Mental Models Across Languages
Subtitle: The Visual Representation of Baldness Terms in German, English, and Japanese
Publisher: Benjamins Publishing Company, John
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 344
ISBN-13: 9789027201782
Subjects: Mental representation; German language; English language; Baldness
Description: "This book presents a study designed to triangulate the core meanings of expressions across English, German and Japanese. Native speakers of the three languages were asked to design visual representations of expressions referring to baldness phenomena in an online experiment. These sets of visualizations are used to determine conceptual overlap or distance between expressions in the three languages, resulting in lexical-conceptual 'maps' for MALE BALDNESS. The study is discussed against the background of an embodied, perceptual symbol-based understanding of linguistic meaning. An additional part of the book applies this perspective to the issue of translation, developing a process model of translation activity based on the concept of cognitive equivalence. The book presents a novel approach to lexical semantics, tested through an innovative experimental method grounded in cognitive linguistic theory. It will be highly interesting to scholars in cognitive semantics, contrastive semantics, embodied cognition and cognitive translation studies"--