27.2475, Review: Anthropological Ling; Cog Sci; General Ling; Ling Theories; Socioling: Hollington (2015)

Fri Jun 3 20:04:49 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-2475. Fri Jun 03 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.2475, Review: Anthropological Ling; Cog Sci; General Ling; Ling Theories; Socioling: Hollington (2015)

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Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2016 16:04:31
From: Maria Prikhodko [m.prikhodko at iup.edu]
Subject: Traveling Conceptualizations

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-3898.html

AUTHOR: Andrea  Hollington
TITLE: Traveling Conceptualizations
SUBTITLE: A cognitive and anthropological linguistic study of Jamaican
SERIES TITLE: Culture and Language Use 14
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Maria Prikhodko, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

In Traveling Conceptualizations: A Cognitive and Anthropological Linguistic
Study of Jamaican Andrea Hollington scrutinizes how African influences shaped
Jamaican “ways with words” from a cognitive-linguistic perspective. The author
slowly reaches the goal by structuring the monograph linearly, from
introducing the study rationale, background, and significance in Chapter 1;
data collection methods and the researcher’s self-positioning in Chapter 2; to
Chapter 3 to illuminate the crucial theoretical lenses: cultural
conceptualizations, interrelation of language, culture and cognition. Then,
Chapter 4 steps into Jamaican contexts to envisage language domains to be
under investigation. After brief Chapter 5, where the author discusses
embodied concepts like hybridity and agency, Chapters 6 conceptualizes serial
verb constructions (SVCs) in Jamaican settings as influenced by Western
African languages. Chapter 7 changes track to explore Jamaican naming
practices like ethnonyms and toponyms. Finally, the final chapter summarizes
the book and concludes with further implications. 

The monograph opens with the introductory chapter defining a major theme,
linguistic conceptualizations of various individuals and communities in
Jamaican settings as influenced by African heritage. Then, the author lays out
how the book is organized. 

The title of Chapter 2, Methods and Data, speaks for itself. The author
delineates the process of data collection and research positionality. First,
in order to triangulate the data, together with conducting semi-structured and
unstructured interviews, the author reports several journeys to Jamaica in
2011 and 2012; she describes recordings of oral narratives, like folk stories
and personal stories, observations of media sources that represented Jamaican
language platforms, and participant observations and unstructured discussions.
The chapter ends with critical insights into research positioning. 

Chapter 3 aims at establishing the theoretical basis for the study, cultural
conceptualizations (metaphor, metonymy, categories, schemas, cultural models
and events) and cognitive processes such as meaning making through conceptual
systems embedded in particular cultures.

In Chapter 4, Hollington scrutinizes the sociohistorical settings of the
research site – Jamaica. Following this is a discussion of empirical studies
on African influences on Jamaican contexts (divided into two subsections:
Previous studies on African influences in Jamaica; and A New Perspective). The
first subsection addresses the process of forming “the creolist paradigm as
well as on linguistic contributions concerning the African heritage in
Jamaica” (p. 3) through analyzing its linguistic subdomains, such as lexicon,
phonology, semantic structures, linguistic practices as embedded in religious
and ethnic communities. The second subsection, shifts to a new research
perspective to take up a holistic view on how African influences may be
traveling into Jamaican residents’ daily practices. 

Chapter 5, Body Parts and Conceptualizations, illuminates how the movement of
body parts becomes embodied in linguistic expressions used in Jamaican
contexts. To demonstrate the significance of this, the author envisages the
cognitive-linguistic role of embodiment in African conceptualizations and
languages (i.e. the Ewe, Ntrubo and Chumburung); and then, she traces cultural
hybridization and agency in the Jamaican body. The author summarizes the
examined body parts metaphors and their cultural conceptualizations in
Jamaican and West African languages in a table. The purpose of the table is to
identify parallel constructions, rather than to generalize about semantically
transparent units in Africa and the African Diaspora in the New World. 

Chapter 6 concentrates on the daily usage of serial verb constructions (SVCs)
as “strategies of coding and expressing a range of semantic as well as
grammatical relations and functions.” (p. 133) Defining the constructions, the
author also surveys most typical features of  SVCs (symmetrical
lexicalization, grammatization of a verbum dicendi) in wider contexts of West
Africa (Kwa, West Benue-Congo, Gur, Adamawa, Ubangi, and in sub branches of
East Benue-Congo including Cross-River, Jukunooid, and Nigerian Plateau
languages). The remainder of the chapter categorizes most frequent SVCs in
Jamaican contexts: (a) assymetrical (instrumental (‘to take’); motion (‘change
of state’ verbs); purposive (‘to hide’); benefactive (‘to give’); comparative
(‘to pass’, ‘to surpass’); complementizer (‘se say, that’); (b) symmetrical;
(c) argument-sharing and switch-subject; and (d) focus. 

Chapter 7 examines kinship, names and conceptualizations of identity in the
research settings. Starting with kinship concepts ‘mother’ (Mama Africa) or
‘father’ in folklore and (oral) literature (Anansi) and what they may
symbolize (human behavior, relations), the discussion proceeds to the domains
of the spiritual world and leadership (reconnecting with ancestors after
death. The next theme is naming in Jamaica: personal names, Kromanti and
Nyabingi. As associated with a specific historical character, the Kromanti
element is considered essential for Jamaican Maroon’s cultural practices. The
last element embedded in the naming practices is Nyabingi, which the author
defines to be a strong marker of African identity (recognized in music). 

EVALUATION

This book is an invaluable contribution to the fields of cognitive linguistics
and cultural anthropology, because it exemplifies how one particular cultural
context with its embedded linguistic practices may be scrutinized. The author
marks down how the wider sociohistorical context of West Africa influenced and
inspired Jamaican communities to maintain linguistic traditions of naming,
interacting and embodying meanings. 

>From a methodological point of view, this book is an asset for graduate
students majoring in the related fields of study. The author scrutinizes the
process of establishing the epistemological basis of the study: cognitive
meaning making processes and cultural conceptualizations of metaphor,
metonymy, categories, schemas, cultural models and events. Then, the author
succinctly describes a very complex data collection process, which,
definitely, is helpful for scholars seeking appropriate models of gathering
artifacts and procedures. 

However, besides critical reflection on self-positioning in the research,
there were few other critical insights into the context. For instance, the
author might have specified cognitive differences in transferring naming
practices in different cultural communities of Jamaica. Instead of describing
what practices exist, the author might have distinguished how certain
representatives (for example, of elder generations) had acquired the same
meaning over time or space. 

While there is a lack of critical discussion of the empirical results, I
highly recommend this monograph for methodological information  in conducting
qualitative studies.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Maria Prikhodko is a PhD candidate in Composition and TESOL at Indiana
University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation focuses on qualitative
explorations of internationally mobile students’ multilingual literacies in
the context of US freshman composition. She currently teaches two sections of
Composition II (research writing) through the pedagogy of equality and
sustainability.

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