Viewpoint in Language : A Multimodal Perspective

by Dancygier, Barbara; Sweetser, Eve

• ISBN13: 9781107017832
• ISBN10: 1107017831
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-04-16
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

What makes us talk about viewpoint and perspective in linguistic analyses and in literary texts, as well as in landscape art? Is this shared vocabulary marking real connections between the disparate phenomena? This volume argues that human cognition is not only rooted in the human body, but also inherently 'viewpointed' as a result; consequently, so are language and communication. Dancygier and Sweetser bring together researchers who do not typically meet on common ground: analysts of narrative and literary style, linguists examining the uses of grammatical forms in signed and spoken languages, and analysts of gesture accompanying speech. Using models developed within cognitive linguistics, the book uncovers surprising functional similarities across various communicative forms, arguing for specific cognitive underpinnings of such correlations. What emerges is a new understanding of the role and structure of viewpoint and a groundbreaking methodology for investigating communicative choices across various modalities and discourse contexts.

Table of Contents

Introduction: viewpoint and perspective in language and gesture, from the ground up

Intersubjectivity and Subjectification

Irony as a viewpoint phenomenon

Subjectivity and upwards projection in mental space structure

Negation, stance verbs, and intersubjectivity

Gesture and Processing of Visual Information

Interactions between discourse status and viewpoint in co-speech gesture

Maybe what it means is he actually got the spot: physical and cognitive viewpoint in a gesture study

Multiple Viewpoints in American Sign Language

Reported speech as an evidentiality strategy in American sign language

Two ways of conceptualizing space: motivating the use of static and rotated vantage point space in ASL discourse

Constructions and Discourse

The constructional underpinnings of viewpoint blends: the Past+now in language and literature

Evoking discourse spaces in speech and thought representation

Conclusion: multiple viewpoints, multiple spaces

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