Cultural Conceptualisations in West African English: A Cognitive-Linguistic Approach

ISBN-13: 9783631572047 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 306 str.

Frank Polzenhagen

Opis

This book is an application of the cognitive-linguistic framework to the study of the New Englishes, specifically West African English. Its theoretical part provides an outline of the analytical tools, in particular conceptual metaphor/metonymy and cultural-model theory. Using corpus-linguistic methods and incorporating research from neighbouring social sciences, the empirical part explores culture-specific conceptualisations and their linguistic expression in the variety under analysis. The findings attest to the -cultural contextualisation- of the English language in the West African setting. The last part of the book critically discusses the current debate on the role and spread of English as a global language, from a cognitive-linguistic and discourse-analytical perspective."

Spis treści

Contents: Theories of metaphor - Conceptual-metaphor theory - Metaphor and discourse - Cultural-model theory - West African English - The African community model - Kinship - Conceptualisations of community, leadership, politics, witchcraft, corruption - «Cultural contextualisation» - Comparative corpus analysis - Cultural keywords - Frequency analysis - Collocational patterns - The debate on global English - Cultural models of globalisation.

O autorze

The Author: Frank Polzenhagen taught linguistics at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and at The University of Hong Kong. He is a member of an international research project on West African English, which is in progress at these two universities.