23.5181, Review: Anthropological Linguistics; Cognitive Science; Pragmatics: Idstr=?UTF-8?Q?=C3=B6m=2C_?=Piirainen & Falzett (2012)

[linguist at linguistlist.org]

LINGUIST List: Vol-23-5181. Tue Dec 11 2012. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 23.5181, Review: Anthropological Linguistics; Cognitive Science; Pragmatics: Idström, Piirainen & Falzett (2012)

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>

Reviews: Veronika Drake, U of Wisconsin Madison
Monica Macaulay, U of Wisconsin Madison
Rajiv Rao, U of Wisconsin Madison
Joseph Salmons, U of Wisconsin Madison
Anja Wanner, U of Wisconsin Madison
       <reviews at linguistlist.org>

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Do you want to donate to LINGUIST without spending an extra penny? Bookmark
the Amazon link for your country below; then use it whenever you buy from
Amazon!

USA: http://www.amazon.com/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=linguistlist-20
Britain: http://www.amazon.co.uk/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=linguistlist-21
Germany: http://www.amazon.de/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=linguistlistd-21
Japan: http://www.amazon.co.jp/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=linguistlist-22
Canada: http://www.amazon.ca/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=linguistlistc-20
France: http://www.amazon.fr/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=linguistlistf-21

For more information on the LINGUIST Amazon store please visit our
FAQ at http://linguistlist.org/amazon-faq.cfm.

Editor for this issue: Rajiv Rao <rajiv at linguistlist.org>
================================================================  


Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:06:31
From: Megan Stone [stonem at email.arizona.edu]
Subject: Endangered Metaphors

E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=23-5181.html&submissionid=5534282&topicid=9&msgnumber=1
 
Discuss this message: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=5534282


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-1936.html

Editor: Anna  Idström
Editor: Elisabeth  Piirainen
Editor: Tiber F.M.  Falzett
Title: Endangered Metaphors
Series Title: Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts 2
Publisher: John Benjamins
Year: 2012

Reviewer: Megan Schildmier Stone, University of Arizona

SUMMARY

As editors Anna Idström and Elisabeth Piirainen suggest in the volume's
introduction, the title ''Endangered Metaphors'' weds two distinct areas of
linguistic interest in a single concept: the term 'endangered' is borrowed
from the study of endangered languages; and 'metaphor' is a blanket term for
the different kinds of non-literal language discussed in the book, ranging
from conceptual metaphors and metonymies to idioms and figures of speech.
Altogether, the term 'endangered metaphors' is not meant to refer exclusively
to metaphors in endangered languages, but rather to metaphors that are
themselves endangered, due either to language endangerment or to radical
changes in the linguistic environment of the host language. The purpose of the
book, as stated by Idström and Piirainen, is ''to explore in what ways these
metaphors and other kinds of figurative language may encode culturally
specific cognitive systems which will be lost when these languages cease to
exist or will be abandoned when they change under pressure'' (p. 16). The
editors strongly encourage the documentation of figurative language in
minority languages, concluding that metaphors ''start to vanish at the very
beginning of a language becoming endangered'' (p. 18). Toward that end, the
contributions in this book provide novel data representing languages from all
six inhabited continents and ten distinct language families. All fourteen
papers are united by the central theme of 'endangered metaphors'.

In the prologue, which precedes the introduction, Peter Mühlhäusler provides
background on the two central concepts of the book: metaphor and language
endangerment. He begins by discussing what metaphors are and how we can
recognize them, noting importantly that conceptual metaphors take different
shapes in different cultures. Mühlhäusler then shifts his focus to language
endangerment and why we should care about language loss. Finally, he discusses
the importance of the study of metaphor to preserving endangered languages,
arguing that metaphors provide a crucial link to understanding the cultural
underpinnings that provide hope for a language's future.

Sally Rice opens the volume with her contribution, '''Our language is very
literal': Figurative expression in Dene Sųłiné [Athapaskan]''. Given the
tendency for Athapaskan languages to resist borrowing in favor of reusing a
small set of core stems in novel ways, Rice provides an extensive survey of
the figurative lexicalization patterns in Dene Sųłiné that are based on
metaphor or metonymy. She argues that, although other Athapaskan languages may
use different stems to lexicalize the same concepts, these lexicalizations
tend to share the same underlying conceptual metaphors. Finally, Rice claims
that there is a pedagogical benefit to understanding figurative expressions in
underrepresented languages, namely the ability to teach native speakers
authentic word-building strategies.

Next is Carolina Pasamonik's contribution, '''My heart falls out':
Conceptualizations of body parts and emotion expressions in Beaver
Athabascan''. Pasamonik explores the use of body part terms to express
abstract emotions and personality traits in Beaver Athabascan, arguing that
these expressions follow patterns established by systematic metaphors and
metonymies. She ultimately claims that these expressions give us insight, not
just into the Beaver way of using language, but also into its speakers’
conceptualization of the world.

In ''Walking like a porcupine, talking a like a raven: Figurative language in
Upper Tanana Athabascan'', Olga Lovick discusses two classes of animal idioms
used to describe human behavior: iconic idioms directly compare the behavior
of humans with the observed behavior of animals; and symbolic idioms compare
human behavior to traits that are associated with mythological
conceptualizations of animals. Lovick examines other Athabascan languages and
concludes that these types of expressions are not unique to Upper Tanana;
however, these idioms are falling out of use with younger generations of
speakers and are in danger of being lost as populations decline and shifts in
language usage occur.

The next contribution, ''Are Nahuatl riddles endangered conceptualizations?'',
by Mercedes Montes de Oca Vega, explores the conceptual structure underlying
riddles in two corpora of Nahuatl: one from the 16th century (Sahagún 1969
[1577]); and another from the 20th century (Amith 1997). Using Blending Theory
(Fauconnier & Turner 2002), Montes de Oca Vega compares riddles with the same
referent from the two corpora. She concludes that classical riddles reveal
historic, mythic, biological, and sociocultural information that is not
present in contemporary riddles and suggests that classical Nahuatl riddles
express ''endangered ways of thinking and conceptualizing'' (p. 142).

Elena Mihas, in her contribution ''Bodily-based conceptual metaphors in
Ashéninka Perené myths and folk stories'', discusses three bodily-based
metaphors that underlie the mythology of demonology in Ashéninka Perené. Mihas
uses the conceptual frameworks of animism and perspectivism (Viveiros 1998) to
highlight the ways in which these metaphors reflect the underlying cultural
conceptualizations of the Ashéninka Perené.

''The use of a conceptual metaphor in the Siroi language of Papua New Guinea:
Narrative is climbing a mountain'' is the next contribution, by Sjaak van
Kleef and Jacqueline van Kleef.  In this paper, the authors claim that
NARRATIVE IS CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN is an extended conceptual metaphor that
characterizes much of the discourse in the language. As evidence for this
claim, the authors argue that the choice of aspectual morphemes and
conjunctions in discourse is dictated by this and related metaphors, such as
ASCEND IS GOING TO THE UNKNOWN and DESCEND IS GOING TO THE KNOWN. Because the
morphemes under discussion are all optional, van Kleef and van Kleef conclude
that narrative concerns -- rather than syntactic ones -- must drive the
selection of the appropriate morpheme.

In the next contribution, ''Kewa figures of speech: Understanding the code'',
Karl J. Franklin describes many varieties of figurative language in Kewa. Many
of these figures of speech are embedded in 'saa agaa', a form of veiled speech
in which speakers use not only idioms and metaphors but also maxims that serve
as coded warnings. As Franklin states, ''the overall purpose and role of
disguised speech is to leave the hearer with a certain amount of
bewilderment'' (p. 192), rendering this form of speech intentionally opaque.
Franklin argues that it is impossible to understand the complexity of Kewa
coded speech without adopting an emic viewpoint (Pike 1967, 1982) sympathetic
to the native culture.

Monali Longmailai and Lakshminath Rabha have the next contribution,
''Metaphors in Dimasa and Rabha -- A comparative study''. This paper explores
metaphors from several semantic domains in two related endangered languages,
Dimasa and Rabha. Metaphors in these languages share similar morphological
processes within metaphors, as well as similar conceptual domains, such as
pride, leading the authors to conclude that the two groups of people
historically ''follow the same socio-cultural beliefs'' (p. 216). Longmailai
and Rabha end by discussing the loss of metaphor in the two languages,
claiming that metaphors in Dimasa are being replaced, whereas metaphors in
Rabha are simply being lost.

Next is Gillian F. Hansford's contribution, ''Numbers that Chumburung people
count on'', which explores the figurative and symbolic uses of numerals in
Chumburung. Hansford begins by reviewing some features of this base ten
numeral system. She then discusses the numerals one through nine, as well as a
few select larger numbers, highlighting the symbolic and figurative uses of
each. She concludes that elicitation and documentation of numeral systems,
including their symbolic uses, are essential to the preservation of this
important aspect of language.

''The importance of unveiling conceptual metaphors in a minority language: The
case of Basque'', by Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano, is the next contribution.
Ibarretxe-Antuñano argues against the universality of conceptual metaphors (as
claimed for metaphors of perceptual modality by, for example, Lakoff and
Johnson 1980), claiming that culture plays a significant role in the
interpretation of metaphor. Ibarretxe-Antuñano presents a range of conceptual
metaphors based on body parts in Basque, discussing the similarities and
differences in the way these body parts are conceptualized in Basque and more
familiar languages like English. She claims that culture and metaphor exist in
a sort of symbiotic relationship, where metaphor can only be understood in
terms of its cultural background, but culture likewise needs metaphor to
provide a way of framing cultural beliefs and knowledge. For this reason, she
concludes, the documentation and study of metaphor are essential to the
preservation of endangered languages.

The next contribution in the volume is Anna Idström's paper ''Antlers as a
metaphor of pride: What idioms reveal about the relationship between human and
animal in Inari Saami conceptual system''.  Idström argues against the
assumption of Cognitive Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), which
states that conceptual metaphors rely on a cognitive mapping that allows one
to understand one experience in terms of another. Instead, she claims that
Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986) better accounts for the patterns of
metaphor found in Inari Saami. According to Relevance Theory, repeated
exposure to environmental factors causes the formation of an image schema in
the speaker's mind; activation of this shared image schema allows speakers to
use and understand metaphors grounded in common experience. After presenting
animal metaphors from many different semantic domains, Idström concludes --
like many of the other authors in this volume -- that these metaphors reveal a
lot about the culture of the people who use them.

Kimmo Granqvist's contribution ''Metaphors of the Finnish Roma in Finnish and
Romani'' is next. Granqvist compares the conceptualizations underlying
metaphors in Romani and the Finnish lects spoken by the Roma people. He argues
that the Roma's sociocultural ''division of the human body into a ritually
pure upper part and a ritually unclean lower part'' (p. 295) characterizes not
just Romani body-based metaphors, but also Finnish metaphors used by the Roma.
Granqvist concludes by presenting the results of a survey, which show that
Romani adolescents are, by and large, much less competent with the metaphors
of their language than Romani elders, which is a symptom of a larger language
attrition issue.

The penultimate contribution in the volume is '''Bhio' tu dìreach ga ithe, bha
e cho math = You would just eat it, it was so good': Music, metaphor and food
for thought on Scottish Gaelic aesthetics'', by Tiber F. M. Falzett. This
paper explores metaphorical uses of food terms in Scottish Gaelic, providing
evidence for two conceptual metaphors: MUSIC AND SPEECH ARE FOOD and ACCURATE
PERFORMANCE IS TASTE. Falzett argues that several lexical items in Scottish
Gaelic with literal meanings related to food (e.g. ith 'eat' and blas 'taste')
have figurative meanings related to performance. For Falzett, the study of
metaphor in endangered languages is essential to understanding the cultures
and worldviews of those communities.

Rounding out the volume is Elizabeth Piirainen's contribution, ''Metaphors of
an endangered Low Saxon basis dialect -- exemplified by idioms of STUPIDITY
and DEATH'' (small caps are used in place of all caps in the original chapter
title). Piirainen discusses idioms from two semantic fields, stupidity and
death, arguing that these idioms ''are clearly motivated to [native]
speakers'' (p. 342) in the sense that there is a culture-specific metaphorical
link available between the idiom's literal and figurative interpretations.
Piirainen concludes by noting that the underlying imagery in these idioms is
distinct from the imagery found in the figurative speech of similar semantic
domains in standard European languages.

EVALUATION

The empirical coverage of this volume is quite impressive, bringing together
novel data on metaphors in a wide range of endangered and minority languages.
On this basis alone, the book is to be commended; documentation of the
figurative usages of language is often overlooked, and -- as pointed out by
the editors in the volume's introduction -- figurative language is
particularly vulnerable during the initial stages of language decline.

One common undercurrent among the contributions to this volume is the notion
that conceptual metaphors are not universal but rather shaped by the
sociocultural worldviews of native speakers. This line of thinking runs
contrary to earlier work within Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT; Lakoff &
Johnson 1980, Lakoff 1993, i.a.), which held that, because conceptual mappings
are based on embodied experience, and because we all share the same
physiology, conceptual mappings for embodied metaphors should be universal.
However, as Granqvist points out in this volume, that work was based primarily
on English. As researchers started applying CMT to a more diverse set of
languages, it became clear that even embodied metaphors were not universal,
but rather constrained by cultural conceptions of the human body. This volume
represents promising advancements in this line of research.

In spite of the overall cohesion presented by the Cognitive Linguistics
approach to non-literal language, some of the contributions seem to fit less
well in this volume than others. For instance, Montes de Oca Vega's paper on
Nahuatl riddles deals with figuration in a specific type of performance,
rather than figurative language used in everyday speech. Similarly, Franklin's
contribution on Kewa figures of speech details many types of metaphor and
figurative language, but these are predominately couched within a specific
speech style, outside of more standard usage. Nonetheless, nearly every paper
in the volume references CMT, either directly or by citing the seminal work of
Lakoff and Johnson (1980), thus drawing a unifying thread even through more
loosely related content.

The majority of contributions in this volume are focused on a single language,
sometimes offering cursory comparisons to closely related languages (the
notable exceptions being Longmailai and Rabha's paper presenting a comparative
study of metaphors in Dimasa and Rabha and Granqvist's offering on Finnish and
Romani). Now that data is available on metaphor in minority languages, a
logical next step is to look at the data from a broader perspective and see
what comparisons can be made across languages and language families. The field
of non-literal language is also a great area for future experimental work,
where native speakers are available, which would give us a better
understanding of how metaphors and idioms are processed in minority languages.

While the book has many merits, some of the contributions lack cohesive
argumentation, leaving the volume feeling a bit uneven. For instance,
Longmailai and Rabha suggest in their introduction that they will
''reconstruct the proto-forms'' (p. 206) of metaphors found in both Dimasa and
Rabha; instead, they make some general statements about commonalities between
metaphors in the two languages without positing any specific proto-forms, and
conclude that the metaphors under discussion ''must have been as old as the
culture and the language'' (p. 216).  This type of internal inconsistency,
while not common, can occasionally be found in this volume.

Reading this book was also made difficult by many formatting inconsistencies
and typographical errors. The volume seems to lack guidelines for glosses, so
glossing varies widely from one paper to the next. Some papers contain full
morpheme-by-morpheme glosses (e.g. van Kleef and van Kleef), while others have
only free translations (e.g. Falzett). Some papers do not contain literal
interpretations alongside the figurative ones assigned to idioms or metaphors,
which can obscure the point the authors are trying to make (e.g. Longmailai
and Rabha, Ibarretxe-Antuñano). In almost every case the glossing conventions
are not discussed, so the reader is left guessing what certain abbreviations
mean (e.g. Idström). In addition, typographical errors occur in almost every
contribution, which occasionally cause frustration for the reader, as in
example (5) on page 133, where the word ''black'' appears in the
morpheme-by-morpheme gloss but seems to be missing from the free translation.
There even appears to be a typographical error in the title of the final
contribution, Piirainen's ''Metaphors of an endangered Low Saxon basis
dialect'', which she refers to as a 'basic' dialect through the remainder of
paper.

Nonetheless, this volume represents a commendable empirical contribution to
data both on minority languages and on metaphor. The comprehensive background
provided in the prologue makes this work accessible reading for anyone
interested in the study of underrepresented languages or metaphor, or in
cognitive linguistics more generally.

REFERENCES

Amith, Jonathan. 1997. Tan ancha como tu abuela: Adivinanzas en náhuatl de
Guerrero central. Tlalocan 12. 141-219.

Fauconnier, Gilles & Mark Turner. 2002. The way we think: Conceptual blending
and the mind's hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books.

Lakoff, George. 1993. The contemporary theory of metaphor. In Andrew Ortony
(ed.), Metaphor and thought, 202-251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: Chicago
University Press.

Pike, Kenneth L. 1967. Language in relation to a unified theory of the
structure of human behavior. The Hague: Mouton & Co.

Pike, Kenneth L. 1982. Linguistic concepts: An introduction to tagmemics.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Sahagún, Bernardino. 1969 [1577]. Florentine Codex: General history of the
thing of New Spain. Santa Fe, NM: The School of American Research and the
University of Utah.

Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication and cognition.
Oxford: Blackwell.

Viveiros, Eduardo de Castro. 1998. Cosmological deixis and Amerindian
perspectivism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4(3). 469-488.


About the Reviewer:
Megan Schildmier Stone is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Linguistics at
the University of Arizona. She is currently a Visiting Student at the
University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests are in morphology,
syntax, and semantics, particularly as they pertain to idioms and other
noncompositional uses of language. She is in the process of writing her
dissertation, which uses both traditional and experimental methods to
investigate what idioms can tell us about the limits of human language.








----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-23-5181	
----------------------------------------------------------