Includes papers, which introduce and elaborate upon the concept of sociocultural situatedness, understood as the way in which minds and cognitive processes are shaped, both individually and collectively, and by their interaction with culturally contextualized structures and practices.

The contributions contained in the second volume of the two-volume set Body, Language and Mind introduce and elaborate upon the concept of sociocultural situatedness, understood broadly as the way in which minds and cognitive processes are shaped, both individually and collectively, by their interaction with socioculturally contextualized structures and practices; and, furthermore, how these structures interact, contextually, with language and can become embodied in it. Drawing on theoretical concepts and analytical tools within the purview of cognitive linguistics and related fields, the volume explores the relationship between body, language and mind, focusing on the complex mutually reinforcing relationships holding between the sociocultural contextualisation of language and, inversely, the linguistic contextualisation of culure. Stated differently, the notion of sociocultural situatedness allows for language to be seen as a cultural activity and at the same time as a subtle mechanism for organizing culture and thought. The volume offers a representative, multi- and interdisciplinary collection of new papers on sociocultural situatedness, bringing together for the first time a wide variety of perspectives and case studies directed explicitly to elucidating the analytical potential of this concept for cognitive linguists and other researchers working in allied fields such as AI, discourse studies and cognitive anthropology. The book brings together several core issues related to the notion of sociocultural situatedness, some of which have been addressed previously, although to a large degree sporadically and from a variety of disciplinary perspectives without fully exploring the possible analytical advantages of this concept as a tool for investigating the role of culturally entrenched schemata in cognition and language. In short, this is the first comprehensive survey of sociocultural situatedness theory.

This book analyses changing views on bilingualism in Cognitive Psychology and explores their socio-cultural embeddedness. It offers a new, innovative perspective on the debate on possible cognitive (dis)advantages in bilinguals, arguing that it is biased by popular “language myths”, which often manifest themselves in the form of metaphors. Since its beginnings, Cognitive Psychology has consistently modelled the coexistence between languages in the brain using metaphors of struggle, conflict and competition. However, an ideological shift from nationalist and monolingual ideologies to the celebration of bilingualism under multicultural and neoliberal ideologies in the course of the 20th century fostered opposing interpretations of language coexistence in the brain and its effects on bilinguals at different moments in time. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Cognitive Psychology, Psycholinguistics, Multilingualism and Applied Linguistics, Cognitive and Computational Linguistics, and Critical Metaphor Analysis.

This book explores scholarly challenges within the fields of Anglophone language, literature, and culture. The section focusing on language details issues falling within two areas: namely, language contact and the language-culture relationship, and stylistic and syntactic perspectives on the English language. The literature part investigates twentieth-century American, English, and Australian literature, dealing with both poetry and prose and discussing topics of identity, gender, metafiction, postmodern conditions, and other relevant theoretical issues in contemporary literature. The culture part treats theoretical approaches in cultural studies that are vital in today’s cultural context, especially in Central European universities, the Irish language and culture, and contemporary cultural phenomena inspired by the growing ubiquity of technological intrusions into various fields of cultural production.

This book offers the first systematic, up-to-date, cross-cultural, and detailed study of “semi-volitional bodily behaviour” (sneezing, spitting, coughing, burping, vomiting, defecating, etc.) in the classical world. Examining verse and prose texts, fragments, and scholia from the age of Homer to the second century AD, the central argument put forward in this volume is that semi-volitional bodily acts have the potential to betray individual or collective (ethnic/civic and cultural) identities centred on a variety of different themes. Discussions specifically focus on the following five aspects of the interplay between semi-volitional body language and identity construction: sexuality and gender; the link between sexuality and socioeconomic identity of individuals or groups; the embodied markers of civic/ethnic and cultural collectives and the contrast between “we-ness” and “otherness”; ēthos and emotions; and how dietary habits and illnesses indicate the “somo-psychosocial” identity of individuals or groups. The book offers a comprehensive understanding of representations of the human body in ancient Greece and Rome, while reopening the complex and fascinating discussion about the relationship between intention, mind, body, and identity. This book offers a fascinating study suitable for students and scholars of classics and ancient Greek and Roman history. It is also of interest to those in a variety of other disciplines, including body culture studies, gender and sexuality studies, and performance studies, as well as sociology, anthropology, cognitive medicine, and the history of medicine.

This groundbreaking collection represents the broad scope of cutting-edge research in Cultural Linguistics, a burgeoning field of interdisciplinary inquiry into the relationships between language and cultural cognition. The materials surveyed in its chapters demonstrate how cultural conceptualisations encoded in language relate to all aspects of human life - from emotion and embodiment to kinship, religion, marriage and politics, even the understanding of life and death. Cultural Linguistics draws on cognitive science, complexity science and distributed cognition, among other disciplines, to strengthen its theoretical and analytical base. The tools it has developed have worked toward insightful investigations into the cultural grounding of language in numerous applied domains, including World Englishes, cross-cultural/intercultural pragmatics, intercultural communication, Teaching English as an International Language (TEIL), and political discourse analysis.

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.