TY  - JOUR
A1  - Peters, Arne
A1  - Coetzee-Van Rooy, Susan
T1  - Exploring the interplay of language and body in South African youth
T2  - Cognitive linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of cognitive science
N2  - Elicitation materials like language portraits are useful to investigate people's perceptions about the languages that they know. This study uses portraits to analyse the underlying conceptualisations people exhibit when reflecting on their language repertoires. Conceptualisations as manifestations of cultural cognition are the purview of cognitive sociolinguistics. The present study advances portrait methodology as it analyses data from structured language portraits of 105 South African youth as a linguistic corpus from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. The approach enables the uncovering of (a) prominent underlying conceptualisations of African language(s) and the body, and (b) the differences and similarities of these conceptualisations vis-a-vis previous cognitive (socio) linguistic studies of embodied language experiences. In our analysis, African home languages emerged both as 'languages of the heart' linked to cultural identity and as 'languages of the head' linked to cognitive strength and control. Moreover, the notion of 'degrees of proficiency' or 'magnitude' of language knowledge emerged more prominently than in previous studies of embodied language experience.
KW  - language portraits
KW  - embodiment
KW  - corpus linguistics
KW  - cognitive
KW  - sociolinguistics
KW  - cultural conceptualisations
Y1  - 2020
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/58795
SN  - 0936-5907
SN  - 1613-3641
SN  - 1861-048X
VL  - 31
IS  - 4
SP  - 579
EP  - 608
PB  - Mouton de Gruyter
CY  - Berlin
ER  -