Mental Worlds

2020 ◽  
pp. 265-287
Author(s):  
Patricia Crawford ◽  
Laura Gowing
Keyword(s):  
Mental Worlds

What can size tell us about abstract conceptual processing?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo Yao ◽  
Jack Edward Taylor ◽  
Sara C Sereno
Keyword(s):  
Congruency Effect ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Physical Size ◽  
Conceptual Processing ◽  
Task Effects ◽  
Mental Worlds ◽  
Size Congruency

Embodied cognition theories propose that abstract concepts can be embodied via metaphorical extensions from experiences of the physical or the mental worlds. In three experiments, we explored how semantic size (e.g., the magnitude, dimension or extent of an object or a concept) of abstract concepts is mentally represented. We show that abstract size is metaphorically associated with the physical size of concrete objects (Experiment 1) and can produce a semantic-font size congruency effect comparable to that demonstrated in concrete words during online lexical processing (Experiment 2). Critically, this size congruency effect is large when a word is judged by its size but significantly smaller when it is judged by its emotionality (Experiment 3). Our results suggest that semantic size of abstract concepts can be represented in physical size and that such experiences are variably engaged under different task demands. The present findings advocate flexible embodiment of semantic representations, with an emphasis on the role of task effects on conceptual processing.

Mental Worlds

2020 ◽  
pp. 265-287
Author(s):  
Patricia Crawford ◽  
Laura Gowing
Keyword(s):  
Mental Worlds

The ‘listen to characters thinking’ novel

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 399-430
Author(s):  
Esther Pascual ◽  
Emilia Królak
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Verbal Communication ◽  
Heterogeneous Database ◽  
Direct Speech ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Mental Worlds

Abstract This article explores direct speech involving fictive interaction, that is not functioning as an ordinary quote (e.g. “a look of ‘I told you so’”; Pascual, 2006, 2014). We specifically deal with its use as a literary strategy, in which different fictive speech constructions may serve to: (i) give access to characters’ mental worlds; (ii) show the relationships and non-verbal communication between characters; (iii) create new semantic categories; and (iv) produce such rhetorical effects as vividness or humor. Special emphasis is placed on a comparative analysis of the English fictive direct speech plus noun construction (e.g. “the ‘why bother?’ attitude”) with its translations into Polish and Spanish. We show that the construction proves a challenge to translators, since neither of these languages has an exact syntactic equivalent. This study is based on an extensive and heterogeneous database that includes 30 bestselling novels from different genres, published between 1935 and 2013.

THE LANGUAGE OF CHAOS

2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (03) ◽  
pp. 523-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELEONORA BILOTTA ◽  
PIETRO PANTANO
Keyword(s):  
Chaotic Systems ◽  
Relative Distribution ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Linguistic Unit ◽  
Mental Worlds ◽  
Linguistic Approach ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Selection Of

This work presents a linguistic approach to the understanding of chaos. The idea comes from our work on translating into sounds and music the complexity of chaotic systems, as with Chua's attractors. Therefore, working with sounds, we have used a standardization criterion in order to detect only some of the features of the richness of chaos. This method involves the selection of a limited number of sounds, which, in turn, allow for the creation of other components of the system at different levels of organization, as with natural language. Thus, phonetic, morphological, syntactic and semantic levels, linked by a grammar of an "artificial chaotic language" are defined. Each linguistic unit of the artificial language presents networks of interrelated phenomena since for each of them, it is possible to detect its path length, tracing a graph of the mutual relationships of the system's components. We found that there is interaction among the different levels of the chaotic language. Furthermore, some traits of the dynamics of the evolution of language in human infants are found in the main routes to chaos. In this emergent dynamics, mutations, struggle for the fittest, natural selection, and the relative distribution of linguistic entities in genetic landscapes are observed. On the basis of this, a possible bridge of connection between the physical and the mental worlds may be developed.

scholarly journals Poem by S. A. Yesenin “Black Man” in Polish translations and original poetry

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 213-226
Author(s):  
Grajewski Katsper
Keyword(s):  
Original Poetry ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Black Man ◽  
Sensory Layer ◽  
Poetic Texts ◽  
Mental Worlds

The paper examines Polish reception of the poem by Sergei Yesenin “The Black Man”. It attempts to intertextually analyze the work at the level of various kinds of analogies with Polish poetic texts, translated and original. The subject of comparative analysis is the content-formal aspects of translated texts. At the same time, the theory of translation, becoming a part of the comparative methodology, allows one to reach a broader level of generalizations, cultural projections, and socio-historical parallels. The study addresses a number of translations (W. Słobodnik, L. Podhorski-Okołów, W. Broniewski, A. Pomorski), illustrating the degree of freedom of interpretation of a literary text, proportion of congeniality as a special criterion of poetic correspondence. The very process of circulation, transfer, continuous cultural exchange of motives, lyrical situations between the texts of different national literatures and linguistic elements came to be an undeniably important aspect of artistry as a new quality of imagery and the birth of “explosive” poetic meanings. The issue of cultural transfer allows perceiving in individual translation versions mental worlds of the authors refracted in them, life-creating and biographical contexts, as well as historical collisions. In this case literary translation acts as a reliable tool, through which typological and comparative-historical comparisons of poetic worlds are carried out. Analysis of the micro-poetics of texts, motif structure and sensory layer appears more or less convincing on the way of studying reception and a broad intertextual field of selected works.

Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-413
Author(s):  
Lorraine Daston
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Single Structure ◽  
Mental Worlds ◽  
First Time

Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) is the bestselling and most-cited book ever published in the history and philosophy of science. Yet very few scholars in those fields would now endorse the book’s main claims, and many are critical of its central premise: namely, that major changes in different disciplines and diverse historical contexts conform to a single “structure.” Key Kuhnian concepts such as “paradigm shift” have become part of everyday language but all but disappeared from specialist publications. Nonetheless, the book still galvanizes readers encountering it for the first time—or even scholars who haven’t reread it since their own student days. Kuhn’s description of allencompassing and incommensurable mental worlds inhabited by scientists who practice in different paradigms resonates with the experience of readers who have experienced seismic changes in moral and political intuitions.

Context-dependent vantage points in literary narratives: A functional cognitive approach

Semiotica ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (203) ◽  
Author(s):  
Szilárd Tátrai
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Narrative Interpretation ◽  
Vantage Points ◽  
Mental Worlds

AbstractThis paper offers a model for the interpretation of stories as referential scenes in narrative discourses as joint attentional scenes (see Tomasello 1999). It is proposed that narrative interpretation crucially builds on the context-dependent processing of the physical, social, and mental worlds presented by the narrative, pertaining to spatio-temporal relations, interpersonal relations, and the mental states of participants, respectively (see Tátrai 2010a; cf. Verschueren 1999). Set against the background of social cognitive linguistics (cf. Sinha 1999; Croft 2009), the model has a strong pragmatic orientation with its focus on the role of two context-dependent vantage points in the generation of a discourse universe (see Sanders and Spooren 1997). The first is the referential center that forms the basis of the situative grounding of the narrative's spatio-temporal and interpersonal relations. Second, the subject of consciousness plays a fundamental role in providing access to the mental processes of participants. The paper demonstrates the model's applicability by a pragmatic analysis of “That Will Be Fine” by William Faulkner.

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