Traveling Conceptualizations

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 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.

As time cannot be observed directly, it must be analyzed in terms of mental categories, which manifest themselves on various linguistic levels. In this interdisciplinary volume, novel approaches to time are proposed that consider temporality without time, on the one hand, and the coding of time in language, including sign language, and gestures, on the other. The contributions of the volume demonstrate that time is conceptualized not only in terms of space but in terms of other domains of human experience as well. Renowned specialists in the study of time, the authors of this volume investigate this fascinating topic from a variety of perspectives – philosophical, linguistic, anthropological, (neuro)psychological, and computational – demonstrating a familiarity with both classical and recent approaches to the study of time and including up-to-date corpus-based methods of study. The volume will be of interest to philosophers, linguists (including specialists in cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics, and computational linguistics), anthropologists, (neuro)psychologists, translators, language teachers, and graduate students.

Since the relational turn, scholars have combated methodological universalism, nationalism, and individualism in researching social-spatial transformations. Yet, when leaving the gaps between the traveling and local epistemic assumptions unattended, engaging relational spatial theories in empirical research may still reproduce established theoretical claims. Following the sociology of knowledge tradition and taking Critical Realism as a meta-theoretical framework, Xiaoxue Gao takes relational spatial theories as traveling conceptual knowledge and develops meaningful and context-sensitive ways of engaging them in studying the complex urban phenomenon in China. She offers conceptual elucidations and methodological roadmaps, which leap productively from employing plural causal hypotheses to generating effect-based explanations for locally observable events. They are exemplified by manifold interrogations of Beijing's Artworld as a conjuncture of particular events.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of current research in African languages, drawing on insights from anthropological linguistics, typology, historical and comparative linguistics, and sociolinguistics. Africa is believed to host at least one third of the world's languages, usually classified into four phyla - Niger-Congo, Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan - which are then subdivided into further families and subgroupings. This volume explores all aspects of research in the field, beginning with chapters that cover the major domains of grammar and comparative approaches. Later parts provide overviews of the phyla and subfamilies, alongside grammatical sketches of eighteen representative African languages of diverse genetic affiliation. The volume additionally explores multiple other topics relating to African languages and linguistics, with a particular focus on extralinguistic issues: language, cognition, and culture, including colour terminology and conversation analysis; language and society, including language contact and endangerment; language and history; and language and orature. This wide-ranging handbook will be a valuable reference for scholars and students in all areas of African linguistics and anthropology, and for anyone interested in descriptive, documentary, typological, and comparative linguistics.

This book is the result of intensive and continued discussions about the social role of language and its conceptualisations in societies other than Northern (European-American) ones. Language as a means of expressing as well as evoking both interiority and community has been in the focus of these discussions, led among linguists, anthropologists, and Egyptologists, and leading to a collection of essays that provide studies that transcend previously considered approaches. Its contributions are in particular interested in understanding how the attitude of the individual towards societal processes and strategies of norming is negotiated emotionally, and how individual interests and attitudes can be articulated. Discourses on public spaces are in the focus, in order to analyse those strategies that are employed to articulate dissent (for example, in the sense of face-threatening acts). This raises a number of questions on the spatial and public situatedness of emotions and language: How is the public space dealt with and reflected in language as property, heritage, and as a part of ascribed identities? Which role do emotions play in this space? How is emotion employed there as part of place making in relation to identity constructions? What is the connection between emotion, performance and emblematic spaces and places? Which opportunities of the violation of norms and transgression do such public spaces offer to actors and speakers? These questions intend to address the communicative representation of core cultural processes and concepts.

This volume offers a detailed exploration of coloniality in the discipline of linguistics, with case studies drawn from across the world. The chapters provide a nuanced account of the coloniality of linguistics at the level of knowledge and disciplinary practice, and expand their discussion to imagine a decolonial linguistics.

In spite of the theoretical knowledge of diagnosis and assessment, case conceptualization, and treatment planning imparted by their course instructors, most students are confused about the interrelationships of these processes in practice and are unable to apply what they have learned to the solution of thorny client problems. This book is designed to bridge the gap between classroom and clinic. In pragmatic fashion it walks beginners through the strategies needed to work with adults in outpatient settings and answers the questions they most frequently ask their clinical supervisors at the outset of their clinical apprenticeships. Three chapters succinctly summarize the crucial general information and skills that must be reflected in a clinician's approach to any client. Then, following a standard format that facilitates understanding and comparison, experts describe specific disorders one by one and present their own illustrative cases to point the way to effective targeting. Diagnosis, Conceptualization, and Treatment Planning for Adults will be an indispensable guide for mental health professionals in training who are facing their first assignments with clients.