Metaphor in Language and Culture across World Englishes

Marcus Callies, Marta Degani, Marcus Callies, Marta Degani

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350157552
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Sociolingüística

This book advances and broadens the scope of research on conceptual metaphor at the nexus of language and culture by exploring metaphor and figurative language as a characteristic of the many Englishes that have developed in a wide range of geographic, socio-historical and cultural settings around the world. In line with the interdisciplinary breadth of this endeavour, the contributions are grounded in Cognitive (Socio)Linguistics, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, and Cultural Linguistics. Drawing on different research methodologies, including corpus linguistics, elicitation techniques, and interviews, chapters analyse a variety of naturalistic data and text types, such as online language, narratives, political speeches and literary works. Examining both the cultural conceptualisations underlying the use of figurative language and the linguistic-cultural specificity of metaphor and its variation, the studies are presented in contexts of both language contact and second language usage. Adding to the debate on the interplay of universal and culture-specific grounding of conceptual metaphor, Metaphor in Language and Culture across World Englishes advances research in a previously neglected sphere of study in the field of World Englishes.

1

Introduction: Metaphor in Language and Culture Across World Englishes

Marta Degani and Marcus Callies

When compared to other long-standing research paradigms within linguistics, World Englishes (WEs) qualifies as a rather recent field of linguistic enquiry, its inception dating back to the 1980s. One of the motivating factors behind the emergence of research in WEs was the need to account for the level of formal and functional variation brought about by the diversification of English into Englishes or, in other words, to consider the nature and the relative implications of the spread of one language across the globe, including processes of acculturation. Given this broad scope, the fact that researchers have approached the object of study from multiple vantage points in the last forty years should not come as a surprise. Scholars who have given content and shape to research in WEs come from different linguistic traditions, and they do not always share the same epistemologies and interests.

Among the different approaches to the study of WEs (see Bolton 2020 for an overview), three major trends or traditions can be identified. One tradition is represented by research from an applied linguistic perspective, whose major aim is exploring the implications of WEs for English Language Teaching and Learning (see, e.g., Galloway and Rose 2015; Jenkins 2000; Kirkpatrick 2007; Matsuda 2017). Researchers in this tradition share an interest in developing new pedagogical approaches and teaching practices that can legitimate the existence of multiple varieties of English going beyond inner-circle models and give recognition to the use of English either as an International Language or as a Lingua Franca.

Another significant trend is that of Critical Linguistics (see, e.g., Canagarajah 2013; Phillipson 1992; Pennycook 1994, 2007; Saraceni 2015), which considers the political implications of the global spread of English (see also Blommaert 2010; Seargeant 2009), adopts an ideological discourse of resistance to the assumed linguistic imperialism and cultural hegemony of English and discusses the power of local contexts to transform the global language. Some of this research takes a critical stance towards globalization and the development of national language policies that can act to the detriment of languages other than English. In a way that is consonant with a post-colonial theoretical orientation, this research also emphasizes the capacity of indigenous cultures to suit English to their own purposes by transforming it into a local language on a global scale.

A third influential dimension in research on WEs can be situated in the vast and expanding field of Sociolinguistics. This includes studies that look at English in relation to issues of language maintenance, language shift and ethnolinguistic identity (see, e.g., Ammon 2001) and, even more traditionally, research that takes a so-called feature-based approach to describing English varieties through dialectological and variationist methodologies (see, e.g., Kortmann and Schneider 2004, and the two book series Varieties of English Around the World by John Benjamins and Dialects of English by De Gruyter Mouton). This approach is also informed by research on language typology that aims at classifying varieties of English according to parameters of structural diversity (see, e.g., Kortmann, Lunkenheimer and Ehret 2020). The feature-based approach has provided the field with sound evidence for socio-linguistic variation across main national standard varieties, regional, ethnic, and social varieties, as well as contact varieties and second-language varieties of English. Here, variation is indexed chiefly in terms of sets of distinctive, though not necessarily variety-specific, phonological, morphological, and lexico-grammatical traits. Aspects of discourse and word order are also considered but appear to feature much less prominently. The compilation of electronic corpora (the International Corpus of English (ICE; Greenbaum 1996) project can be seen as a milestone for corpus-based research into WEs), recent web-based megacorpora (in particular the corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE; Davies 2013)), and the analysis of Englishes in different modes and media has spurred this trend of research even further by providing various sources and large repertoires/collections of language use that allow for diversified and detailed linguistic descriptions of individual English varieties and facilitate cross-varietal research, thus accounting for both intra- and inter-varietal variation.

The vast amount of research in WEs that has been published in the last four decades has given recognition to varieties as separate voices in the English-speaking world, characterized by autonomous identities and embedded in individual cultural contexts. These realities seem to call for new types of investigations that may disclose differences among varieties of English in subtler and deeper ways by focusing on variation in the use of figurative language and conceptual metaphor. In particular, one aspect of research in WEs that is still in its infancy and in dire need of further exploration is the role of metaphor (and figurativity more generally) as a conceptual and linguistic phenomenon that is culturally grounded and hence likely to be subject to variation in the context of varieties of English around the world.

Kövecses (2005) was the first major work that explicitly put classic sociolinguistic variables and their impact on the use of linguistic metaphor on the research agenda of Cognitive Linguistics. This seminal book, however, largely considers a traditional inner-circle variety, American English, and provides examples of linguistic and cultural variation from a contrastive (English/Hungarian) perspective. Studies on the role of metaphorical thought and language in WEs are still sparse. However, the pioneering work by Wolf and Polzenhagen, e.g. their 2009 book on cultural conceptualizations in West African Englishes, and two recent special journal issues edited by Callies and Onysko (2017), and Wolf, Polzenhagen and Peters (2017) will hopefully spark future interest in this topic. Much of the research in these publications is characterized by an emphasis on the socio-cognitive and socio-cultural dimensions of language use that is frequently informed by and generally coherent with the more recently emerging socio-cognitive turn in linguistics, i.e. Cognitive Sociolinguistics (Kristiansen and Dirven 2008; Geeraerts, Kristiansen and Peirsman 2010; Pütz, Robinson and Reif 2014). Another related research paradigm that has originally been more closely connected to Anthropological Linguistics has also started to inform research in WEs. This is the field of Cultural Linguistics as described by Palmer (1996) and explored further by Sharifian (e.g. 2011), among others.

What research on metaphor in WEs essentially shares with Cognitive Sociolinguistics and Cultural Linguistics is a general interest in meaning variation, a conception of cognition as socially and culturally situated, an emphasis on cultural models of thought and cultural conceptualizations and an interest in the interplay between language, culture and ideology. So far, research on metaphor in WEs has examined specific uses of figurative language in rather few cultural settings (mostly Southern and South-Eastern Asia, and West Africa). Furthermore, it has focused on the analysis of cultural conceptualizations, cultural schemas and culture-specific lexis (Callies and Onysko 2017; Wolf, Polzenhagen and Peters 2017).

Against the background of this increasing interest in metaphor in WEs, the present volume aims to advance and broaden the scope of research on figurative language use and conceptual metaphor at the nexus of language and culture, at the same time adding to the debate on the interplay of universal and culture-specific grounding of conceptual metaphor.

The book explores conceptual and linguistic metaphor, and figurative language more generally, as a characteristic of the many Englishes that have developed in an extremely diverse range of geographic, socio-historical and cultural settings around the world. In line with the interdisciplinary breadth of this endeavour, the contributions are grounded in Cognitive (Socio)Linguistics, Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Cultural Linguistics. Drawing on different research methodologies, including corpus linguistics, elicitation techniques and interviews, the chapters analyse a variety of naturalistic data and text types, such as online language, narratives, political speeches, and literary works. Examining both the cultural conceptualizations underlying the use of figurative language and the linguistic-cultural specificity of metaphor and its variation, the studies are presented in contexts of both language contact and second language use.

Most of the studies collected in this volume are based on presentations delivered at the third international workshop on Metaphor in Englishes around the World, held at the University of Klagenfurt in September 2018. The volume, comprising eleven chapters, is structured into three parts that guide the unfolding of the different paths of investigation: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations (Part I), Aspects of Variation and Culture-Specificity in the Use of Metaphor (Part II) and Metaphor and Cultural Conceptualizations (Part III).

Part I opens with the chapter “Important Discoveries in the Study of Metaphor in World Englishes” by Raymond Gibbs. This chapter in a sense prepares the ground for the following contributions in that it provides the reader with an overview of the benefits and potential challenges of exploring the use of metaphor in different varieties of English across the globe. Gibbs presents an assessment of and a critical reflection on the study of metaphor in WEs by concentrating on its theoretical and methodological implications for the broader and multidisciplinary field of metaphor research. Studies of metaphor in WEs are praised, among other things, for their focus on both the common generalities and specific variations in metaphor enactments since this important characterizing feature allows for the creation of theories that can account for a wide range of metaphorical experiences. This research paradigm is also valued as a welcome contribution from a psycholinguistic perspective because the amount of empirical evidence provided by research on metaphor in WEs offers important insights into the relation of metaphorical cognition to cultural knowledge. In this respect, the biggest challenge for scholars, according to the author, consists in trying to identify explicitly the multiple forces that are responsible for metaphorical performance. Gibbs also touches upon other aspects. In particular, he sees studies on metaphor variation in WEs as an enrichment to the recent schol...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Metaphor in Language and Culture Across World Englishes
• Part One Theoretical and Methodological Considerations
• 2 Important Discoveries in the Study of Metaphor in World Englishes
• 3 Comparing Large Electronic Corpora and Elicitation Techniques in Research on Conceptual Metaphor and Idioms in World Englishes: Validating the ‘Lexicon of Corruption’ in West African Englishes
• Part Two Aspects of Variation and Culture-Specificity in the Use of Metaphor
• 4 Animal-Based Metaphors of Womanhood in English Literary Works Set in the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian Regions of India
• 5 Conceptualizations of EAGLE in Varieties of English: The Case of Nigerian English
• 6 Building Metaphors in Hong Kong Policy Addresses
• 7 Embodiment Across Englishes: The Comprehension of Metaphors in Popular Song Lyrics in Canadian, Austrian, and American English
• Part Three Metaphor and Cultural Conceptualisations
• 8 Genres and Text Types from a Cross-Varietal and Cognitive-Cultural Perspective: A Case Study on the Contextualisation of Classified Adverts
• 9 Segregation and Cooperation: Cultural Models of Gender in Indian and Nigerian English
• 10 Cultural Metaphors of Personification in Aotearoa English
• 11 Transfer of Metaphorical Conceptualizations from the L1 into English: Notes on an Emerging Project
• Index
• Copyright