КРЕАТИВНІСТЬ ІДІОМАТИЧНОГО ПРОСТОРУ СОЦІАЛЬНОЇ ІНТЕРАКЦІЇ

The present paper is a study of creativity of idiomatic space in the national varieties of English. The defi nition of the term ‘idiomatic space of social interaction’ has been suggested, formulated as “the property of the idiomatic space of social interaction to, either individually or collectively, form new idiomatic units or to adjust them according to the pragmatic and communicative goals of discourse”, and is further investigated in the News on the Web (NOW) corpus evidenced from canonical and non-canonical forms of the idiom have your cake and eat it (too). In total, 1158 instances of the use of the above idiom were investigated in fi ve national varieties of English (British English, American English, Canadian English, Australian English, and New Zealand English). Based on the data obtained, it was discovered that canonical forms of the idiom under analysis prevail over non-canonical forms (79.8% to 20.2%). Further, this was verifi ed with the help of concordance analysis using AntConc freeware corpus analysis toolkit, which showed minor deviations of the idiom from its base form. However, despite being in the minority, the non-canonical forms of have your cake and eat it (too) lend themselves to a rigorous analysis from the standpoint of the conceptual integration theory. One such instance of conceptual blending – to have their cake and eat it and then expect to still have it to eat later on when they’re hungry. And a bag to put it in – was considered in the present paper. The overall analysis has proved the applicability of the conceptual integration theory to idiomatic creativity in terms of idiomatic inputs and blends. Since no direct blends inv olving the above idiom were identifi ed in the NOW corpus, a wider context of the idiom (at least two or three sentences along with the title of the relevant publication) was considered. This provides certain evidence to hypothesize that the conceptual integration theory is not a universal one when it comes to interpreting idiomatic creativity. With this in mind, further quantitative and qualitative analyses are needed to rigorously determine the place of the conceptual integration theory in examining idiomatic creativity. Key words: study of idioms, idiomatic space, corpus analysis, conceptual integration theory, creativity of idiomatic space.

Flannel and beggar’s blanket: metaphors or conceptual blends? A cognitive analysis of selected common names of mullein in English

The paper offers a cognitive analysis of selected common English names of mullein (Verbascum thapsus L.) motivated by the appearance of the plant. While analyzing such names as flannel and beggar’s blanket, the author strives to portray the way they are conceptualized by recalling Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Integration Theory, in particular the Brandt and Brandt six-space model of conceptual integration, also known as a cognitive-semiotic approach to metaphor. In the course of the analysis, the author also makes reference to those aspects which seem indispensable from the standpoint of cognitive linguistics, viz. (i) the role of human experience and embodied thought in the conceptualization process, (ii) the dynamic and context-dependent meaning construction and (iii) the role of linguistic worldview in decoding meaning.

The Conceptual Metaphor of Modesty in English and Ukrainian

The Conceptual Metaphor of Modesty in English and UkrainianThe article focuses on the cultural regulatory concept of MODESTY in English and Ukrainian linguistic construals of the world. The article examines this concept as it is lexicalized in English and Ukrainian in terms of cross-domain mapping and conceptual integration theory. In the corresponding national corpora of fiction, MODESTY serves both as target and source domains, thus forming the range and scope of conceptual metaphors. The article claims that in genetically unrelated languages, conceptual metaphors of MODESTY demonstrate common mental models and mainly vary in their verbal form and in their frequency in discourse. From a cross-cultural perspective, the variation of conceptual metaphors of MODESTY is motivated not only linguistically but also culturally. In English conceptual metaphors, the source domains cross-mapped onto the target MODESTY are semantically more varied than in Ukrainian. The target domains onto which modesty is mapped form semantically similar conceptual metaphors, which differ in their frequency in English and Ukrainian discourses. Metafora konceptualna skromności w języku angielskim i ukraińskim Autorki przedstawiają kulturowo-regulacyjny koncept SKROMNOŚCI w angielskich i ukraińskich językowych konstruktach świata. Analizują leksykalizację tego konceptu w języku angielskim i ukraińskim pod kątem mapowania międzydomenowego i teorii integracji konceptualnej. W utworach literackich zawartych w korpusach narodowych SKROMNOŚĆ służy zarówno jako domena docelowa, jak i źródłowa, kształtując w ten sposób zakres metafor konceptualnych. Autorki stwierdzają, że w językach niezwiązanych genetycznie konceptualne metafory SKROMNOŚCI wskazują na wspólne modele umysłowe i różnią się głównie formą werbalną oraz częstotliwością występowania w dyskursie. Z perspektywy międzykulturowej, zróżnicowanie konceptualnych metafor SKROMNOŚCI jest umotywowane nie tylko językowo, ale i kulturowo. W angielskich metaforach konceptualnych domeny źródłowe, na które nakłada się docelowe pojęcie SKROMNOŚCI, są semantycznie bardziej zróżnicowane niż w metaforach ukraińskich. Domeny docelowe, na które mapowana jest SKROMNOŚĆ, tworzą semantycznie podobne metafory konceptualne, różniące się częstotliwością występowania w dyskursie angielskim i ukraińskim.

On the construction of the concept ‘language’: Entrenched Conceptual Integration Networks Encountered in Evolutionary Biology and Studies of Language Evolution

<p>In recent years the relationship between language change and biological evolution has captured the attention of investigators operating in different disciplines, particularly evolutionary biology, AI and A-Life (Zeimke 2001, Hull 2001), as well as linguistics (Croft 2000; Sinha 1999), with each group often bringing radically different conceptualizations of the object under study, namely, “language” itself, to the debate.&nbsp;Over the centuries, meanings associated with the expression “language” have been influenced by mappings of conceptual frames and inputs from the biological sciences onto the entity referred to as “language”. At the same time the prestige of the “science of linguistics” created a feedback mechanism by which the referentiality of “language”, at each stage, was mapped back into the field of evolutionary biology along with the emergent structure(s) of the resulting “blend”. While significant energy has been spent on identifying ways in which biological evolution has been linked to concepts of language evolution (Dörries 2002), little attention has been directed to the nature of the conceptual integration networks that have been produced in the process. This paper examines the way conceptual integration theory can be brought to bear on the “blends” that have been created, focusing primarily on examples drawn from 19th century debates concerning the “language-species-organism analogy” in the emerging field of comparative-historical philology.</p><p>In recent years the relationship between language change and biological evolution has captured the attention of investigators operating in different disciplines, particularly evolutionary biology, AI and A-Life (Zeimke 2001, Hull 2001), as well as linguistics (Croft 2000; Sinha 1999), with each group often bringing radically different conceptualizations of the object under study, namely, “language” itself, to the debate. Over the centuries, meanings associated with the expression “language” have been influenced by mappings of conceptual frames and inputs from the biological sciences onto the entity referred to as “language”. At the same time the prestige of the “science of linguistics” created a feedback mechanism by which the referentiality of “language”, at each stage, was mapped back into the field of evolutionary biology along with the emergent structure(s) of the resulting “blend”. While significant energy has been spent on identifying ways in which biological evolution has been linked to concepts of language evolution (Dörries 2002), little attention has been directed to the nature of the conceptual integration networks that have been produced in the process. This paper examines the way conceptual integration theory can be brought to bear on the “blends” that have been created, focusing primarily on examples drawn from 19th century debates concerning the “language-species-organism analogy” in the emerging field of comparative-historical philology. The document includes Supplemental Materials: Resource Guide and Commentaries.</p>

HUMORNA METAFORA U „DEKAMERONU“: NOVELA O ALIBEH I RUSTIKU

The subject of this paper is the „putting devil into hell” humorous metaphor from the tenth novel of the third day in Boccacio’s Decameron. The main methodological basis for the analysis is the conceptual integration theory by Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier (1994), as well as proposed supplements to the model (Coulson & Oakley 2005; Hedblom, Kutz, Neuhaus 2015). The author points out that to read Boccacio’s novel in a christian-moralistic manner also means to interpret the given metaphor as a double-scope network. The second possibility is to read the story in the spirit of carnivalesque logic, through understanding the metaphor as a single-scope network. In accordance with Mikhail Bakhtin’s hypothesis that the folk culture of the Middle Ages is embedded into the renaissance culture, the author concludes that Boc- cacio’s metaphor must be interpreted as the metaphor of the latter type, since that this type of reading is in accordance with the textual strategies of the piece.

CONCEPTUAL BLENDING THEORY AS A TOOL FOR INTERPRETING BRITISH NATIONAL HUMOR

The article considers British humorous text interpretation in terms of the cognitive linguistic paradigm, in particular, conceptual blending theory. British national humor is analyzed as a preserver and exponent of the historical heritage, national culture, and national collective memory. The paper aims to demonstrate the potential of conceptual blending theory for analyzing the British sense of humor. The object is British humor. The subject is English texts with a humorous implication analyzed using an interpretative analysis based on conceptual integration theory. The novelty consists of considering this theory as an interpretative tool for researching into the collective memory of the British. It is evaluated through the prism of polymodal conceptualization along with national culture, which is inextricably linked with the English sense of humor. The paper shows that the blending theory can be successfully applied to understanding humor, since it is based on describing how cognitive thinking models and operations are organized, structured, and used. The results show that British humor focuses not only on the British national traits, lifestyle, and worldview, but also on the collective rethinking of the national historical past, in particular, the hardships that befell the British at World War II.

Conceptual blends in Polish anti-refugee rhetoric

Present day anti-refugee and anti-immigrant rhetoric both in European countries and in the USA makes reference both to shared tropes and to culture-specific rhetoric devices. The paper analyzes four instances of Polish rabid anti-refugee rhetoric that is eminently country specific: they invoke Holocaust scenario as the means of dealing with the refugee question, should they appear on Polish soil, and specifically suggest exterminating them in former Nazi death camps. The analysis is carried out within the Conceptual Integration Theory, amended by the Author with the notion of parasitic blends: these are said to occur when audiences recruit into the blend some elements of the two input spaces that were not intended to be recruited and come up with an emergent meaning that differ from the intended one. It is claimed that such possibility is actually built into CIT and explains why some of the criticism of CIT claims blends’ non-predictability and generally ex-post character of most analyses found in relevant literature.

What is the Impact of Multimodality and Intersubjectivity on the English Humour?

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The purpose of my article is to demonstrate how the terms of multimodality and intersubjectivity function within the areana of English humour, specifically in reference to a chosen sitcom. To this means I shall employ the cognitive apparatus of conceptual integration theory, aka blending. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The presented research problem centres around the notions of intersubjectivity, i.e. the human ability to display a shared perception of reality with regard to members of their own community, as well as multimodality, i.e. the use of more than one sense for the purpose of meaning rendition. Both phenomena are studied here with regard to the English humour, whose explanation is based on a cognitive linguistic method of blending. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: Having explained the term ‘English humour’, I then clarify intersubjectivity, multimodality and cognitive integration, which will serve here as the tools for the purpose of my humour analysis. Therein I intend to show how they interlink and how their roles influence the comprehension of English humour. RESEARCH RESULTS: The result of this argumentation is constituted by the fact that intersubjectivity and multimodality together with blending can greatly enhance the comprehension of the amusing contents within English comedy. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The analysis confirms that conceptual integration theory, as enriched by intersubjectivity and multimodality, provides a humour researcher with a concrete apparatus for measuring humour effects. However, further research is advocated into the process of blending, as accompanied by intersubjectivity and multimodality, with recourse to English humour as well as other types of humour, e.g. the Polish comedy, in order to provide contrastive evidence for these tools and their usefulness or effectiveness.

A Metaphor Analysis of Love Allusions in A Dream of Red Mansions

The paper explores two love allusions, ‘the pledge between plant and stone’ and ‘Jin’s marriage’ in the Chinese literary classics A Dream of Red Mansions written by Cao Xueqin and provides new explanations to the theme of the novel. Nearly 20 metaphorical expressions in the novel are selected through Critical Metaphor Analysis with 6 specifically representational examples analyzed in the paper by building integration networks based on Conceptual Integration Theory (CIT). The findings are as follow: 1) the counterculture of ‘plant and stone’ is embodied in the mythological stories at the beginning of the novel. 2) a ‘nested integrational network’, originally proposed by the researchers, links the mythological narrative space and the fictional human world space. 3) the comparison between integration networks of the two love allusions shows anti-feudalism of the author Cao Xueqin. This paper offers an interpretation of the novel from the aspect of cognitive linguistics, which, in turn, could promote the development of CIT within this field.