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The collection of papers addresses the perennial problem of the relation between language and meaning. It proposes various theoretical approaches to the issue ranging from a synergetic theory of meaning merging the cognitive and the socio-historical perspectives, through holistic, evolutionary models and a revision of some of the assumptions of Cognitive Metaphor Theory to the discussion of the role of pragmatic competence in meaning construction. A number of papers make recourse to corpus based studies and psycholinguistic experiments. The topics of specific linguistic investigations cover such diverse issues as idiom processing, emotion words in Chinese, valuation of abstract nouns, the preposition at and scalar adjectives. Several papers explore the application of the reflections on the nature of meaning to lexicography and translation. One, self-reflective article investigates the consequences of the unformulated assumptions about meaning for the coherence of proposed linguistic theories. The volume firmly places the study of meaning in the centre of the linguistic research by showing its significance for linguistic theory and its applications.
List of contents
Contents: Malgorzata Fabiszak: Introduction. Language, meaning and scientific endeavour - Enrique Bernárdez: Synergy in the construction of meaning - Anna Cieslicka: Effects of literal plausibility and predictability on the suppression of irrelevant literal meanings in idiom processing - Anna Dziemianko: The analytical definition in monolingual English learners' dictionaries as a vehicle for syntactic information on verbs: A diachronic perspective - Adam Glaz: Vantage theory: A newcomer to the cognitivist scene? - Dwight Holbrook: Domain of meaning/Domain of language - Katarzyna Horszowska: The embodied emotions in Chinese, metaphor and metonymy perspective - Michal Janowski: Schematization and valuation in abstract concepts - Iwona Knas: English at: Investigating its conceptualization by native speakers and Polish advanced learners of English - Karolina Krawczak: Meaning as an epiphenomenon of cognition, social interaction and intercognition - Maria Pilar Lema Quintana/Juana Teresa Guerra de la Torre: A study of meaning construction across cultures: An epistemological framework for cognitive translation studies - Robert Lew: Linguistic semantics and lexicography: A troubled relationship - Tadeusz Piotrowski: Lexicography, semantics and pragmatics - Nikolaus Ritt: Meaning in a material world or How to find out what linguists think about meaning - Jurat Ruzait : Setting boundaries to fuzzy adjectives: A corpus approach - Joanna Szwabe: Pragmatic competence - Mindreading meets speaker's meaning - Aleksander Szwedek: An alternative theory of metaphorisation - Boguslawa Whyatt: Meaning as a dynamic concept. A Think Aloud Protocol study into strategies performed by inexperienced translators.
About the author
The Editor: Malgorzata Fabiszak is an Assistant Professor at the School of English Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan (Poland). She has published papers on medieval English emotions, language of mass media, and the use of corpora for cognitive metaphor research. She is also the author of a book on the concept of 'joy' in Old and Middle English.
Report
"The book is nevertheless yet another proof of the strength of linguistic work in Poland, and certainly worth a browse for any linguist interested in the current state of research into language and meaning." (Heli Tissari, SKY Journal of Linguistics)
