Summary: How woman are conceptualised

[zmaalej]

Dear List Members,

A few weeks ago, I posted a query on how women are conceptualised in
different languages and cultures. I would like first to acknowledge my debt
to the many people who responded to the query by sending their own
publications on the issue, showing their interest in the subject,
contributing the conceptualisation of their own language, and even promising
to contribute in the future. In particular, I would like to mention in
alphabetical order Adriano Allora and Manuala Manera, Linda Bawcom, Donald
Carroll, Luis Faiska, Andrea Faulstich, Caitlin Hines, Masako Hiraga, Dina
Koschorreck, Ahmad Reza Lotfi, Stephen Matthews, Anette Nielsen, Marina
Rakova, Esther Schely-Newman, Kazuko Shinohara, Tamar Sovran, Marina
Terkourafi, Sirje Virkus, Sheila Webster Boneham.  I do apologise if I left
out any others.

The contributions received concern the following languages: Cantonese,
Danish, German,  Italian, Japanese, Mexican, Persian, Portuguese, Russian,
and Spanish. Obviously, this is a small corpus of languages, and I hope to
receive contributions from other languages. The preliminary conclusion that
I have drawn from the data I received confirms Lakoff & Johnson's (1999)
claim that the three aspects of the mind are "the cognitive unconscious, the
embodiment of mind, and metaphorical thought." To venture a tentative
conclusion, it seems that the aforementioned languages conceptualise women
by relying on embodiment, using the mapping domains of animals, food,
objects, plants, etc. However, they may use different conceptual metaphors
altogether (i.e. metaphoric expressions that are only intelligible to their
own users), the same conceptual metaphor with different lexical realisation,
or the same conceptual metaphor and the same linguistic expression. It also
seems that the choice of linguistic metaphors (and hence its corresponding
conceptual one) can be highly dependent on cultural considerations as when,
for instance, Arabic, Persian, and Russian (as my respondents confirmed it)
do use the conceptual metaphor, WOMAN IS A MYTHICAL CREATURE, while other
languages in the data do not. I will not try to jump to any conclusion
concerning this particular point so long as the corpus is not more
representative of human languages. Such an important conclusion will only be
possible if more languages enter into the picture.

If any colleagues find this topic stimulating, but feel that my conclusions
do not correspond to the reality of their culture, they are welcome to get
in touch with me. And if others feel attracted to the findings (?) of this
query, and want to know more about it, they may contact me off-list.

Zouhair Maalej,
Department of English Chair,
Faculty of Letters, Manouba, 2010,
University of Tunis I, TUNISIA.
Office Phone: (+216) 1 600 700 Ext. 174
Office Fax: (+216) 1 520 910
Home Tel/Fax: (+216) 1 362 871
Email: zmaalej at gnet.tn