Craig Hamilton

The meanings of ‘risk’: a view from corpus linguistics:

In the past, some confusing claims about the meaning of ‘risk’ have been made in the sociology of risk literature. In this article we present and discuss some empirical data from linguistic corpora that elucidate what risk means in ordinary language. This might provide social scientists with a firmer ground on which to base future statements pertaining to the meaning of risk. After a discussion of the problem, we analyse the word ‘risk’, as both noun and verb, with recourse to three corpora containing over a hundred million contemporary English words. We examine whether or not the meaning of ‘risk’ is stable and consistent across a variety of social contexts to test the commonplace view that ‘risk’ is at times manipulated in ideological ways. Data from the corpora, and the methods of corpus linguistics, therefore suggest ways of reconsidering claims about the meaning(s) of ‘risk’.

A cognitive rhetoric of poetry and Emily Dickinson

In this article, I examine three poems by Emily Dickinson. The poems are F372, ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes’, F598, ‘The Brain - is wider than the Sky’, and F1381, ‘The Heart is the Capital of the Mind,’ from the Franklin edition. In particular, I study the figurative language in these poems, but rather than simply identify figures, I attempt to explain how they function persuasively in cognitive terms. This approach is meant to move rhetorical criticism beyond an exercise in figure identification and towards an exercise in the explanation of the persuasive function of figures. The emphasis on figures owes something to the prominence they play not only in Dickinson’s poetry but in all poetry. One implication of cognitive linguistic theories of figures is that they point towards what I envisage as a cognitive rhetoric of poetry. A cognitive rhetoric of poetry ought to be grounded in classical theories of rhetoric and poetics on the one hand, and in cognitive linguistic theories of figures on the other. Such scope would reveal continuity between the concerns of current critics and the concerns of classical rhetoricians. It would also place equal emphasis on the poet’s production of figurative language and the reader’s comprehensive processing of it. What Dickinson’s poems are meant to reveal, ultimately, is poetry’s profoundly rhetorical nature.

Allegory, blending, and censorship in modern literature

Abstract I argue that politically subversive texts written in allegorical form attain their significance because they are conceptual blends. Political allegories allow writers to criticise regimes indirectly since writers can count on readers to mentally contruct appropriate blends. Readers are naturally driven to find new values that fit an allegorys fixed roles, often yielding new meaning for texts in different contexts. Unfortunately, politically subversive allegories may be censored when censors run the same blends. The three main texts discussed here – Bulgakovs Heart of a Dog, Orwells Animal Farm, and Millers The Crucible – are often interpreted as political allegories. I turn to conceptual blending theory to show in some detail how those readings arise. When it comes to allegory and censorship, I suggest that conceptual blending theory can offer us new insights into these timeless topics.