On the cross-cultural transmission of core conceptual metaphors in The Analects of Confucius translated by Roger. T. Ames

Alireza Korangy and Farzad Sharifian, eds. <i>Persian Linguistics in Cultural Contexts</i>

This chapter explores the relationship between cultural pragmatic schemas, pragmemes, and practs, from the perspective of Cultural Linguistics (Sharifian, Cultural conceptualisations and language: theoretical framework and applications. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2011; Cultural linguistics. In: F. Sharifian (ed) The Routledge handbook of language and culture. Routledge, London, pp. 473–492, 2015). The analytical tools that Cultural Linguistics draws on include cultural schemas, cultural categories, and cultural metaphors. Cultural pragmatics schemas comprise a particular class of cultural schemas that serve as a basis for communicating pragmatic meaning. This chapter argues that in certain cases, cultural pragmatic schemas, pragmemes, and practs reflect a hierarchical relationship where a particular pract instantiates a pragmeme, which in turn instantiates a particular cultural pragmatic schema. In other words, a three-tier hierarchy (cultural pragmatic schema > pragmeme > practs) is at work, such that correctly interpreting the practs requires knowledge of the underlying cultural pragmatic schemas and pragmemes in which they are entrenched. Social context, which as Mey (2007, p. 172) argues “is, by its very origin, cultural” is also an integral part of the process. The chapter elaborates on the framework by presenting and analyzing further examples from Persian.

In this paper we examine the nature of the relationship between culture and language, and its complexity, and how culture informs language usage. Our cultural sense entails our knowledge about cultural norms, beliefs and values of human society, a community, and our generalised knowledge about the language system that we use in our social and communicative interactions. Therefore, our cultural knowledge includes ontology, representation, reasoning, cultural schemata, cultural metaphors and cultural conceptualisations. Many artists (painters and poets) use language in the service of their art, and visual artists frequently use text directly in paintings as a cultural visual-linguistic semiotic.The hypothesis in this research study is that meaning in culture is facilitated by language and that language draws on cultural common ground while the cognitive processes that retrieve a meaning from language use are argues to be those characterised within Relevance Theory. Additionally, we argue that these cognitive processes also apply to retrieving meaning from art, music, poetry, and artefacts within the linguistic landscape.

BackgroundDiabetes mellitus is an emerging public health problem in Tanzania. For the community and the health system to respond adequately to this problem, it is important that we understand the meanings given to its symptoms, and the care-seeking practices of individuals.MethodsTo explore collective views on the meanings given to diabetes symptoms, we conducted nine focus group discussions with adult diabetes patients and members of the general community. To gain a better understanding of how the meanings in the community inform the care-seeking practices of individuals, 19 in-depth interviews were conducted with diabetes patients. The data were analyzed using principles of grounded theory and applying cultural schema theory as a deductive framework.ResultsIn the communities and among the patients, knowledge and awareness of diabetes are limited. Both people with diabetes and community members referred to their prevailing cultural meaning systems and schemas for infectious diseases to interpret and assign meaning to the emerging symptoms. Diabetes patients reported that they had initially used anti-malarial medicines because they believed their symptoms—like headache, fever, and tiredness—were suggestive of malaria. Schemas for body image informed the meaning given to diabetes symptoms similar to those of HIV, like severe weight loss. Confusion among members of the community about the diabetes symptoms instigated tension, causing patients to be mistrusted and stigmatized. The process of meaning-giving and the diagnosis of the diabetes symptoms was challenging for both patients and health care professionals. Diabetes patients reported being initially misdiagnosed and treated for other conditions by medical professionals. The inability to assign meaning to the symptoms and determine their etiologies informed the decision made by some patients to consult traditional healers, and to associate their symptoms with witchcraft causes.ConclusionThe meanings given to diabetes symptoms and the care-seeking practices described in the study are shaped by the prevailing cultural schemas for infectious diseases and their treatments. Efforts to educate people about the symptoms of diabetes and to encourage them to seek out appropriate care should build on the prevailing cultural meaning system and schemas for diseases, health and illness.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-015-1504-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Cultural Technique in Creative Practice: Exploring Cultural Embodiment in the Movement of the Body in a Studio Space

Taufiq Rafat is a renowned English poet who is well-known for introducing Pakistani idioms to poetry. The study focuses on tracing cultural metaphors and metonymies in the selected poems of Taufiq Rafat with the lens of the theoretical and analytical framework of cultural linguistics as proposed by Farzad Sharifian. The research is qualitative and carries a descriptive analysis of the text and used the constructivism paradigm. The study's findings revealed that the cultural metaphors and metonymies used in his poetry are engrossed in Pakistani culture and are culture-specific. Therefore, cultural metaphors originate from the culture and are manifested in the human lexicon, thinking, and feelings that exhibit the cultural schema.

Exemplarism – the view that exemplary people, whom we admire, are the bearers of our moral concepts – presents considerable challenges to the (widely-assumed) place of moral theory in how we learn to be moral. Exemplarism has been garnered by Amy Olberding to articulate a Confucian approach to moral learning. This paper extends Exemplarism by considering how it may be put into practice, based on a seminal Confucian text, the Analects of Confucius. To date, the majority of discussions on Confucian ethics that have brought Confucian philosophy to the attention of Anglophone scholars tend to focus on conceptually-based matters. There remain questions regarding how these values may be inculcated and embodied in our moral lives. Central to our proposal is the practice of reflective observation (guan 觀), comprised by three integrated components: observation, evaluation, and emulation. Observing, reflectively, is important not only for an individual’s acculturation to existing norms and practices but also for how they may subsequently exercise some latitude over their moral practices. Our reflections offer a practical approach to Confucian moral learning. In doing so, we demystify moral learning in Confucianism and open up avenues for future cross-tradition dialogues on moral education.

Cultural metaphors of NATURE in the folk songs of the Udmurts living beyond the Vyatka Folk songs are an important part of the spiritual culture of the Udmurts since they reflect the worldview and culture of the nation, personal emotions as metaphorical representations. The aim of this paper is to investigate the сul- tural metaphors of the Udmurt language in the frame of cultural linguistics. The research corpus includes folk songs of the Udmurt diaspora living in the present-day Republics of Tatarstan and Mari El, and in the Kirov Region of Russia beyond the Vyatka River. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the most common conceptualizations of the concepts of nature such as RIVER, FOREST/ BLACK FOREST, TREES and FLOWERS in the selected corpus. Besides, this paper also attempts to present the cultural metaphor NATURE IS EMOTION which is based on the schemes of the emotions of shyness and shame. Keywords: metaphor, cultural metaphor, cultural linguistics, conceptualiza- tion, cultural category, cultural schema

The present study applies a cultural conceptualizations framework within the multidisciplinary field of Cultural Linguistics to the analysis of gratitude in dissertation acknowledgements (DAs), as a culturally-embedded genre written in Persian and English by native speakers of Persian. Benefitting from a corpus analysis approach to Cultural Linguistics, 185 English and 196 Persian DAs from language-related fields were selected randomly from DAs written in national universities in Iran as the corpus for the study. Grounded theory-driven analysis revealed a number of similar and different representations of Persian cultural schema and cultural metaphors between the sampled Persian and English DAs. Additionally, the unclosed cultural conceptualizations revealed a selective transfer of Persian cultural conceptualizations to the DAs written in English. The paper concludes with reference to the emergence of Persian English in the DAs. By complementing genre analysis with a Cultural Linguistics perspective, the study contributes to the literature on comparative genre analysis of DAs, moving it beyond move-step analysis to a more systematic in-depth cultural analysis. In addition, the findings advance the literature on Cultural Linguistics by revealing a relationship between cultural schema and cultural metaphor.

In the Analects of Confucius, the Bible of Chinese people, junzi and xiaoren, are two contrasting cultural keywords respectively with multiple meanings. There are a variety of target terms for each of them through the interactions between suggestiveness and articulateness, translatability and untranslatability, and between comparability and incommensurability. These target terms may establish in the target culture different conceptual paradigms about the source culture. The strategies of translating cultural keywords should draw support from the history of thoughts and concepts. The methodology needs to be discussed against the cultural background. Unifying these meanings with one term and diversifying the original word with multiple terms are two contradictory but complementary approaches. Through case analysis, this paper aims at presenting how and why the two approaches are used, what are the relationships between them and what insights we can get from the case study in terms of cultural construction and intercultural communication. cultural keywords, things become more complicated even than those of social sciences. Actually, any translated term for cultural keywords, may highlight one or two meanings of the keyword, but conceal the rest or impose upon the keyword extra meanings it does not originally have, but any translated term for it may be reasonable, necessary and constructive, though inadequate. Traditionally there exist two approaches in this regard, unifying the meanings in the keyword with one term or diversifying the keyword with multiple terms, with the former seemingly being preferable and justified according to the principle mentioned above. The two contradictory pursuits, based not convergent and divergent thinking respectively, compete against each other among the translators, but fewer of them account for their preference for one over the other. Although there are established terms for the keyword, the discovery or creation of an infallible and ever-lasting translated terms is still tantalizing. To bring about the similar suggestiveness in the target text, the translator is encouraged to construct a term capable to comprise as many original meanings as possible. The diversifying-purpose translators may be prompted by presenting the multifold meanings of a cultural keyword. How and why are the two approaches used in the translation of cultural keywords? What effects do the diversifying approach bring about on target readers? To what extent do the two approaches have something to do with constructing or reshaping the national identity of the source culture or the target? How do they have joint function in the cross-cultural exchange? Is it possible to examine the problems from Chinese perspective? All these need to be discussed based on the case analysis of cultural keyword translation.

Response to John Lantos Gayle Whittier (bio) In response to my essay on cultural metaphors and pain relief in neonatology, John Lantos shifts emphasis to a significant, related, but ultimately distracting topic, the NICU’s life-saving mission, thus launching a defense of neonatal intensive care units not really central to my critique of inadequate pain relief for the preterm baby. I neither celebrate nor condemn neonatal intensive care per se but mainly focus on cultural metaphors as an influence on clinical practice. The desire to save babies’ lives is indisputably primal and unassailably “moral”—but isn’t that just the problem in a modern, technologically complex world? Moreover, some of the medical studies I cite indicate that pain relief enhances survival, so is this really the issue? Instinct may or must be our field guide, especially in the emotionally sensitive area of neonatal care, but a cartography of cultural metaphor and means helps us identify and refine our human obligations beyond it. However, the respondent does pose a number of provocative questions pertinent to my premises and argument, and we remain in agreement on several points. Let me begin, then, with the latter. The respondent and I both accept that Western medicine “works its magic by causing harm,” and, like him, I am aware that good and bad are not always extricable from one another. To think otherwise would be to adopt the puritan fallacy that one can eliminate evil without affecting good. Correspondingly, cultural metaphors like those I describe both enable and disable. That said, I think we would agree that some evils, such as causing unnecessary pain, can and should be limited as much as possible. We do not equally value exploring cultural metaphor as a means for effecting pragmatic changes in medical care, however; and, by implication, the respondent distrusts the representational nature of my writing, which he sees as replicating the very metaphoric transactions I critique. Like the neonatologists and parents who both want babies to survive, the respondent and I agree only generally, but otherwise perceive according to differing motivations and arrive at different evaluations of the same phenomena. The primary purpose of my essay is to encourage people—laypersons and medical professionals alike—to look into and, as necessary, [End Page 241] past the cultural metaphors contextualizing NICU care in order to locate themselves more consciously as participants or witnesses, with an end to relieving all the kinds of pain in the NICU zone. We need to refine our assessment of the “balance of benefits to burdens,” in the respondent’s words. This is not to say that immediate remedies always result from conscious awareness. The respondent rightly claims that my critique “stops short of particular proposals for reform.” I indeed diagnose more freely than I prescribe, in part because practical remedies to the infliction of pain in neonatology are emerging, as physicians such as K. J. S. Anand, his colleagues, and others research neonatal suffering from both a clinical and humanitarian standpoint; and because changing whole institutions strikes me as a Herculean, if not arrogant ambition, just as replacing major cultural metaphors with others is a Utopian one. (Nevertheless, we should not abandon the imagination of “other worlds” of medicine, since one of the disadvantages of cultural metaphor is that it limits research possibilities.) What is more, as a literary person writing across disciplines, I have never felt a sense of trespass but have sometimes suspected that I was jaywalking past complexities I did not see. In medical situations, people often have to act and react quickly, without the luxury of a long exposition like my essay. Perhaps my words, reaching the minds of readers at a calm time, when there is space for reflection, may enlarge those deeper sensibilities from which our trained and/or spontaneous actions spring. Perhaps someone actively struggling with the issues I raise will feel, if not enlightened, less isolated as a witness. I confess also that I value consciousness for consciousness’s sake. If, as I hope, my essay offers readers a new perspective on the relationship between metaphor and practice, whether in NICU care or in any of the other venues the respondent designates, such...

کلیشه‌های جنسیتی را می‌توان یکی از مفاهیم برجسته در حوزه‌ی جامعه‌شناسی زبان به‌شمار آورد. این کلیشه‌ها در همه‌ی سطوح زبانی از جمله در ادبیات کودک یافت می‌شوند و در بازتولید زبان جنسیت-زده و گفتمان مردسالار نقش به‌سزایی دارند. پژوهش حاضر به بررسی این کلیشه‌ها در مجموع چهل داستان کودک در گروه سنی «الف» و «ب» پرداخته و درصدد این بوده تا با روشی توصیفی-تحلیلی در چارچوب زبان‌شناسی فرهنگی میزان و نوع کلیشه‌های رایج در دو گروه را با یک‌دیگر مقایسه کند و در ادامه تفسیری زبانی و فرهنگی از این کلیشه‌ها ارائه دهد. یافته‌های پژوهش نشان‌گر این بوده‌اند که اگرچه نسبت به آثاری تألیفی در دهه‌های پیشین از میزان کلیشه‌های جنسیتی در داستان‌های کودکان کاسته شده لیکن گفتمان مردسالار در سطح ژرف‌ساخت داستان‌های کودکان هم‌چنان حضور پررنگی داشته و ارزش‌ها و ملاک‌های مربوطه را از طریق ارائه‌ی چارچوب‌ها و نقش‌های جنسیت‌زده در زبان رمزگذاری کرده و به مخاطب القا می‌کند.

In its journey across the globe, English has become increasingly localised by many communities of speakers around the world, adopting it to encode and express their cultural conceptualisations, a process which may be called glocalisation of the language. The glocalisation of English and the dynamics of increased contact between people from different cultural backgrounds, or transcultural mobility, call for new notions of ‘competence’ to be applied to successful intercultural communication. In this paper, I focus on the notion of metacultural competence, from the perspective of Cultural Linguistics, and explain how such competence can be developed as part of learning English as an International Language (EIL). Cultural Linguistics is a discipline with multidisciplinary origins exploring the relationship between language, culture, and conceptualisation. The analytical tools of Cultural Linguistics are conceptual structures such as cultural schemas, cultural categories, and cultural metaphors, collectively referred to as cultural conceptualisations. The paper provides examples of cultural conceptualisations from Chinese English and Hong Kong English. It also explores different aspects of metacultural competence. Metacultural competence enables interlocutors to consciously engage in successfully communicating and negotiating their cultural conceptualisations during intercultural communication. I argue that EIL curricula should provide opportunities for learners to develop this competence and expose them to the conceptual variation that characterises the English language in today’s globalised world. Exposure to a variety of cultural conceptualisations in learning an L2 is likely to expand a learner’s conceptual horizon, where one can become familiar with, and even have the option of internalising, new systems of conceptualising experience.

This chapter explores the role of ‘culture’ in perceptions of impoliteness from a Cultural Linguistics perspective. Recent studies of impoliteness have identified a number of factors that influence speakers’ perception of (im)polite language use. The chapter argues that Cultural Linguistics has the potential to offer a robust analytical framework for the exploration of the cultural conceptualisations that are often associated with (im)polite use of language. The framework provides a set of analytical tools for bringing to the foreground features of human languages that are entrenched in cultural conceptualisations, including cultural schemas, cultural categories, and cultural metaphors. This chapter elaborates on this proposal by presenting examples of naturalistic discourse from Persian in which speakers interpret impolite behaviour in the light of a number of Persian cultural schemas. The study reported in this chapter also adopts a novel three-layered approach that combines (meta)discourse analysis with the ethnography of cultural conceptualisations for data analysis.

This study examined conceptualisations of FANÄ€, the case of &lsquo;the cave&rsquo; and &lsquo;the bull&rsquo;, in Masnavi (complete six books) using the theoretical and analytical frameworks of Cultural Linguistics. The study was motivated by an increasing number of Rumi readers all over the world, and specifically in Western contexts. Furthermore, the dearth of empirical research that addresses conceptual metaphors and their cultural roots in a Sufi literary context added to the significance of such a study. The study investigated the cultural schemas, categories, and metaphors of FANÄ€; however, the results suggested the existence of a schema and metaphors. Moreover, the study sought to find out possible external cultural influences on such conceptualisations (e.g. Proto-Indo-Iranian religions). The study was conducted through the compilation of the corpus, identification of the metaphors, and the cultural analysis using Nvivo11 and MAXQDA. The preliminary results of the data analysis suggested both universal and culturally-specific conceptualisations. The study was concluded by listing all symbols and metaphors that are linguistic manifestations of FANÄ€. Key words: Cultural linguistics, corpus linguistics, cultural metaphors, cultural categories, cultural schemas, Rumi, Mathnavi. &nbsp