Cultural Linguistics: Cultural Conceptualisations and Language

191 Pages·2017·6.328 MB·

by  Farzad Sharifian

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8
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Cultural Linguistics
Cognitive Linguistic Studies
in Cultural Contexts (CLSCC)
issn 1879-8047
This book series aims at publishing high-quality research on the relationship between
language, culture, and cognition from the theoretical perspective of Cognitive
Linguistics. It especially welcomes studies that treat language as an integral part
of culture and cognition, that enhance the understanding of culture and cognition
through systematic analysis of language – qualitative and/or quantitative, synchronic
and/or diachronic – and that demonstrate how language as a subsystem of culture
transformatively interacts with cognition and how cognition at a cultural level is
manifested in language.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
http://benjamins.com/catalog/clscc
Editors
Ning Yu and Farzad Sharifian
Pennsylvania State University / Monash University
Editorial Board
Antonio Barcelona Charles Forceville Zouhair Maalej
Universidad de Córdoba University of Amsterdam King Saud University
Erich A. Berendt Roslyn M. Frank Fiona MacArthur
Assumption University, University of Iowa Universidad de Extremadura
Bangkok
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. Todd Oakley
Alan Cienki University of California, Santa Case Western Reserve
VU University Amsterdam Cruz University
& Moscow State Linguistic
Masako K. Hiraga Chris Sinha
University
Rikkyo University Hunan University
Alice Deignan
Zoltán Kövecses Gerard J. Steen
University of Leeds
Eötvös Loránd University University Amsterdam
Vyvyan Evans
Graham Low Hans-Georg Wolf
Bangor University
University of York Potsdam University
Volume 8
Cultural Linguistics. Cultural conceptualisations and language
by Farzad Sharifian
Cultural Linguistics
Cultural conceptualisations and language
Farzad Sharifian
Monash University
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/clscc.8
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
lccn 2017027548 (print) / 2017040317 (e-book)
isbn 978 90 272 0411 0 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 0412 7 (Pb)
isbn 978 90 272 6499 2 (e-book)
© 2017 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com
Table of contents
List of figures ix
About the author xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Preface xv
Note on transliteration conventions of Persian transcripts xvii
chapter 1
Cultural Linguistics: An overview 1
1.1 Cultural Linguistics 2
1.2 The theoretical framework of Cultural Linguistics 3
1.3 The analytical framework of Cultural Linguistics 7
1.4 An assessment of Cultural Linguistics 9
chapter 2
Cultural conceptualisations and language: The analytical framework 11
2.1 Cultural schemas 11
2.2 Cultural categories 14
2.3 Cultural metaphors 17
2.3.1 Cultural metaphors relating to the Land 19
2.3.2 Cultural metaphors relating to Medicine 20
2.3.3 Creative cultural metaphors 21
2.3.4 The cognitive processing continuum of cultural metaphors 21
2.4 Concluding remarks 23
chapter 3
Embodied cultural metaphors 25
3.1 Embodiment and embodied cognition 25
3.2 Conceptualisations relating to del in contemporary Persian 26
3.3 Del in psychological, intellectual, and person-bound concepts 28
3.3.1 del as the seat of emotions, feelings, and desires 28
3.3.2 del as the centre of thoughts and memories 32
3.3.3 d el as the centre of personality traits, character,
and mood 33
3.3.4 Summary 35
vi Cultural Linguistics
3.4 Cultural conceptualisations behind the notion of del 36
3.5 Iranian Traditional Medicine (ITM) and temperature terms in Persian 38
3.6 Concluding remarks 39
chapter 4
Research methods in Cultural Linguistics 41
4.1 Conceptual-associative analysis 42
4.2 Conceptual analysis of story recounts 43
4.3 (Meta)discourse analysis 45
4.4 Corpus-based analysis 47
4.5 Ethnographic-conceptual text/visual analysis 47
4.6 Diachronic/synchronic conceptual analysis 49
4.7 Concluding remarks 50
chapter 5
Cultural Linguistics and pragmatics 51
5.1 Pragmemes and practs 51
5.2 Pragmatic schemas 52
5.3 Pragmatic schemas, speech acts/events, pragmemes, and practs 54
5.3.1 shekasteh-nafsi 54
5.3.2 sharmandegi 56
5.3.3 ru-dar-bâyesti 57
5.3.4 tâ’ârof 57
5.4 Pragmatic schemas and cultural cognition 60
5.5 Concluding remarks 62
chapter 6
Cultural Linguistics and emotion research 63
6.1 Cultural conceptualisations relating to Persian qam 64
6.2 Cultural conceptualisations relating to pride in British English
and its counterparts in Polish 67
6.3 The word Rain in Aboriginal English 67
6.4 The word Sorry in Aboriginal English 69
6.5 Concluding remarks 71
chapter 7
Cultural Linguistics and religion 73
7.1 Conceptualisations relating to Sufi life 73
7.2 Conceptualisations relating to death in Buddhist and Christian
eulogistic idioms 76
7.3 Conceptualisations relating to Sacred Sites in Aboriginal English 76
7.4 Concluding remarks 78
Table of contents vii
chapter 8
Cultural Linguistics and political discourse 79
8.1 Political discourse and cultural conceptualisations 79
8.2 Conceptualisations relating to democracy in political discourse
in Ghana 79
8.3 The cultural metaphor the nation as a body 80
8.4 Conceptualisations relating to austerity in political discourse 81
8.5 Cultural conceptualisations in Military English 82
8.6 Concluding remarks 83
chapter 9
Cultural Linguistics and World Englishes 85
9.1 Processes of localisation 85
9.2 Cultural schemas in World Englishes 86
9.3 Cultural categories in World Englishes 88
9.4 Cultural metaphors in World Englishes 89
9.5 Recent studies of World Englishes from a Cultural Linguistics
perspective 90
9.6 Concluding remarks 93
chapter 10
Cultural Linguistics and intercultural communication 95
10.1 Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal intercultural (mis)communication 96
10.2 Concluding remarks 100
chapter 11
Cultural Linguistics and Teaching English as an International
Language (TEIL) 101
11.1 Globalisation – and what it means for the notion of “native speaker” 101
11.2 “Competence” in foreign language education 103
11.3 Meta-cultural competence and learning EIL 106
11.4 Developing meta-cultural competence through new technology 108
11.5 Concluding remarks 108
chapter 12
Cultural Linguistics and linguistic relativity 111
12.1 The three pioneers of linguistic relativity 112
12.1.1 Franz Boas 112
12.1.2 Edward Sapir 113
12.1.3 Benjamin Lee Whorf 115
12.2 Cultural Linguistics and linguistic relativity 118
12.3 Linguistic relativity and conceptual distribution 120
12.4 Concluding remarks 121
viii Cultural Linguistics
chapter 13
Recent developments and research initiatives on language and culture 123
13.1 The Routledge handbook of language and culture 123
13.2 Advances in Cultural Linguistics 138
13.3 Other recent research 148
13.4 Concluding remarks 149
References 151
Index 165
List of figures
Figure 1. Synopsis of the theoretical and the analytical frameworks
of Cultural Linguistics 3
Figure 2. The theoretical framework of Cultural Linguistics 6
Figure 3. The relevance of cultural conceptualisations to various disciplines/domains 6
Figure 4. The analytical framework of Cultural Linguistics 8
Figure 5. The cognitive processing continuum of cultural metaphors 22
Figure 6. Conceptualisations associated with del in Persian 35
Figure 7. Possible historical roots of the conceptualisations of del
in contemporary Persian 37
Figure 8. The three-stage analysis for metadiscourse analysis (based on Sharifian
and Tayebi, 2017a, 2017b) 46
Figure 9. Stages of identifying cultural conceptualisations in textbooks
(Source: Dinh, 2017) 48
Figure 10. A pragmatic set 54
Figure 11. The relationship between pragmatic schemas, speech acts, pragmemes,
and practs 60
Figure 12. Diagrammatic representation of a cultural schema 61
Figure 13. The analytical framework of emotion research from the perspective
of Cultural Linguistics 64
Figure 14. The stages of the human psyche’s advancement and perfection
in the traversal of the Sufi path (based on Nūrbakhsh, 1992, p. 3) 74
Figure 15. Classes and subclasses of hypotheses on how language might
affect thought (Source: Wolff & Holmes, 2011, p. 254) 121