Exploring the interplay of language and body in South African youth
- 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, theElicitation 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.…
| Author details: | Arne PetersORCiDGND, Susan Coetzee-Van RooyORCiD |
|---|---|
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2019-0101 |
| ISSN: | 0936-5907 |
| ISSN: | 1613-3641 |
| ISSN: | 1861-048X |
| Title of parent work (English): | Cognitive linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of cognitive science |
| Subtitle (English): | a portrait-corpus study |
| Publisher: | Mouton de Gruyter |
| Place of publishing: | Berlin |
| Publication type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of first publication: | 2020/08/25 |
| Publication year: | 2020 |
| Release date: | 2023/04/19 |
| Tag: | cognitive; corpus linguistics; cultural conceptualisations; embodiment; language portraits; sociolinguistics |
| Volume: | 31 |
| Issue: | 4 |
| Number of pages: | 30 |
| First page: | 579 |
| Last Page: | 608 |
| Funding institution: | NWU ethics clearance [NWU-00031-07-A1]; North-West University (NWU); University of Potsdam (UP) |
| Organizational units: | Philosophische Fakultät / Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik |
| DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache |
| Peer review: | Referiert |
