This book presents the results of a large-scale experiment into interpretations of the metaphor “the Nation as a Body” among 1,800+ respondents from 30 linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In this first account of an empirical study of cross-cultural global metaphor interpretation of that scale, Musolff confirms that the meanings of metaphors are complex, culturally mediated and may differ for senders and recipients. The book provides a historical and cultural map of the traditions underlying differences in how the nation as a body – or, “the body politic” – is understood. Musolff challenges the hypotheses of the universality of “the nation” as a predominantly male-gendered and hierarchically organized concept and, in so doing, puts into question some of the key presuppositions of traditional historical and cognitive approaches to metaphor. For scholars and students of figurative language, the book lays out methodological foundations for cross-cultural metaphor comparison and reveals hidden meaning differences in political metaphor in English as lingua franca.

This book presents the results of a large-scale experiment into interpretations of the metaphor "the Nation as a Body" among 1,800+ respondents from 30 linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In this first account of an empirical study of cross-cultural global metaphor interpretation of that scale, Musolff confirms that the meanings of metaphors are complex, culturally mediated and may differ for senders and recipients. The book provides a historical and cultural map of the traditions underlying differences in how the nation as a body - or, "the body politic" - is understood. Musolff challenges the hypotheses of the universality of "the nation" as a predominantly male-gendered and hierarchically organized concept and, in so doing, puts into question some of the key presuppositions of traditional historical and cognitive approaches to metaphor. For scholars and students of figurative language, the book lays out methodological foundations for cross-cultural metaphor comparison and reveals hidden meaning differences in political metaphor in English as lingua franca.

The book comprises a selection of papers concerning the general theme of cultural conceptualizations in language. The focus of Part 1, which includes four papers, is on Metaphor and Culture, discussing general as well as language-specific metaphoricity. Part 2, which also includes three papers, is on Cultural Models, dealing with phenomena relating to family and home, nation and kinship, blood, and death in different cultures. Six papers in Part 3, which refers to questions of Identity and Cultural Stereotypes, both in general language and in literature, discuss identity in native and migration contexts and take up motifs of journey and migration, as well as social and cultural stereotypes and prejudice in transforming contexts. Three papers in the last Part 4 of the book, Linguistic Concepts, Meanings, and Interaction, focus on the semantic interpretation of the changes and differences which occur in their intra- as well as inter-linguistic contexts.

Synthesising diverse research avenues for politics, discourse, and political discourse, this cutting-edge Handbook examines the formative traditions, current theoretical and methodological landscape, and genres and domains over which political discourse extends.

Christine de Pizan was born in Venice and raised in Paris at the court of Charles V of France. Widowed at the age of twenty-five, she turned to writing as a source of comfort and income, and went on to produce a remarkable series of books, including poetry, politics, chivalry, warfare, religion and philosophy. She is considered to be France's first female professional writer. This was the first translation into modern English of Christine de Pizan's major political work, The Book of the Body Politic. Written during the Hundred Years' War, it discusses the education and behaviour appropriate for princes, nobility and common people, so that all classes can understand their responsibilities towards society as a whole. A product of a time of civil unrest, The Book of the Body Politic offers a medieval political theory of interdependence and social responsibility from the perspective of an educated woman.

The present volume explores the meeting ground between Critical Discourse Studies and Cultural Linguistics. The contributions investigate culture-specific conceptualisations, ways of framing and conceptual metaphors in political discourse, as well as cultural models, cultural stereotypes and stereotyping. The individual authors use quantitative (e.g. corpus-based approaches) and/or qualitative methods. They address a range of contexts, e.g. Europe, the US, Japan, West Africa, and a variety of topics, e.g. migration, presidential elections, identity, food culture, concepts of health. The papers included in this volume show that ideologies, the key concern of Critical Discourse Studies, cannot be analysed independently of cultural conceptualisations. In a complementary, dialectic fashion, cultural conceptualisation, the central concern of Cultural Linguistics, have ideological implications, sometimes subtle, sometimes very straightforward. The present volume thus illustrates that travelling on this meeting ground is a natural and fruitful endeavour for both approaches.