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From Utterances to Speech Acts

By Mikhail Kissine

"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."

--François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod


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Book Information

   

Title: The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor
Written By: Ning Yu
Series Title: Human Cognitive Processing, 1
Description:

The primary objective of this book is to contribute to the contemporary theory of metaphor from the viewpoint of Chinese so as to help place the theory into a wider cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective. Aiming at this primary objective, it explores two major questions faced by the contemporary theory: (1) if abstract reasoning is at least partially metaphorical in nature; and (2) what conceptual metaphors are universal, widespread, or culture-specific. It focuses on (1) metaphors of emotions, (2) the TIME AS SPACE metaphor, and (3) the Event Structure Metaphor. It studies how Chinese is similar to and different from English with regard to these metaphor systems and image schemas involved, and what reasons (cognitive or cultural) can account for the similarities and differences between these two languages. In general, the empirical studies presented in this book reinforce the view that metaphor is the main mechanism through which abstract concepts are comprehended and abstract reasoning is performed. They also support, from the perspective of Chinese, the candidacy of some conceptual metaphors for metaphorical universals. These include, for instance, the ANGER IS HEAT metaphor, the HAPPY IS UP metaphor, the TIME AS SPACE metaphor and the Event Structure Metaphor. It seems that these conceptual metaphors are grounded in some basic human experiences that may be universal to all human beings.

Publication Year: 1998
Publisher: John Benjamins
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BibTex: View BibTex record
Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories
Subject Language(s): Chinese, Mandarin

Versions:
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 902722353X
ISBN-13: N/A
Pages: 300pp
Prices: USD 59.00
NLG 118