Image schemas in cognitive linguistics: Introduction (original) (raw)

2014. On defining image schemas. Language and Cognition 6:4. 510-532.

In this theoretical paper we propose three diff erent kinds of cognitive structure that have not been diff erentiated in the psychological and cognitive linguistic literatures. They are spatial primitives , image schemas , and schematic integrations . Spatial primitives are the fi rst conceptual building blocks formed in infancy, image schemas are simple spatial stories built from them, and schematic integrations use the fi rst two types to build concepts that include non-spatial elements, such as force and emotion. These diff erent kinds of structure have all come under the umbrella term of ‘image schemas’. However, they diff er 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 infl uence, the most important of these being the primacy of imageable spatial information.

The Linguistic Image of the World and Image Schemas: an attempt at their delimitation and comparison

2020

This article is a review of a few essential aspects of one of the famous Slavic linguistic schools-the Polish ethnolinguistic school of Lublin. This school developed the theory of językowy obraz świata (in Polish) or jazykovaja kartina mira (in Russian), which is generally translated in English as 'Linguistic Image of the World' (LIW). The Linguistic Image of the World takes into account the sociocultural embeddedness of language and cognition. We will compare this theory with embodiment models-Image Schemas. The paper is organised in four parts: (1) a brief review of relevant studies related to the Theory of Linguistic Image of the World; (2) an introduction to some essential aspects of Image Schemas, as representative of the standard Cognitive Linguistics approach, together with a brief analysis of some examples; (3) a description of LIW, highlighting some basic notions such as the stereotype and clarifying its relationship with the prototype; and (4) conclusions on the central role of culture in the process of conceptualization. Keywords: Linguistic image of the world, image schema, prototype, stereotype, cognitive definition. [es] La imagen lingüística del mundo y esquemas de imagen: un intento de delimitación y comparación Resumen. Este artículo es una revisión de los aspectos esenciales de una de las célebres escuelas lingüísticas eslavas: la escuela etnolingüística polaca de Lublin. Esta escuela desarrolló la teoría de językowy obraz świata (en polaco) o jazykovaja kartina mira (en ruso), que se suele traducir en inglés como "Linguistic Image of the World" (LIW). La Imagen Lingüística del Mundo tiene en cuenta la posición sociocultural del lenguaje y de la cognición. Compararemos esta teoría con los modelos corporeizados: Esquemas de Imagen. El artículo está organizado en cuatro apartados: (1) estudios relevantes de la Teoría de la Imagen Lingüística del Mundo; (2) introducción a algunos aspectos esenciales de los Esquemas de Imagen, como representante del enfoque estándar de Lingüística Cognitiva, junto a un breve análisis de algunos ejemplos; (3) descripción de la Imagen Lingüística del Mundo, destacando algunas nociones básicas como el estereotipo y aclarando su relación con el prototipo; y (4) conclusiones sobre el papel central de la cultura en el proceso de conceptualización. Palabras clave: Imagen lingüística del mundo, esquema de imagen, prototipo, estereotipo, definición cognitiva.

The Image of Grammar and the Grammar of Image

Przekładaniec

The paper deals with the relation between verbal expressions and mental images. As claimed by cognitive linguists, "understanding a verbal message" requires that two kinds of mental imagery be evoked: rich images, which are encoded in individual lexemes, and schematic images, conventionally related to grammatical structures. Based upon this principle, an analysis of a Polish poem and its English translation is carried out, in order to demonstrate that a complicated interplay between the two kinds of mental imagery underlies the texts and accounts for their interpretation.

Studies in linguistics and cognition

2012

Contents: Barbara Eizaga Rebollar/Jose Maria Garcia Nunez/ Maria Angelez Zarco Tejada: Preface - Maria Tadea Diaz Hormigo/Carmen Varo Varo: Neology and Cognition - Gerard Fernandez Smith/Marta Sanchez-Saus Laserna/Luis Escoriza Morera: Studies on Lexical Availability: The Current Situation and Some Future Prospects - Maria Luisa Mora Millan: Adverbs in the Internet Lexicon: New Modes of Signification - Maria Angeles Zarco Tejada: `Holding' Metaphorical Meaning from a Computational Linguistics Approach: The Verb Hold and its Counterparts in Spanish - Jose Maria Garcia Nunez: Attitude Verbs and Nominalization - Carmen Noya Gallardo: Cleft Sentences: Semantic Properties and Communicative Meanings - Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibanez/Alicia Galera Masegosa: Metaphoric and Metonymic Complexes in Phrasal Verb Interpretation: Metaphoric Chains - Barbara Eizaga Rebollar: Meaning Adjustment Processes in Idiom Variants - Jose Luis Guijarro Morales: Beauty and Art in Science - Ana Isabel ...

Cognitive study of image schemas in a poem by Fereydoon Moshiri

The present study aims at analyzing image schemas in a poem by Fereydoon Moshiri called "koocheh"(The Lane). Image schemas as mentioned by Johnson (1987) are conceptual structures derived from physical experiences, cultural background and ideology of a nation. All human beings have access to a universal collection of image schemas, such as containment, path and force schemas. But culturally image schemas are represented differently in languages. It is essential to mention that conceptual structures are not just used in poetry but, in everyday language as well. The analysis of the poem "koocheh"(The Lane) by Fereydoon Moshiri as the corpus of this article shows that some linguistic forms are connected with some schemas; some special prepositions with containment schema, verbs (or nouns derived from them) containing the concept of motion with path schema, and verbs (or nouns derived from such verbs) containing the concept of power accompanied by two nouns with force schema.

Cognitive Linguistics 2015; 26(1): 31 – 60

2016

Vision verbs dominate in conversation across cultures, but the ranking of non-visual verbs varies Abstract: To what extent does perceptual language reflect universals of experi-ence and cognition, and to what extent is it shaped by particular cultural preoc-cupations? This paper investigates the universality~relativity of perceptual lan-guage by examining the use of basic perception terms in spontaneous conversation across 13 diverse languages and cultures. We analyze the frequency of perception words to test two universalist hypotheses: that sight is always a dominant sense, and that the relative ranking of the senses will be the same across different cul-tures. We find that references to sight outstrip references to the other senses, sug-gesting a pan-human preoccupation with visual phenomena. However, the rela-tive frequency of the other senses was found to vary cross-linguistically. Cultural

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The visual memory of grammar: Iconographical and metaphorical insights

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This study represents an interdisciplinary attempt to trace the origins of metaphorical expressions as they are found in English grammatical terminology. The perspective chosen combines cognitive and art-historical approaches to the meaning of abstract concepts: cognitive semantics and iconography. It takes into account the historical dimension of the media which have served, over the course of centuries, to render abstract concepts graspable: figurative language, visual images, and the printed page. By taking a close look at examples from an iconography of grammar created for the purpose of this study (which includes personifications, allegories and memory buildings from the early Modern period), I shall discuss the visual traditions and patterns in the representation of abstract concepts and structures. In the second part of this paper, the theory of conceptual metaphor is applied to one of these educational and mnemonic illustrations, whereby the metaphorical concepts underlying expressions in both media are presented and linguistic metaphors are related to their visual counterparts. The aim is to provide insights into the conventional repertoire of images of grammar as a discipline and as a symbolic system. Dieser Beitrag ist ein interdisziplinärer Versuch, die medienhistorische Dimension von metaphorischen Ausdrücken in der englischen Grammatikterminologie aufzuzeigen. Um bedeutungsstiftende Prozesse in der Konzeptualisierung von abstrakten Konzepten sichtbar zu machen, bringt die hier gewählte Perspektive kognitiv-linguistische und kunsthistorische Ansätze zusammen, nämlich kognitive Semantik und Ikonographie. Die historische Verankerung bildhafter Ausdrücke wird anhand des Zusammenwirkens der Medien aufgezeigt, die seit Jahrhunderten dazu dienen, abstrakte Konzepte greifbar zu machen: bildhafte Sprache, bildliche Darstellungen und das sie transportierende Druckmedium. In einem ersten Schritt werden Einsichten in die für diese Arbeit erstellte Grammatik-Ikonographie gegeben. Dann wird die von Lakoff and Johnson entwickelte Metapherntheorie auf das Bildmaterial (vorwiegend Personifikationen und Wissenschaftstürme aus der frühen Neuzeit) angewandt, wobei die medienübergreifenden Metaphorisierungsprozesse sowie entsprechenden sprachlichen Ausdrücke herausgearbeitet werden. Auf diese Weise wird ein Eindruck von konventionellen Vorstellungen von Grammatik als Disziplin und symbolisches System gegeben. * This paper is a more substantial version of a paper presented at the AISB '99 symposium on Metaphor, Artificial Intelligence, and Cognition (Mittelberg 1999). I would like to thank Wolfgang Settekorn and Martin Warnke for intellectual guidance in this interdisciplinary endeavor and James Lantolf, James Gair, Hongyin Tao, and Linda Waugh for valuable comments on previous versions of this paper. I am also grateful to Martin Döring and Claudia Polzin-Haumann of the metaphorik.de-Team for their support and suggestions.

When down is not bad, and up not good enough: A usage-based assessment of the plus–minus parameter in image-schema theory

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Preceding research in cognitive linguistics has advanced the claim that evaluative components form an integral part of image schemas (cf. Krzeszowski 1993(cf. Krzeszowski , 1997 Cienki 1997: 3-6). This so-called 'plus-minus' (or ''axiological'') parameter has primarily been discussed with regard to opposing orientations within a range of image-schematic contexts. In the paired particles in-out, up-down, and on-o¤, for instance, the meaning of which is based on the image-schematic notions of CONTAINMENT, VERTICALITY, and CONTACT, respectively, the second elements are assumed to carry negative default evaluations. Additionally, the Axiological Invariance Principle (Krzeszowski 1997) claims that these evaluative components are generally retained in metaphorical extensions. This study applies the plus-minus hypothesis in image-schema theory to the analysis of semantically highly redundant verb-particle constructions in English. The hypotheses derived from this application are tested against the real usage of such constructions as documented in the British National Corpus and the Collins Online. Though the presentation of a full-blown alternative to the plus-minus assumption is beyond the scope of this empirical investigation, an important implication of this study is that the isolated, ''primitive'' (noncompound) image schemas traditionally dealt with in cognitive linguistic research should not be considered as the locus of evaluative defaults. It is suggested instead that axiological components are dimensions of richer, contextualized cognitive models, in which image schemas appear as complex superimpositions, i.e., image-schema groupings or compounds.

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Cognitive linguistics has been aimed at revealing the very nature of language for the last several decades. One of the field’s most significant contributions has been the abstraction of the general patterns, or image schemas, underlying grammatical concepts. In this paper, we propose that English grammar-teaching methods adopting image schema theory offer strong benefits for language teaching. As schematic explanations given to learners are more visible and comprehensible than ordinary verbal-based ones, this method offers a clearer and more engaging way to understand the target grammar. We also present data collected from experiments conducted with more than 400 native Japanese-speaking students at one national and one private university that support the effectiveness of this method. 認知言語学は産声をあげてここ数十年の間,人間の言語の真の姿を明らかにすることに専心してきた。この学問分野がつまびらかにしてきた数々の言語現象のうち,最も有益な成果のひとつにイメージ図式理論の構築があげられる。イメージ図式とは文法および語彙構造のひな形となるものである。本論文は認知言語学のイメージ図式理論を応用した英文法教材の学習効果を一国立大学と一私立大学に学ぶ400人以上の日本人学部生を対象に行っ...

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The aim of this paper is to lay out the foundations of a typology of diagrams in linguistics. We draw a distinction between linguistic parameters-concerning what information is being represented-and diagrammatic parameters-concerning how it is represented. The six binary linguistic parameters of the typology are: (i) mono-versus multilingual, (ii) static versus dynamic, (iii) mono-versus multimodular, (iv) object-level versus meta-level, (v) qualitative versus quantitative, and (vi) mono-versus interdisciplinary. The two diagrammatic parameters are (i) iconic/concrete versus symbolic/abstract representation and (ii) static versus dynamic representation. We briefly illustrate how different types of linguistic diagrams can be analysed in terms of the interaction between the linguistic and the diagrammatic parameters.

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