farzad sharifian editor advances in cultural linguistics · editor farzad shariﬁan monash...

Cultural Linguistics

Advances inCultural Linguistics

Farzad Sharifian Editor

Cultural Linguistics

Series editor

Farzad Sharifian, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Cultural Linguistics advances multidisciplinary inquiry into the relationshipbetween language and cultural conceptualisations. It champions research thatadvances our understanding of how features of human languages encode culturallyconstructed conceptualisations of experience. Edited by world-renowned linguistProfessor Farzad Sharifian, Cultural Linguistics publishes monographs and editedvolumes from diverse but complementary disciplines as wide-ranging ascross-cultural pragmatics, anthropological linguistics and cognitive psychology topresent new perspectives on the intersection between culture, cognition, andlanguage. Featured themes include:

• Cultural conceptualisations and the structure of language• Language and cultural categorisation• Language, culture, and embodiment• Language and cultural conceptualisations of emotions• Cultural conceptualisations and pragmatic meaning• Cultural conceptualisations and (im)polite language use• Applied Cultural Linguistics (e.g., Cultural Linguistics and English Language

Teaching, Cultural Linguistics and World Englishes, Cultural Linguistics andIntercultural Communication, Cultural Linguistics and Political DiscourseAnalysis)

The series editors welcome proposals that fit the description above. For moreinformation about how you can submit a proposal, please contact the publishingeditor, Ilaria Walker. E-mail: [email protected]

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14294

Farzad SharifianEditor

Advances in CulturalLinguistics

123

EditorFarzad SharifianMonash UniversityMelbourneAustralia

ISSN 2520-145X ISSN 2520-1468 (electronic)Cultural LinguisticsISBN 978-981-10-4055-9 ISBN 978-981-10-4056-6 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4056-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017932774

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or partof the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmissionor information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilarmethodology now known or hereafter developed.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in thispublication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt fromthe relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in thisbook are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor theauthors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein orfor any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard tojurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Acknowledgements

The editor wishes to thank the authors of the chapters in this volume not only fortheir valuable contributions, but also for their help in serving as internal reviewersof other contributions. A number of other (anonymous external) reviewers alsodeserve a special word of thanks for their helpful comments, particularly on theinitial proposal for the volume. I am grateful to Ilaria Walker, Nick Melchoir, andDion Kagan from Springer for their very passionate and valuable help and supportduring the preparation of this volume. I would also like to thank my researchassistant, Marzieh Sadeghpour, for her help with designing the diagrams presentedin Chap. 1. I received financial support from the Australian Research Councilthroughout the process of editing this book (ARC[DP140100353]). Chapter 23 is areprint from the International Journal of Language and Culture, 3(2), 2016, 137–160 (https://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.3.2.01pee). Permission to reprint was grantedby John Benjamins Publishing Company.

v

Contents

1 Cultural Linguistics: The State of the Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Farzad Sharifian

2 Cultural Conceptualisations in Humorous Discoursein English and Serbian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29Diana Prodanović Stankić

3 Cultural Conceptualisations of DEATH in Taiwanese Buddhistand Christian Eulogistic Idioms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49Wei-lun Lu

4 LIFE AS OPERA: A Cultural Metaphor in Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65Ning Yu

5 Cultural Conceptualisations of Collective Self-representationAmong Chinese Immigrants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89Yanying Lu

6 Cultural Conceptualisations of IRONY in Greek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111Angeliki Athanasiadou

7 The Interface Between Language and CulturalConceptualisations of Gender in Interaction:The Case of Greek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125Angeliki Alvanoudi

8 Grounding and Relational Schemas in Managalase,Papua New Guinea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149William H. McKellin

9 Kinship Semantics: Culture in the Lexicon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173Alice Gaby

vii

10 Cultural Conceptualisations of MOUTH, LIPS, TONGUE

and TEETH in Bulgarian and English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189Alexandra Bagasheva

11 Cultural Conceptualisations of RIVER in HungarianFolksongs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223Judit Baranyiné Kóczy

12 Pride in British English and Polish: A Cultural-LinguisticPerspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247Paul A. Wilson and Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk

13 Beyond Metaphorisation and Myth-Making: Tertium Daturfor Language and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289Adam Głaz

14 Context in Cultural Linguistics: The Case of Metaphor. . . . . . . . . . 307Zoltán Kövecses

15 Metaphor and Cultural Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325Andreas Musolff

16 The Conceptualisation of AUSTERITY in the Portuguese,Spanish and Irish Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345Augusto Soares da Silva, Maria Josep Cuenca and Manuela Romano

17 Cultural Conceptualisations of DEMOCRACY and PoliticalDiscourse Practices in Ghana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369Gladys Nyarko Ansah

18 Perceptions of Impoliteness from a Cultural LinguisticsPerspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389Farzad Sharifian and Tahmineh Tayebi

19 Seoul Uncle: Cultural Conceptualisations Behindthe Use of Address Terms in Korean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411Hyejeong Ahn

20 Evidentiality—A Cultural Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433Enrique Bernárdez

21 Noun Classes and Toponyms in Shüpamem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461Lydie Christelle Talla Makoudjou and Victor Loumngam Kamga

22 Corpora and Cultural Cognition: How Corpus-LinguisticMethodology Can Contribute to Cultural Linguistics. . . . . . . . . . . . 477Kim Ebensgaard Jensen

23 APPLIED ETHNOLINGUISTICS Is Cultural Linguistics, butIs It CULTURAL LINGUISTICS? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507Bert Peeters

viii Contents

24 Expanding the Scope of Cultural Linguistics: Taking ParrotsSeriously. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529Roslyn M. Frank

25 Where Japanese and Occidental Cultural Conceptualisations Meet:Reading Manga Which Anthropomorphise Nations as Kyara‘Characters’ Through the Lens of Cultural Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . 561Debra J. Occhi

26 Are Marriages Made in Heaven? A Cultural-Linguistic CaseStudy on Indian-English Matrimonials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573Frank Polzenhagen and Sandra Frey

27 Cultural Linguistics and Ageing: What Naming Practicesin Australian English Can Reveal About UnderlyingCultural Conceptualisations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607Réka Benczes, Kate Burridge, Farzad Sharifian and Keith Allan

28 Terms of Adoption: Cultural Conceptual Factors Underlyingthe Adoption of English for Aboriginal Communication . . . . . . . . . 625Ian G. Malcolm

29 Cultural Conceptualisations in Stories of Māori-EnglishBilinguals: The Cultural Schema of MARAE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 661Marta Degani

30 De-escalation—A Cultural-Linguistic View on MilitaryEnglish and Military Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683Hans-Georg Wolf

31 Developing Meta-cultural Competence in Teaching Englishas an International Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703Zhichang Xu

32 Cultural Linguistics and ELT Curriculum: The Caseof English Textbooks in Vietnam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 721Thuy Ngoc Dinh

Contents ix

Editor and Contributors

About the Editor

Farzad Sharifian is Professor and holds the Chair in Cultural Linguistics at MonashUniversity. He has made significant contributions to the development of Cultural Linguistics as amultidisciplinary area of research. He is the author of Cultural Conceptualisations and Language(John Benjamins 2011), the author of Cultural Linguistics (John Benjamins 2017). Amsterdam,PA: John Benjamins, the founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Language andCulture (IJoLC) [John Benjamins] and the founding Editor of the Cultural Linguistics book series[Springer].

Contributors

Hyejeong Ahn Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

Keith Allan Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Angeliki Alvanoudi James Cook University, Cairns, Australia

Gladys Nyarko Ansah University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana

Angeliki Athanasiadou Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki,Greece

Alexandra Bagasheva Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria

Judit Baranyiné Kóczy Széchenyi István University, Győr, Hungary

Réka Benczes Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary

Enrique Bernárdez Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

Kate Burridge Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Maria Josep Cuenca University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

Marta Degani University of Verona, Verona, Italy

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Thuy Ngoc Dinh Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Roslyn M. Frank University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA

Sandra Frey Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

Alice Gaby Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Adam Głaz Marie Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS), Lublin, Poland

Kim Ebensgaard Jensen University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Zoltán Kövecses Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk University of Lodz, Lodz, Poland; StateUniversity of Applied Sciences, Konin, Poland

Victor Loumngam Kamga University of Yaounde I—Ecole Normale Supérieure,Yaoundé, Cameroon

Wei-lun Lu Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

Yanying Lu Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Ian G. Malcolm Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia

William H. McKellin University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Andreas Musolff University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

Debra J. Occhi Miyazaki International College, Miyazaki, Japan

Bert Peeters Australian National University, Canberra, Australia; GriffithUniversity, Brisbane, Australia

Frank Polzenhagen Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

Manuela Romano Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

Farzad Sharifian Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Augusto Soares da Silva Catholic University of Portugal, Braga, Portugal

Diana Prodanović Stankić Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, NoviSad, Serbia

Lydie Christelle Talla Makoudjou University of Yaounde I—Ecole NormaleSupérieure, Yaoundé, Cameroon

Tahmineh Tayebi Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Paul A. Wilson University of Lodz, Lodz, Poland

Hans-Georg Wolf Potsdam University, Potsdam, Germany

Zhichang Xu Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Ning Yu Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

xii Editor and Contributors

Chapter 1Cultural Linguistics: The State of the Art

Farzad Sharifian

1.1 Introduction

While the term ‘cultural linguistics’ (or the more frequently used term ‘ethnolin-guistics’) may be used to refer to the general area of research on the relationshipbetween language and culture (see, e.g., Peeters 2016, reprinted in this volume), Iuse ‘Cultural Linguistics’ to refer to a recently developed discipline with multidis-ciplinary origins that explores the relationship between language and cultural con-ceptualisations (Sharifian 2011, 2017). In particular, Cultural Linguistics exploresthe features of human languages that encode culturally constructed conceptualisa-tions of the whole range of human experience. It offers both a theoretical frameworkand an analytical framework for investigating the cultural conceptualisations thatunderlie the use of human languages. Cultural Linguistics has drawn on several otherdisciplines and sub-disciplines to develop its theoretical basis. These include cog-nitive psychology, complexity science, distributed cognition, and anthropology.Cultural Linguistics has also been applied to and has benefited from several areas ofapplied linguistics, including intercultural communication, intercultural pragmatics,World Englishes, Teaching English as an International Language, and politicaldiscourse analysis (Sharifian 2011; Sharifian and Palmer 2007).

1.2 The Theoretical Framework of Cultural Linguistics

At the heart of the theoretical framework of Cultural Linguistics is the concept ofcultural cognition, which affords an integrated understanding of the notions of‘cognition’ and ‘culture’ as they relate to language (e.g. Sharifian 2009, 2011). This

F. Sharifian (&)Monash University, Melbourne, Australiae-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017F. Sharifian (ed.), Advances in Cultural Linguistics, Cultural Linguistics,DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4056-6_1

1

concept offers a multidisciplinary understanding of cognition that moves beyondthe level of the individual mind (e.g. Clark and Chalmers 1998; Sutton 2005, 2006;Wilson 2005). As Frank (2015, p. 494) puts it, cultural cognition is “a form ofcognition that ... is not represented simply as some sort of abstract disembodied‘between the ears’ entity”. Furthermore, cultural cognition is a form of enactivecognition (Stewart et al. 2011) that comes about as a result of social and linguisticinteractions between individuals across time and space (see also Cowley andVallée-Tourangeau 2013). Crucially, the elements of a speech community’s cul-tural cognition are not equally shared by speakers across that community, so muchso that, in fact, cultural cognition is a form of (heterogeneously) distributed cog-nition (Hutchins 1994). Speakers show variation and differences in their access toand internalisation of their community’s cultural cognition. Also, cultural cognitionis dynamic in that it is constantly being negotiated and renegotiated across gen-erations and through contact between speech communities.

The study of cultural cognition has parallels in several subfields and sub-paradigms of the cognitive sciences (see also Frank 2015). For example, scholarsworking in the area of complexity science, often under the rubric of ComplexAdaptive Systems (CAS), have been seeking to explain how relationships betweenparts, or agents, give rise to the collective behaviours of a system or group (e.g.Holland 1995; Waldrop 1992). Similarly, Cultural Linguistics explores culturalcognition as a complex adaptive system that emerges from the interactions betweenmembers of a speech community across time and space. Frank (2015, p. 497)observes that “the adoption [by Cultural Linguistics] of a CAS approach as well asother analytical tools, such as ‘distributed cognition’, opens up the possibility ofproductive dialogue between scholars in the humanities and investigators operatingin subfields of cognitive science”.

As a central aspect of cultural cognition, language serves [to use the term usedby wa Thiong’o (1986)], as a ‘collective memory bank’ of the cultural cognition ofa speech community. Many aspects of language are shaped by elements of culturalcognition that have prevailed at different stages in the history of a speech com-munity. In other words, these elements can leave traces in subsequent linguisticpractice. In this sense, language can be viewed as a primary mechanism for‘storing’ and communicating cultural cognition, acting both as a memory bank anda fluid vehicle for the (re-)transmission of cultural cognition.

The theoretical framework of Cultural Linguistics, as a whole, may be dia-grammatically represented as in Fig. 1.1, which shows that this is a framework thatalso provides a basis for understanding cultural conceptualisations and their real-isation in language. Language plays a dual role in relation to cultural conceptual-isations. On the one hand, linguistic interactions are crucial to the development ofcultural conceptualisations, as they provide a space for speakers to construct andco-construct meanings about their experiences. On the other hand, many aspects ofboth language structure and language use draw on and reflect cultural conceptu-alisations. Hence, the study of language itself is of key significance to our under-standing of cultural conceptualisations and, ultimately, of the broader culturalcognitions associated with languages and language varieties.

2 F. Sharifian

Apart from language, cultural conceptualisations may also be instantiated invarious other aspects of people’s lives, including cultural arts, literature, ritual,cultural events, emotion, etc., as represented in Fig 1.2. Exploring cultural con-ceptualisations is thus not only relevant to language (and linguistics), for theseconceptualisations are reflected in many aspects of human life. Consequently,research into cultural conceptualisations can be undertaken by scholars across awide range of disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, literature, sociol-ogy, theology, and fine arts.

1.3 The Analytical Framework of Cultural Linguistics

The analytical framework of Cultural Linguistics provides tools for analysing therelationship between language and cultural conceptualisations. They include thenotions of ‘cultural schema’, ‘cultural category’, and ‘cultural metaphor/metonymy’

Fig. 1.1 The theoretical framework of Cultural Linguistics

1 Cultural Linguistics: The State of the Art 3

(cross- or intra-domain conceptualisation). Many features of human languages areentrenched in cultural conceptualisations. As such, notions such as cultural schema,cultural category and cultural metaphor provide fruitful analytical tools for exam-ining features of language that instantiate culturally constructed conceptualisationsof experience. The contributions to this volume present many examples of culturalconceptualisations encoded in human languages.

Cultural schemas capture beliefs, norms, rules, and expectations of behaviour aswell as values relating to various aspects and components of experience. Culturalcategories are those culturally constructed conceptual categories that are primarilyreflected in the lexicon of human languages. Examples of cultural categories are‘colour categories’, ‘age categories’, ‘emotion categories’, ‘food categories’, ‘eventcategories’, and ‘kinship categories’. Cultural metaphors are cross-domain con-ceptualisations that have their conceptual basis grounded in cultural traditions suchas folk medicine, worldview, or a spiritual belief system. The analytical frameworkof Cultural Linguistics can be diagrammatically represented as in Fig. 1.3.

In summary, the theoretical and the analytical frameworks of CulturalLinguistics can be presented as in Fig. 1.4, which reflects the fact that variousfeatures and levels of language, from morpho-syntactic features to pragmatic/semantic meaning and discourse, may be entrenched in cultural conceptualisationstaking the form of cultural schemas, cultural categories, and cultural metaphors.

Fig. 1.2 The relevance of cultural conceptualisations to various disciplines/domains

4 F. Sharifian

Apart from the above, an important aspect of our conceptual life is what can bereferred to as the reconceptualisation of cultural conceptualisations. This phe-nomenon is gaining momentum as the processes of globalisation bring aboutincreased contacts between different speech communities and, consequently, dif-ferent systems of cultural conceptualisations. An example of reconceptualisation isprovided by the way in which the cultural conceptualisations of Christmas areadapted in non-Christian, non-Western societies, as is the case in the author’s placeof birth, Iran. Local adaptations of the CHRISTMAS schema may involve modifyingthe cultural categories of CHRISTMAS PARTY, including the subcategories ofCHRISTMAS GIFT, CHRISTMAS FOOD, and CHRISTMAS DRINK. The whole event categoryof CHRISTMAS may be conceptualised as a Western celebration, rather than a religiousoccasion, providing the host of such a party with a chance to project a (Western)“modern” identity. It is well known that, even in the Western world, historically,

Fig. 1.3 Analytical framework of Cultural Linguistics


Christmas has been reconceptualised first from a pagan celebration, then to aChristian cultural event, and more recently in many cases from a religious event to amore commercial one or simply a family gathering. Other examples of reconcep-tualisation are provided by event categories such as VALENTINE’S DAY, THANKSGIVING

DAY, and HALLOWEEN. In some parts of the world, including China, people maycelebrate Thanksgiving Day to thank teachers and parents, rather than conformingto the original, earlier idea of thanking God for the blessings of the year, includingharvest, as continues to be done in the United States. Thus, in general, reconcep-tualisation may take various forms, such as blending elements of conceptual sys-tems drawn from different speech communities and cultural traditions, aphenomenon that may be referred to as cross-cultural reconceptualisation. Anoteworthy case would be where a conceptual/spiritual system, such as a religion, isamalgamated into a local system of conceptualisations, as in the case of theChristianisation of events such as Yule (which became Christmas) and Valentine’sDay (which grew out of the ancient Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia).Processes such as transnational trade, colonisation, and (increasingly) globalisationoften lead to such cases of reconceptualisation.

Fig. 1.4 The theoretical and the analytical frameworks of Cultural Linguistics

6 F. Sharifian

1.4 This Volume

The contributions to this volume collectively represent contemporary cutting-edgeresearch in the newly developed field of Cultural Linguistics. As the editor of thevolume, I find the very wide range of topics, methodologies, and languages rep-resented (more than 30) extremely impressive and promising. The volume as awhole is a clear indication of how well established the field of Cultural Linguisticshas become over what has been a relatively short period of time, and is a reflectionof its very promising future. Another indication of the firm establishment ofCultural Linguistics as a viable and robust research paradigm has been the signif-icant success of the First International Conference of Cultural Linguistics, held inPrato, Italy, in 2016, with approximately 150 presentations from around 40 differentcountries. Hopefully, this trend will continue to escalate in the years to come.

The following table presents a quick snapshot of the methodologies/data andareas of study represented in this volume:

# Author Methodology/data Area/s of the study

1 Diana Prodanović-Stankić

Discourse analysis of filmand TV dialogues

Language and humour

2 Wei-lun Lu (Analysis of) specialiseddatabase (eulogy requestsystem)

Language of death, languageand religion

3 Ning Yu Cultural texts/artefactsanalysis

Language andconceptualisations of life

4 Yanying Lu Qualitative discourseanalysis of focus groupinterviews

Discourse of (diaspora) identity

5 AngelikiAthanasiadou

Corpus analysis Situational irony in Greek

6 Angeliki Alvanoudi Conversation analysis andinteractional approaches todiscourse

Language, gender, andcognition

7 William H. McKellin Ethnography, discourseanalysis (verbalnegotiations)

Kinship, personhood, andepistemology

8 Alice Gaby Ethnography Kinship

9 AleksandraBagasheva

Corpus analysis Language and culturalconceptualisations relating tobody parts

10 Judit BaranyinéKóczy

Corpus analysis Folksongs

11 Paul A. Wilson andBarbaraLewandowska-Tomaszczyk

GRIDinstrument, cognitivecorpus linguisticsapproach, online sortingmethodology

Language and emotion

(continued)


(continued)


12 Adam Głaz Peircean semiotics Mythology and religiousdiscourse

13 Zoltán Kövecses Theoretical/argumentativeessay

Language, context, andmetaphorical conceptualisation

14 Andreas Musolff Questionnaire survey ofmetaphor interpretation

Language and politics

15 Augusto Soares daSilva, Maria JosepCuenca, andManuela Romano

Corpus analysis,contrastive analysis


16 Gladys NyarkoAnsah

Discourse analysis of radiotalk programmes


17 Farzad Sharifian andTahmineh Tayebi

Meta-discourse analysis,discourse analysis,conceptual analysis

Language and (im)politeness

18 Hyejeong Ahn Discourse analysis of TVseries

Language and address terms

19 Enrique Bernárdez Syntactic analysis ofliterary and journalistictexts

Morpho-syntax (evidentiality)

20 Lydie ChristelleTalla Makoudjou andVictor LoumngamKamga

Interview, ethnography Morpho-syntax

21 Kim EbensgaardJensen

Corpus-linguistictechniques

Research methodology

22 Bert Peeters Theoretical/argumentativeessay

Applied ethnolinguistics

23 Roslyn M. Frank Analysis of YouTubevideos

Inter-species communication

24 Debra J. Occhi Analysis ofanthropomorphisedcharacters

Multimodal communication

25 Frank Polzenhagenand Sandra Frey

Analysis of marriageadverts

Language and marriage

26 Réka Benczes, KateBurridge, FarzadSharifian, and KeithAllan

Corpus analysis Language and ageing

27 Ian Malcolm Discourse analysis World Englishes

28 Marta Degani Narrative analysis World Englishes

29 Hans-Georg Wolf Discourse analysis World Englishes andintercultural communication

30 Zhichang Xu On-line discussion Teaching English as anInternational Language (TEIL)

(continued)

8 F. Sharifian

(continued)


31 Thuy Ngoc Dinh Ethnography, text/visualanalysis

English Language Teaching(ELT) curriculum

Against this background, and by way of presenting an overview of the volume, Inow turn to presenting summaries of each chapter.

In Chap. 2, Diana Prodanović-Stankić focuses on cultural conceptualisationsunderlying verbal humour as reflected in film and television dialogues in English(British and American varieties) and Serbian. A general tendency emerging fromthe data analysed for the study is that the British and Serbian films and televisionseries resort more often to playing with language to create the intended humorouseffects, whereas the American examples appear to place more value on extralin-guistic, non-verbal humour, such as slapstick. The data also includes a significantnumber of ethnically based conceptualisations that capture the popular beliefs andstereotypes that are used as a basis for creating humour. These include conceptu-alisations such as PEOPLE LIVING IN THE SOUTH/EAST ARE UNEDUCATED/LESS INTELLIGENT/STINGY. The data from the UK reveals a tendency towards using “others”, such asdifferent social classes and immigrants, as the target of humour. Americantelecinematic discourse, on the other hand, tends to favour mockery of popularculture. Overall, Prodanović-Stankić maintains that Cultural Linguistics, and inparticular the notion of ‘cultural conceptualisations’, provides robust analyticaltools for exploring humorous discourse.

In Chap. 3, Wei-lun Lu focuses on cultural conceptualisations of DEATH inTaiwanese Buddhist and Christian eulogistic idioms. To begin with, he notes thatFUNERAL is a cultural event category and that different speech communities/religiousgroups may have different customs and rituals associated with funerals. The studyrelies on Mandarin eulogistic idioms stored in the official eulogy request system inTaiwan. Lu observes that in the Buddhist data the idioms analysed for the studyreflect six major cultural metaphors: DEATH IS REBIRTH, DEATH IS A JOURNEY TOWARDS

REBIRTH, REBIRTH IS WEST, LIFE IS A CIRCLE, A PERSON IS A LOTUS, and HEAVEN IS FULL OF

LOTUSES. The Christian data reflects three underlying cultural metaphors: DEATH IS

REST, HEAVEN IS AN ETERNAL HOME, and DEATH IS A RETURN JOURNEY. Some of thesecultural metaphors appear to be based on underlying cultural schemas. For example,the Taiwanese Buddhist cultural metaphor DEATH IS REBIRTH is consistent with theunderlying cultural schema of REINCARNATION, according to which life and deathform a never ending cycle where death is not only the end of a particular life but itis also the beginning of another. The metaphor according to which DEATH/REBIRTH IS

WEST is consistent with a Buddhist cultural schema by virtue of which, at life’s end,people return to the Western Heaven, and Buddha looks westward to bless a per-son’s soul. The metaphor A PERSON IS A LOTUS appears to be based on a Buddhistcultural schema according to which SYMBOLS OF PURITY AND HOLINESS are concep-tualised as lotuses, and when a person is portrayed as a lotus, it implies that their life


is pure and spotless. Similarly, the conceptualisations reflected in the Christianidioms are consistent with the worldview that characterises Christianity andaccording to which, for example, death is a return journey to the Lord. Lu notes thatin some cases more than one conceptualisation is reflected in a single idiom. Healso notes that some of the underlying metaphors, such as the one according towhich DEATH IS A JOURNEY, appear to be shared by both groups. In general, the studypresented in this chapter makes a strong case for employing Cultural Linguistics inreligious linguistic analysis (to analyse the language of death). It also reveals howCultural Linguistics can benefit from using specialised databases.

In Chap. 4, Ning Yu explores the Chinese cultural metaphor LIFE IS AN OPERA bydrawing on ‘cultural texts and artefacts’, the collective term he uses to refer to songlyrics and items from Chinese visual arts, such as photographs, paintings, andcalligraphies. He contrasts this cultural metaphor with the cultural metaphor LIFE IS A

PLAY associated with Anglo varieties of English. Yu notes that the basis of theChinese metaphor is the cultural category of (CHINESE/BEIJING) OPERA as well as theassociated Chinese cultural schema, which captures the culture’s extensiveknowledge of the opera’s elements, including the cultural subschemas of theOPERA’S ACTORS, an OPERA PERFORMANCE, and the OPERA VENUE. Each of these iselaborated upon and shown to include various sophisticated features. For example,PEOPLE captures knowledge about role types, characteristic costumes, makeups,masks, and decorations. Yu observes that all this knowledge both gives shape toand reflects a core component of the Chinese cultural conceptualisation of life.

In Chap. 5, Yanying Lu examines cultural conceptualisations of collectiveself-representation in a group of Chinese migrants in Australia. The data for thisstudy comes from focus group interviews with 25 Mainland Chinese first generationimmigrants living in Australia. During the focus group meetings, participants dis-cussed ways of life in different cultural contexts, including their experiences withthe differences, benefits, and challenges associated with these different culturalcontexts. Two dominant cultural schemas emerge from the qualitative discourseanalysis of the focus group interviews: the cultural schema of the SINO-CENTRICWORLDVIEW, and the cultural schema of the ROLE OF THE CULTURAL EXEMPLAR. Luobserves that for the participants in her study the latter schema appears to bestrongly associated with the moral teachings they received in China, such as theConfucian idea of self-cultivation and the nation-building ideology of modernChina. The data also reveals the conceptualisation of social group membership interms of a CONTAINER cultural image schema. A dominant cultural metaphoremerging from the data is that of the CULTURAL GROUP (CHINESE IDENTITY) AS A

BOUNDED AREA. A further cultural metaphor reflected in the corpus is that of theCULTURAL GROUP AS A CONTAINER FOR CORRECT OPINIONS. Overall, the analyses pre-sented in this chapter reveal how Cultural Linguistics can provide fruitful analyticaltools for examining the discourse of (diaspora) identity and of self-representation. Italso reveals how focus group interviews can be used as a viable source of datacollection in Cultural Linguistics.

In Chap. 6, Angeliki Athanasiadou shows how cultural conceptualisations ofhistorical origin have influenced the conceptualisation and expression of irony in

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Greek. The chapter explores the impact three types of Ancient Greek irony (asrepresented in selected masterpieces of Ancient Greek philology), namely, Socraticirony, dramatic irony, and irony of fate, have had on contemporary linguisticresearch on the topic of irony. Given that culture structures our experience and istransmitted across generations of speakers, it is to be expected that the centralmeaning of the device of irony also draws on its source diachronic meaning. Thechapter discusses instances of situational irony, atypical states or events, andinstances of irony of fate (an aspect of situational irony), and demonstrates that thevarious features that make a situation appear as ironic are deeply entrenched inhistory.

In Chap. 7, Angeliki Alvanoudi investigates the relationship between languageand cultural conceptualisations of gender. She, too, focuses on the Greek language.To begin with, she notes that GENDER is a cultural category that refers to social,cultural, and psychological attributes and behaviours that are commonly associatedwith male/female sex. Alvanoudi observes that the Greek language categorises theworld on the basis of an asymmetric gender dichotomy involving both grammaticaland lexical gender. The author views linguistic items marked by grammatical orlexical gender in Greek as referential indices of gender and notes that the use ofthese items in conversation communicates gendered messages that in turn reflectcertain cultural schemas about social gender order. Alvanoudi argues that “inter-action is the ‘natural habitat’ of cultural conceptualisations of gender, that is, theenvironment in which cultural conceptualisations emerge and are negotiated indaily life”. For this study, she analysed some 45 hours of audio-recorded naturallyoccurring conversations. By adopting a conversation analysis (CA) approachcombined with the analytical framework of Cultural Linguistics, she demonstratesthat the use of referential indices of gender in these conversations reflects andsustains two cultural schemas: MAN AS NORM and HETERONORMATIVITY. The formerunderpins the use of the masculine grammatical gender to refer both to female andmale humans, whereas the latter leads to covert presuppositions that interlocutorsshare in conversation. Alvanoudi shows that the role the two cultural schemas playin social interaction becomes more obvious in cases of repair and genderednoticing. A major implication of this study for Cultural Linguistics is that its pivotalnotion of ‘cultural cognition’ “is shown to be a socially situated phenomenon,which is embedded in social action, and can be examined empirically in interac-tion”. This study also reveals how CA and interactional approaches to discourse canbe beneficially used by scholars subscribing to a Cultural Linguistics perspective.As Alvanoudi puts it, the chapter shows that “it is possible for analysts to examinethe emergence and negotiation of cultural conceptualisations in real conversationaltime”. She also argues that Cultural Linguistics provides researchers working in thearea of language and gender with robust analytical tools for investigating theinterface between language, gender, and cognition.

In Chap. 8, William McKellin explores several cultural schemas that underpinthe daily lives of the Managalase of Papua New Guinea. Together, these culturalschemas shape metaphorical idioms, lexical choices, discourse structures, narrativerecall, and assumptions about common ground and intersubjectivity in verbal


negotiations. The Managalase have two relational schemas based on shared bodilysubstance. The first, LINEALITY, is grounded in procreation; the second,TERRITORIALITY, is based on sharing food grown or caught in places that are them-selves also shared. A third relational schema, EXCHANGE, captures the dynamics ofmarriage, “which ideally should occur between members of different clans, andshould over time achieve reciprocity”. The three relational schemas provide thebasis for two additional Managalase schemas, PERSONHOOD and EPISTEMOLOGY, whichcapture the Managalase concepts of individual viewpoint and perspective ininteraction, on the one hand, and individuals’ socially legitimate access toknowledge, on the other. McKellin observes that the Managalase relational schemasare reflected in everyday actions, including the use of language. He notes, forexample, that they are lexically foregrounded by the prohibition of individualsusing words that are phonologically similar to the names of their in-laws. Theimpact of the PERSONHOOD and EPISTEMOLOGY schemas is also further elaboratedupon. In addition, the Managalase use of metaphors in indirect, allegorical rhetoricfor negotiations highlights the relational notion of PERSONHOOD and provides evi-dence of the existence of cultural assumptions about a speaker’s and hearer’sknowledge that challenge conventional assumptions about the role of commonground and shared intentions or intersubjectivity during language-based socialinteraction. McKellin shows that, by employing the Cultural Linguistics concept of‘distributed cultural conceptualisations’, it is possible to appreciate the role ofparticipant viewpoints and perspectives on language use. The analyses presented inthis chapter clearly reveal the significance of cultural schemas and the value of theanalytical framework of Cultural Linguistics for analysing language in socialinteraction.

In Chap. 9, Alice Gaby applies the analytical notion of ‘cultural category’ tokinship terms in Kuuk Thaayorre, an Australian Aboriginal language. The kinshipterms in this language can be divided into four categories: (a) referential terms,(b) vocative terms, (c) bereavement terms, and (d) hand signs. Referential kin termsrefer to individuals in terms of how they are related to a particular ego (e.g., myfather). Vocative kin terms highlight the relationship between speaker andaddressee (e.g., Father!). This is a significant cultural category in this speechcommunity, as kin terms may be used to refer to anybody within the community,whether or not they are related to the speaker. When this kind of term is addressedto someone who is not related to the speaker (for instance someone fromPormpuraaw referring to Alice Gaby as ‘Daughter!’), we could say the term is beingused metaphorically, which illustrates cultural metaphors are at work. Bereavementkin terms are used to refer to individuals following the death of a close relative or asurrogate (e.g., one bereaved of a father). Hand sign categories are part of the signlanguage that exists in many Aboriginal languages; they may be used either inconjunction with speech or in particular contexts where speech is avoided (e.g.,while hunting or during mourning seclusion). An example of this would be the useof the biceps hand sign to refer to a father. These categories are not just a matter oflabelling; rather, they accompany certain behavioural and linguistic norms andexpectations. These are captured in a number of the Kuuk Thaayorre cultural

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schemas, discussed in this chapter. The significance of Kuuk Thaayorre culturalcategorisations is reflected in Gaby’s observation that when, for instance, a strangerfrom another community in the same area comes to meet someone fromPormpuraaw, “their first task will usually be to identify some third party known toboth, so that the interlocutors can establish how to address one another in accor-dance with how they address that third party (i.e. ‘if you call John ‘Son’ and I callJohn ‘Father’, I must call you ‘Paternal Grandfather’’)”. Finally, Gaby also presentsevidence from both language and culture to account for the internal structure ofKuuk Thaayorre cultural categorisations. This is another chapter that demonstratesthe usefulness of Cultural Linguistics for exploring the domain of kinship and itsrelationship to sociocultural structure.

In Chap. 10, Alexandra Bagasheva examines cultural conceptualisations relatingto mouth, lips, tongue, and teeth in English and their counterparts in Bulgarian. Bydrawing on several corpora, Bagasheva presents sets of comparable data from thetwo languages and notes some similarities and a significant number of differences inconceptualisations based on these body-part terms. For example, in both languagesthe opening of the mouth is conceptually associated with speaking, surprise, andfoolishness, whereas the closing of the mouth is associated with reticence, stupidity,and refusal to engage in social interactions. As for the differences, Bagasheva notesthat the mouth is used to conceptualise social awkwardness only in English,whereas it is used to conceptualise broken dreams and expectations only inBulgarian. Moreover, in English, communication is perceived as a socially andindividually regulated activity that implies premeditation and self-reflection. Bycontrast, in Bulgarian, communication is perceived as a more leisurely andunselfconscious interactive behaviour. The chapter illustrates the usefulness of theanalytical tools of Cultural Linguistics for specifying differences underlying culturalconceptualisations in what is supposedly a human universal—the body.

In Chap. 11, Judit Baranyiné Kóczy explores folk cultural conceptualisations(particularly cultural image schemas and cultural metaphors) involving theHungarian word for river, as reflected in Hungarian folksongs. The data for thisstudy comes from 2500 texts, thematically arranged into 47 subtypes. BaranyinéKóczy notes the emergence of the cultural metaphor EMOTION IS RIVER WATER as adominant conceptualisation in the analysed folksongs. Some texts reflect the cul-tural metaphors FALLING IN LOVE IS BATHING IN RIVER WATER and BEING OVERCOME WITH

EMOTION IS THE FLOOD OF RIVER WATER. Other texts reflect underlying conceptuali-sations of temperature in relation to river water, in particular EMOTIONAL REST IS

FROZEN RIVER WATER. Another noteworthy cultural metaphor reflected in the corpusof folksongs is TROUBLED RIVER WATER IS THE LOVER’S (GIRL’S) ANGER. In the folk-songs, the cultural metaphor for the unification of lovers, a sexual act, or marriage isplucking a flower, which frequently appears in the image schema of CROSSING THE

RIVER. Here the two banks of the river represent the man and woman in therelationship. Baranyiné Kóczy maintains that folksongs express particular princi-ples of morality, including gender role schemas as well as norms associated with thechoice of a spouse. These in turn lead to a specific treatment of emotions andsexuality, captured in a cultural schema that she labels RESERVEDNESS. An important


finding of this study is that conceptualisations embodied in folksongs appear tosupport the Cultural Linguistics principle of heterogeneous distribution, insofar assome but not all of the properties of the resembling images are shared. On thewhole, the analyses presented in this chapter reveal the robustness of CulturalLinguistics for analysing and cross-culturally comparing folk cultural artefacts,including folksongs.

In Chap. 12, Paul Wilson and Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk employ threemethodological tools to carry out their contrastive analysis of the cultural emotionschemas of PRIDE in British English and Polish. They use GRID methodology,which is based on a system of dimensions and components, to gain insight into thenature of prototypical structures of emotion. A cognitive corpus linguisticsapproach provides information on the probabilities of the occurrence of some lin-guistic patterns of emotional language use based on frequency and distributionalpatterns. Finally, in an online emotions sorting study, participants were asked tofreely categorise emotion terms displayed on a computer desktop into as many or asfew groups as they wished. Although the negative evaluation of (English) priderelative to (Polish) duma that shows up in the results of all three approaches is atfirst surprising from an individualistic versus collectivistic standpoint, it might beattributable to a sense of communal pride, that is, pride in others that one wouldexpect to be a salient feature of the relatively more collectivistic Polish culturalschema of PRIDE. This remarkable result can also be traced back to some asym-metries in the English and Polish lexical systems. Polish has a larger set of PRIDE

cluster members than English, which allows for a more granular classification ofshades of pride in Polish than in English. Out of the basic three terms in Polish,duma is the most positive (neutral and weakly negative in some contexts). The othertwo, próżność and pycha, carry a negative charge in all contexts. Since English hastwo corresponding word forms, i.e., pride and vanity, the comparison is necessarilynon-symmetric. The distribution of positive and negative evaluative aspects differsfrom what is found in Polish. While English vanity is entirely negative, Englishpride contains, apart from its weaker evaluative charge (which can be positive), acomponent that is more strongly negative compared to the term duma in Polish.

In Chap. 13, Adam Głaz returns to the problem of metaphorical versusmythological thinking, recognised in Polish ethnolinguistics (Bartmiński 2009).Relying on Peircean semiotics and the notions of ‘pragmatic maxim’, ‘final logicalinterpretant’, and ‘habit’, which link thinking with action, Głaz offers an interpre-tation of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ (Francis 2015) and shows it to be atext that demonstrates a kind of thinking that is more than metaphorical and yet notmythological. Indeed, it is a text rich in symbolic imagery, bordering on theecopoetic. Głaz addresses the question of whether this discourse of inclusion, whichseems “a-cultural”, actually is so. He concludes that since humans are inherentlycultural beings, it in fact represents a cultural mindset (in the sense of Underhill2011). This is where Cultural Linguistics, with its focus on conceptualisation andsymbolic expression, enters the stage. On the basis of the encyclical, Głaz recon-structs a cultural model of home, or rather of the earth, as OUR COMMON HOME,MOTHER and SISTER. Naturally, the model sits within the whole network of Cultural

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Linguistic constructs and emphasises the important role played by cultural values.Finally, the Cultural Linguistic framework is located vis-à-vis anthropologicallinguistics, ethnolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology.

In Chap. 14, Zoltán Kövecses approaches metaphorical conceptualisationagainst the backdrop of a multi-layered, and therefore rather broad, understandingof context that includes various components of the situation of discourse (situa-tional context), the discourse itself (discourse context), the conceptual-cognitivebackground (conceptual-cognitive context) and the body of the speaker (bodilycontext). All four layers of context, Kövecses argues, can influence the creation ofmetaphor in discourse; culture has relevance for the first and the third. The fact thatculture can capture concepts, ideas, values, principles, behaviours, etc. that arespecific to a particular speech community illustrates its relevance to situationalcontext. The fact that it can be viewed as the result (or product) of various types ofconceptualisations specific to a community of speakers (i.e., various types of thecultural conceptualisations that are at the heart of the CulturalLinguistics enterprise) illustrates its relevance to the conceptual-cognitive context.For Kövecses, it is the latter view of culture (culture as conceptual-cognitivecontext) that is likely to underlie the production of metaphorical conceptualisations.In this view, culture “is a dynamic and constantly evolving system characterising agroup of people (a community) who live in a social, historical and physical envi-ronment making sense of their experiences in a more or less unified manner. Wecan think of the conceptual system conceived of this way as one form of culture,which can function as context of a particular kind”.

In Chap. 15, Andreas Musolff focuses on culture-specific interpretations of theconceptual metaphor THE NATION AS A BODY. After discussing the shortcomings ofConceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), he maintains that Cultural Linguistics, withits focus on cultural cognition, cultural schemas, cultural categories, and culturalmetaphors can provide significant insights into the culturally constructed concep-tualisations of various human experiences that are encoded through human lan-guages and language varieties, including the use of cultural metaphors in politicaldiscourse. Using a questionnaire, Musolff examined how participants from 10different countries apply the metaphor THE NATION AS A BODY to their home nation.He notes the emergence of two dominant patterns of interpretation in his data: THE

NATION AS A GEOBODY and THE NATION AS A FUNCTIONAL WHOLE. Musolff links theseinterpretations to the conceptual and historical (cultural) traditions of the countriesin his sample. Musolff also notes a significant degree of further intra-culturalvariation in the participants’ interpretations. The findings support the notion of‘heterogeneously distributed conceptualisations’ in Cultural Linguistics, a notionwhich repudiates the essentialist notion of ‘culture’ while retaining a culturalperspective.

In Chap. 16, Augusto Soares da Silva, Maria Josep Cuenca and ManuelaRomano analyse the conceptualisations of AUSTERITY in a representative newspaperfrom each of three countries, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland, countries especiallyaffected by austerity measures. They focus on metaphors associated with austerityin the fields of economy and politics, classifying them according to the proposition


schemas, image schemas, and event schemas they instantiate. The authors find that,in general terms, austerity policies and measures are conceptualised in terms ofhuman attributes and behaviour, including psychological and moral attributes, aswell as individual and national ideas. Schematic analysis of the data shows that theproposition schematic conceptualisations of austerity and related concepts representmodels of thought and human behaviour, as well as living entities, natural andsupernatural forces, etc. The authors then turn their attention to image schematicconceptualisations of austerity (and cuts and debts), which take the form ofembodied patterns of movement in space, manipulation of objects, and so forth,before highlighting event schematic conceptualisations of AUSTERITY in terms ofwar, show business, competitive games, etc. A comparative analysis of the threenewspapers suggests that although the kinds of metaphors used are similar, there aredifferences in the frequency of appearance of metaphoric conceptualisations asso-ciated with austerity across the three newspapers. The authors capture these dif-ferences as follows: a deep conservative morality of self-discipline and punishmentprevails in Portugal; a strong sense of outrage against austerity measures and thecountry’s creditors exists in Spain; and the idea that the crisis and its effects arehitting the country but not hitting as hard as they do elsewhere predominates inIreland. In general, Soares da Silva, Cuenca and Romano maintain that CulturalLinguistics and its analytical tools (in particular cultural conceptualisation, culturalmetaphor, and cultural schema) provide a very powerful tool set for exploring howcertain political-ideological conceptualisations allow governments to legitimiseeconomic and political measures.

In Chap. 17, Gladys Nyarko Ansah builds on the premise of Cultural Linguisticsthat political discourse is not free from the influence of cultural conceptualisationsand explores how contemporary Ghanaian cultural conceptualisations ofDEMOCRACY influence political discourse in Ghana. She argues that current trendsin Ghanaian political discourse represent a clash of cultural conceptualisations(worldviews). In particular, she claims that current trends appear to be signalling areconceptualisation of DEMOCRACY shaped by Ghanaian traditional cultural con-ceptualisations as well as conceptualisations associated with Western traditions. Tobegin with, Ansah notes that the Ghanaian cultural schema of (IM)POLITENESSencourages the mitigation, through the use of apologetics or indirectness, of any actof communication that could be interpreted as face-threatening, especially if the actinvolves authority or leadership. This schema in turn influences the norms ofpolitical discourse in Ghana, in the sense that democracy and freedom of speechneed to be exercised within the limits of Ghanaian politeness norms. Ansahobserves that the Western notion of ‘freedom of speech’ is inherently hostile toGhana’s traditional norms, according to which the collective interest of the societyis elevated above that of the individual. She analyses linguistic labels used toencode the concept of ‘democracy’ in three Ghanaian languages, and notes that theymainly revolve around ‘permission to speak’, which only covers one aspect ofdemocracy in the Western sense of the word. By drawing on radio talk programmesthat broadcast in major Ghanaian languages, Ansah presents data that reflectsGhanaian conceptualisations of appropriate political discourse. For example, she

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notes that in response to an inflammatory speech by an ex-president, a number ofclergymen called for “a political discourse that is characterised by mutual respect,coolness and a decent language”. She also presents cases where “constitutionallypermissible” political discourse is deemed culturally inappropriate, again in light ofthe Ghanaian cultural schemas of POLITE POLITICAL DISCOURSE. The latter involve, forexample, “avoidance of open critical discourses in the face of authority”. In general,it appears that “the increasing use of invective language rather than politenessstrategies in modern political discourses and the responses the practice receives maybe attributable to the clash of cultural schemas of political discourse in the twocontexts—western-based cultures and Ghanaian traditional culture”. Overall, thediscussion and analyses presented in this chapter reveal how political discourseanalysis can benefit from employing the analytical tools of Cultural Linguistics.

In Chap. 18, which is based on data drawn from Persian, Farzad Sharifian andTahmineh Tayebi explore the role of culture in perceptions of impolite use oflanguage from the perspective of Cultural Linguistics. Using online data and fieldnotes, the authors develop a three-tier methodology that involves: (a) a metadis-course analysis, (b) a discourse analysis, and (c) a conceptual analysis. Themetadiscourse analysis focuses on identifying expressions or lexical items that“tag” part of a communicative interaction as impolite, such as the use of the wordrude. The discourse analysis is based on a close scrutiny of incidents—such asrefraining from extending an invitation to someone—that lead to a perception ofimpoliteness. The conceptual analysis explores a possible link between the per-ception of impoliteness and specific cultural conceptualisations, for example, apossible “breach” of values associated with a cultural schema. The analysis of thedata collected for this study reveals that perceptions of impoliteness emerge morefrequently when speakers do not fully share the same cultural conceptualisationsand consequently have non-homogenous patterns of understanding and models ofinteraction. This is consistent with the idea of ‘heterogeneously distributed culturalconceptualisations’, which lies at the heart of Cultural Linguistics. It highlights theimportance of this notion as an explanatory mechanism for analysing empiricaldata, and not just as a theoretical construct in Cultural Linguistics. On the whole,this study underlines the usefulness of repudiating as empirically inaccurate theessentialist notion of ‘culture’ and adopting instead the analytical framework ofcultural conceptualisations when examining perceptions of impolite language use.

In Chap. 19, Hyejeong Ahn focuses on cultural conceptualisations underlyingthe use of Korean address terms. The data from this study comes from a Koreanreality TV show entitled The Return of Superman. Ahn notes that the use of addressterms in Korean in general reflects the cultural schema of JANGUYUSEO [‘there mustbe order between seniors and juniors’], a schema that is concerned with maintaininghierarchical social relationships based on Confucian values. She notes that since itis a taboo to address people with personal names and pronouns, Korean speakershave developed a rather sophisticated system of address that makes use of kinshipterms, teknonymy, geononymy, occupation titles, etc. For example, the word abeoji‘father’ may be used to refer to a speaker’s friend’s father. Teknonymy, on the otherhand, refers to the practice of addressing someone by the name of their child (e.g.,


mother of-so-and-so). Geononymy is the practice of utilising a place name as aqualifier for a kinship term (e.g., Seoul’s uncle). The use of kinship terms to refer tonon-kin members also reflects the cultural metaphor COMMUNITY MEMBERS AS KIN.Ahn observes that all of the above usage patterns of address terms exist in the datathat she has analysed for her study. Finally, she discusses the importance of herfindings for intercultural communication between Korean and non-Korean speak-ers. The study reported in this chapter demonstrates the strength of CulturalLinguistics as a vehicle for investigating the use of address terms, an area which hastraditionally been explored from the perspective of sociolinguistics.

In Chap. 20, Enrique Bernárdez develops a view of evidentiality based onCultural Linguistics. He notes that, in the past, some accounts of evidentiality haveignored language use, which lies at the heart of Cultural Linguistics, only takinginto account grammatical and/or lexical elements in isolation from context.Bernárdez reviews several definitions of evidentiality and presents examples fromseveral languages, including Afrikaans glo, Swedish lär, and Icelandic ku, as wellas a morpho-syntactic construction in German involving the verb sollen. He pointsout, for example, that in Swedish the particle lär is frequently used as a marker ofevidentiality to indicate that ‘what is told has been learned from someone else, anddoes not stem from the direct experience of the speaker’. Bernárdez also closelyanalyses evidentiality in a number of other languages, including Cha’palaa, andargues that in these cases it reflects three cultural conceptualisations, as follows:

• Small groups living in isolated environments are more likely to developevidentials.

• Difficulties in accessing the world around enhance the probability of developingevidentials; such difficulties can be the impenetrability of the forest, as is thecase in the Amazon and also the rainy forest inhabited by the Chachi.Evidentials can furthermore be related to the impossibility of easy travel evenover short distances due to weather conditions, etc. Absence of literacy, as is thecase of the Quechua, is another fundamental factor.

• Very tight relations within the group and with neighbouring groups also enhancethe probability of developing evidentials.

Bernárdez presents a set of culturally constructed principles that appear to be atwork in association with the evidentials in the languages referred to, including theprinciple that “every member of the community knows—to a greater or lesserdegree—all, or most other members”. Bernárdez then discusses how theseconceptualisations/principles perfectly fit with the sociocultural and environmentalfeatures of the speakers of a language such as Cha’palaa. Overall, in this chapter,Bernárdez shows how it is “possible and convenient indeed to try to interpretevidentiality in the framework of Cultural Linguistics as driven by cultural andcognitive factors at the same time and through history”. The analyses of eviden-tiality in this chapter make another case for the potential of Cultural Linguisticswhen examining cultural conceptualisations that are encoded in themorpho-syntactic and lexical features of human languages.

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In Chap. 21, Lydie Christelle Talla Makoudjou and Victor Loumngam Kamgaexamine cultural conceptualisations, particularly cultural categories, associated withtoponyms as noun classes in Shüpamem, a language spoken by the Bamuns in theWest region of Cameroon. Previous studies mention up to 15 noun classes, whichserve as cultural categories in Shüpamem. These noun classes relate to manyaspects of the lives of Shüpamem speakers as well as to various features of thelanguage itself. In addition, they incorporate the traditional worldview and culturalcognition associated with the Shüpamem language. For example, classes 1 and 2and their sub-classes represent most human nouns (kinship terms, titles, etc.) as wellas a number of animals. Classes 3 and 4 include some names of animals, smallitems (such as boxes), and some plants. Makoudjou and Kamga also discuss fourother main locative morphemes in Shüpamem. Toponyms in this language makeuse of these prefixes to foreground aspects such as altitude, direction, or distance.On the whole, this study reveals the potential of Cultural Linguistics for exploringaspects of morpho-syntax that are entrenched in cultural conceptualisations.

In Chap. 22, Kim Jensen discusses how Cultural Linguistics can benefit fromadding corpus-linguistic techniques to its list of research methods. A major aim ofthe corpus-linguistic approach is to identify association patterns such as colloca-tions, colligations, and collostructions in large, but well-circumscribed, datasets.Jensen begins his chapter with an overview of culturally sensitive corpus-linguisticresearch to date and then moves on to present case studies of his own. Drawing ondata from Danish as well as several varieties of English, he explains howcorpus-linguistic analysis can discern patterns of instantiated cultural conceptuali-sations in the naturalistic use of language. For example, he observes thatcorpus-linguistic analysis of collostructional relations in a Danishpseudo-coordinating construction points to a Danish cultural schema where sitting,rather than standing, appears to be the prototypical bodily posture of verbal inter-action. In another case study, he analyses a corpus of data from twenty nationalvarieties of English, examining usage patterns for the X make love to Y construction.He notes that in all these varieties the construction appears to be associated with aheteronormative cultural schema of intercourse in which men are agents andwomen are patients. Jensen convincingly argues that corpus-linguistic and experi-mental methods can complement each other and provide a platform for triangula-tion through naturalistic and experimental data sources.

In Chap. 23, Bert Peeters explores the possibility of building bridges betweenapplied ethnolinguistics (Peeters’s own framework) and Cultural Linguistics. Healso makes a distinction between Cultural Linguistics, as represented in the work ofSharifian, and the broader field of research on the relationship between languageand culture, which he suggests calling ‘cultural linguistics’ (in lowercase). Whileany attempt to examine the relationship between language and the broad notion of‘culture’ may be termed cultural linguistics or ethnolinguistics, Cultural Linguisticsfocuses on the interrelationship between language and cultural conceptualisations.Applied ethnolinguistics, a by-product of the NSM (Natural SemanticMetalanguage) approach developed by Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard,examines how features of human languages reflect cultural values. Peeters notes


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