Image Schemas and Linguistic Relativity

[Paul Hopper]

I understood Monica's call for papers all along to be stating two extreme
positions, rather than endorsing one of them herself. As a means of scaring
up opinions along the entire spectrum of views, it seems a perfectly
legitimate tactic in a call for papers.

But it's an interesting category confusion, between direct and indirect
disourse, de re and de dictu, linguistic and metalinguistic, whatever we're
to call it. Failure to contextualize the two poles adequately can get
people into serious trouble. A few years ago a German politician had to
resign after giving a speech in which he rhetorically adopted the persona
of a supporter of right-wing extremists and seemed to many to be endorsing
the very views he was actually opposing.

Paul Hopper



>
>> Hello Funknet Members,
>>
>> I have received several emails arguing "against' the position supposedly
>> taken in the call for abstracts. I think that unfortunately the wording
>> may have been been misleading. The purpose of the workshop is to question
>> the general assumptions about the universality of image schemas in
>> relation to the assumptions about linguistic relativity. We want to put
>> all the cards on the table and figure out what's what, according to what
>> we know would be consistent with the rest of cognition. As such, if any
>> Funknet members would like to join the discussion, we will welcome your
>> abstracts until Sunday night at midnight at the latest.
>
>
>



---------------------------
Paul Hopper
Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of the Humanities
Department of English
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
Telephone (412) 268-7174
Fax (412) 268-7989