scholarly journals Cross-linguistic Analysis of Metonymic Conceptualization of Personality in English and Vietnamese Idioms Containing "Head", "Face" and “Eyes”

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 23-32
Author(s):  
Nguyen Ngoc Vu ◽  
Nguyen Thi Thu Van ◽  
Nguyen Thi Hong Lien

Research on idioms from the point of view of cognitive linguistics, in particular through conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy in cognitive semantics, has been steadily growing. While there have been quite a few investigations into the role of conceptual metaphors in meaning formation, conceptual metonymies are still left underexplored. This article examines the role of metonymic conceptualization of personality in English and Vietnamese idioms containing "head", "face" and “eyes” from the conceptual metonymy theory of cognitive linguistics. With analyzed examples from 713 English languages and 947 Vietnamese idioms of body parts collected, the article shows that metonymic conceptualization plays an essential part in the formation of meaning. There are many similarities in the way "head", "face" and “eyes” are conceptualized for personality in both English and Vietnamese cultures. However, why Vietnamese body part idioms use a lot of symbolic pairs, English idioms do not. The study suggests more attention to conceptual metonymy in teaching idioms in order to help students infer idiomatic meanings. Rather than asking students to learn by heart the composite meaning of idioms, teachers should encourage them to guess the idiomatic meaning. Besides, conceptual metonymy should be explained to students since it helps language learners infer idiomatic meaning and retain it longer.

ExELL ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-39
Author(s):  
Adisa Imamović ◽  
Anela Mulahmetović Ibrišimović

Abstract The paper deals with metonymies having body parts as source domains in English and Bosnian. According to Cognitive Linguistics standpoint, human cognition is based on bodily functioning. Therefore, we started from the hypothesis that most body part metonymies are very similar across languages and cultures, and share similar properties. The aim of the paper was threefold: first, to examine whether metonymies with body parts as source domains have common grammatical and conceptual properties in English, secondly to examine whether they share the same properties in Bosnian, and thirdly to compare the two languages in this respect. We analysed body part metonymies in terms of some grammatical properties such as the use of singular and plural, specific and generic reference, grammatical recategorisation from count to mass nouns, noun-to-verb conversion, and some conceptual properties such as source-in-target vs. target-in-source metonymies, metonymic chains and combination of metaphor and metonymy. Many common features were found both within the respective languages under consideration and in cross-linguistic analysis. The minor differences found in contrasting the data from the two languages are mainly the result of differences in grammatical systems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-208
Author(s):  
Dorothea Hoffmann

Abstract In this paper I provide a description of the role of body-part terms in expressions of emotion and other semantic extensions in MalakMalak, a non-Pama-Nyungan language of the Daly River area. Body-based expressions denote events, emotions, personality traits, significant places and people and are used to refer to times and number. Particularly central in the language are men ‘stomach’, pundu ‘head’ and tjewurr ‘ear’ associated respectively with basic emotions, states of mind and reason. The figurative extensions of these body parts are discussed systematically, and compared with what is known for other languages of the Daly River region. The article also explores the grammatical make up of body-based emotional collocations, and in particular the role of noun incorporation. In MalakMalak, noun incorporation is a central part of forming predicates with body parts, but uncommon in any other semantic domain of the language and only lexemes denoting basic emotions may also incorporate closed-class adjectives.


Literator ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Suren Naicker

This article investigates the use of metaphorical language in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (henceforth CW). Vivekananda is one of the most important modern-day Hindu scholars because his interpretation of ancient Hindu scriptural lore has been very influential. Vivekananda’s influence was part of the motivation for choosing his CW as the empirical domain for the current study. AntConc software was used to mine Vivekananda’s CW for water-related terms, which seemed to have a predilection for metaphoricity. Which terms to search for specifically was determined after a manual reading of a sample from the CW. The data were then tagged using a convention inspired by the well-known Metaphor Identification Procedure – Vrije University (MIPVU). Then, a representative sample of the data was chosen, and the metaphors were mapped and analysed thematically. Five of these are referred to in this article, but special emphasis is placed on the theme of the Vedanta philosophy as the basis for neo-Hinduism, which has become synonymous with contemporary Hinduism, with Yoga as the practical wing, and Vedanta as the ideological basis for the practice; this aspect is expounded upon in more detail. The study’s main aim was therefore to investigate whether Hindu religious discourse uses metaphors to explain abstract religious concepts in a specific way, and indeed one of the main findings was the pervasiveness of water as a source domain. Hence, the key finding in this article is that neo-Hindu thought, as reconceptualised by Vivekananda, relies heavily on the water frame (as is convention in the field of Cognitive Semantics, conceptual domains are written in upper case, including hypothetical frames and conceptual metaphors), which is not as pervasive in other religio-philosophical traditions.


Perception ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shinsuke Shimojo

When the visual image of a body part, such as a finger, is doubled by a prism, the ‘felt’ position of that body part is captured by one of its visual images. Moving eye fixation from one to the other visual image is accompanied by a quick shift of the felt position. When focal attention is dissociated from foveation, the former determines visual capture. These new observations underline an active role of focal attention in intersensory integration and sensory—motor coordination of body parts.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moses Gatambuki Gathigia ◽  
Ruth W. Ndung’u ◽  
Daniel Ochieng Orwenjo

Studies in Cognitive Linguistics show that metaphors are fundamental to the structuring of people’s thought and language (Sweetser 1990; Kövecses 2009). It is against this backdrop that this study discusses human body parts as metaphors of conceptualizing love in Gĩkũyũ. To achieve this objective, an interview schedule was administered to 48 respondents of different gender by the researcher assisted by four research assistants. The Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and the main principles of the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) (see Steen et al. 2010) were used in this study. The principles of the MIPVU were employed to find out whether the lexical items collected were metaphorical or not. Using three annotators and the researcher, the study identified 100 Metaphor Related Words (MRWs) as per the annotation guidelines adapted from the MIPVU procedures and three lexical units which were annotated as Discard From Metaphor Analysis (DFMA). From the MRWs, the study identified eight metaphors of human body parts which play an indispensable role in the conceptualization of love in Gĩkũyũ. Further, the study noted that gender is a vital variable that provides people with the prism through which they view love since males registered more lexical frequencies for LOVE IS A HUMAN BODY PART than females. The study concludes that metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics is not only a creative device, but an important mental facility and cognitive instrument.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 874
Author(s):  
Ehsan Alijanian ◽  
Saeed Ketabi ◽  
Ahmad Moinzadeh

From the sociocultural point of view, the investigation of private speech is important in seeing how the mind works. Yet, not much is known about the form and content of private speech. A group of English language learners were required to talk about some topics of their reading courses. Their voices were recorded and the private speech used by them were identified. It was found that the main role of the loud and silent forms of the private speech in the data is to help learners manage the interaction. Private speech is embedded within the speech context and it needs to be explained in the context in which it happens.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (XXII) ◽  
pp. 29-40
Author(s):  
Beata Marta Kopecka

This article is devoted to the linguistic analysis of terms referring to air passengers in the language of flight attendants. The term secret language denotes a subsection of the aviation slang used by cabin crews to communicate information meant not to be understood by passengers. The analysis, aiming at discovering the motivation for the creation of such terms, focuses on the role of metaphor and metonymy. Metaphor and metonymy are treated in accordance with the assumptions of cognitive linguistics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (8) ◽  
pp. 78-85
Author(s):  
Viet Nguyen Dinh

From the in-depth study of the concept of “thread” in Vietnamese idioms and folk songs, the article has established metaphorical structures of the concept of human\body part as “thread”; The predestined object is the “thread”; love\affection means “thread”; human activities\perceptions are activities with “threads”; human mood is considered as “thread”; talent\quality is a “thread”; The situation is the “thread” and thereby, this paper may contribute to further conceptual metaphor of cognitive linguistics illustration; and show a unique part of Vietnamese language - thinking - culture.


Author(s):  
Leo Wetzels ◽  
Stella Telles

Lakondê, together with Mamaindê and Latundê, belongs to the Northern Nambikwara branch of the Nambikwara linguistic family spoken in Northwestern Brazil. The language is head-marking, predominantly suffixal, and of great derivational productivity. It has an elaborate system of nominal classifiers; it is incorporating, with nuclear arguments integrated in the morphology of the verb. Lakondê has two ways of incorporating nouns: one is prefixal when the incorporated morphemes represent body parts; the other is suffixal, involving nominal classifiers. When the incorporation occurs in dynamic verbs, the integrated classifier morphemes assume the role of direct object. The verbal template provides for more than thirty morpheme positions, which, from the point of view of their function, can be categorized as argumental, adverbial, evidential, and TAM. Flexional suffixes may function as nuclear arguments and dispense with the lexical realization of the subject and the object. With these characteristics Lakondê may be classified as a typical polysynthetic language.


Author(s):  
Fabio Ciambella

Dance in Elizabethan and Jacobean England was a practice closely linked to the notion of power, understood both from a political point of view – especially in relation to courtly dances – and from a gender perspective – as regards popular dances in particular. The purpose of this article is to conduct a linguistic analysis of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night 1.3, where two secondary characters, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Sir Toby Belch, compete for the woman they both love – countess Olivia – by displaying absurd terpsichorean skills. With the support of conversation analysis and cognitive linguistics, this article underlines how the concept of power (intended both as man-man and man-woman relationship) is expressed at the linguistic level with a series of lexical and morphosyntactic strategies in the discourse about Renaissance dances.


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