Metaphor, Embodied Realism, and Sacramental Truth

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-57
Author(s):  
Stephen R. Shaver
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Prototype Theory ◽  
Conceptual Blending ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Material World ◽  
Embodied Realism ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
Objective Observer ◽  
Independent Reality

This chapter and the next provide an introduction to the field of cognitive linguistics. This chapter focuses on core concepts including conceptual metaphor, metonymy, polysemy, and prototype theory (conceptual blending is explored in Chapter 3). Based on this overview, the author argues that language “means” not through referential correspondence to objective, observer-independent reality but by prompting for embodied simulation on the part of hearers and readers. Language, then, is true insofar as these simulations are apt to reality as experienced by embodied human beings. The chapter proposes that this epistemological perspective of “embodied realism” is congruent with the critical realism endorsed by many recent theologians and with a sacramental worldview in which the material world can be the arena for God’s self-communication.

The Property Species

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart J. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Full Account ◽  
Symbolic Thought ◽  
Core Property ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

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.

scholarly journals The DIVIDED SELF metaphor: A cognitive-linguistic study of two poems by Nabokov

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Mª Asunción Barreras Gómez
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
The Self ◽  
Linguistic Study ◽  
Divided Self ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
Embodied Realism ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Shed Light

<p>This paper will approach two of Nabokov’s poems from the perspective of embodied realism in Cognitive Linguistics. We will shed light on the reasons why we believe that Nabokov makes use of the DIVIDED SELF metaphor in his poetry. In the analysis of the poems we will explain how the Subject is understood in the author’s life in exile whereas the Self is understood in the author’s feelings of anguish and longing for his Russian past. Finally, we will also explain how Nabokov’s use of the DIVIDED SELF metaphor thematically structures both poems.</p>

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
pp. 309-318
Author(s):  
Leora Auslander ◽  
Tara Zahra
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Material World

This epilogue argues that war is a profound reminder of human materiality and fragility. Conflicts are made and decided through the interaction of human beings and the material world. The inquiries started in this book offer the foundation for a historically informed investigation of this interaction in the new forms of warfare in an age in which the virtual often seems to have more presence than the material. Indeed, new technologies have radically changed the materiality of war. Rather than physically encountering the enemy on the battlefield or entering homes as they invade enemy territory, for example, many soldiers are now sitting thousands of miles away launching missiles or operating drones that do first the reconnaissance and then the killing for them.

Critical Realism as an Underlying Philosophy for IS Research

2005 ◽  
pp. 606-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip J. Dobson
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Is Research ◽  
Classical Realism ◽  
Causal Laws ◽  
Realist Perspective ◽  
Stable Structures ◽  
Formal Constraints

Many recent articles from within the information systems (IS) arena present an old-fashioned view of realism. For example, Iivari, Hirschheim, and Klein (1998) saw classical realism as seeing “data as describing objective facts, information systems as consisting of technological structures (‘hardware’), human beings as subject to causal laws (determinism), and organizations as relatively stable structures” (p. 172). Wilson (1999) saw the realist perspective as relying on “the availability of a set of formal constraints which have the characteristics of abstractness, generality, invariance across contexts.”

scholarly journals Transdisciplinarni pristup u razmatranju odnosa znanost — teologija

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-412
Author(s):  
Krešimir Cerovac
Keyword(s):  
Round Table ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Transdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Material World ◽  
Theology And Science ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Modes Of Thought

There are many reasons why a partnership dialogue between theology (religion) and the natural sciences is needed. However, first and foremost this must be a conversation between one human being and another regarding the most important of human interests. The most effective way to approach complex issues and problems in the dialogue between theology and science is the transdisciplinary approach. Transdisciplinarity can solve prob lems which cannot be resolved by separate attempts. This approach can connect different modes of thought, that is, thought beginning with different points of view on the material world or religion. The transdisciplinary approach takes on the role of mediator, which demands at the “round table” that which unites human beings on a universal human level. This is a new, challenging and demanding approach which requires researchers to leave their own field of interest and strive to learn about other fields. The transdisciplinary approach, as “critical rationality” and a new way of thinking, opposed to classical and reductive rationalism, emphasizing objectivity, is based on controlled conflict–induced paradoxes. Transdisciplinarity creates a new quality — which is not an arithmetic sum of individual disciplines — and enables articulation, i.e. a link between two, at first glance, controversial disciplinary modes of thought.

Implied narratives of medical practice in learning-for-doing texts: a simulation semantics approach to rhetorical analysis

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Oakley
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Rhetorical Analysis ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Conceptual Blending ◽  
Semantic Approach ◽  
Conceptual Integration ◽  
Print Advertisements ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Simulation Semantics

The functional interdependence of word, image, narration, and reason is recognized as a fundamental condition of modern-day persuasion, yet a substantial gap still exists in our understanding of how static textual elements interact to generate dynamic, persuasive narratives. This article attempts to narrow that gap in understanding through the development of a simulation semantics approach to rhetorical analysis as applied to print advertisements in medical journals. Located within the broader field of cognitive linguistics, simulation semantics is a theory of linguistic meaning based on the hypothesis that language users run mental simulations of perceptual and motor content of experiences which distribute inferences from these simulations during language comprehension and production. Using the perspectives and methods of conceptual blending, a programmatic model of meaning construction developed by Fauconnier and Turner (2002) and elaborated by many associates (e.g. Brandt and Brandt, 2002; Coulson and Oakley, 2000), the article attempts to show how a simulation semantic approach can lead to cognitively plausible explanations of how persuasion works in a genre of print advertisements aimed at physicians and medical practitioners I call learning-for-doing. In addition, I seek to further refine conceptual blending theory as an interpretive framework by arguing for the need to incorporate the notion of a grounding space as well as the need to distinguish between conceptual blending and conceptual integration.

Historical dictionary definitions revisited from a prototype theoretical standpoint

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Molina
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Prototype Theory ◽  
Cognitive Constraints ◽  
Theoretical Standpoint ◽  
Dictionary Definitions

Historical dictionaries have not yet incorporated prototype theoretical principles, from which singular enhancements might be obtained in historical lexicography. Revisiting diachronic definitions from a prototypical standpoint underlines how salience-based definitions comply more accurately with the cognitive constraints of the human mind. Upon this realization, the paper presents a template for reorganizing historical definitions according to the principles of prototype theory. The resulting definitions depict the semasiological profile of terms in a more transparent way while stressing the mutual interface between linguistic and extralinguistic data and between synchrony and diachrony. At the same time, the paper shows how the theoretical tenets of cognitive linguistics can be put to use in the field of applied linguistics, viz. lexicography.

Nature

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bellamy Foster
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Material World ◽  
Complex Word ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
The World ◽  
Raymond Williams

This article is adapted from John Bellamy Foster, "Nature," in Kelly Fritsch, Clare O'Connor, and AK Thompson, ed., Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 279-86, http://akpress.org/keywords-for-radicals.html."Nature," wrote Raymond Williams in Keywords, "is perhaps the most complex word in the language." It is derived from the Latin natura, as exemplified by Lucretius's great didactic poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) from the first century BCE. The word "nature" has three primary, interrelated meanings: (1) the intrinsic properties or essence of things or processes; (2) an inherent force that directs or determines the world; and (3) the material world or universe, the object of our sense perceptions—both in its entirety and variously understood as including or excluding God, spirit, mind, human beings, society, history, culture, etc.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

scholarly journals Evolution of Language from the Perspective of Historical Cognitive Linguistics—Connotations of Chinese “Dog” and English “Dog”

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 1517
Author(s):  
Yue Zhou ◽  
Qi’ang Liu
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Folk Custom ◽  
The World ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
Chinese And English

Language, as part of culture, is the most essential communicative tool and the main expression of human beings. Like all forms of life, it goes through the process of birth, development, decay, and continuity rather than being static. Chinese and English, occupying prominent positions in the world, exactly have different evolution which emerges in words, phonemes, grammar, syntax and so on. The study of evolution of language has become one of the hottest topics that experts and scholars attach great importance to. This thesis collects traditional and modern connotations of Chinese “dog” and English “dog” by referring to authoritative dictionaries and other relevant resources. From the aspects of formation of civilization, folk custom, myth and legend as well as value, it analyses traditional and modern connotations of Chinese “dog” and English “dog”. This thesis verifies that evolution of different languages has their respective characteristics and features.

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