Metaphor Interpretation and Cultural Linguistics

Metaphor use is characterised by conceptual variation that can be explained with reference to culture-specifi c discourse traditions.Cognitively oriented metaphor analyses that are interested in cultural relativity have so far concentrated mainly on the production side of metaphors and their misunderstanding by ESL learners.This study,by contrast,focuses on variation in metaphor interpretation across groups of ESL/EFL users from 31 cultural and linguistic backgrounds.Its data consist of a questionnaire survey,administered in 10 countries,which gave students the task of applying the metaphor of the"body politic"to one’s home nation.The results show systematic variation between four interpretation models for this metaphor,i.e.NATION AS GEOBODY,NATION AS FUNCTIONAL WHOLE,NATION AS PART OF SELF and NATION AS PART OF INTERNATIONAL/GLOBAL STRUCTURE,as well as some evidence of polemical and/or political elaboration.The two main versions,i.e.NATION AS GEOBODY and NATION AS FUNCTIONAL WHOLE,were represented across all cohorts but exhibited opposite frequency patterns across Chinese v.Western cohorts,with the former favouring GEOBODYbased,the latter functional interpretations.This fi nding provides evidence of culture-specifi c variation in metaphor interpretation(as well as in metaphor production),specifically with regard to the frequency and distribution patterns of source concepts.Metaphor interpretation analysis can thus contribute to a cognitive metaphor analysis in general and especially to the"cultural linguistics"approach to metaphor.

Cultural Linguistics: The Development of a Multidisciplinary Paradigm

Cultural Linguistics is a multidisciplinary area of research that explores the relationship between language and cultural conceptualisations. It offers both a theoretical framework and an analytical framework for examining features of languages that are entrenched in cultural conceptualisations, including cultural schemas, cultural categories, and cultural metaphors. In recent years, Cultural Linguistics has drawn on several disciplines and sub-disciplines, such as complexity science and distributed cognition, to enrich its theoretical basis, particularly the notion of cultural cognition. Applications of Cultural Linguistics have enabled fruitful investigations of the cultural grounding of language in several applied domains such as World Englishes, intercultural communication, and political discourse analysis. This paper elaborates on these observations and provides illustrative examples of linguistic research from the perspective of Cultural Linguistics.

Linguistic Cultural Signs in College English Teaching

This paper explores the relationship of language and culture in College English teaching, taking further discussion about the current linguistic cultural issues. Therefore, English culture should be introduced in college English teaching to help students better understand the English language as well as the English society. Due to the close relationship between culture and language and the great difference between Chinese and English

Protecting intangible cultural heritage of linguistic culture resources and developing strategies from the perspective of cultural ecology

From the perspective of cultural ecology, the thesis takes the linguistic culture resources as the research object, analyzes the diversified and endangered characteristics of linguistic cultural resources, and then comes up with three different strategies to protect intangible cultural heritage of linguistic culture domain and to develop cultural industry. Then it stresses cultural self-consciousness, sustainable development of cultural ecology to develop and protect the linguistic culture resources under the protection mechanism of intangible cultural heritage.

Cultural conceptulisations in Elijah Akintunde's Yoruba ballad gospel song Jjo Odi‘Dance of the Deaf’

What kind of actions or reactions can sudden good news elicit in the experiencer?How can these actions/reactions be cognitively interpreted by others?Is there a nexus between social realities and the gospel?Using these questions as a spark,this article critically examines the cultural conceptualisations in Jjo Odi,a Yoruba gospel ballad by Elijah Akintunde.Drawing insights from Cultural Linguistics,this study argues that cultural symbols and structures(schemas,categories,and metaphors)are deployed in gospel music to capture the message of liberation from socio-economic challenges.Specifically,DANCE and DEAFNESS are mapped to express the kind of PERPLEXITY and ABSURDITY that characterise reaction to SUDDEN PLEASANT NEWS.The song also invokes cognitive schemas and cultural memories of dance,cultural class categories and metaphorization of dance and its internalized network of cognitive associations in the Yoruba world view to project the message of prosperity as a miracle.The study concludes that language is firmly grounded in cultural cognition and the complex socio-economic lives of Nigerians can be captured in the negotiation of spirituality in gospel songs.Future research may explore how the artistic performance of other music genres equally evoke cultural imageries in communicating other diverse issues.

Bilingualism and Culture:Psycholinguistic Aspect

The development of bilingualism of a bilingual child is inextricably linked with the formation of an individual folklore-linguistic picture of the world.In this regard,proverbs,sayings,riddles and folk phraseology as universal phenomena of folklore of the Russian and Greek languages,which have important linguistic and cultural potential,are of particular interest from the point of view of their presence in the bilingual speech and thought activity.The quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the functioning of paremiological and phraseological units in a bilingual speech determine the content of folklore language worldview and directly depend on the type of formation of the child’s early bilingualism.Phraseological and paremiological composition of the folklore picture of the world of natural Russian-Greek bilinguals is asymmetric and directly depends on the type of early bilingualism–in bilinguals who learn two languages on the principle of“one-person-one-language”,asymmetry prevails in favor of the Greek language,children from Russian-speaking families whose bilingualism develops according to the principle“family language is the language of society”exhibit better knowledge of Russian folklore elements compared to Greek.