26.5054, Review: Anthropological Ling; Cog Sci; Ling Theories; Pragmatics; Semantics; Text/Corpus Ling: Kraska-Szlenk (2014)

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Subject: 26.5054, Review: Anthropological Ling; Cog Sci; Ling Theories; Pragmatics; Semantics; Text/Corpus Ling: Kraska-Szlenk (2014)

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Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 17:17:39
From: Kelsie Pattillo [kelsie at uwm.edu]
Subject: Semantics of Body Part Terms

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-3987.html

AUTHOR: Iwona  Kraska-Szlenk
TITLE: Semantics of Body Part Terms
SUBTITLE: General Trends and a Case Study of Swahili
SERIES TITLE: LINCOM Studies in Semantics 06
PUBLISHER: Lincom GmbH
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Kelsie E. Pattillo, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Reviews Editors: Malgorzata Cavar and Ashley Parker

SUMMARY

This book contextualizes common cross-linguistic patterns found in body part
semantics. It contains 18 chapters organized in two parts. Part 1 analyzes
patterns in semantic extensions of body part terms as they appear across
languages and language families, and Part 2 analyzes Swahili corpus data for
patterns of lexical semantics and language usage as they are mapped onto other
domains.

Part 1 is divided into 10 short chapters and a brief conclusion that address
current discussions in semantic studies on body parts. More specifically, this
section shows how metaphor and metonymy provide explanations to patterns found
in embodiment, partonymy, grammaticalization, and semantic extensions.
Kraska-Szlenk provides cross-linguistic examples from more than 70 languages,
representing more than 15 language families and relates her own intimate
knowledge of Polish and Swahili to each of these subtopics. She further
contextualizes these patterns within the ongoing discussions of language
universals. 

Part 2 includes 8 chapters and a brief conclusion devoted to explaining
semantic mappings of Swahili body part terms, including ‘body,’ head,’ ‘face,’
‘eyes,’ heart,’ ‘hand/arm,’ and ‘sweat.’ Kraska-Szlenk’s data for these
chapters come from many sources including the Helsinki Corpus of Swahili,
mono- and bilingual dictionaries, and compilations of proverbs and idiomatic
expression. Along with many corpus examples, Part 2 includes bodily and
figurative meanings for each body part examined as well as a figure of the
semantic network discussed. This results in detailed usage-based data for both
metaphorical and metonymic body part extensions in Swahili.

There are also three indices in this book. The “Name Index” lists names cited
in the book with corresponding page numbers. The “Language Index” lists
language and language family names from which the  data in the book is taken,
along with page numbers. The “Subject Index” lists subjects discussed in the
book, including metaphor, metonymy, embodiment, emotion and individual body
parts, along with their corresponding page numbers.

Chapter 1 illustrates how body part studies fit into cognitive linguistics
from three perspectives: cognition and conceptualization, usage, and culture.
It focuses on metaphor and metonymy and introduces the concept of
unidirectionality, which are each discussed at length throughout the book.
This chapter also provides a general overview of the two parts of the book and
the chapters in Part 1.

Chapter 2 introduces the embodiment hypothesis, which states  that in semantic
extensions, the body serves as a source and not as a target. Kraska-Szlenk
emphasizes that this hypothesis is supported by data found in a vast number of
languages families spoken across geographic areas. She includes data from
languages spoken around the world to demonstrate how widespread embodiment is.
She gives a quick overview of the development of this hypothesis starting with
Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and ending with the most recent literature on
embodiment. 

In Chapter 3, Kraska-Szlenk summarizes the literature addressing three common
questions in cross-linguistic body part studies as follow: (1) Which parts of
the body are linguistically encoded? (2) Is the partition of the body
language-specific or common to all languages? (3) How can one posit
equivalents and compare different body parts in many languages? Along with
summarizing previous claims in the literature as answers for each of these
questions, she adds her own Polish examples.

Chapter 4 focuses on showing how languages extend body part terms in
grammaticalization. Kraska-Szlenk briefly summarizes Heine’s (2014) findings
that spatial orientation, reference identity and counting are the most common
target domains found in the grammaticalization of body part terms. 

Kraska-Szlenk devotes the following four chapters of the book to major domains
that are  common cross-linguistic targets for body part extensions. In Chapter
5, the author explains how the body tends to have physically felt responses to
emotion. She provides many examples and discusses the interior and exterior
body parts that experience a physical effect when people experience emotions,
the cross-linguistic parallels and differences in body part metaphors,
finally, the body parts that serve as sources for words of endearment and
curses. Chapter 6 examines how languages extend body part terms to the domain
of knowledge and reasoning. Kraska-Szlenk shows how languages differ in the
way they classify irrational emotions and rational thinking using body part
metonymy. Chapter 7 focuses on the domain of social interactions and values
including kinship, possession, and honor.Chapter 8 looks at domains external
to the human body such as animals, plants, landmarks, human-made artifacts,
and foods. 

In Chapter 9, the focus shifts from demonstrating cross-linguistic tendencies
to explaining how language specific semantic extensions fit into the
theoretical discussion. Kraska-Szlenk demonstrates that culture plays a key
role in shaping metaphors, which further influence language structure. This
cultural model explains language usage between speakers in a community and
transfer of linguistics expressions, calques, metaphors and metonymies. She
also introduces corpus models as a method to measure how alive a metaphor is
in a given language, which prepares readers for the corpus studies discussed
in Part 2. 

Chapter 10 completes Part 1 with the discussion of Kraska-Szlenk’s view of
language universals and embodiment. She explains language universals and their
use in body part literature, assuming that embodiment is the only hard
universal. She also includes what she classifies as soft embodied universals,
such as most languages have a body part term meaning ‘head.’ The author’s
examples focus on metaphors, metonymies, lexicon and directionality of
semantic extensions. At the end of the chapter, she reformulates Kövecses’
(2005) language universals into soft universals.

Between Chapters 10 and 11, Kraska-Szlenk includes a short conclusion which
both summarizes the main points of Part 1 and prepares readers for Part 2.

Chapter 11 introduces Kraska-Szlenk’s goals and methodology to examine body
part terms in Swahili. She uses a usage-based approach to semantic extension,
explaining why it is needed, what it is, and the key elements of major studies
(i.e. Croft and Cruse 2004, Traugott and Dasher 2002, and Langacker 2006) of
semantic extension. She, then, shows how corpus studies fulfill the needs of a
usage-based approach and explains her methodology in data collection, analysis
and body part selection discussed in the remaining chapters.

In Chapter 12, Kraska-Szlenk shows corpus examples to demonstrate the
difference between Swahili «mwili» ‘body’ and «roho» ‘soul.’ Her findings
indicate that «mwili» ‘body’ is overwhelmingly common in the bodily sense and
not very common in figurative senses. As in each of the remaining chapters in
Part 2, Kraska-Szlenk concludes with a figure representing this semantic
network.

Chapter 13 focuses on many bodily and figurative senses associated with
Swahili «kichwa» ‘head.’ Bodily uses in the data include the domain of the
physical body, especially in texts describing accidents and medical
references. Figurative usages include referring to people’s thoughts,
extensions to agriculture, alcohol consumption, counting, and spatial
relations. The uses of «kichwa» refer to both the head as a whole and the
parts of the head, such as the top, which is commonly used to carry objects
such as jugs of water. 

Chapter 14 examines the uses of «uso» ‘face’ and finds that the Swahili corpus
data  has for this term bodily senses more commonly than figurative senses.
Some bodily uses include appearance, age, and criteria used to determine
beauty, whereas some of the figurative uses include the metaphors Face for
Emotions, and Honor (Respect/Dignity) is Face. Other figurative extensions
include spatial and temporal domains.

Chapter 15 focuses on the terms «jicho» and «macho» ‘eye(s).’ Kraska-Szlenk
shows that there is an overlap between figurative and bodily uses for ‘eye(s)’
and claims that it is often difficult to tell the difference between the two
uses. 

Chapter 16 examines the uses of «moyo» ‘heart,’ which competes with Swahili
«roho» ‘soul, spirit’ for the concept of ‘locus of emotions.’ Kraska-Szlenk
finds that bodily uses of «moyo» are extremely rare and figurative extensions
commonly use locus of emotions as a target domain for both metaphors and
chained metonymies. 

Chapter 17 demonstrates the complexity of a complete semantic network of
Swahili «mkono» ‘hand/arm’. The complexity originates from  the vast variety
of ways to use the hands and arms. Bodily uses include washing, contact with
another person, and damaging or injuring the hand/arm. Figurative uses include
instrument of moving, instrument of touching, instrument of working and
instrument of pointing. The data also indicate that it is more common to show
metonymies of working in Swahili with the term for ‘sweat’ than «mkono»
‘hand/arm.’

Chapter 18 exemplifies both bodily and figurative uses of «jasho» ‘sweat.’ A
major source domain for metaphorical meanings of «jasho» is hard physical
work. Kraska-Szlenk outlines a unidirectional semantic chain Sweat for Hard
Physical Work > Hard Work > Work and shows that «jasho» is often used with the
term for ‘peasants’ and is also used to refer to hardships and fighting.
Part 2 ends with a brief conclusion recapitulating the main findings from the
Swahili data and showing how they support the Cognitive Linguistics approaches
discussed in Chapter 11.

EVALUATION

This book is a much needed addition to the  contributions on body part
semantics and lexical typology. In addition to providing a thorough analysis
of seven body part terms in Swahili, Kraska-Szlenk provides numerous examples
from diverse language families, making it appealing to Bantuists and
linguistic typologists. Previous work in this field predominantly focuses on
data from languages spoken in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East (Maalej and Yu
2011, Sharifian et al. 2008, Yu 2002, Charteris-Black 2003, Horszowska 2007,
Pavlenko 2002, Matisoff 1985 and others) and there are few studies of body
part extensions in Bantu languages (Pongweni 2008). In addition to
representing sub-Saharan languages in a quickly growing subfield of cognitive
linguistics, the present study results in a solid representation of body part
semantics in the world’s languages in one source. Furthermore, Kraska-Szlenk’s
work provides many thorough examples of both metaphor and metonymy,
consistently showing how the two differ and overlap throughout Part 2.
Kraska-Szlenk’s chapter on «jasho» ‘sweat’ is also noteworthy as it is not
widely discussed in cross-linguistic body part studies and is a welcome
contribution to studies of bodily metaphors and metonymies. Kraska-Szlenk
meets her goals by providing a comprehensive description of cross-linguistic
semantic patterns of body part semantics as well as an in depth description of
figurative and bodily uses in Swahili.

This book has many strengths. First, Kraska-Szlenk includes examples from more
than 70 languages in her discussion of the literature on body part extensions.
These examples represent a well-balanced language sample in terms of genetic
and areal distribution. In addition to synthesizing data from a wide number of
grammars and articles, Kraska-Szlenk also provides her own abundant examples
from Polish and Swahili throughout Part 1. Throughout Part 2, Kraska-Szlenk
uses examples from Swahili grammar to show how deeply rooted the extensions
are in Swahili. This emphasizes the importance of the data presented in Part 2
for linguistic typologists. Further, the data is presented within  a clear
theoretical framework that explains how embodiment functions
cross-linguistically and which  is transparent throughout the book. The
author’s consistent use of examples throughout the book further strengthens
this transparency, creating a book that is uniform in quality and depth in the
range of topics covered by the author. Another strength of the book is that it
focuses on a variety of body parts and extensions rather than a narrower
analysis of the internal organs and the emotions, as  previously discussed in
the literature (Sharifian et al. 2008, Horszowska 2007, Yu 2002). Finally, the
discussion of the interplay between metaphor and metonymy is very clear.
Kraska-Szlenk highlights metonymy’s role in body part extensions throughout
the book, which makes the book stand out from most previous studies which most
commonly focus on the metaphor.

The monograph has a couple of weaknesses. Kraska-Szlenk assumes that readers
are familiar with the body part literature referenced in Part 1. This may make
the book difficult to approach for those unfamiliar with the literature  but
interested in the topic, especially readers coming from fields such as
anthropology, psychology, or philosophy. It may also make the Swahili data
less accessible to the Bantuists without a solid background in lexical
semantics. Additionally, I question the relevance of the discussion of
Optimality Theory on pages 75-76 for the intended audience of the book.
Although there is an attempt to fit the discussion into the discussion of
language universals, this section neither supports Kraska-Szlenk’s claims
regarding language universals and tendencies, nor is it relevant to the
semantics of body part terms. Especially given the assumption of the 
familiarity with the body part semantic literature throughout Part 1, it is
odd to devote nearly a full page to a theory that is commonly included in the
standard linguistic training. Last, the glossing of examples throughout the
text is sometimes confusing. Morphological glosses are left out if not
essential, and throughout Part 2  English translations appear in the same line
as the Swahili corpus examples, making them difficult to read. Italicizing the
Swahili corpus examples would have enhanced readability. 

Overall, this book is an excellent contribution to semantic typology and it
will certainly become a valuable resource and reference for future research on
body part extensions.

REFERENCES

Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2003. ''A Contrastive Cognitive Perspective on
Malay and English Figurative Language.'' In Meaning through Language Contrast,
Volume 2, 141-157. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Benjamins, 2003.

Croft, William and D. Alan Cruse. 2004. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge:
University of  Cambridge Press.

Heine, Bernd. 2014. The body in language: Observations from
grammaticalization. In: M.  Brenzinger and I. Kraska-Szlenk (eds.). The Body
in Language: Comparative Studies of  Linguistic Embodiment. Leiden:
Brill.13-32.

Horszowska, K. (2007). The Embodied Emotions in Chinese, Metaphor and Metonymy
 [Metonymy] Perspective. In M. Fabiszak (Ed.) , Language and Meaning:
Cognitive and  Functional Perspectives (pp. 127-138). Frankfurt, Germany:
Peter Lang.

Kövecses, Zoltán. 2005. Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation.
Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.

Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and
London: The  University of Chicago Press.

Langacker, Ronald W. 2006. On the continuous debate about discreteness.
Cognitive Linguistics 17 (1): 107-151.

Maalej, Zouheir and Ning Yu (eds.). 2011. Embodiment via Body Parts: Studies
from Various Languages and Cultures. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.

Matisoff, James. 1985. “Out on a limb: ARM, HAND, and WING in Sino-Tibetan.”
In   Thurgood, Matisoff, and Bradley (eds.). Linguistics of the Sino-Tibetan
area; the state of the art: papers presented to Paul K. Benedict for his 71st
birthday. 421-50. Pavlenko, Galina. 2002. Emotions and the body in Russian and
English. Pragmatics and Cognition 10: 207–241.

Pongweni, A. C. 2008. Body-Sourced Metaphors in Discourse across Cultures:
Similarities and Dissimilarities between English and Bantu. In M. Bagwasi, M.
Alimi, P. Ebewo (eds.). English Language and Literature: Cross Cultural
Currents. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars. 98-120.

Yu, Ning. 2002. Body and emotion: Body parts in Chinese expression of emotion.
Pragmatics and Cognition 10 (1-2): 341-367.

Sharifian, Farzad, René Dirven, Ning Yu, and Susanne Neimeier (eds.). 2008.
Culture body and  language: Conceptualization of internal body organs across
languages and cultures. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Traugott, Elizabeth and Richard Dasher. 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dr. Kelsie Pattillo is an associate lecturer in the department of linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her current research focuses on body part semantics. Kelsie's other interests include linguistic typology, semantic change, historical linguistics and language contact.




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