PRAGMATIC MEANING AND COGNITION.Sabine S. A. Marmaridou. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2000. Pp. xii + 322. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

2001 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 567-568
Author(s):  
Bruce Anderson

Pragmatic meaning and cognition provides an analysis of pragmatic meaning that is grounded in general cognitive linguistics. It makes use of the specific framework of “experiential realism” as put forth in the works of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, which views language as a representation of reality as it is perceived and experienced by human beings. As such, experiential realism stands in contradistinction to an objectivist framework in which language is a symbolic representation of objectively existing reality. Marmaridou's overarching goal is to demonstrate how sociocultural aspects of pragmatic meaning are integrated into cognitive structure rather than being external to it.

Author(s):  
Gillian Knoll

This section argues that Lyly’s and Shakespeare’s characters process and experience eros through the primary metaphor of motion. These introductory pages explore the philosophical and conceptual underpinnings of this metaphor through the example of Shakespeare’s Angelo in Measure for Measure. Drawing from the work of cognitive linguistics George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, and Zoltan Kövecses, this section explores the broad metaphorical structures that shape Angelo’s erotic experience as both a passion and an action. Things happen within Angelo well before he ‘acts out’ his sexual pursuit of the novitiate Isabella. The remainder of this section investigates the relationship between erotic potentiality and actuality, or entelechy, in Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics. In Aristotle’s writings, as in Shakespeare’s play, the boundary between potency and actuality is fluid rather than fixed. As a result, Angelo’s metaphors dramatize the capacity of erotic potentiality to create drama. For him, as for so many of Lyly’s and Shakespeare’s characters, desire is itself a frenzied action.


2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-24
Author(s):  
Phil King

Feeling down or in a tight spot? How do we know what someone means when they tell us how they feel? How could we go further and explain how emotions are understood across cultures? This article looks at three approaches—the use of physiology, of key words, and of metaphors. This is followed by a demonstration of the insights from the metaphorical approach as applied to Anglo emotions. Applying this metaphorical approach to biblical Hebrew (where there is no access to native speakers) is much more difficult than to a living language. However, application of the Cognitive Linguistics of George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Raymond Gibbs, John Taylor and others allows the construction of a methodology to give evidence for what emotions the Hebrew authors felt. This methodology is applied to Hebrew descriptions of distress to show how such emotions are conceptualised. The article also explains how this methodology can be applied more widely, to evaluate others’ claims about how the ancient Israelites thought and felt. Finally, some implications are given in the areas of Hebrew exegesis, cultural anthropology, and for the translation of “emotional” texts.


2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Golan Gur

Studies by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in the field of cognitive linguistics give rise to a theory of meaning that bestows a central role on metaphorical thinking and the body. This essay explores the ramifications of physical embodiment on Jean-Philippe Rameau’s conceptualization of tonal harmony. My examination will show that Johnson’s theory of the bodily basis of metaphor is not sufficiently adequate to account for all the aspects of Rameau’s harmonic theory, and additional sources for metaphorical projection should be taken into account for its full rendering.


Author(s):  
Anita Maria Leopold

This article is a rereading of Friedrich Max Müller’s theory of the origin and growth of religion and mythology in the light of modern cognitive theories. The intention of this research is to draw attention to Max Müller’s linguistic and cognitive hypothesis of mythology and religion and compare it to modern cognitive theories presented by Mark Turner, Gilles Fauconnier, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. In the theory of Max Müller, notions such as ‘myth being a disease of language’ and ‘man’s propensity to religion’ originate from a certain ‘mental faculty’,  which reveals an ontologically distinct definition of religion. According to Max Müller, myth is the result of the defective attempt of early language to classify the surrounding world of man. These theories, which have been considered idiosyncratic and useless, appear more plausible in the light of current cognitive linguistics, and Max Müller’s intuitions are viewed in the light of these recent theories.


Author(s):  
Bart J. Wilson

What is property, and why does our species happen to have it? The Property Species explores how Homo sapiens acquires, perceives, and knows the custom of property, and why it might be relevant for understanding how property works in the twenty-first century. Arguing from some hard-to-dispute facts that neither the natural sciences nor the humanities—nor the social sciences squarely in the middle—are synthesizing a full account of property, this book offers a cross-disciplinary compromise that is sure to be controversial: All human beings and only human beings have property in things, and at its core, property rests on custom, not rights. Such an alternative to conventional thinking contends that the origins of property lie not in food, mates, territory, or land, but in the very human act of creating, with symbolic thought, something new that did not previously exist. Integrating cognitive linguistics with the philosophy of property and a fresh look at property disputes in the common law, this book makes the case that symbolic-thinking humans locate the meaning of property within a thing. The provocative implications are that property—not property rights—is an inherent fundamental principle of economics, and that legal realists and the bundle-of-sticks metaphor are wrong about the facts regarding property. Written by an economist who marvels at the natural history of humankind, the book is essential reading for experts and any reader who has wondered why people claim things as “Mine!,” and what that means for our humanity.


MANUSYA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-153
Author(s):  
Yao Siqi

《蛙》/ua55/ (frog) by the Nobel Prize winning Chinese author Mo Yan describes China’s changing its highly controversial one - child policy and system of forced abortions over the past half-century. Frog metaphors are omnipresent throughout the novel. The present study aims to investigate these metaphors within the framework of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and the “GREAT CHAIN OF BEING” system of George Lakoff and Mark Turner (1989) to deepen our understanding of their nature and manifestations. Zoltán Kövecses’s (2002) “HUMAN BEINGS ARE ANIMALS” and “ANIMALS ARE HUMAN BEINGS” were also considered as cognitive metaphorical models. Moreover, the viewpoint of “phonetic metaphor” initially proposed by Ivan Fónagy (1999) was also taken into account. Results were that in Mo Yan’s work, the frog plays an essential role in the conceptualizing conventional views of certain areas in China. The analysis demonstrates how a cognitive approach offers an effective way to explore the cognitive basis of the text’s view on the complex relationship between the basic human rights and the dilemmas of living in a repressive society. This paper also hopes to make a certain contribution to comprehending frog metaphors in terms of more clearly delineated concepts and ideology reflecting China’s real society of a one-child policy and its traditional counter - policy notion.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-231
Author(s):  
Anna A. Kuvychko

This study of modern media devoted to the problems of motherhood discourse is significant and relevant due to both the axiological nature of motherhood phenomenon and socio-cultural features of the existing (present day) media space. Problems of motherhood are of enduring importance. The variety of issues concerning motherhood raised in modern media indicate the relevance and importance of all manifestations of this phenomenon for contemporary society. The purpose of the present study is to identify and reveal the features of media discourse of motherhood in socio-political media (which is a product of cognitive activity of modern Russian society) through the category of interdiscursivity. The material for this research was obtained from media texts of Internet versions of Russian socio-political media Arguments and Facts, Izvestia, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Moskovsky Komsomolets, and Kommersant, published from 2001 to 2019. The research methodology includes content analysis of online publications, classification and systematization of the research material: media texts, media text studies and description of media discourse on motherhood in the form of a cognitive structure (concept sphere). The present study is the first attempt to interpret maternal media discourse through the category of interdiscursiveness, a fusion of various discourses. The author presents media discourse on motherhood in contemporary Russian socio-political media as a combination of institutional media discourses (political, economic, legal, medical, and religious), each manifesting its own aims and using own linguistic means of presenting information. This approach to describing media discourse emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of the study and indicates the relevance of its results for various fields of scientific knowledge, primarily journalism and cognitive linguistics.


M/C Journal ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulf Wilhelmsson

Editors' Preface When Ulf Wilhelmsson first contacted us about including his "Dialogue on Film and Philosophy" in the M/C 'chat' issue, we were initially taken aback. True, the notion of chat surely must include that of 'dialogue', but Wilhelmsson's idea, as he put it to us, was that of a Socratic dialogue about film. The dialogue "Film och Filosofi" already existed in Swedish, but he had done an initial rough translation of the dialogue on his Website. Since Wilhelmsson put this to us in the very early days of the submission period, we decided to have a look. Wilhelmsson had omitted to mention the fact that his dialogue was amusing as well as informative. Playing Socrates was ... Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino was not just discussing film, but he was moderating a hefty grab-bag of influential philosphers, film-makers, film-scholars and the odd Beatle (John Lennon). Furthermore, creeping in to many of the utterances in the discussion was Wilhelmsson's take on Tarantino's vernacular -- keep an eye out for "Bada boom bada boom, get it?" and "Oh Sartre. Dude, I would also like to provide a similar example". The philosphers sometimes also get a chance to break out of their linguistic bonds, such as Herakleit, who tells us that "War is the primogenitor of the whole shebang". Occasionally, Wilhelmsson lets his conversants get rowdy (St Thomas of Aquinas and Aristotle yell "Tabula Rasa!" in unison), put on accents (Michel Chion with French accent: "Merci merci. Je vous en pris that you are recognising tse sound"), be "dead sure of themselves" (George Lakoff and Mark Johnson; Noam Chomsky thanks us for our attention) and wander in and out of the dialogue's virtual space (at the end, Immanuel Kant returns to us after his daily walk around town). Unfortunately, due to its length, the dialogue can not be supplied in regular M/C 'bits', and so we have made it available as a downloadable Rich Text Format file. Felicity Meakins & E. Sean Rintel -- M/C 'chat' co-editors Download "Dialogue on Film and Philosophy" in Rich Text Format: Citation reference for this article MLA style: Ulf Wilhelmsson. "Dialogue on Film and Philosophy." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.4 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/dialogue.php>. Chicago style: Ulf Wilhelmsson, "Dialogue on Film and Philosophy," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 4 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/dialogue.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Ulf Wilhelmsson. (2000) Dialogue on Film and Philosophy. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(4). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/dialogue.php> ([your date of access]).


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-53
Author(s):  
Алла Гнатюк

This article is dedicated to the research of synonymous groups for the designation of doubt “Hesitate, Waver, Vacillate, Falter” and “Hesitation, Hesitancy” in contemporary English-language fictional discourse. Doubt is defined as an epistemic state in the cognitive world of individuals which provides motivation to undertake a further quest for information. The purpose of this work is to investigate how the set of semes identified in each component of the synonymous group is presented in the context of modern English fictional discourse. This research is directed towards verifying whether the use of all the components of the given synonymous groups is of equal importance in modern language discourse, as well as checking whether all the semes of “Hesitate, Waver, Vacillate, Falter” and “Hesitation, Hesitancy” are used correctly, based on the results of the componential analysis. The results of the research make it possible to form conclusions regarding the homogeneity or heterogeneity of contextual sematic representations in discourse, dependent upon the number of constituents which make up the synonymous group. References  Arthur, T. S. (2008). The Good Time Coming. Webster’s French Thesaurus Edition. SanDiego: Icon Classics.  Bisson, T. (2009). Fire on the Mountain. Oakland: PM Press. Clark, M. S. (2011). Don’t Take Any Wooden Nickels. Eugene: Harvest House Publishers. Crystal, D. (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press. Dijk, T. A. (1992). Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics and Pragmatics ofDiscourse. Longman. Evans, V. (2006). Cognitive Linguistics. Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress. Ortony, A. (1988). The Cognitive Structure of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress. Plutchik, R., Kellerman H. (1980). A General Psychoevolutionary Theory of Emotion. In:Emotion: Theory, Research and Experience. Vol. 1: Theories of Emotion, (pp. 3−31). NewYork: Academic Press. Thagard, P., Brun G., Doğuoğlu U., Kuenzle D. (2008). How Cognition Meets Emotion:Beliefs, Desires and Feelings as Neural Activity. In: Epistemology and Emotions, (pp.167−184). Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Sources Ely, A. (1862). Journal of Alfred Ely, A Prisoner of War in Richmond. New York:D. Appleton and Company. Madrid-Null, M. H. (2006). Navajo Heat. Victoria: Trafford Publishing. Matza, D. (1964). Delinquency and Drift. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Merriam-Webster, A. (1947). Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms. First Edition. ADictionary of Discriminated Synonyms with Antonyms and Analogous and ContrastedWords. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam Co. Publishers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-39
Author(s):  
Gregory E. Sterling

AbstractThis essay considers Philo of Alexandria’s metaphor in which he used the dual nature of embodied existence (body and soul) to argue that both literal and allegorical readings are legitimate. It examines the metaphor in the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CTM) developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson that argues that experience is the key to meaning. A metaphor occurs when we apply a pattern that we have observed in one setting (gestalt) to another. In this case, Philo has drawn on a Platonic/Stoic understanding of being human and applied it to contested hermeneutics within the Alexandrian Jewish community in an effort to maintain a sense of unity among two groups. The metaphorical experience is the recognition that Scripture is polyvalent in the same way that being human is.


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