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Body Part Terms in Conceptualization and Language Usage
Edited by Iwona Kraska-Szlenk
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts 12] 2020
► pp. 31–52

Polysemic chains, body parts and embodiment

The paper focuses on the phenomenon of embodiment via the perspective of meaning approximation, and re-conceptualization in terms of body-part polysemic chains of conceptualization via dynamically constructed categories. In the first part the analysis focuses primarily on the processes in which body part conceptualizations act as special reference points at relevant mental elaboration sites for broader meaning phenomena. The interpretation is further elaborated on with reference to culturally rich image schemas, emerging as a consequence of their dynamic repeatedness. In the second part the concept of embodiment is taken up, the discussion leading to a thesis which assumes the status of lexical meanings as stimulators and instructions to build mental models of objects and events. The framework adopted for the analysis presents examples of body parts from English, Polish and occasionally from other languages and combines interdisciplinary methodological instruments: Cognitive Linguistic construal and conceptualizations, cultural schemas and models, and relevant corpus linguistic tools (monolingual and parallel).
Keywords: categorization, body parts, embodiment, meaning approximation, meaning displacement, polysemy, re-conceptualization
Article outline
  • 1.Perceptual and action-based grounding of cognition
  • 2.Intralingual and interlingual polysemic displacement and meaning reconceptualization
  • 3.Metonymy
  • 4.Metonymic grammaticalization displacement chains
  • 5.Metaphoricity – polysemous extensions into other domains
    • 5.1.Bi-directionality of body part names polysemies
    • 5.1.Metaphtonymy
    • 5.2.Complex blended portmanteau forms
  • 6.Interlinguistic conceptual displacement
  • 7.Cultural conceptualizations and re-conceptualizations
  • 8.Typology of polysemic embodied extension basis
  • 9.Body schema and the Embodiment Hypothesis
  • Notes
  • References
  • Internet sources
Published online: 23 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clscc.12.c02lew
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