The Construal of Spatial Meaning

The Construal of Spatial Meaning
Author: Carita Paradis
Publisher: Explorations in Language and S
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2013-04-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199641633

This book deals with how language users express and understand literal and metaphorical spatial meaning in language and through gesture and pointing. The research draws on data from textual investigation using corpora, as well as from experiments of various kinds, such as psycholinguistic experiments and eye-tracking.

Spatial Dimensions of Social Thought

Spatial Dimensions of Social Thought
Author: Thomas W. Schubert
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2011-10-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 311025431X

Space provides the stage for our social lives - social thought evolved and developed in a constant interaction with space. The volume demonstrates how this has led to an astonishing intertwining of spatial and social thought. For the first time, research on language comprehension, metaphors, priming, spatial perception, face perception, art history and other fields is brought together to provide an integrative view. This overview confirms that often, metaphors reveal a deeper truth about how our mind uses spatial information to represent social concepts. Yet, the evidence also goes beyond this insight, showing for instance how flexible our mind operates with spatial metaphors, how the peculiarities of our bodies determine the way we assign meaning to space, and how the asymmetry of our brain influences spatial and face perception. Finally, it is revealed that also how we write language - from left to right or from right to left - shapes how we perceive, interpret, and produce horizontal movement and order. The evidence ranges from linguistics to social and spatial perception to neuropsychology, seamlessly integrating such diverse findings as speed in word comprehension, children's depictions of abstract concepts, estimates of the steepness of hills, and archival research on how often Homer Simpson is depicted left or right of Marge. The chapters in this book offer a topology of social cognition and explore the pivotal role language plays in creating links between spatial and social thought.

The Construal of Spatial Meaning

The Construal of Spatial Meaning
Author: Carita Paradis
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2013-04-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0191613142

This book considers how language users express and understand literal and metaphorical spatial meaning not only in language but also through gesture and pointing. Researchers explore the ways in which theoretical developments in language and cognition, new empirical techniques, and new computational facilities have led to a greater understanding of the relationship between physical space and mental space as expressed in human communication.

Representing Space in Cognition

Representing Space in Cognition
Author: Thora Tenbrink
Publisher: Explorations in Language and S
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2013-10
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0199679916

This book considers how people talk about their environment, find their way in new surroundings, and plan routes. Leading scholars and researchers in psychology, linguistics, computer science, and geography show how empirical research can be used to inform formal approaches towards the development of intuitive assistance systems.

Spatial Biases in Perception and Cognition

Spatial Biases in Perception and Cognition
Author: Timothy L. Hubbard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 505
Release: 2018-08-23
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1108696295

Our experience of the world is influenced by numerous spatial biases, most of which influence us without our being aware of them. These biases are related to illusions and asymmetries in our perception of space, relationships between space and other qualities, dynamics of moving objects, dynamics of scene configuration, and dynamics related to perception and action. Consideration of these biases provides insight into how we perceive, remember, and navigate space, as well as how we interact with objects and people in space. This volume introduces and reviews numerous spatial biases, and provides descriptions and examples of each bias. The contributors discuss historical and current theories for many biases, and for some biases, provide new explanatory theories. Providing a 'one-stop shop' for information on such a key aspect of our experience in the world, this volume will interest anyone curious about our understanding of space.

Constructions in Cognitive Contexts

Constructions in Cognitive Contexts
Author: Franziska Günther
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2016-11-07
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 311046134X

In what ways are language, cognition and perception interrelated? Do they influence each other? This book casts a fresh light on these questions by putting individual speakers’ cognitive contexts, i.e. their usage-preferences and entrenched patterns of linguistic knowledge, into the focus of investigation. It presents findings from original experimental research on spatial language use which indicate that these individual-specific factors indeed play a central role in determining whether or not differences in the current and/or habitual linguistic behaviour of speakers of German and English are systematically correlated with differences in non-linguistic behaviour (visual attention allocation to and memory for spatial referent scenes). These findings form the basis of a new, speaker-focused usage-based model of linguistic relativity, which defines language-perception/cognition effects as a phenomenon which primarily occurs within individual speakers rather than between speakers or speech communities.

Motion Encoding in Language and Space

Motion Encoding in Language and Space
Author: Mila Vulchanova
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2013
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199661219

This book brings together researchers in linguistics, computer science, psychology and cognitive science to investigate how motion is encoded in language. Part I considers the parameters of the field, while part II looks at the way in which spatial scale or granularity plays a role in the encoding of motion in language.

Metaphor across Time and Conceptual Space

Metaphor across Time and Conceptual Space
Author: James J. Mischler, III
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2013-09-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027271801

Contemporary linguistic forms are partially the product of their historical antecedents, and the same is true for cognitive conceptualization. The book presents the results of several diachronic corpus studies of conceptual metaphor in a longitudinal and empirical “mixed methods” design, employing both quantitative and qualitative analysis measures; the study design was informed by usage-based theory. The goal was to investigate the interaction over time between conceptualization and cultural models in historical English-speaking society. The main study of two linguistic metaphors of anger spans five centuries (A.D. 1500 to 1990). The results show that conceptualization and cultural models—understood as non-autonomous, encyclopedic knowledge—work together to determine both the meaning and use of a linguistic metaphor. In addition, historically a wide variety of emotion concepts formed a complex cognitive array called the Domain Matrix of emotion. The implications for conceptual metaphor theory, research methodology, and future study are discussed in detail.

The Discourse of Conflict and Crisis

The Discourse of Conflict and Crisis
Author: Piotr Cap
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2021-10-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1350135658

This book explores the linguistic patterns of conflict, crisis and threat generation in Polish political rhetoric that have been at the heart of state-level policies since the Law and Justice (PiS) Party came to power in October 2015. Analysing a vast corpus of speeches, statements and remarks by prominent Law and Justice Party politicians, this book sheds light on internal parliamentary and presidential discourse against opponents of the government, before widening its lens to Poland's strained relations with the EU regarding refugee distribution and immigration. Drawing on theories from contemporary critical discourse studies and critical-cognitive pragmatics, the book shows how the crisis, conflict and threat elements in these discourses produce public coercion and strengthen the Party's leadership. Piotr Cap extends his argument further to examine discursive examples from Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Austria, Italy and the UK, highlighting the correlation between the Law and Justice Party and broader socio-political and rhetorical trends in contemporary Europe. The result is an authoritative panorama of the mutual dependencies and shared discursive strategies of European right-wing groups.