The book deals with the important shift that has been heralded in cognitive linguistics from mere universal matters to cultural and situational variation. The discussions examine cognitive and cultural linguistics’ theories in relation to the following areas of research: (i) metaphorical conceptualization; (ii) the influence of culture on metaphor, metonymy and conceptual blends; (iii) the impact of culture and cognition on metaphorical lexis; (iv) the interface of pragmatics and cognition when metaphor is studied in situ, that is, in face-to-face as well as in virtual multimodal interaction; (v) the application of insights from metaphorical conceptualizations to language teaching, and (vi) recent methods for revealing (inter)cultural metaphorical conceptualizations (corpus-based approaches, gesture studies, etc.). The book brings together cognitive, functional, and (inter)cultural approaches.

The book deals with the important shift that has been heralded in cognitive linguistics from mere universal matters to cultural and situational variation. The discussions examine cognitive and cultural linguistics’ theories in relation to the following areas of research: (i) metaphorical conceptualization; (ii) the influence of culture on metaphor, metonymy and conceptual blends; (iii) the impact of culture and cognition on metaphorical lexis; (iv) the interface of pragmatics and cognition when metaphor is studied in situ, that is, in face-to-face as well as in virtual multimodal interaction; (v) the application of insights from metaphorical conceptualizations to language teaching, and (vi) recent methods for revealing (inter)cultural metaphorical conceptualizations (corpus-based approaches, gesture studies, etc.). The book brings together cognitive, functional, and (inter)cultural approaches.

Offers an extended, improved version of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), updating it in the context of current linguistic theory.

Traveling Conceptualizations is a monograph which is concerned with African cultural conceptualizations in Jamaican. It contributes to the study of Transatlantic relations between Africa and Jamaica, and in particular to the understanding of African influences in Jamaican linguistic practices. The book constitutes a first study of these phenomena from a cognitive-linguistic perspective and investigates traveling conceptualizations at the intersection of language, culture and cognition. The author explores Jamaican linguistic practices in different domains namely conceptualizations involving parts of the (human) body, conceptualizations of events, roles and relations underlying serial verb constructions, and conceptualizations of kinship and names. The study can be regarded as an innovative contribution as it looks not only at linguistic expressions on the surface but discusses the underlying cultural and cognitive basis of semantic structures. The study thus aims at making African-Jamaican connections on the conceptual level visible and also discusses notions of consciousness, agency and emblematicity.

The study of metaphor is now firmly established as a central topic within cognitive science and the humanities. This book explores the critical role that conceptual metaphors play in language, thought, cultural and expressive actions. It evaluates the arguments and evidence for and against conceptual metaphors across academic disciplines.

The study of metaphor is now firmly established as a central topic within cognitive science and the humanities. We marvel at the creative dexterity of gifted speakers and writers for their special talents in both thinking about certain ideas in new ways, and communicating these thoughts in vivid, poetic forms. Yet metaphors may not only be special communicative devices, but a fundamental part of everyday cognition in the form of 'conceptual metaphors'. An enormous body of empirical evidence from cognitive linguistics and related disciplines has emerged detailing how conceptual metaphors underlie significant aspects of language, thought, cultural and expressive action. Despite its influence and popularity, there have been major criticisms of conceptual metaphor. This book offers an evaluation of the arguments and empirical evidence for and against conceptual metaphors, much of which scholars on both sides of the wars fail to properly acknowledge.

To what extent and in what ways is metaphorical thought relevant to an understanding of culture and society? More specifically: can the cognitive linguistic view of metaphor simultaneously explain both universality and diversity in metaphorical thought? Cognitive linguists have done important work on universal aspects of metaphor, but they have paid much less attention to why metaphors vary both interculturally and intraculturally as extensively as they do. In this book, Zoltán Kövecses proposes a new theory of metaphor variation. First, he identifies the major dimension of metaphor variation, that is, those social and cultural boundaries that signal discontinuities in human experience. Second, he describes which components, or aspects of conceptual metaphor are involved in metaphor variation, and how they are involved. Third, he isolates the main causes of metaphor variation. Fourth Professor Kövecses addresses the issue to the degree of cultural coherence in the interplay among conceptual metaphors, embodiment, and causes of metaphor variation.