English) as well as on ethnographic
fieldwork conducted by the author, the paper will explore cu ltural conceptualisations from the domains of
religion and the supernatural with a view to both their current usage patterns in Irish English and their sources in
Irish-Gaelic.
References
Hickey, R. (2007a) Irish English: history and present-day forms. Cambridge: University Press.
Hindley, R. (1990) The Death of the Irish Language: A qualified obituary. London: Routledge.
Kallen, J.L. (2013) Irish English Volume 2: The Republic of Ireland. Boston and Berlin: Mou-ton de Gruyter.
Rosch, E. (1978) Principles of categorization. In Cognition and Categorisation. E. Rosch & B.B. Lloyd (eds),
27-48. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Sharifian, F. (2011) Cultural Conceptualisations and Language: Theoretical framework and applications .
Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Watson, I. (2008) The Irish Language and Identity. In A New View of the Irish Language. C. Nic Pháidín & S. Ó
Cearnaigh (eds), 66-92. Dublin: Cois Life.
14:00 – 14:30
Language, Power & Mundanity
Aaron Ward
Rikkyo University
Consumer aesthetics research often focuses on consumption relat ing to products with h igh conspicuous value,
such as fashion brands, rather than mundane practice. As such, the current study draws on Saito’s (2007)
application to Western contexts of the Japanese practice of appreciating the aesthetic and ethical aspects of
everyday objects, examined through the lens of cultural linguistics theory (Frank, 2015; Sharifian, 2015).
Through variation in language use, differential cultural schema - acquired in social-class contexts - are
heterogeneously distributed within and across social class fractions. Bourdieu’s (1984) moderat ing variable
symbolic capital is used to advance an understanding of the role of vocabulary and grammat ical co mp lexity in
inter and intra-group cognitive schema used to create social hierarchy in daily aesthetic consumption. By
engaging 307 part icipants in a quasi-experiment of mult i-sensory trials of everyday products (lemon squeezers),
an examination was made of how their language use reveals embodied knowledge of daily consumption practice.
The results indicate a general agreement among the participants about the categorization of mundane consumer
products according to a schema of functionality. However, as the participants’ volumes of symbolic cap ital
increased, their narratives changed and evidence of inter-group conceptual hierarchies appeared. A greater
tendency to categorize the stimuli according to their formal aspects emerged, and the participants with more
symbolic capital were o ften inclined to draw upon language and metaphor derived from decorative, ethical and
artistic schema. Ho wever, the results of the study suggest that cognitive schema are not applied uniformly,
rather are contingent on whether the evaluations being made are positive or negative. In part icular, the majority
of the participants were inclined towards simp ler criteria relat ing to only to functionality when making negative
evaluations. Thus, the logic of everyday aesthetic practice appears to be contingent on contextualized interaction,
and schemas are not applied in a strictly rational fashion.
Keywords: everyday aesthetics, symbolic capital, linguistic complexity, cognitive schema
73
References
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press.
Frank, R. M. (2015). A future agenda for reseach on language and culture . In F. Sharifian (Ed.), The Routlege
Handbook of Language and Culture. New York: Routledge.
Saito, Y. (2007). Everyday Aesthetics. New York: Oxford University Press Inc.
Sharifian, F. (2015). Cultural Linguistics. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and
Culture. New York: Routledge.
Stereotyped cultural idioms in context of use
Abir Bouzemmi & Mar Balboa
Universidad Complutense de Madrid & University of Sussex
Cultural Linguistics, a mu ltidiscip linary filed of research that explores relations between language and cultural
conceptualizat ions, is employed in this study as both theoretical and analytical framework. The paper presents
findings fro m a Co mputer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis (CAQDA) using NVivo Soft ware as a to ol to
analyse the contextual use of two stereotyped idio matic exp ressions: All Greek to me and Go Dutch. In order to
do so, WebCorp Live, a large-scale search engine that allows access to the Web as a corpus is used as our data
pool. A total of 71 online news articles were retrieved for observation. By bringing textual context to the
aforementioned idio mat ic exp ressions, the NVivo project asks: 1) Ho w does context influence the use of
stereotyped nation idio ms? 2) Are there any references to the nation and/ or the national stereotype in their
context of use? Results show that: (1) the use of these expressions in context can be interpreted in both idio matic
and non idio matic sense; 2) there is a correlation between the idio mat ic or non id io matic uses, and the reference
to the nation of the idiom in the text; 3) In addition to their use in text, it is assumed that both All Greek to me
and Go Dutch cannot be divorced fro m their cultural context. Both expressions are semantically non compositional and institutionalized; therefore they encode cognitive and cultural grounded conceptualizations of
other ethnic stereotypes.
Keywords: cultural stereotypes, ethnic, nation idio ms, context of use, cognition, conceptualizat ion, language,
cultural linguistics
References
Fetzer, A. 2004. Recontextualizing Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Holland, D.C. and N. Quinn (eds). 1987. Cultural Models in Language and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Nayak, N. P., &: Gibbs, R. Jr. (1990) 'Conceptual knowledge in the interpretation of id io ms',Jornnal
of&perimental Psychology: Gerural, 19(3): 315-330
Palmer, G.B. 1996. Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Sharifian, F. (ed.), 2015. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture. Routledge Oxon & NY
Turner, J. C. (1982). To wards a cognitive redefinit ion of the social group. In H. Tajfel (ed.), Social Identity and
Intergroup Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
74
Expandi ng the scope of Cultural Linguistics: Taking parrots seriously
R. M. Frank
University of Iowa
In this chapter I will show how the scope of Cultural Linguistics can be expanded to include the study of
interspecies communication and specifically the cognitive abilit ies and cultural world of home -raised African
Grey parrots. The paper introduces a topic that until now has received little attention fro m those working in
Cultural Linguistics. So I begin by giving a brief overview o f the research that has been done on the lin guistic
abilities of parrots, the avian order of Psittaciformes, but concentrating on a particular parrot species known as
Red-Tailed Greys or mo re co mmon ly as African Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus). These birds are
extraordinarily smart and long-lived—up to 60 years in captivity—as well as being unquestionably the most
proficient at accurately modeling human speech.
The chapter has two interrelated objectives. The first is to show how the field of Cultural Linguistics can benefit
by enlarging its scope to include the study of the communication skills of non -human animals, specifically,
parrot speech as represented by the performance of ho me-raised African Greys. The second objective is to
demonstrate how the tools and concerns of Cultural Linguistics are especially appropriate for this task, namely,
that of ‘taking parrots seriously.’ Whereas animal behaviorists and those working in areas of language evolution
are concerned with replicable experiments, testing and quantificat ion of results, when we approach the available
data from the perspective of Cultural Linguistics, we beco me concerned with the cognitive aspects of parrot
speech, how they process their interactions with humans, how over time they build up their own cu ltural
conceptualizat ions, ones that allow them to understand what is taking p lace around them, establish and maintain
their relat ionships with their human caretaker. Indeed, because of their genetic disposition to monogamous life long relationships in the wild, a ho me-raised African Grey forms a strong bond with its human caretaker,
relating to the person as if she were a substitute mate, as well as interacting verbally with other b irds and
animals who might be living in the same house.
After the initial introduction, the body of the chapter is div ided into four main parts. The first part examines the
factors that have held back the study of the cognitive ab ilit ies of these birds and the ways that they make use of
human language. The second section discusses the cognitive abilit ies of Greys and the imp lications that these
abilities have for their b ilingual skills, that is, the way that they switch back and forth fro m their native L1 code
to their L2 co mmunicat ive code, albeit a limited one but nonetheless one what they have learned from their
human caretakers. The p ioneering research of Pepperberg will be d iscussed and the basis of her conclusion –
which is accepted by animal behaviorists —that the cognitive abilities of Greys allow them to b e ranked as
having reasoning skills equivalent to those of a two to three-year old hu man child and in so me specific areas, the
tests have shown that a Grey is capable of performing at the level of a five-year old.
In the third section the similarities and differences in the neurobiological make-up of Greys and other ‘vocal
learners’ will be the focus, including the recent discovery that both parrots and humans spontaneously entrain to
the beat whereas primates do not. Parrots regularly display evidence of rhythmic entrain ment, i.e., the ability to
sync the movements of their body with an external source of sound or music. Even more remarkably it will be
demonstrated that they do this when the source of the music is in their heads: you can see that they are thinking,
silently, about a melody and then they start bobbing to the rhythm they themselves have invented for their own
entertainment. Similarly, the hu man can key them with the words ‘dance’, ‘sing’ or ‘music’ and they will begin
bobbing away, clearly having associated the words, generically, with the sound and rhythm of music. The
mystery behind all of this is explored: whether the musical abilities of parrots and humans have anything to do
with the cognitive wiring of their brains and hence with the evo lutionary path taken by humans who did develop
complex linguistic codes absent from parrots in the wild.
The discussion of rhythmic entrain ment shows that investigators working in the field of co mparative animal
behavior are interested in a broad category of creatures called ‘vocal learners’ (o r ‘vocal mimicking species’)
and with the exception of Pepperberg, have not had the opportunity to be in close, daily contact with a Grey, that
is, interacting personally with the b ird, much less on a daily basis with a ho me -raised Grey who has been
exposed to a language-rich environ ment, one in which it is often treated and talked to as if it were another
member of the family. As a result, there has been little d iscussion of the ‘culture’ or ‘world’ of these birds, how
they view and interact with their hu man ‘mate’, what topics they bring up repeatedly, that is, the themes—
cultural schemas or semantic do mains —that are of particular interest or concern to them and about which they
75
acquire a certain fluency, using learned routines and original ones. These include Greys talking about ‘food and
eating’, co mmenting on controlling unwanted behaviors, such as ‘biting’, ‘squawking’ and ‘pooping’, as well as
making up their own vocabulary items, creating co mpound words they have never heard spoken and inventing
mini-dramas in which they and/or their human caretaker take part. Other more linguistically -oriented areas of
interest are discussed, including the ways that Greys manipulate pronouns, construct verbs and create
collocations, e.g., adjective-noun constructions. A related topic that will be treated has to do with the way that
certain words are used by Greys to create cover terms, categories or prototypes that can sometimes strike us as
quite mundane, but at others as quite unusual and unexpected. At the same t ime these cover terms —these
semantic generalizations—can often reveal to us or at least suggest to us the underlying cognitive processes that
led to the creation of the category and hence the cultural conceptualizations that stand behind these
generalizations.
In the final section I turn to the way that a vast Internet dat a base has been integrated into the study, a corpus
consisting of literally hundreds of videos featuring African Greys found on YouTube. These have been utilized
in this chapter to provide an easily accessible time -coded audial-visual archive. The treatment given to these
videos is exp lained and the process used in transcribing and analyzing their content is discussed. This section
includes a detailed analysis of three transcriptions showing among other things, the sense of humor that these
birds display on many occasions in their verbal interactions with humans and other animals in the household. It
will end with a discussion of a sound clip of an interaction between a four year old Grey called N’Kisi who is
the most verbally advanced Grey identified so far. An analysis of the transcript of that audio recording will serve
to demonstrate how a ho me-raised Grey can learn to interact in a meaningful way with its human mate, reacting
in ways that are fully comparable to those expected of young child.
References:
Audio recordings:
N’Kisi and Aimee Morgana: http://www.sheldrake.org/nkisi/nkisi1_text.html
Print references:
Chakraborty, M., Walløe, S., Nedergaard, S., Fridel, E. E., Dabelsteen, T., Pakkenberg, B., . . . Jarvis, E. D.
(2015).
Core and shell song systems unique to the parrot brain.
PloS ONE.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.p one.0118496.
Colbert-White, E. N., Covington, M. A., & Fragaszy, D. M. (2011). Social context influences the vocalizations
of a ho me-raised African Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus erithacus). Journal of Comparative Psychology,
125(2), 175-184.
Craige, B. J. (2010). Conversations with Cosmo: At Home with an African Grey Parrot . Santa Fe: Sherman
Asher Publishing.
Farabaugh, S.M., Lin zenbold, A., and Dooling, R.J. (1994). Vocal p lasticity in budgerigars (Melopsittacus
undulatus): Ev idence for social factors in the learning of contact calls. Journal of Co mparat ive Psychology,
108, 81–92.
Fitch, W. T. (2000). The evolution of speech: A comparative review. Trends in Cognitive Science, 4, 258-267.
Fitch, W. T. (2006). On the biology and evolution of music: A co mparative perspective. Music Perception, 24,
85-88.
Fitch, W. T. (2009). Biology of music: Another one bites the dust. Current Biology, 19(10), R403-R404.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2009.1004.1004.
Janik, V. M., & Slater, P. J. B. (1997). Vocal learning in mammals. Advances in the Study of Behavior, 26, 5999.
Nottebohm, F. (1975). A zoologist's view of some language phenome na with particular emphasis on vocal
learning. In E. H. Lenneberg & E. Lenneberg (Eds.), Foundations of Language Development: A
Multidisciplinary Approach (pp. 61-104). New York/San Francisco/London: Academic Press, Inc.
76
Patel, A. D. (2009). Music and the brain: Three links to language. In S. Hallam, I. Cross, & M. Thaut (Eds.),
The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology (pp. 208-216). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Patel, A. D. (2014). The evolutionary biology of musical rhythm: Was Darwin wrong? PLoS Biology, 12(3),
e1001821.
Patel, A. D., Iversen, J. R., Breg man, M. R., & Schultz, I. (2009). Studying sychronization to a musical beat in
nonhuman animals. Annuals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1169, 459-469.
Patel, A. D., Iversen, J. R., Breg man, M. R., & Schultz, I. (2009a). Avian and hu man movement to music: Two
further parallels. Communicative and Integrative Biology 2(6), 1-4.
Patel, A. D., Iversen, J. R., Breg man, M. R., & Schult z, I. (2009b). Experimental evidence for sychronizat ion to
a musical beat in a nonhuman animal. Current Biology, 19, 827-830.
Pepperberg, I. M . (1990a). Cognition in an African Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus): Further ev idence for
comprehension of categories and labels. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 104, 42-51.
Pepperberg, I. M . (1990b). Referential mapping: Attaching functional significance to the innovative utterances
of an African Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus). Applied Psycholinguistics, 11(1), 23-44.
Pepperberg, I. M. (2000). The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots: Harvard.
Pepperberg, I. M. (2011a). Avian cognition and social interaction: Fifty years of advances. Interaction Studies,
12(2), 195-207.
Pepperberg, I. M. (2011b). Evolution of co mmun ication and language: Insights from parrots and songbirds. In
M. Tallerman & K. Gibson (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution (pp. 109-119). Oxford :
Oxford University Press.
Schackner, A., Brady, T. F., Pepperberg, I. M., & Hauser, M. D. (2009). Spontaneous motor entrainment to
music
in
mu ltip le
vocal
mimicking
species.
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831-836.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982209009154
77

Table of Contents - The First International Conference of Cultural

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