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Description:
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The study of the relationship between language and thought, and how this
apparently differs between cultures and social groups, is a rapidly
expanding area of enquiry. This book discusses the relationship between
language and the mental organisation of knowledge, based on the results of
a fieldwork project carried out in the Kingdom of Tonga in Polynesia. It
challenges some existing assumptions in linguistics, cognitive anthropology
and cognitive science and proposes a new foundational cultural model,
'radiality', to show how space, time and social relationships are expressed
both linguistically and cognitively. A foundational cultural model is
knowledge that is repeated in several domains and shared within a cultural
homogeneous group. These knowledge structures are lenses through which we
interpret the world and guide our behaviour. The book will be welcomed by
researchers and students working within the fields of psycholinguistics,
anthropological linguistics, cognitive anthropology,
cognitive psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and cognitive science.
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