scholarly journals Construing the scene in Julian of Norwich’s “A Revelation of Love”

2022 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 62-74
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Stadnik ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
Language User ◽  
New Research ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Julian of Norwich’s “A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman” and “A Revelation of Love” are texts which present two accounts (short and long, respectively) of her mystical experience. Julian was an anchoress whose work is known for its vivid imagery and bodily resonance it provokes in the reader. New research on Julian’s work has focused scholarly attention on the significance of embodied cognition for the exploration of the mystic’s writing. The present paper identifies a gap in this research in that cognitive-linguistic aspects of the anchoress’s text are still largely ignored. The article discusses the connection between perception and cognition and its potential role in structuring Julian’s longer text, “A Revelation of Love”. The Cognitive Linguistic analysis focuses on selected excerpts from the long version portraying scenes from Julian’s visions, where visualisation is particularly significant for meaning construction. Providing a link between recent findings from cognitive science and current cognitively-oriented studies of Julian’s texts, the paper draws on the concept of construal pertinent to the fact that the language user may conceive and present some conceptual content (an apprehended scene) in alternate ways. The Cognitive Linguistic investigation connects Julian’s work to the visual and material culture of her day, revealing how the mystic transforms the familiar imagery into vivid, dynamically unfolding images. It is concluded that cognitively-informed research is likely to shed new light onto long-standing issues in scholarship on Julian, particularly those that concern the interplay of language, culture and cognition.

Touchy-Feely History: The ‘Stuff’ of American Culture

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-18
Author(s):  
Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Research Perspectives ◽  
Economic Trends ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
New Research

This state of the field essay examines recent trends in American Cultural History, focusing on music, race and ethnicity, material culture, and the body. Expanding on key themes in articles featured in the special issue of Cultural History, the essay draws linkages to other important literatures. The essay argues for more a more serious consideration of the products within popular culture, less as a reflection of social or economic trends, rather for their own historical significance. While the essay examines some classic texts, more emphasis is on work published within the last decade. Here, interdisciplinary methods are stressed, as are new research perspectives developing by non-western historians.

scholarly journals American Wedding Albums: a Case Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marisa Catherina D’Agostino
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Main Section ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Popular Medium ◽  
Production Organization ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Wedding photography is an area of vernacular studies that receives surprisingly little scholarly attention. This thesis explores the material culture of wedding photography, with a specific focus on the analysis of the wedding album in terms of presentation and consumption by families from the 1950s to the 1980s. The main section of this thesis provides an examination of selected wedding album owners. This case study contains a collection of oral histories from seven individuals on their experiences with presenting and displaying their wedding photographs. The analysis provides qualitative research on the production, organization, and consumption of the wedding album as a popular medium for exhibiting wedding photographs. In addition, this thesis offers some social and historical context on the development of the wedding album and wedding photography.

scholarly journals Elitism and Status: Reassessing Settlement Hierarchy in Early Medieval England

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-42
Author(s):  
Hana Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Hierarchical Model ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
The Status ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Scholarly Attention

The complexities of identifying and understanding settlement hierarchy in early medieval England (c. 5th–11th centuries) is the focus of much debate. Within this field of enquiry, settlement arrangements, architecture, landholding patterns and material culture are commonly used in the identification of a range of settlement types. These include royal complexes, monastic institutions, towns and trading/production sites such as emporia. This same evidence is also used to interpret the status and role of these sites in early medieval England. This paper advances the current understanding of settlement hierarchy through an assessment of rural settlements and their material culture. These settlements have received comparatively less scholarly attention than higher profile early medieval sites such as elite, ecclesiastical and urban centres, yet represent a rich source of information. Through analysis of material culture as evidence for the consumption, economic and social functions which characterise rural settlements, a picture of what were inherently complex communities is presented. The findings further support the need to reassess settlement hierarchy in early medieval England and a new hierarchical model is proposed.  

Creating metaphor in context

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltán Kövecses
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Systems Change ◽  
Conceptual System ◽  
Major Goal ◽  
Conceptual Systems ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
Cognitive Operations ◽  
Universal Nature

The issue of context has been, in the main, neglected in cognitive linguistic and much other work on how conceptual systems change and vary. In most recent work on conceptual systems, the issues of embodied cognition and the universal nature of cognitive operations have been emphasized. By contrast, my major goal in this paper is to attempt to characterize some of the contextual factors that are involved in shaping the conceptual system. My focus will be on metaphorical concepts, as well as on the interaction between metaphorical aspects of the conceptual system and contextual factors. I also suggest that the different conceptual factors do not mechanically and automatically lead to differences in the metaphorical conceptualization of a concept. Instead, they can affect non-metaphorical aspects of concepts.

Ottoman archaeology in Greece: a new research field

2019 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 145-156
Author(s):  
Elias Kolovos ◽  
Athanasios Vionis
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Ottoman History ◽  
New Research ◽  
Of Greece

Some areas of the territory of present-day Greece were under Ottoman rule for more than 500 years. To date, the study of this period has largely been neglected, with academic research generally focused on Prehistoric and ancient Greece. However, over the course of the last 20 years, there have been noteworthy developments in the study of the Ottoman history and archaeology of Greece. This paper has two aims: (1) to summarize research conducted in the fields of Ottoman archaeology and material culture in Greece, focusing on demographics, settlement layouts and ceramics, particularly table wares; and (2) to present recent efforts to record and protect the Ottoman monuments of Greece.

Co-forming real space blends in tactile signed language dialogues

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Mesch ◽  
Eli Raanes ◽  
Lindsay Ferrara
Keyword(s):  
Body Part ◽  
Real Space ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
The Other ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Linguistic Study ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Semiotic Perspective

AbstractThis article reports on a linguistic study examining the use of real space blending in the tactile signed languages of Norwegian and Swedish signers who are both deaf and blind. Tactile signed languages are typically produced by interactants in contact with each other’s hands while signing. Of particular interest to this study are utterances which not only consist of the signer producing signs with his or her own hands (or other body parts), but which also recruit the other interactant’s hands (or another body part). These utterances, although perhaps less frequent, are co-constructed, in a very real sense, and they illustrate meaning construction during emerging, embodied discourse. Here, we analyze several examples of these types of utterances from a cognitive linguistic and cognitive semiotic perspective to explore how interactants prompt meaning construction through touch and the involvement of each other’s bodies during a particular type of co-regulation.

The situatedness of meaning construction in Wisława Szymborska’s “Cat in an Empty Apartment”

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-40
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Stadnik
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Cultural Milieu ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Social And Cultural Factors

AbstractSo far the cognitively-oriented study of literature has largely missed out on the cognitive conception of situatedness, which holds that human mental activity should be seen through the lens of its grounding in the physical, social and cultural milieu of the individual. Accordingly, the article shows the value of this approach in a Cognitive Linguistic analysis of Wisława Szymborska’s poem “Cat in an Empty Apartment”, setting out the ways in which situatedness underlies dynamic meaning construction in the production and reception of the work, giving rise to the singularity (Attridge 2004. The singularity of literature. London-New York: Routledge) of the poem. The paper concludes that situatedness can illuminate how the interplay of cognitive, linguistic, social and cultural factors might be brought to bear on the singularity of a literary work.

Anarchy: War and Status in 12th-Century Landscapes of Conflict

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Creighton ◽  
Duncan Wright
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Stephen King ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
New Research ◽  
Material Record

The turbulent reign of Stephen, King of England (1135–54), has been styled since the late 19th century as 'the Anarchy’, although the extent of political breakdown during the period has since been vigorously debated. Rebellion and bitter civil war characterised Stephen’s protracted struggle with rival claimant Empress Matilda and her Angevin supporters over ‘nineteen long winters’ when, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘Christ and his Saints slept’. Drawing on new research and fieldwork, this innovative volume offers the first ever overview and synthesis of the archaeological and material record for this controversial period. It presents and interrogates many different types of evidence at a variety of scales, ranging from nationwide mapping of historical events through to conflict landscapes of battlefields and sieges. The volume considers archaeological sites such as castles and other fortifications, churches, monasteries, bishops’ palaces and urban and rural settlements, alongside material culture including coins, pottery, seals and arms and armour. This approach not only augments but also challenges historical narratives, questioning the ‘real’ impact of Stephen’s troubled reign on society, settlement, church and the landscape, and opens up new perspectives on the conduct of Anglo-Norman warfare.

The Era of Electoral Authoritarianism

2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yonatan L. Morse
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Development ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Chief Executives ◽  
Electoral Authoritarianism ◽  
New Research ◽  
National Legislatures ◽  
Scholarly Attention

In recent years scholarly attention has shifted from the study of democratization to the phenomenon of electoral authoritarianism. In these regimes, regular elections are held for national legislatures and chief executives, yet they fail to live up to democratic standards of freedom and fairness. A range of new research has investigated these regimes and especially the capacity of elections to either dislodge or reinvigorate authoritarian incumbents. This article reviews some of the current work on electoral authoritarianism and attempts to find ways to achieve synthesis and better theoretical development. It notes the need for greater conceptual consensus, attention to context, and better evaluation of what electoral competiveness means under authoritarian conditions. It argues that the next stage for research should be smaller and contextual comparison that can allow for greater attention to concepts, while allowing for strong midrange theory.

On defining image schemas

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 510-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEAN M. MANDLER ◽  
CRISTÓBAL PAGÁN CÁNOVAS
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Information ◽  
Cognitive Structure ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
Complete Understanding ◽  
Developmental Origin ◽  
Image Schemas ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
Theoretical Paper

abstractIn this theoretical paper we propose three different kinds of cognitive structure that have not been differentiated in the psychological and cognitive linguistic literatures. They are spatial primitives, image schemas, and schematic integrations. Spatial primitives are the first conceptual building blocks formed in infancy, image schemas are simple spatial stories built from them, and schematic integrations use the first two types to build concepts that include non-spatial elements, such as force and emotion. These different kinds of structure have all come under the umbrella term of ‘image schemas’. However, they differ in their content, developmental origin, imageability, and role in meaning construction in language and in thought. The present paper indicates how preverbal conceptualization needs to be taken into account for a complete understanding of image schemas and their uses. It provides examples to illustrate this influence, the most important of these being the primacy of imageable spatial information.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document