This volume is based on the theme session titled 'Embodiment via Body Parts', organized by Zouheir Maalej, Farzad Sharifian, and Ning Yu at the 10th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference held in Krakow, Poland, in July 2007.

The volume focuses on body part terms as the vehicle of embodied cognition and conceptualization. It explores the relationship between universal embodiment, language-specific cultural models and linguistic usage practices. The chapters of the volume add to the previous research in a novel way. The presentation of original data from previously undescribed languages spoken by small communities in Africa and South America allows to discover unknown aspects of embodiment and to propose new interpretations. Well-known languages are analyzed from a new perspective relying on the benefits of linguistic corpora. Contrastive and theoretically oriented studies help to pinpoint similarities and differences among languages, as well as tendencies in conceptualization patterns and semantic development of the lexis of body part terms. The volume contributes to the field of linguistics, but also to cognitive science, anthropology and cultural studies.

Research on the “embodiment hypothesis” within cognitive linguistics and beyond is growing steadily aiming to bridge language, culture, and cognition. This volume seeks to address the question regarding what specific roles individual body parts play in the embodied conceptualization of emotions, mental faculties, character traits, cultural values, and so on, in various cultures, as manifested in their respective languages. It brings together some linguistic evidence that sheds light on the embodied nature of human cognition from languages as diverse as Arabic, Chinese, Danish, English, Estonian, German, Greek, Indonesian, Japanese, Persian, Spanish, and Turkish. The studies in this volume also show how embodiment is mediated in those languages through such cognitive mechanisms as metonymy and metaphor.

Embodiment in Cross-Linguistic Studies: The 'Head'edited by Iwona Kraska-Szlenk adds to linguistic studies on embodied cognition and conceptualization while focusing on one body part term from a comparative perspective. The 'head' is investigated as a source domain for extending multiple concepts in various target domains accessed via metaphor or metonymy. The contributions in the volume provide comparative and case studies based on analyses of the first-hand data from languages representing all continents and diversified linguistic groups, including endangered languages of Africa, Australia and Americas. The book offers new reflections on the relationship between embodiment, cultural situatedness and universal tendencies of semantic change. The findings contribute to general research on metaphor, metonymy, and polysemy within a paradigm of cognitive linguistics.

This volume is the first book publication which focuses on conceptualization and polysemy of ‘eye’. It encompasses a wide variety of languages to evidence cross linguistic similarities and differences in the semantic extensions of the eye.

The Body in Language: Comparative studies of Linguistic Embodiment provides new insights into the theory of linguistic embodiment in its universal and cultural aspects. The contributions of the volume offer theoretical reflections on grammaticalization, lexical semantics, philosophy, multimodal communication and - by discussing metaphorization and metonymy in figurative language - on cognitive linguistics in general. Case studies contribute first-hand data on embodiment from more than 15 languages and present findings on the body in language in diverse cultures from various continents. Embodiment fundamentally underlies human conceptualization and the present discussions reveal a wide range of target domains in conceptual transfers with the body as the source domain.

The ‘Head’ edited by Iwona Kraska-Szlenk offers cross-linguistic studies on the body part term ‘head’ investigated as a source domain in conceptualization. It focuses on the relationship between embodiment, cultural situatedness and universal tendencies of semantic change.