Farzad Sharifian

Cultural Conceptualisations and Language: Theoretical framework and applications

This book presents a multidisciplinary theoretical model of cultural conceptualisations and language. Viewing language as firmly grounded in cultural cognition, the model draws on analytical tools and theoretical advancements in several disciplines, including cognitive linguistics, cognitive anthropology, anthropological linguistics, distributed cognition, complexity science, and cognitive psychology. The result is a framework that has significant implications for those disciplines as well as for applied linguistics. Applications of the model to intercultural communication, cross-cultural pragmatics, English as an International Language/World Englishes, and political discourse analysis are explored in detail.

Culture, body, and language : conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages

The volume makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the intricate relationship between culture, body and language by focusing on conceptualizations of internal body organs in several languages. The studies explore how across various cultures internal body organs such as the heart have been used as the locus of conceptualizing feelings, thinking, knowing, etc. Such conceptualizations appear to be rooted in cultural systems such as ethnomedical and religious traditions. The volume engages with these themes using the analytical tools developed in cognitive linguistics and cognitive anthropology.

Cultural schemas in L1 and L2 compliment responses: A study of Persian-speaking learners of English

Abstract This paper explores the relationship between speech acts and cultural conceptualizations by examining the degree to which compliment responses produced by Persian speakers in their L1 and L2 (English) are informed by the Persian cultural schema of shekasteh-nafsi ‘modesty’. The schema, which appears to be rooted in certain cultural-spiritual traditions of Iranian society, motivates the speakers to negate or scale down compliments, downplay their talents, skills, achievements, etc., and return the compliment to the complimenter. The schema also encourages the speakers to reassign the compliment to a family member, a friend, God, or another associate. In this study, a Persian and an English version of a discourse completion test (DCT) were used to collect data from a group of Persian speaking learners of English in Iran. The participants completed the English DCT first and then received and completed the Persian version after an interval of two weeks. The results revealed that speakers of Persian instantiated the cultural schema of shekasteh-nafsi, in varying degrees, in their responses to compliments both in their L1 and L2. A significant finding of the study was that even where this cultural schema is reflected in a speakers compliment response in his/her L2 it may be absent from the corresponding L1 response. The findings also suggest that the schema may be instantiated differently according to the context of receiving the compliment. These observations point to the dynamic nature of the relationship between language and cultural conceptualizations. The paper ends by presenting a discussion of the implications of the findings for the teaching and learning of English as an International Language.

Cultural Conceptualisations in English Words: A Study of Aboriginal Children in Perth

This study explored conceptualisations that two groups of Aboriginal and Anglo- Australian students attending metropolitan schools in Western Australia instantiate through the use of English words. At the time of the study, many educators believed that both these groups of students spoke the same dialect. A group of 30Aboriginal primary school students and a matching group of Anglo-Australian students participated in the study. Thirty-two English words were used as prompts to evoke schemas and categories in participants. The responses were then interpreted using an ethnographic approach toward the identification of cultural conceptualisations. These responses were compared within and between the two groups. The analysis of the data provided evidence for the operation of two distinct, but overlapping, conceptual systems among the two cultural groups studied. The discrepancies between the two systems largely appear to be rooted in the cultural systems that characterise each group while the overlap between the two conceptual systems appears to arise from several phenomena such as experience in similar physical environments. One of the implications of the findings is that a critical defining feature of some varieties of a language may be their conceptual basis, rather than so much their grammatical and/or phonological features. This observation calls for further exploration and perhaps a revisiting of the notion of ‘dialect’.

Globalisation and developing metacultural competence in learning English as an International Language

In its journey across the globe, English has become increasingly localised by many communities of speakers around the world, adopting it to encode and express their cultural conceptualisations, a process which may be called glocalisation of the language.The glocalisation of English and the dynamics of increased contact between people from different cultural backgrounds, or transcultural mobility, call for new notions of ‘competence’ to be applied to successful intercultural communication. In this paper, I focus on the notion of metacultural competence, from the perspective of Cultural Linguistics, and explain how such competence can be developed as part of learning English as an International Language (EIL). Cultural Linguistics is a discipline with multidisciplinary origins exploring the relationship between language, culture, and conceptualisation. The analytical tools of Cultural Linguistics are conceptual structures such as cultural schemas, cultural categories, and cultural metaphors, collectively referred to as cultural conceptualisations. The paper provides examples of cultural conceptualisations from Chinese English and Hong Kong English. It also explores different aspects of metacultural competence. Metacultural competence enables interlocutors to consciously engage in successfully communicating and negotiating their cultural conceptualisations during intercultural communication. I argue that EIL curricula should provide opportunities for learners to develop this competence and expose them to the conceptual variation that characterises the English language in today’s globalised world. Exposure to a variety of cultural conceptualisations in learning an L2 is likely to expand a learner’s conceptual horizon, where one can become familiar with, and even have the option of internalising, new systems of conceptualising experience.

'But it was all a Bit Confusing …': Comprehending Aboriginal English Texts

The study reported in this paper explored the schemas that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators bring to the task of comprehending oral narratives produced by Aboriginal children. During each data collection session, a participant listened to a series of eight passages and tried to recall each passage immediately after listening. The participants had a chance to listen to each narrative twice and produce two recalls of each passage. The participants were also given a chance to read a transcript of each passage and to make comments on their experience after the recall process. The data were then analysed in three stages. The first stage involved the analysis of recall protocols for the idea units out of which they were composed. This was carried out to explore the content schemas that were employed by the participants in comprehending the original narratives. The second stage was a comparison of formal schemas that appeared to inform the original narratives and the recall protocols. Finally, the recalls by Aboriginal participants were examined for any general patterns or strategies recruited during the recall. The results overall showed a continuum of familiarity on the part of participants with the schemas that appeared to underlie the narratives.

Aboriginal English in the Classroom: An Asset or a Liability?

This paper discusses issues surrounding the use of Australian Aboriginal English in the classroom in the light of a recent survey. Aboriginal English is often correlated with low academic performance and poor school attendance. The paper argues that in any discussion of the school role of students ‘home talk, a range of factors need to be examined, including the relationship between language, identity, power, emotion and cultural conceptualisations. Students’ home dialect can be viewed as an asset at school on various grounds.

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue: Australian Aboriginal Students' Schematic Repertoire

Learning a second dialect entails learning new schemas, and in some cases learning a whole new set of language schemas as well as cultural schemas. Most Australian Aboriginal children live in a bicultural and bidialectal context. They are exposed, to a greater or lesser extent, to the discourse of Australian English and internalise some of its schemas. This may occur in diverse contexts, not only the context of the school. However, Western-based schooling by its nature generally expects students to operate exclusively according to the schemas that underlie the ‘standard’ dialect. An analysis of the discourse of bidialectal Aboriginal children in the South-west of Australia suggests that it exhibits the use of schemas from Aboriginal English (‘something old’), Australian English (‘something new’) as well as parodic uses of Australian English schemas (‘something borrowed’) and schematic blends which may sometimes be dysfunctional (‘something blue’). In this paper, discourse illustrating each of these schema types will be exemplified and discussed in terms of its implications for our understanding of second dialect acquisition and the literacy education of Aboriginal children.

Cultural Linguistics: Cultural conceptualisations and language

This ground-breaking book marks a milestone in the history of the newly developed field of Cultural Linguistics, a multidisciplinary area of research that explores the relationship between language and cultural conceptualisations. The most authoritative book in the field to date, it outlines the theoretical and analytical framework of Cultural Linguistics, elaborating on its key theoretical/analytical notions of cultural cognition, cultural schema, cultural category, and cultural metaphor. In addition, it brings to light a wide array of cultural conceptualisations drawn from many different languages and language varieties. The book reveals how the analytical tools of Cultural Linguistics can produce in-depth and insightful investigations into the cultural grounding of language in several domains and subdisciplines, including embodiment, emotion, religion, World Englishes, pragmatics, intercultural communication, Teaching English as an International Language (TEIL), and political discourse analysis. By presenting a comprehensive survey of recent research in Cultural Linguistics, this book demonstrates the relevance of the cultural conceptualisations encoded in language to all aspects of human life, from the very conceptualisations of life and death, to conceptualisations of emotion, body, humour, religion, gender, kinship, ageing, marriage, and politics. This book, in short, is a must-have reference work for scholars and students interested in Cultural Linguistics.

They felt sorry about our Sorry: Indigenising English by Aboriginal Australians

After coming into contact with Europeans in Australia, Aboriginal people came to adopt English as a means to communicate with each other as well as with the new settlers. Aboriginal people must have realised that the English language spoken by the white settlers did not provide them with all the tools that they needed to express their conceptualisations the way they did in their own languages. However, Aboriginal people managed to indigenise English and use it to express their cultural conceptualisations in language varieties that were developed out of their contact with Europeans. These contact varieties include Aboriginal Creole varieties and Aboriginal English. Today, Aboriginal English communicates the dynamic systems of the cultural conceptualisations of Aboriginal people as these conceptualisations have continued to evolve. To give a quick example here, Aboriginal people use the English word sorry to mean sorrowful, mourning, and empathy/worry/care for other people. This word can also be used in Aboriginal English to refer to special mourning rituals only performed by Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people needed a word to refer to these culture specific rituals and adopted the English word sorry for that purpose. Take the following example: