32.1019, Books: Bringing Stories to Life: Trompenaars

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-32-1019. Fri Mar 19 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.1019, Books: Bringing Stories to Life: Trompenaars

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Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2021 17:19:50
From: Janacy van Duijn Genet [lot-fgw at uva.nl]
Subject: Bringing Stories to Life: Trompenaars

 


Title: Bringing Stories to Life 
Subtitle: Animacy in narrative and processing 
Series Title: LOT Dissertation Series  

Publication Year: 2021 
Publisher: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT)
	   http://www.lotpublications.nl/
	

Book URL: https://www.lotpublications.nl/bringing-stories-to-life 


Author: Thijs Trompenaars

Paperback: ISBN:  9789460933684 Pages: 213 Price: Europe EURO 32


Abstract:

What does it mean to be alive? An age-old question, and not one this thesis
will pretend to answer. Instead, we will be exploring the many ways in which
life enters into our language. We refer to this as animacy, a linguistic
distinction between living and non-living entities. Animacy has been widely
successful as an explanation for grammatical variation, but we note that a
simple distinction between animate and inanimate is ill-equipped to handle the
incredible creative potential of language – in our stories, we readily
transform inanimate objects like peanuts, paintings and toys into living,
breathing characters. We have chosen to take these transformations seriously,
using narrative as the lens through which we may enrich the meaning of
linguistic life.

This thesis shows through a series of studies that linguistic animacy is
indeed not a distinction between living and non-living entities, but rather an
expression of how alive we consider entities to be. This consideration, it
turns out, is influenced by many factors, some of which may be derived from
the linguistic context. We demonstrate that stories can bring objects to life
through linguistic means; specifically, through the ascription of Agency and
Experience. Agency and Experience – being able to act on and perceive the
environment – are two roles strongly associated with life, and we conclude
that this behaviour is central to the linguistic expression of animacy as
well.
 



Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics


Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=152553




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