It is widely assumed that there is a natural, prelinguistic conceptual domain of time whose linguistic organization is universally structured via metaphoric mapping from the lexicon and grammar of space and motion. We challenge this assumption on the basis of our research on the Amondawa (Tupi Kawahib) language and culture of Amazonia. Using both observational data and structured field linguistic tasks, we show that linguistic space-time mapping at the constructional level is not a feature of the Amondawa language, and is not employed by Amondawa speakers (when speaking Amondawa). Amondawa does not recruit its extensive inventory of terms and constructions for spatial motion and location to express temporal relations. Amondawa also lacks a numerically based calendric system. To account for these data, and in opposition to a Universal Space-Time Mapping Hypothesis, we propose a Mediated Mapping Hypothesis, which accords causal importance to the numerical and artefact-based construction of time-based (as opposed to event-based) time interval systems.
Cognitive linguists have long been interested in analogies people habitually use in thinking and speaking, but little is known about the nature of the relationship between verbal behaviour and such analogical schemas. This article proposes that discourse metaphors are an important link between the two. Discourse metaphors are verbal expressions containing a construction that evokes an analogy negotiated in the discourse community. Results of an analysis of metaphors in a corpus of newspaper texts support the prediction that regular analogies are form-specific, i.e. bound to particular lexical items. Implications of these results for assumptions about the generality of habitual analogies are discussed.
The present study demonstrates that language-specific grammatical resources can afford speakers language-specific ways of organising cooperative practical action. On the basis of video-recordings of Polish families in their homes, we describe action affordances of the Polish impersonal modal declarative construction trzeba x ('one needs to x') in the accomplishment of everyday domestic activities, such as cutting bread, bringing recalcitrant children back to the dinner table, or making phone calls. Trzeba x-turns in first position are regularly chosen by speakers to point to a possible action as an evident necessity for the furthering of some broader ongoing activity. Such turns in first position provide an environment in which recipients can enact shared responsibility by actively involving themselves in the relevant action. Treating the necessity as not restricted to any particular subject, aligning responsive actions are oriented to when the relevant action will be done, not whether it will be done. We show that such sequences are absent from English interactions by analysing (a) grammatically similar turn formats in English interaction ("we need to x", "the x needs to y"), and (b) similar interactive environments in English interactions. We discuss the potential of this research to point to a new avenue for researchers interested in the relationship between language diversity and diversity in human action and cognition. Acknowledgments:We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. We also want to thank Alan Costall, Alessandra Fasulo, Giovanni Rossi, Matylda Weidner, and Katarzyna Zinken for their feedback on earlier versions of the paper.
the role that metaphors play in the ideological interpretation of events. Research in cognitive linguistics has brought rich evidence of the enormous influence that body experience has on (metaphorical) conceptualization. However, the role of the cultural net in which an individual is embedded has mostly been neglected. As a step towards the integration of cultural experience into the experientialist framework in cognitive metaphor research I propose to differentiate two ideal types of motivation for metaphor: correlation and intertextuality. Evidence for the important role that intertextual metaphors play in ideological discourse comes from an analysis of Polish newspaper discourse on the tenth anniversary of the end of communism. K E Y W O R D S : cognitive linguistics, ideology, imagination, metaphor, political discourseThe Cognitive Theory of Metaphor Johnson, 1980, 1999) rests on an experientialist framework. Our minds are regarded as working the way they do because of the ways our bodies interact with, that is experience, the world. Though it has been stated that experience should not be understood as individual body experience alone, but also as a sociocultural experience (Johnson, 1992;Lakoff, 1987), the subject's cultural situatedness has hardly been modeled by cognitive linguists. Analyses of public discourse, however, show that often metaphors that seem quite different from the classic examples of the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor play the most important part in negotiating and popularizing an understanding of poorly known phenomena. This has been shown in analyses of metaphors in public discourses such as discourse on political topics (e.g.
This paper introduces a method for computer-based analyses of metaphor in discourse, combining quantitative and qualitative elements. This method is illustrated with data from research on German newspaper discourse concerning the ongoing system transformations of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Methodological aspects of the research procedure are discussed and it is argued that quantitative elements can enhance comparability in cross-cultural and cross-lingual research. Some basic findings of the research are presented. The peculiarities of the German Wende discourse Á / especially the salience of a passive perspective on the ongoing political and social changes Á / are outlined.
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