John Benjamins Publishing Company
Feeling for speaking
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Abstract
In this paper, attention is drawn to the embodied experiences that are mobilized when speakers are asked to describe emotions. By analyzing how people use expressive body movements and language when thinking and speaking about emotion concepts, light is thrown on “People’s subjective, felt experiences of their bodies in action” (Gibbs, 2005: 9). It illustrates how experiencing emotion concepts bodily provides “part of the fundamental grounding for language and thought.” (Gibbs, 2005: 9). The title of this chapter alludes to Daniel I. Slobin’s reformulation of the linguistic relativity hypothesis. Slobin counters Wilhelm von Humboldt and Benjamin L. Whorf static understanding of the relationship between “thought and language” with a dynamic idea of this relation which he terms Thinking for speaking (Slobin, 1996: 76). We report a small study indicating that speakers not only express affective experiences as conceptual content, but perform or indicate expressive body movements before or while describing a specific emotion. The chapter thus suggests a very concrete way of understanding Gibbs’ assumption of an “embodiment premise for language and thought”.
Abstract
In this paper, attention is drawn to the embodied experiences that are mobilized when speakers are asked to describe emotions. By analyzing how people use expressive body movements and language when thinking and speaking about emotion concepts, light is thrown on “People’s subjective, felt experiences of their bodies in action” (Gibbs, 2005: 9). It illustrates how experiencing emotion concepts bodily provides “part of the fundamental grounding for language and thought.” (Gibbs, 2005: 9). The title of this chapter alludes to Daniel I. Slobin’s reformulation of the linguistic relativity hypothesis. Slobin counters Wilhelm von Humboldt and Benjamin L. Whorf static understanding of the relationship between “thought and language” with a dynamic idea of this relation which he terms Thinking for speaking (Slobin, 1996: 76). We report a small study indicating that speakers not only express affective experiences as conceptual content, but perform or indicate expressive body movements before or while describing a specific emotion. The chapter thus suggests a very concrete way of understanding Gibbs’ assumption of an “embodiment premise for language and thought”.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Art: My Dancing Mind vii
- Prologue 1
- Introduction 11
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Part I. New windows into cognition and communication
- Metaphor in The Cancer Poetry Project 31
- Narrative experiences of metaphor 45
- Researching embodied metaphor production through improvisational dance practice 63
- Feeling for speaking 77
- Multimodal body, multimodal mind, multimodal communication 95
- Fictive motion in the wild 109
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Part II. Account expansion, flexibility, or integration
- Extended CMT and the dynamic systems theory of metaphor 131
- Communication, comprehension, and interpretation 143
- Between embodiment and usage 157
- Metaphors and meaning-making in young people’s talk about climate change 191
- Experiential viewpoint, simile and dynamicity in discourse 205
- Metaphor and elaboration in context 223
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Part III. Influencers and drivers
- Figurativity 243
- Conceptual blending and memes 265
- How to talk about motion without verbs 293
- Defaultness vs. constructionism 305
- Relevance theory perspectives on web-mediated communication 325
- Language happens 341
- Index 357
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Art: My Dancing Mind vii
- Prologue 1
- Introduction 11
-
Part I. New windows into cognition and communication
- Metaphor in The Cancer Poetry Project 31
- Narrative experiences of metaphor 45
- Researching embodied metaphor production through improvisational dance practice 63
- Feeling for speaking 77
- Multimodal body, multimodal mind, multimodal communication 95
- Fictive motion in the wild 109
-
Part II. Account expansion, flexibility, or integration
- Extended CMT and the dynamic systems theory of metaphor 131
- Communication, comprehension, and interpretation 143
- Between embodiment and usage 157
- Metaphors and meaning-making in young people’s talk about climate change 191
- Experiential viewpoint, simile and dynamicity in discourse 205
- Metaphor and elaboration in context 223
-
Part III. Influencers and drivers
- Figurativity 243
- Conceptual blending and memes 265
- How to talk about motion without verbs 293
- Defaultness vs. constructionism 305
- Relevance theory perspectives on web-mediated communication 325
- Language happens 341
- Index 357