16.3421, Review: Semantics/Pragmatics Dobrovol'skij&Piirainen(2005)

[LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-16-3421. Wed Nov 30 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.3421, Review: Semantics/Pragmatics Dobrovol'skij&Piirainen(2005)

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Wayne State U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>
 
Reviews (reviews at linguistlist.org) 
        Sheila Dooley, U of Arizona  
        Terry Langendoen, U of Arizona  

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, Wayne
State University, and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Lindsay Butler <lindsay at linguistlist.org>
================================================================  

What follows is a review or discussion note contributed to our 
Book Discussion Forum. We expect discussions to be informal and 
interactive; and the author of the book discussed is cordially 
invited to join in. If you are interested in leading a book 
discussion, look for books announced on LINGUIST as "available 
for review." Then contact Sheila Dooley at dooley at linguistlist.org. 

===========================Directory==============================  

1)
Date: 27-Nov-2005
From: Dennis Alexander < dalexan3 at grapevine.net.au >
Subject: Figurative Language 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:35:38
From: Dennis Alexander < dalexan3 at grapevine.net.au >
Subject: Figurative Language 
 

AUTHORS: Dobrovol'skij, Dmitrij; Piirainen, Elisabeth
TITLE: Figurative Language
SUBTITLE: Cross-cultural and Cross-linguistic Perspectives
SERIES: Current Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface
PUBLISHER: Elsevier Ltd.
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-2095.html

Dennis Alexander, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, 
University of New England, Australia

This monograph contains: a preface, an introduction, fourteen 
chapters, references, abbreviations, an index of linguistic units, a 
subject index, and a name index.  The book appears to be printed on 
semi-gloss paper in an 8 point font.  The languages examined include: 
English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Russian, Lithuanian, 
Greek, Finnish, a German dialect WML, and Japanese.

SYNOPSIS

In the preface, the authors assert the need to address issues outside 
of linguistics proper in the study of conventional figurative language 
(CFL).  The project for the book is the development of a linguistic 
theory capable of taking into account the image component and 
cultural content included in idioms and lexicalised metaphors.  The 
introduction also identifies the scope of the topic covered as including 
idioms, proverbs, one word metaphors and similar conventionalised 
figurative units in the lexicon of a given language.  It also explains the 
need to go beyond linguistics to look in other cultural codes than the 
natural language system.  The approach is identified as cognitive 
because it is uses ''different types of knowledge as an explanatory 
basis for linguistic phenomena.''

Chapter 1 introduces the six working hypotheses underlying the 
research, the languages analysed and how various criteria can be 
applied to distinguish conventional figurative units (CFUs) from other 
related phenomena.  For their distinction between literal, non-literal, 
and figurative phenomena they rely on the notion of an image 
component as a conceptual structure that mediates between the 
lexical structure and the actual meaning of figurative units.  They also 
use the notion of 'additional naming' as a means of identifying CFUs.  
By 'additional naming' a CFU is seen as another way to say something 
that can already be said in a more direct and primary way.

Chapter 2 contains significant explanation of CFL and conventional 
phraseology.  It also develops a typology of CFUs as phrasemes.  It 
deals with idioms, similes, restricted collocations and proverbs using 
examples from a range of languages.  

Chapter 3 deals with the idea of cross-linguistic equivalence of 
idioms.  Many idioms are examined with respect to their semantics, 
syntactics, and pragmatics.  They show how the image component is 
crucial to cross-linguistic analysis and how it is not definitive of 
equivalence because of functional and syntactic factors.  This is 
achieved through careful and subtle analysis of differences between 
posited semantically equivalent idioms in a range of languages.  They 
develop a notion of functional equivalence in place of what they view 
as the traditional idea of ''full equivalence''.

This is a crucial chapter.  Here the authors draw some fine grained 
distinctions relating to the motivation of CFUs and their relations to, 
among other things, conceptual metaphors, rich imagery, stereotypes, 
kinegrams, and textual dependence.  The differences between index-
based, iconic, and symbol-based motivations drawn in this chapter 
become important in later chapters.  The blending of different kinds of 
motivation is also examined briefly.

Chapter 5 is an extended treatment of the notion of phraseological 
and idiomatic 'false friends' across languages.  It shows how CFUs 
from two languages can have similar mental images and lexical items 
in their composition yet have quite different semantics.  Different 
salient features of the knowledge of the source domain are shown to 
come to the surface in each of the CFUs in a 'false friends' 
relationship.  An interesting notion here is the quasi-false friends 
relation identified between a Finnish and a Japanese idiom based on 
spoons: arising from different source concepts with similar targets, 
they have similar meaning but are not true false friends.

Chapter 6 is an examination and critique of the Cognitive Theory of 
Metaphor (CTM) and its application in CFU analysis from a number of 
perspectives including linguistics and anthropology.  The conclusion of 
this chapter is that rich images are more promising than CTM for 
revealing semantic and pragmatic features of every single CFU - not a 
small claim.

Chapter 7 is an implementation of some ideas developed so far in the 
book to the field of idioms of fear.  The empirical results canvassed 
demonstrate that cognitively based semantic theories are compatible 
with the ideas of semantic decomposition developed in structural 
semantics.  However, the examination of fear idioms here does not 
find support for the traditionally posited oppositions applied to fear 
(strong vs. not strong; expectations vs. reaction; personal vs. general; 
etc).  However a connection is found between imagery and 
oppositions such as acceptable vs. unacceptable fear; serious vs. not 
serious causes; and, quality of the person vs. external conditioning.  In 
particular, Dobrovol'skij and Piirainen find that the same emotion 
expressed by different means can invoke different parts of people's 
conceptual knowledge and thus not remain completely the same 
emotion.

Chapter 8 is a development and application of cognitive modelling, 
based on Fillmore's Frame Semantics, to CFU analysis.  A number of 
analytical and operational concepts and tools are developed and 
applied to notions such as the fifth wheel of a car/cart and 'black 
sheep'.  Again the orientation is towards uncovering motivational links 
between the composition and the meaning of CFUs.  

Chapter 9 is an extended application and demonstration of the 
analytical techniques of Chapter 8 to the concept of HOUSE as used 
in idioms from mainstream European languages, WML, and 
Japanese.  The conceptual differences and their realisations in CFUs 
are profound and revealing, though, on occasion, do appear almost 
banal.  

Chapters 10 and 11 deal with the difficult issue of culture.  In so doing 
they develop an elaborate technology for analysis of culture and 
cultural symbolism in relation to CFUs.  Dobrovol'skij and Piirainen 
identify and develop five types of culture-based knowledge applicable 
to CFUs: social interaction; material culture; inter-textual phenomena; 
fictive conceptual domains; and, cultural symbols.  They then examine 
the notion of blending of these phenomena.  A brief set of applications 
to names, idio-ethnic realia, and culture specific targets demonstrates 
that CFUs can be profoundly affected by culture.  A particularly 
interesting element of this examination is that of the GDR idioms, their 
motivation and embeddedness in a particular culture.

Chapter 11 pursues the concept of culture into symbolism.  While 
Dobrovol'skij and Piirainen eventually opt for a Saussurian approach 
to symbolism, they also consider other approaches including, briefly, 
the Peircean sign functions.  In this chapter they draw and 
demonstrate a particularly important distinction between 'metaphor' 
and 'symbol' as figurative devices, with the latter being more deeply 
embedded in culture than the former.  The idea that an analysis of 
symbols in CFUs requires the analyst to look outside the domain of 
linguistics into other cultural codes is presented with compelling clarity.

Chapters 12 and 13 are applications of the theory developed in the 
previous chapters to the fields of number and animal based CFUs.  
The cross-linguistic and cross-cultural underpinning and analysis 
arising from this examination is both informative and revealing in both 
depth and detail.  The peculiarities of the symbolism of 'quatre' in 
French are pertinent and well contrasted with other European 
languages.  The contradictory symbolism of WOLF and its roots in, for 
some languages, a distant past is also valuable in an age where in 
some views yesterday is ancient history.

Chapter 14 summarises and re-presents the theory of CFLT in a 
comprehensive and concise manner.  While it does canvas future 
applications of the theory, it does not do so at the expense of clear 
exposition.

EVALUATION

This is a very detailed work based on a sizable corpus from the 
languages examined.  It is rigorous and comprehensive as well as 
comprehensible in its synthesis of concepts, techniques, and 
perspectives from sometimes divergent fields.  For those working in 
the fields of cross-cultural, cross-linguistic, and figurative linguistics, 
this book is an important theoretical contribution.  

While it does canvass the work of a number of authors in relation to 
cross-linguistic and cross-cultural studies, there does seem to be 
scope for fruitful examination of Wierzbicka's Cultural Scripts 
approach (Wierzbicka 1990), especially in relation to explication of 
underlying cultural symbolism.  In relation to this, and notwithstanding 
the critique of Wierzbicka's analysis of Russian cultural scripts, the 
work of Goddard on Peircean sign functions (Goddard 2002) is also 
relevant to the discussion of cultural symbolism.

The theoretical exposition is well supported by the data adduced.  The 
extensive application of the theoretical framework across different 
languages and semantic domains is a real strength of this book.  In 
their synthesis of different analytical frameworks and their analysis of 
competing theoretical perspectives, Dobrovol'skij and Piirainen remain 
focussed on conventionalised figurative language.  This focus is 
maintained in their application of their theoretical insights into the data.

The theory and its application by the originators is well demonstrated, 
and is itself very practical: not quite a cookbook, but it both explains 
the theory and demonstrates its application in comprehensible steps.  
In the case of this book, the use of an idiom of evaluation is almost 
mandatory.  The utility of the theory can only be assessed by ongoing 
application, development, and dialogue with other users: i.e. the proof 
of the pudding is in the eating.

REFERENCES

Goddard, C. (2002). Ethnosyntax, Ethnopragmatics, Sign-functions 
and Culture. Ethnosyntax, in Explorations in grammar and culture ed. 
by N. J. Enfield. Oxford, Oxford University Press. 1: 52-73.

Wierzbicka, A. (1990). Cross-cultural pragmatics: the semantics of 
human interaction. Berlin, Walter de Gruyter. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dennis Alexander is a PhD student at the University of New England.  
His research interests are figurative language, semantics, corpus 
linguistics, language, culture and cognition, and the philosophy of 
language.  His work to date has used NSM as a tool in the 
investigation of the semantics of abstract and figurative expressions.





-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-16-3421