Creating worldviews : metaphor, ideology and language / James W. Underhill.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Underhill, James W. (James William)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Semantics.

Metaphor.

Physical Description:

viii, 299 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2011]

Summary:

Encouraging readers to reflect upon language and the role metaphor plays in patterning ideas and thought, this book first offers a critical introduction to metaphor theory as it has emerged over the past thirty years in the United States. James W. Underhill then widens the scope of metaphor theory by investigating not only the worldview our language offers us, but also the worldviews which we adapt in our own ideological and personal interpretations of the world.

This book explores new avenues in metaphor theory in the work of contemporary French, German and Czech scholars. Detailed case studies marry metaphor theory with discourse analysis in order to investigate the ways the Czech language was reshaped by communist discourse, and the way fascism emerged in the German language. The third case study turns metaphor theory on its head: instead of looking for metaphors in language, it describes the way language systems (French and English) are understood in terms of metaphorically-framed concepts evolving over time.

Including a multilingual glossary of key terms and concepts, this is an ideal volume for anyone new to the topic, as well as those already interested in metaphor theory and the analysis of worldviews. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Metaphor

1 Metaphor and World-Conceiving 3

Worldviews 3

Patterning 7

This Book 12

2 A Concern for Metaphor 17

3 Metaphors We Live By 25

4 Other Developments in Metaphor Theory 30

Philosophical Investigations 30

Linguistic Approaches 34

The Poetic Tradition 39

The Rhetorical Tradition 40

5 Further Cognitive Contributions to Metaphor Theory 44

Critical Discourse Analysis 45

Turner's Contribution 55

Blending 58

Universalism 60

6 Diversity on the Periphery 63

An Early Contribution 63

The Online Journal, metaphorik.de 67

Embodiment 71

The Slavic Contribution 77

Sweetser's Contribution 79

Reaching Beyond a Languageless Linguistics 81

Part II Case Studies in Metaphor 89

Introduction to Part II

7 The Language of Czechoslovak Communist Power 92

Docs It Make Any Sense? 92

Conceptual Clusters 96

An ABC of Czechoslovak Communist Terminology 115

Conclusions 124

8 Hitlerdeutsch: Klemperer and the Language of the Third Reich 128

Mindset and Personal World 128

Hitlerdeutsch 132

Seven Perversions 136

Conceptual Clusters 136

Binary Definition 144

Essentialisation and Exclusion 145

Adoption and Inversion 148

Instability 150

Contradiction 152

Absurdity 153

Two Goebbels 156

Conclusions 164

9 Language in Metaphors 172

The French Language Is So Beautiful, We Hardly Dare Touch Her 172

The Aesthetics of Order 183

New Defences 189

Hagège's Garden 199

Global English 207

Ecolinguistics 219

Sprachsinn 230

A Final Word 236.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [285]-299) and index.

ISBN:

074864315X

9780748643158

OCLC:

697948516