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- Speaking bodies II. Topics in cognitive linguistics:
metaphor, gesture, deixis and polysemy
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- This second session of the Speaking
bodies minicourse will introduce an exciting alternative approach to
linguistics that has grown out of interdisciplinary contacts among linguistics,
philosophy, psychology, computer science, neuroscience, and anthropology.
Classical linguistics has thought of languages the way we think of algebra
or symbolic logic, as abstract systems of rules applied to combinations
of elements: as codes. Cognitive linguistics, instead, has wanted to investigate
language as one of the ways human bodies influence each other while in
the midst of dealing with the surrounding world. Aspects of language use
that have been particularly important in strengthening this viewpoint have
been metaphor, gesture, deixis (the way words like here or now
can only be understood in relation to a context shared by speaker and hearer),
and polysemy (the way words have many meanings).
- 1. Naturalizing a discipline
- 2. Review: language as structural
influence
- 3. About representing in general
- 4. Conceptual structure of the study
of language:
- 5. Traditional linguistics
- 6. Functional and cognitive linguistics
- Topic 1: deixis
- Topic 2: gesture
- Topic 3: metaphor and polysemy
- Bibliography for cognitive linguistics
- Supplementary notes 1: more recent science of language
- Supplementary notes 2: on language and imagining space
1. Naturalizing a discipline
Session I was the overview, an orientation,
a way to understand what language is in relation to bodies.
Session II continues this discussion but
is also about studying language as a topic about linguistics
what it used to be, what it is becoming - what embodiment means in relation
to linguistics as the study of language in other words about the
naturalization of linguistics.
Naturalizing a field of study, for instance epistemology or mathematics, is
reframing it in a non-dualistic way. When we naturalize mathematics, for
instance, we try to understand how mathematical knowledge could be based
on evolved abilities to interact with the natural world. When we naturalize
epistemology we try to understand any sort of knowledge in this way.
2. Review: language as structural influence
- a. Embodiment.
- b. Consciousness and nonconscious structure.
- c. Integration and segregation.
- d. We speak (and write) from the structure
we are.
- e. Language has structural effect.
- f. Self-talk also has structural effect.
3. About representing in general
There is no external relation of
environmental thing and representing object. There is no re-presenting of
the thing, only a re-evoking of a state.
a. Without the body of the user there
is no representation.
b. Representational effect is structural
effect.
Any representational effect is a structural
alteration of the user, a physical, dynamical event.
It is always a partial effect; it is never
the only thing going on for its users, who must continue also to be about
other aspects of their physical context.
c. Representing and simulating
Representing practices can be used to
organize states in the user that are like the state that would be produced
in the presence of something.
d. The same representational form can
evoke different states in different bodies, and with the same body, in
different contexts.
4. Conceptual structure of the study
of language as a representing medium:
a. In the beginning was the world.
b. The body comes next, inherently related
to the world.
i. Perception-action capability is primary
presence: perception and action, emotional response.
ii. Simulation capability is derived from
it: seeming to perceive and act, simulational emotion.
c. Representing forms and practices require
these original capabilities.
d. Language is one representing capability
among others (math, art, music, photography).
e. 'Thinking' as we know it requires all
of these conceptual levels.
5. Traditional linguistics
Traditional linguistics developed in the
middle ages mainly in the teaching of Latin, which was predominantly a written
language.
a. Traditional distinctions and contrasts
>Syllable, word/morpheme, phrase, sentence,
text/discourse
>Grammar = lexicon + syntax
>Closed class and open class forms
>Syntax and semantics
Emphasizing distinction between form and
meaning/content, competence and performance, semantics and pragmatics.
b. Chomsky
Chomsky's structural linguistics, which
is the present paradigm, hypothesizes an innate universal grammar. It is
a formal theory of language, which hasn't much scope in studying
the whole practice of language. It also isolates language from other representing
practices, and does not offer a common platform.
Structural Linguistics and rationalist
tradition creationism mind vs body - reason and sensory-motor
capabilities separate - the notion of module with dedicated function -
'computationally specialized' versus 'general purpose mechanism'
innately specified universal grammar "theory of the initial
state of the language organ" expression of genes particular
grammars are "theories of states attained" languages the
states themselves.
Anti-behaviorist, anti-mechanist impulse.
Hard distinction between language and
protolanguage grammar is unlearnable, therefore innate.
Doesn't think of language as communication
but as 'thinking'
"Language is not properly regarded
as a system of communication. It is a system for expressing thought, something
quite different may even be of no unique significance for understanding
the functions and nature of language." "Language use is largely
to oneself." (Chomsky 2002, 77)
c. Representations and computations
The dominant terminology within mainstream
cognitive science is a way of imagining linguistic form and meaning as
'representation' and 'computation.' They are imagined as two different
representations that have to get associated. For instance they would say,
"When asked to shove something, the system would activate the
definition and select the appropriate schema and parameters from the large
collection available."
6. Functional and cognitive linguistics
a. Functional linguistics
Functional linguistics. Halliday's Introduction
to Functional Grammar. "More socially oriented semantically based
model of grammatical structure." Emphasis on multifunctionality of
grammatical units in the linguistic moment.
b. Cognitive Linguistics
Integrating linguistics within other sorts
of study. Cognitive theory perception, imagining, representing, thinking.
Commitment to compatibility with cognitive science, Lakoff 1990.
Emphasis on ways language shows general
structures of perception and action, shared cognitive structure.
'Concepts' embodied in the sense of making
use of sensory-motor capabilities.
Usage-based study spontaneous spoken
speech recorded, transcribed, analyzed 'corpus linguistics.'
There are no natural units of language,
instead a self-organizing cumulative network effect. For example articulation
of initial consonant depends on vowel that follows. People mostly don't
speak in sentences but in intonational units prosodical and semantical
units with only one element of new information sentence is not prototypical
spoken and written language very different.
7. Topic 1: deixis
Why think about deixis. Because it demonstrates
a concreteness about language use: that to understand language we have to
either be together with our hearer, or we have to imagine ourselves so.
In traditional linguistics deictic elements
are thought of as atypical, but in an embodied linguistics deixis can be
imagined as indicating a core fact about language and representation generally
that it springs from mutual presence and joint attention.
The way deictic elements function demonstrates
the embodied nature and purposes of language.
8. Topic 2: gesture
Why think about gesture. Because findings
about gesture show language integrated with action in the body, and suggest
its origins. The evidence that language and gesture are one integrated system
in the cortex suggests evolutionary history and the centrality even in language
of capabilities derived from contact with the physical world.
Comparisons of American Sign Language (ASL)
and spoken English, gesture with speech.
9. Topic 3: metaphor and polysemy
Why think about metaphor. Because it demonstrates
an effect of language apart from the 'meaning' we think of it as having.
Why think about polysemy and language change. Because, like metaphor, they
demonstrate that words don't really 'have' meanings, they have uses.
Functional grammar showing how one noun
or noun phrase can be functioning in a number of different ways simultaneously
10. Summary
1. linguistic event/artifact
2. linguistic effect
3. is on structure
4. of whole body
5. and within the body the neural wide
net
6. within which a linguistic subnet
7. and a conscious subnet
8. which can overlap in different ways
and to different degrees
9. these structures are dynamically self-organizing
at all scales
10. language we understand evokes structure
11. when we create language it runs off
existing structure
- The point is that language plays the
instrument we already are. The locus of effect of language (or any representation)
is the body of the user.
Cognitive linguistics bibliography
Language and linguistics generally
Chomsky N 1966 Cartesian linguistics:
a chapter in the history of rationalist thought Harper and Row
Ogden C, I Richards 1959 The meaning of
meaning Harcourt, Brace and World
Richards I 1991 Richards on rhetoric:
selected essays 1929-1974, A Berthoff ed Oxford
Turner M 1991 Reading minds: a study of
English in the age of cognitive science Princeton
Kroeber K 1994 Ecological literary criticism:
romantic imagining and the biology of mind Columbia
Cognitive linguistics
Rohrer, Tim (2001). Pragmatics, ideology
& embodiment: William James and the philosophical foundations of cognitive
linguistics. In: RenZ Dirven, Bruce Hawkins and Esra Sandikcioglu (eds.),
Language and Ideology. Volume 1: Theoretical Cognitive Approaches, 49-81.
John Benjamins: Amsterdm/Philadelphia. http://www.hum.au.dk/semiotics/docs/epub/arc/tr/prag/pragmatism.html
[10.14.03]
Lakoff G 1995 Embodied minds and meanings,
in Speaking minds: interviews with twenty eminent cognitive scientists,
P Baumgartner and S Payr eds, 115-130 Princeton
Lakoff G, M Johnson 1999 Philosophy in
the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought Basic
Books
Halliday M 1994 An introduction to functional
grammar, 2nd ed E Arnold
Sweetser E 1990 From etymology to pragmatics:
metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic experience Cambridge
Rosch E 1978 Principles of categorization,
in Cognition and categorization, E Rosch and B Lloyd eds, 27-48 Lawrence
Erlbaum
Metaphor
Arbib M 1995 Schema theory, in Handbook
of brain theory and neural networks, ed M Arbib, pp 830-834 MIT
Lakoff G 1987 Women, fire and dangerous
things: what categories reveal about the mind University Of Chicago
Lakoff G 1993 The contemporary theory
of metaphor, in Metaphor and thought, A Ortony ed, 2d ed, 202-251 Cambridge
Ortony A ed 1993 Metaphor and thought,
2nd ed Cambridge
Ricoeur P 1975 The rule of metaphor University
Of Toronto
Richards I 1991 Richards on rhetoric:
selected essays 1929-1974, A Berthoff ed Oxford
ASL and hemispheric lateralization
Leroi-Gourhan A 1964/1993 Gesture and
speech MIT
Liddell S 1995 Real, surrogate and token
space; grammatical consequences in ASL, in Language, gesture and space,
K Emmory and J Reilly eds Lawrence Erlbaum
Poizner L, E Klima, U Bellugi 1987 What
the hands reveal about the brain MIT
Deixis
Buhler K 1982 The deictic field of language
and deictic words, in Studies in deixis and related topics Wiley
Emmory K 1996 The confluence of space
and language in signed languages, in Language and space, P Bloom et al
eds MIT
Fillmore C 1975 Santa Cruz lectures on
deixis 1971 Indiana University Linguistics Club
Landau B, R Jackendoff 1993 "What"
and "where" in spatial language and spatial cognition, Behavior
and Brain Science 16:217-265
Liddell S 1995 Real, surrogate and token
space: grammatical consequences in ASL, in Language, gesture and space,
K Emmory and J Reilly eds Lawrence Erlbaum
McNeill D, L Pedelty 1995 Right brain
and gesture, in Language, space and gesture, K Emmory and J Reilly eds,
63 Lawrence Erlbaum
Talmy L 1978/1988 The relation of grammar
to cognition, in Topics in cognitive linguistics, B Rudzka-Ostyn ed, 165-205
J Benjamins
Talmy L 1983 How language structures space,
in Spatial orientation: theory, research, and application, H Pick and L
Acredolo eds Plenum Press
Talmy L 1996 Fictive motion in language
and 'ception,' in Language and space, P Bloom et al eds, 211-276 MIT/Bradford
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