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- Volume 3, Issue, 2016
International Journal of Language and Culture - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2016
Volume 3, Issue 1, 2016
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Contrastive analysis of keywords in discourses
Author(s): Melani Schröter and Marie Veniardpp.: 1–33 (33)More LessThis article suggests a theoretical and methodological framework for a systematic contrastive discourse analysis across languages and discourse communities through keywords. This constitutes a lexical approach to discourse analysis which is considered to be particularly fruitful for comparative analysis. We use a corpus-assisted methodology, presuming meaning to be constituted, revealed, and constrained by collocation environment. We compare the use of the keywords intégration/Integration in French and German public discourses about migration on the basis of newspaper corpora built from two French and German newspapers from 1998 to 2011. We look at the frequency of these keywords over the given time span, group collocates into thematic categories, and discuss indicators of discursive salience by comparing the development of collocation profiles over time in both corpora as well as the occurrence of neologisms and compounds based on intégration/Integration.
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‘The Great Mother’
Author(s): Yanying Lupp.: 34–55 (22)More LessThis paper examines the metaphorical conceptualization of the core philosophical terms in DàoDéJīng, namely, 道 dào, “the way,” and 德 dé, “efficacy.” Based on the notion of conceptual metaphor, it can be argued that these two philosophical terms have gained meaning through conceptual metaphors that have motherhood and infancy as the source domain concepts. An analysis of the conceptual mappings of these metaphors finds that human body-related terms serve as the cognitive basis for the understanding of DàoDéJīng’s arguments on cosmology, morality and spirituality. Based on the findings of this study, I demonstrate that the meanings of some key philosophical terms in the text, such as dào and dé, can be explored by examining metaphorical structures at a conceptual level. This supports the view that conceptualization arises from the embodied experience of human beings and, furthermore, highlights the role of culture when examining the conceptualization of philosophical terms that emerge from a given cultural context.
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Gender, shape, and sociality
Author(s): Alexandra Y. Aikhenvaldpp.: 68–89 (22)More LessMany languages of the world have genders, that is, grammatical agreement classes, based on such core semantic properties as animacy, sex and humanness, and also shape. In Manambu, a language of New Guinea, nouns are assigned genders according to the sex of a human referent, and to shape and size of any other referent. Men are assigned to the masculine, and women to the feminine gender. A long tube and a large house are masculine, and a round plate and a small house are feminine. Switching gender for humans has pejorative overtones: an unusually boisterous or bossy woman can be treated as masculine, and a squat fattish man who does not display fully masculine behaviour as feminine. Classifying humans by their shape and size implies downgrading them to the level of inanimates. Gender switch also reflects social stereotypes. Feminine gender is functionally unmarked for non-humans, but not for humans. The noun du, “man” can be used as a generic term for “human being.” Linguistic Gender of humans in Manambu unequivocally reflects Social Gender relations.
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Gender in Hinuq and other Nakh-Daghestanian languages
Author(s): Diana Forkerpp.: 90–114 (25)More LessNakh-Daghestanian languages are known for their relatively elaborate gender systems and the impact the systems have on the grammar of the languages, most notably on verbal agreement. This paper explores the gender system of Hinuq with its five genders, taking into account semantic and formal principles for gender assignment and the rules of verbal and nonverbal gender agreement. Moreover, the paper discusses the Hinuq gender system within the wider context of Nakh-Daghestanian gender systems and possible social and cultural influences on these systems.
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Sexless babies, sexed grandparents
Author(s): Hannah Sarvasypp.: 115–136 (22)More LessLanguages that lack grammatical gender often still index the sex of humans and higher animates through lexical means (Braun 2001). In the Papuan language Nungon, natural sex is indicated lexically, with gendered person and kin terms. Certain person terms may also function as nominal modifiers. Indexation of sex in these person and kin terms is partially dependent on age. The older the speaker or focal person for the kin relationship, the more likely that his/her sex will determine the term chosen to refer to the addressee or secondary person in the kin relationship. Most kin and person terms for small children disregard the sex of the child; such terms instead employ the sex of the focal person to describe the relationship with the child. Unlike with children, there are no completely gender-neutral terms for adults, although the dedicated male person terms amna, “man” and ketket, “boy” function in certain contexts with generic reference, meaning “human” and “youth.” Generic application of amna, “man” relates to syntax: amna as object argument of deverbal participle expressions has generic reference, as does amna under negation. Thus, indexation of sex is seen to be partially dependent (per Aikhenvald & Dixon 1998) on negation.
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Fairies, banshees, and the church
Author(s): Arne Peters
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