Submitted by tomash on 27 February, 2015 - 10:51.
Małgorzata Fabiszak, (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań) – Nikolaus Ritt – Elisabeth Wacker (University of Vienna)
A Historical Dynamic Approach to Metaphor
A Historical Dynamic Approach to Metaphor (HDM) is a new model proposed to account
for socio-historical change of conceptual metaphors. Grounded in a view of languages
as inherently historical systems, it explores the possibility of studying metaphor
in terms of generalized evolutionary theory (Ritt 2004, Croft 2006). Evolutionary
theory is regarded as a suitable meta-framework for the study of all historical
systems, which maintain their identity over time through the transmission of
individual instantiations among successive generations. The paper consists of two
major parts. The first part presents a reframing of the existing studies within the
proposed model, which allows for a systematic and coherent account of the change of
metaphor over time. The second is a small-scale empirical study presenting the
possibilities offered by the approach to test hypotheses about the use of metaphors.
Keywords: conceptual metaphor, historical dynamic approach, complex systems,
evolutionary linguistics
Halszka Bąk (Faculty of English, AMU) & Jeanette Altarriba (University at Albany, SUNY)
Keeping an ear out for negativity – L2 emotion recognition bias for emotion prosody
The bilingual mind is the dimension wherein the practical aspects of the long-standing debate between universalist and culture-specific views of emotion come to a head. In the processing of emotional content of L2, does the non-native mind rely on the universal nature of emotion? Or does it struggle to reconcile different culture-specific emotion concepts? Jończyk nad Thierry (submitted) provide evidence that in early processing „the brain turns a blind eye” to negative emotions in L2. Our current results indicate that the late cognitive-affective processing yields higher recognition rates to negative than to positive emotions in L2. In an integrative paradigm we have implemented the two prevailing universalist emotion recognition paradigms (the dimensional view in Russell 1980, the categorical view in Ekman 1992) and a free emotion labeling paradigm to provide an empirically-based comprehensive description of the emotion concept processing dynamics in the non-native mind. Whether asked to categorize (into happy/sad/other), evaluate (positivity-negativity and intensity), or simply name the emotion recognized in samples of filtered audio of emotional speech, participants have consistently performed better on the negative emotions. The potential causes of this result and its implications of these results for future studies of emotion will be presented for discussion.
References:
Ekman, Paul. 1992. „An Argument for Basic Emotions”, Cognition and Emotion 6: 3/4. 169-200.
Jończyk, Rafał and Guillaume Thierry. (submitted). “The bilingual brain turns a blind eye to negative statements in the second language”
Russell, James A. 1980. „A Circumplex Model of Affect”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39: 6. 1161-1178.
