Javier E. Díaz-Vera | University of Castilla-La Mancha - Academia.edu

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Javier E. Díaz-Vera

University of Castilla-La Mancha, Filología Moderna, Faculty Member

University of Castilla-La Mancha, Filología Moderna, Faculty Member |

Cognitive Linguistics

How do people express their emotions? How are emotions conceptualized in different historical and cultural areas? How can historical linguistics enable us to understand our feelings, emotions and perceptions? My research integrates methods from diachronic linguistics, art history, sociology, anthropology, cognitive linguistics, and corpus linguistics to explore connections between emotions, language and history.

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Books

Metaphor and Metonymy across Time and Cultures: Perspectives on the Sociohistorical Linguistics of Figurative Language

This volume offers new insights into figurative language and its pervasive role as a factor of li... more This volume offers new insights into figurative language and its pervasive role as a factor of linguistic change. The case studies included in this book explore some of the different ways new metaphoric and metonymic expressions emerge and spread among speech communities, and how these changes can be related to the need to encode ongoing social and cultural processes in the language. They cover a wide series of languages and historical stages.

Sensuous Cognition Explorations into Human Sentience: Imagination, (E)motion and Perception

""This book provides an interdisciplinary, unified view of sensual cognition and its cultural man... more ""This book provides an interdisciplinary, unified view of sensual cognition and its cultural manifestations. The contributors favour an ecological perspective and revisit and problematize some of the core assumptions in Cognitive Linguistics. One of the original tenets of CL states that human thinking is grounded in experiential gestalts as well as in interaction between peoples' embodied minds and their various environments or cultures. In addition to looking in detail at this tenet, the volume provides major insights into the methodological and theoretical dimensions of Cognitive Linguistics research and describes applications of the paradigm in diverse contexts and cultures.
""

Left to My Own Devices: Learner Autonomy and Mobile-Assisted Language Learning

"This book is the result of five years of intensive dedication to teaching innovation and curricu... more "This book is the result of five years of intensive dedication to teaching innovation and curriculum development and offers a series of studies exploring how mobile technologies in particular, and mobile learning in general, may be used for second language teaching and learning in a wide variety of environments. Although a strong emphasis is laid on issues to do with autonomy and independence in second language acquisition, the volume also examines the connections and interrelations of mobile learning and second language teaching and learning process on the whole, as well as the process of adoption of new, mobile technologies as teaching tools in various communities across the globe. The volume is targeted at a broad spectrum of readers including academics in the field of e-learning, online learning, and ICT-based learning, with an interest in exploring the possibilities of mobile-assisted learning and the new developments of ICT in particular, portable devices for the foreign language classroom. It is most attractive to those interested in the emerging field of mobile-assisted learning in general, and its potential for foreign language teaching and learning in particular.
"

Textual Healing: Studies in Medieval English Medical, Scientific and Technical Texts

"The studies presented in this volume concentrate on different aspects of the medical, scientific... more "The studies presented in this volume concentrate on different aspects of the medical, scientific and technical varieties of early English used in a wide range of medieval manuscripts. As the growing body of research published in recent years has shown, analysing the language of specialised texts is an opportunity to obtain access to the early history and vernacularisation of learned writing styles. It is an area of study in which all the contributors have considerable expertise, which affords them to present data findings while discussing important methodological issues. In addition, in most cases data derive from specially-designed 'second-generation' corpora, reflecting state-of-the-art approaches to historical linguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics. Theoretical issues concerning the digital edition of medical and scientific texts, their role in social network analysis, and their value in the identification of dialectal specific traits are highlighted by the authors.
"

A Changing World of Words: Studies in English Historical Lexicography, Lexicology and Semantics

"“Filled with useful ideas, this volume is an undeniably inspiring and thought-provoking resource... more "“Filled with useful ideas, this volume is an undeniably inspiring and thought-provoking resource for historical research.”
Selim, Vol. 12, 2003/2004

"…this is a work of great magnitude and scientific depth […] a most revealing and though-provoking collection."
L'Analisi Linguistica e Letteraria, Vol.1, 2003, pp.341-4
"

Saga de los Volsungos (Völsunga Saga)

Saga de las Islas Orcadas (Orkneyinga Saga)

Book Chapters

Coming to Past Senses. Vision, Touch and Their Metaphors in Anglo-Saxon Language and Culture

The Five Senses in Medieval and Early Modern England, May 2016

The connections between physical perception and cognition are not only culture-specific, but also... more The connections between physical perception and cognition are not only culture-specific, but also subject to change through history. Since the conceptual grounding of metaphors is based on both the body and culture, a study of the linguistic history of the senses should try to overcome the limits imposed by universalist conceptions of the multiple relations between body and mind and to claim the role of culture in the development of sensescapes, that is, each culture’s rich sensorial landscapes. Based on these principles, I will propose here an analysis of the OE vocabulary of vision and touch.

Love in the time of the corpora: Preferential conceptualizations of 'love' in world Englishes

Vito Pirrelli, Claudia Marzi and Marcello Ferro (eds.) Word Structure and Word Usage. Proceedings of the NetWordS Final Conference, Pisa, March 30-April 1, 2015., 2015

According to Gibbs (2006) “there is still insufficient attention paid to the exact ways that cult... more According to Gibbs (2006) “there is still insufficient attention paid to the exact ways that cultural beliefs shape both people’s understandings of their embodied experiences and the conceptual metaphors which arise from these experiences.” In this paper, I deal with the analysis of conceptual variation in the metaphorical and metonymic construction of love in a group of dialectal varieties of contemporary English. Based on textual data extracted from the Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE; Davies 2013), I will demonstrate here that the varieties of English under scrutiny show significant differences in the conventional use of figurative expressions. My findings will be related to the cultural background of each speech community.

'Better shamed before one than shamed before all’: Shaping shame in Old English and Old Norse texts

by Javier E. Díaz-Vera and Teodoro Manrique Antón

Metaphor and Metonymy across Time and Cultures: Perspectives on the Sociohistorical Linguistics of Figurative Language , 2015

In this chapter we will analyze some aspects of the literal and figurative conceptualizations of ... more In this chapter we will analyze some aspects of the literal and figurative conceptualizations of shame in two different languages: Old English and Old Norse. Our main aim consists in describing the earliest stages in the slow but firm transition from a typically Germanic shame society, where shame acts as an instrument of social control through which the deviant individual is publicly exposed and humiliated, towards a guilt culture, based on the individual’s recognition of and repentance from his/her own wrongdoings and on fear of divine punishment. This change implies a progressive individualization of this emotional experience, which obviously had important consequences on its linguistic expression. Through the reconstruction and fine-grained analysis of the whole set of literal, metonymic and metaphoric expressions of shame recorded in our corpora of Old English and Old Norse texts, we try to show that this process of individualization implied the introduction of new linguistic expressions in both languages, normally through the adaptation (glosses and translations) of patristic texts into the vernacular. Broadly speaking, our texts point towards a growing conflict between honour-based and guilt-based conceptualizations of shame, represented respectively by causative metonymies on the one side and metaphors and resultative metonymies on the other side. In fact, whereas the concept of shame characteristic of the ancient Germanic society clearly prevails in both corpora, religious texts tend to favour the introduction and early spread of the new shame-related values through the use of a brand-new set of expressions motivated by some of the physiological and behavioural effects of this emotion on the individual, most of which have become common figurative expressions of shame in the contemporary varieties of both languages.

Metaphor and Metonymy across Time and Cultures: Perspectives on the Sociohistorical Linguistics of Figurative Language

This volume offers new insights into figurative language and its pervasive role as a factor of li... more This volume offers new insights into figurative language and its pervasive role as a factor of linguistic change. The case studies included in this book explore some of the different ways new metaphoric and metonymic expressions emerge and spread among speech communities, and how these changes can be related to the need to encode ongoing social and cultural processes in the language. They cover a wide series of languages and historical stages.

Sensuous Cognition Explorations into Human Sentience: Imagination, (E)motion and Perception

""This book provides an interdisciplinary, unified view of sensual cognition and its cultural man... more ""This book provides an interdisciplinary, unified view of sensual cognition and its cultural manifestations. The contributors favour an ecological perspective and revisit and problematize some of the core assumptions in Cognitive Linguistics. One of the original tenets of CL states that human thinking is grounded in experiential gestalts as well as in interaction between peoples' embodied minds and their various environments or cultures. In addition to looking in detail at this tenet, the volume provides major insights into the methodological and theoretical dimensions of Cognitive Linguistics research and describes applications of the paradigm in diverse contexts and cultures.
""

Left to My Own Devices: Learner Autonomy and Mobile-Assisted Language Learning

"This book is the result of five years of intensive dedication to teaching innovation and curricu... more "This book is the result of five years of intensive dedication to teaching innovation and curriculum development and offers a series of studies exploring how mobile technologies in particular, and mobile learning in general, may be used for second language teaching and learning in a wide variety of environments. Although a strong emphasis is laid on issues to do with autonomy and independence in second language acquisition, the volume also examines the connections and interrelations of mobile learning and second language teaching and learning process on the whole, as well as the process of adoption of new, mobile technologies as teaching tools in various communities across the globe. The volume is targeted at a broad spectrum of readers including academics in the field of e-learning, online learning, and ICT-based learning, with an interest in exploring the possibilities of mobile-assisted learning and the new developments of ICT in particular, portable devices for the foreign language classroom. It is most attractive to those interested in the emerging field of mobile-assisted learning in general, and its potential for foreign language teaching and learning in particular.
"

Textual Healing: Studies in Medieval English Medical, Scientific and Technical Texts

"The studies presented in this volume concentrate on different aspects of the medical, scientific... more "The studies presented in this volume concentrate on different aspects of the medical, scientific and technical varieties of early English used in a wide range of medieval manuscripts. As the growing body of research published in recent years has shown, analysing the language of specialised texts is an opportunity to obtain access to the early history and vernacularisation of learned writing styles. It is an area of study in which all the contributors have considerable expertise, which affords them to present data findings while discussing important methodological issues. In addition, in most cases data derive from specially-designed 'second-generation' corpora, reflecting state-of-the-art approaches to historical linguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics. Theoretical issues concerning the digital edition of medical and scientific texts, their role in social network analysis, and their value in the identification of dialectal specific traits are highlighted by the authors.
"

A Changing World of Words: Studies in English Historical Lexicography, Lexicology and Semantics

"“Filled with useful ideas, this volume is an undeniably inspiring and thought-provoking resource... more "“Filled with useful ideas, this volume is an undeniably inspiring and thought-provoking resource for historical research.”
Selim, Vol. 12, 2003/2004

"…this is a work of great magnitude and scientific depth […] a most revealing and though-provoking collection."
L'Analisi Linguistica e Letteraria, Vol.1, 2003, pp.341-4
"

Saga de los Volsungos (Völsunga Saga)

Saga de las Islas Orcadas (Orkneyinga Saga)

Coming to Past Senses. Vision, Touch and Their Metaphors in Anglo-Saxon Language and Culture

The Five Senses in Medieval and Early Modern England, May 2016

The connections between physical perception and cognition are not only culture-specific, but also... more The connections between physical perception and cognition are not only culture-specific, but also subject to change through history. Since the conceptual grounding of metaphors is based on both the body and culture, a study of the linguistic history of the senses should try to overcome the limits imposed by universalist conceptions of the multiple relations between body and mind and to claim the role of culture in the development of sensescapes, that is, each culture’s rich sensorial landscapes. Based on these principles, I will propose here an analysis of the OE vocabulary of vision and touch.

Love in the time of the corpora: Preferential conceptualizations of 'love' in world Englishes

Vito Pirrelli, Claudia Marzi and Marcello Ferro (eds.) Word Structure and Word Usage. Proceedings of the NetWordS Final Conference, Pisa, March 30-April 1, 2015., 2015

According to Gibbs (2006) “there is still insufficient attention paid to the exact ways that cult... more According to Gibbs (2006) “there is still insufficient attention paid to the exact ways that cultural beliefs shape both people’s understandings of their embodied experiences and the conceptual metaphors which arise from these experiences.” In this paper, I deal with the analysis of conceptual variation in the metaphorical and metonymic construction of love in a group of dialectal varieties of contemporary English. Based on textual data extracted from the Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE; Davies 2013), I will demonstrate here that the varieties of English under scrutiny show significant differences in the conventional use of figurative expressions. My findings will be related to the cultural background of each speech community.

'Better shamed before one than shamed before all’: Shaping shame in Old English and Old Norse texts

by Javier E. Díaz-Vera and Teodoro Manrique Antón

Metaphor and Metonymy across Time and Cultures: Perspectives on the Sociohistorical Linguistics of Figurative Language , 2015

In this chapter we will analyze some aspects of the literal and figurative conceptualizations of ... more In this chapter we will analyze some aspects of the literal and figurative conceptualizations of shame in two different languages: Old English and Old Norse. Our main aim consists in describing the earliest stages in the slow but firm transition from a typically Germanic shame society, where shame acts as an instrument of social control through which the deviant individual is publicly exposed and humiliated, towards a guilt culture, based on the individual’s recognition of and repentance from his/her own wrongdoings and on fear of divine punishment. This change implies a progressive individualization of this emotional experience, which obviously had important consequences on its linguistic expression. Through the reconstruction and fine-grained analysis of the whole set of literal, metonymic and metaphoric expressions of shame recorded in our corpora of Old English and Old Norse texts, we try to show that this process of individualization implied the introduction of new linguistic expressions in both languages, normally through the adaptation (glosses and translations) of patristic texts into the vernacular. Broadly speaking, our texts point towards a growing conflict between honour-based and guilt-based conceptualizations of shame, represented respectively by causative metonymies on the one side and metaphors and resultative metonymies on the other side. In fact, whereas the concept of shame characteristic of the ancient Germanic society clearly prevails in both corpora, religious texts tend to favour the introduction and early spread of the new shame-related values through the use of a brand-new set of expressions motivated by some of the physiological and behavioural effects of this emotion on the individual, most of which have become common figurative expressions of shame in the contemporary varieties of both languages.

Embodied emotions in medieval English language and visual arts

In this paper I will show to what extent the same embodied expressions underlie the expression of... more In this paper I will show to what extent the same embodied expressions underlie the expression of Old English emotions in both the language and the visual modes. Recent studies have shown that verbal expressions and idioms used to describe emotions can be traced back to a limited number of conceptual metaphors and metonymies which represent our embodied experience of these emotions. Things being so, the behavioural reactions and the physiological effects of an emotion will frequently stand for that emotion, implying a universal form of embodiment. In the light of these findings, I analyze here a set of Old English embodied expressions for FEAR and their pictorial manifestations in the Bayeux Tapestry, an 11th century embroidered cloth that narrates and depicts the events that led up to the Norman Conquest of England and the invasion itself. My analysis of the set of visual devices (known as ‘pictorial runes’) used in the Bayeux Tapestry to represent fear shows that (1) Anglo-Norman artists used a well-organized set of visual stimuli to convey fear-related meanings in a patterned way, that (2) the same figurative expressions for fear are shared by verbal and visual modalities, and that (3) whereas verbal expressions of fear regularly draw on non-embodied, behavioural concepts, visual representations of fear show a clear preference for embodied container concepts.

Analysing the diffusion of scientific metaphors through a Corpus of Middle English Medical Texts

This paper describes the origins, usage and diffusion of ME medical metaphors for medicine, as re... more This paper describes the origins, usage and diffusion of ME medical metaphors for medicine, as recorded in the texts included in the corpus of Middle English Medical Texts. The medical metaphors found in the corpus draw upon a variety of experimental domains, among which the most recurrent are those of war, architecture, zoology, clothing and machinery.

Figuration and language history: Universality and variation

Perspectives on the Sociohistorical Linguistics of Figurative Language, 2015

Image schemata and light: A study in diachronic lexical domains in English

New perspectives on English historical linguistics, Jan 1, 2004

In this paper I describe the lexical domain of 'light' in OE and its evolution into later English... more

National Models of Multilingualism and the Challenge of European Integration

Feeling Europe: An Undergraduate Journal in European Multilingual Identities, 2020

In this paper, I analyse a series of aspects related to the 'one nation one language' linguistic ... more In this paper, I analyse a series of aspects related to the 'one nation one language' linguistic myth. In my view, this myth is still tremendously pervasive in contemporary European thought and, consequently, it is an obstacle for the development of a complete understanding of the contemporary multilingual practices of modern Europeans. Whereas national language policies still rely largely on the existence of an ideal connection between nations and their national standard languages, more and more European citizens increasingly move across linguistic boundaries in their everyday lives, as responds to the official European Union strategy 'two languages in addition to the mother tongue'. However, it is clear that different national educational systems are using this strategy with very different results, so that, in many cases, only English and other international languages are being favoured by this strategy, to the detriment of European LWTULs. A poor understanding of contemporary multilingualism, combined with a general tendency by our educational systems to neglect knowledge and subjects considered not-utilitarian, are among the main obstacles for the expansion of these languages outside their national or regional borders. Things being so, a fresher approach to European multilingualism and language education at all levels is necessary in order to impulse the integration process form a human perspective.

Exploring the relationship between emotions, language and space: Construals of AWE in medieval English language and pilgrimage experience

Studia Neophilologica 88.2, pp. 165-189, 2016

In this paper l use a multimodal corpus of language and ritualized practices in order to try to r... more In this paper l use a multimodal corpus of language and ritualized practices in order to try to reconstruct a series of basic mental conceptualizations for awe in late Anglo-Saxon and Norman England (11th to 13th centuries). In doing so, I will demonstrate that many of the conceptual metaphors and metonymies that surface Old English linguistic expressions of awe can also be detected in medieval English pilgrimage experience, creating a dialogic interaction between the two modes.

Emotions in the Household: Emotion words and metaphors in Domesday Book Personal Names

Names - A Journal of Onomastics 62.3: 165-176, Sep 2014

In this paper, I present an analysis of the set of emotion-related personal names recorded in the... more In this paper, I present an analysis of the set of emotion-related personal names recorded in the Domesday Book. Through the fine-grained analysis of the themes used in these names, I will propose here a semantic description of late Old English personal names, which I have classified into the following seven name sub-categories: HAPPINESS, JOY, LOVE, TENDERNESS, PRIDE, ANGER and FEAR. My analysis shows that emotion-related vocabulary was a favorite personal name element in post-Conquest England. Furthermore, it proposes some of the general tendencies behind name-giving practices, especially in relation to (i) gender distribution of emotion themes and concepts and (ii) frequent lexical combinations of emotion-related themes. Finally, I will propose an interpretation of the metaphorization processes that motivated the development of some of these combinations of words and their usage as personal names in Anglo-Saxon England.

On saying two things at once: The historical semantics and pragmatics of Old English emotion words

In this paper I analyze some aspects of the literal and figurative conceptualizations of shame in... more In this paper I analyze some aspects of the literal and figurative conceptualizations of shame in Old English. Through the reconstruction and fine-grained analysis of the whole set of literal, metonymic and metaphoric expressions of shame recorded in a corpus of Old English texts, I show here the embodiment model for the conceptualization of this emotion was not used in Old English until the arrival of Christianity and of the new moral standards brought by it. The slow but progressive introduction of embodied metonymies and metaphors in Old English is, I will argue here, a direct consequence of the adaptation of patristic texts into the vernacular. The pressure to spread the Christian concept of shame, where this emotion is presented as an internal and subjective experience, and the need to substitute the old, honour-based model favoured the emergence and evolution of new figurative expressions of shame, based on its physiological effects on the experiencer.

From Cognitive Linguistics to Historical Sociolinguistics: The evolution of Old English expressions of SHAME and GUILT

Cognitive Linguistic Studies 1.1, 2014

This paper focuses on the analysis of the different motifs that shape the linguistic expression o... more This paper focuses on the analysis of the different motifs that shape the linguistic expression of shame and guilt in Old English. Through the fine-grained analysis of the whole set of expressions recorded in a corpus of Old English texts to refer to these two emotional experiences, a network of literal and figurative conceptualizations for each emotion are proposed. On the basis of these expressions, I argue here that body-related expressions (either metonymic or metaphoric) occupy a very secondary role in the Anglo-Saxon imagery of shame and guilt. In clear contrast with this view of shame and guilt as instruments of social control, the Christianization of England implied the spread of new shame-related values and the growing use of a new set of embodied conceptualizations for the two emotions under scrutiny here, most of which have become common figurative expressions of shame and guilt in later varieties of English. The new expressions (e.g. shame is REDNESS IN THE FACE and SHAME IS SOMETHING COVERING A PERSON) illustrate the shift towards a progressive embodiment of the new emotional standards brought by Christianization where, rather than an external judgement or reproach, shame and guilt involve a negative evaluation of oneself. Furthermore, I argue here that these onomasiological changes are informing us on the lexical choices of Old English speakers and on the sociolinguistic factors that conditioned the development of new emotional styles (i.e. the different ways feelings were expressed and, surely, felt) in Anglo-Saxon England.

Stress change and phonological variation in early Modern English, British and American

Jezikoslovlje 14.1: 33-46, 2013

In this paper, I propose a dynamic approach to the origin and development of the English Stress R... more In this paper, I propose a dynamic approach to the origin and development of the English Stress Rule (ESR), with special attention to late Middle English and early Modern English. My main aim consists in determining (i) the historical relations of this rule with two of its predecessors through the analysis of competing phonological rules and (ii) the patterns of phonological variation thereby created. My analysis tries to demonstrate that the phonological rule that affected the pronunciation of Romance loans in eModE had its origin in the need to avoid homonymy between nouns and verbs. However, this necessity produced a second series of stress changes that affected many other nouns for which the existence of a verbal counterpart was not as obvious. Consequently, nouns and adjectives with “more typically” nominal endings (as those included under [+F]) kept their final stress, so that in broad terms the ESR could be conceived as a consequence of the different level of success with which eModE speakers were able to distinguish between nouns with homonymous verbs and nouns without verbal counterparts.

Exploring the feeling-emotions continuum across cultures: Jealousy in English and Spanish

Intercultural Pragmatics 10:2 (265-294), 2013

"In this paper, we propose an analysis of a set of metaphorical expressions of jealousy in Americ... more "In this paper, we propose an analysis of a set of metaphorical expressions of jealousy in American English and in peninsular Spanish. Using the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the Corpus de Referencia del Español, we have analyzed all the occurrences of English 'jealousy' and Spanish 'celo(s)' (and their derivates) in order to make a list of metaphorical source domains for this emotion. The domains identified here have been classified into groups, after which we have compared, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the metaphorical expressions for jealousy in the two languages. Special attention has been paid to the role of sensorial perception in the metaphors articulating the ways speakers from the two cultures feel this emotion. According to our analysis, in spite of the basic role of touch in both languages, American English speakers make use of a wide variety of sensory-related metaphors (including vision, hearing, smelling,
and tasting), which, much more frequently than in Spanish, foreground the physical component of this emotion."

Woven emotions: Visual representations of emotions in medieval English textiles

"Following Forceville (1999, 2005), in this paper I show that the same conceptual metaphors (Lako... more "Following Forceville (1999, 2005), in this paper I show that the same conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Lakoff 1987) underlie the expression of Old English emotions in both the language and the visual modes.

Kövecses (2000, 2005) and Stefanowitsch (2004, 2006) have shown that verbal expressions and idioms used to describe emotions can be traced back to a limited number of conceptual metaphors. In the light of these findings, I will analyze here the pictorial manifestations of emotion metaphors in the Bayeux Tapestry (Foys 2003), an 11th century embroidered cloth that narrates and depicts the events that led up to the Norman Conquest of England and the invasion itself. The tapestry, which has been described as an example of early narrative art (McCloud 1993: 12-14), shows hundreds of human figures in an astounding range of poses and circumstances.

My analysis of the set of visual devices (known as ‘pictorial runes’; Kennedy 1982; Forceville 2011) used in the Bayeux Tapestry to represent emotion types such as 'anger', 'grief', 'fear' and 'happiness' shows that (1) Anglo-Norman artists used a well-organized set of visual stimuli to convey emotion-related meanings in a patterned way, that (2) the same conceptual metaphors are shared by verbal and visual modalities, and that (3) the HOT FLUID metaphor, frequently presented as the most dominant emotion metaphor, has a peripheral position within the entire range of expressions used in the tapestry. This is highly congruent with recent research on the expression of anger (Gevaert 2002, 2005; Geeraerts and Gevaert 2008) and fear (Díaz Vera 2011) in Old English, where the existence of a universal basis for the conceptualization of basic emotions is questioned on the grounds of diachronic onomasiology."

When pain is not a place: Pain and its metaphors in late middle English medical texts

In this research I will identify and describe the metaphorical expressions for pain recorded in ... more In this research I will identify and describe the metaphorical expressions for pain recorded in the texts included in the Middle English Medical Texts corpus, a collection of English medical writings from the period 1350-1500. Furthermore, I will propose a comparison between the resulting list of specialised medical metaphors and a list of metaphorical patterns for pain extracted from a multi-genre, late middle English corpus, the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (subperiods ME III and me IV), which I
will use here as my reference corpus. In doing so, I will try to show that medieval medical authors borrowed or developed new metaphorical extensions in order to describe pain and its treatments. Through the use of these metaphorical patterns, medieval medical writers tried to refer to pain as a process, with a beginning, a treatment and an end. In fact, pain is frequently conceived of as a living entity of adverse nature (e.g. a soldier,
an enemy, a wild animal), and it is the doctor’s role to fight it with all the weapons (i.e. treatments) at his disposal. These conceptual choices differ greatly from the conceptualizations of pain found in the multi-genre corpus, where pain is frequently conceived of as a permanent state or as a place.

Infected affiances: Metaphors of the word JEALOUSY in Shakespeare’s plays

"In this paper I propose an analysis of the metaphoric conceptualizations of JEALOUSY used in the... more "In this paper I propose an analysis of the metaphoric conceptualizations of JEALOUSY used in the bulk of Shakespeare’s plays. Following the metaphorical pattern analysis methodology, I have identified up to 53 figurative expressions for jealousy in Shakespeare’s English, which I
have classified into broad conceptual areas (such as DISEASE/INSANITY, ENEMY/OPPONENT, NATURAL FORCE, WILD ANIMAL and POISON). Broadly speaking, these conceptual mappings illustrate Renaissance beliefs and ideas on jealousy, and are highly congruent with parallel studies on jealousy in Present-Day English. The most striking differences between both historical periods have to do with the lower frequency of somatic-related conceptualizations in Shakespeare’s English, where jealousy is frequently conceived of as an external force that attacks the experiencer’s body and mind. Finally, I propose a discussion of the distribution of these conceptual mappings among masculine and feminine characters in Shakespeare’s plays, where I tentatively affirm that feminine characters show a stronger tendency towards the use of embodied mappings for jealousy."

A. Idström & E. Piirainen (in cooperation with T. F.M. Falzett) (Eds.). (2012). Endangered Metaphors

Encoding appraisal patterns in linguistic expression: On the 'longue durèe' history of emotion metonymies

Although emotions are frequently thought of as things (Shaver et al 1987; Kövecses 2000), they ar... more Although emotions are frequently thought of as things (Shaver et al 1987; Kövecses 2000), they are inherently structured as “temporally organized sequences of events, i.e. as scripts or as prototype scenarios consisting of a number of stages” (Swanepoel 1992: 423). The script-like nature of emotion knowledge is illustrated by Fehr and Russel (1984: 482) who, using fear as an example, indicate that knowing the meaning of the word fear consists in knowing a script consisting in the list of “prototypical causes, effects, physiological reactions, feelings, facial expressions, actions and consequences” that accompany this emotion. According to Scherer (2001: 388-389), this set of emotional antecedents and responses is codified in our linguistic representation of emotion processes, and the study of these linguistic expressions provides us with crucial information on the subtle differences in appraisal and response profiles.
For example, according to the OED, the English word awe is used to indicate “dread [thread] mingled with veneration [virtue], reverential or respectful fear [thread]; the attitude of a mind subdued [need for accommodation] to profound reverence [virtue; vastness] in the presence of supreme authority [supernatural causation; vastness], moral greatness [virtue; vastness] or sublimity [ability; beauty], or mysterious sacredness [supernatural causality]”. As can be seen here, the seven appraisal dimensions involved in awe (Keltner and Haidt 2003) are embedded in this dictionary definition, which represents linguistically the feeling components of the emotion.
In this paper I describe some of the different ways emotion appraisals (such as [thread] or [supernatural causality]) have been progressively encoded in some of the metonymic expressions used to refer to a series of emotions (with special attention to shame and awe) in the history of the English language, contributing to the development of new semantic extensions from the original, emotion-unrelated vocabulary to the historically-later emotion reading. This is the case of, for example, OE getawian ‘to amputate’, a verb that came to express ‘shame’ in later Old English (based on the close relationship between physical hurt and shame). Similarly, the Old English noun wundor ‘mystery, wonder, miracle’ (see [supernatural causality] above) came to express ‘awe, surprise’ in later Old English. The study of long-term semantic changes in emotional expressions can be used as a powerful informant not only of how emotions were conceptualized in the past, but also of the changes in the social and cultural elicitors of these emotions and in their appraisal and response profiles.

REFERENCES
Fehr, Beverley and James A. Russell. 1984. “Concept of emotion viewed from a prototype perspective.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 113: 464-486.
Keltner, Dacher and Jonathan Haidt. 2003. “Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion.” Cognition and Emotion 17(2): 297-314.
Kövecses, Zoltan. 2000. Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scherer, Klaus. R. 2001. “The nature and study of appraisal. A review of the issues.” In Tom Johnstone, Angela Schorr and Klaus R. Scherer (eds.) Appraisal Processes in Emotion: Theory, Methods, Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 369- 391
Shaver, Philip, Judith Schwartz, Donald Kirson, and Gary O'Connor. 1987. “Emotion knowledge: Further exploration of a prototype approach.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52(6):1061-1086.
Swanepoel, Piet H. 1992. “Getting a grip on emotions. Defining lexical items that denote emotions.” In Hannu Tommola, Krista Varantola, Tarja Salmi-Tolonen and Jürgen Schopp (eds.) EURALEX '92 Proceedings. Tampere: University of Tampere. 419-432.

Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue: A linguistic history of SADNESS

This presentation focuses on the analysis of the different motifs that shape the linguistic expre... more This presentation focuses on the analysis of the different motifs that shape the linguistic expression of sadness in
Old and Middle English texts. I am especially interested in the reconstruction of the conceptual changes that
affected the English language during the Norman period.
My research is divided into the following steps:
(i) definition and onomasiological arrangement of sadmess terms (based on their distribution in the
corresponding semantic space) in both historical varieties of English;
(ii) weighing of words and determining their relative relevance; and
(iii) determining their degrees of literalness within the scale ‘literal meaning – metonymy – metaphor’.
Through the fine-grained analysis of two sets of sadness-related expressions, I am especially interested in
determining the preferential conceptualizations of this emotion in the two historical periods under scrutiny.
The main aim of my presentation is to determine and to reconstruct processes of conceptual change during
this period. Boradly speaking, these diachronic processes can be classified into two different categories (i)
conceptual innovations, and (ii) conceptual borrowings from other European languages (especially French).
Furthermore, I argue here that these conceptual changes are informing us on the lexical choices of Old
English speakers and on the sociolinguistic factors that conditioned the development of new emotional styles
(i.e., the different ways feelings were expressed and, surely, felt) in Medieval England.

The Language of Sight and Touch (Understanding the Senses: Past and Present; workshop 01)

L’histoire d’Awe: Aesthetic emotions across language, visual narratives and space’

In this presentation, I will describe the methodology used for the reconstruction of historical p... more In this presentation, I will describe the methodology used for the reconstruction of historical processes of variation and change in emotional conceptualizations from a multimodal perspective. I will argue here that the same mental conceptualizations can be detected and analysed through the fine-grained study of historical data from different sources. More exactly, as the subtitle of this presentation indicates, I am especially interested in the reconstruction and study of historical emotion conceptualizations in linguistic, visual and architectural data. I will pay special attention to the different ways emotional expressions are adapted to the limitations (words in the case of language, lines for visual narratives, materials and techniques for architecture) imposed by each of the modalities under scrutiny here.

Using a multimodal corpus composed of Old English texts, late Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscripts and Anglo-Norman architectural data, I will propose here a list of mental conceptualization of awe in late Anglo-Saxon and Norman England (11th-13th centuries). As my analysis shows, awe was conceptualized in very similar ways across these three modalities. This is especially true in the case of the metonymic mappings awe is impeded motion and awe is impeded physical perception (vision), both of which are pervasively used as powerful tools of emotional representation and emotional elicitors across these three modalities.

Embodying social emotions: The verbal and visual representation of shame and regret in medieval England

Using a corpus of Old English texts, in this presentation I will propose a reconstruction of the ... more Using a corpus of Old English texts, in this presentation I will propose a reconstruction of the ﬁgurative expressions (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Lakoff 1987) used by Anglo-Saxon speakers in order to conceptualise linguistically such social emotions as shame and regret. Thereafter, I will analyse how these same emotions are represented in a visual corpus of medieval English human images from different sources (especially from the Bayeux Tapestry; Foys 2003). Different to basic (or private) emotions, social emotions are elicited by social situations, normally when other human agents are present or imagined (Hareli and Parkinson 2009). Furthermore, social emotions serve to regulate social behaviours and, consequently, can be effective instruments of social control. This is especially true in the case of collectivist cultures such as, for example, Medieval Europe (Hofstede 1991). Using these two sources (texts and images), I will describe here some of the different ways social emotions are represented in these two modalities and the role of embodiment in these representations. Medieval English representations of social emotions, I will argue here, illustrate the growing tension between the ancient symbols of Germanic shame culture and the new standards brought by Christian guilt culture. Whereas in the ﬁrst case there is a strong preference for emotional expressions that emphasise the social role of the corresponding emotional experience in Anglo-Saxon society, in the second case shame-related emotions are conceptualised on the basis of their physiological effects on the individual. Medieval conceptualisations of social emotions illustrate the evolution from culture-speciﬁc emotional expressions (such as, for example, Old English SHAME IS AMPUTATION) to embodied representations of quasi-universal nature (as in Middle English SHAME IS REDNESS IN THE FACE, an expression shared by a wide variety of languages and linguistic families).

Visual representations of the Old English folk model of fear in the Bayeux Tapestry

Following Forceville (1999, 2005), in this presentation I will show that many of the Old English ... more Following Forceville (1999, 2005), in this presentation I will show that many of the Old English metaphors for fear expressed through the verbal modality illustrate the same conceptual mappings (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Lakoff 1987) as those expressed through other modalities. Kövecses (2000, 2005) and Stefanowitsch (2004, 2006) have shown that verbal expressions and idioms used to describe emotions can be traced back to a limited number of conceptual metaphors. In the light of these findings, I will analyze here the pictorial manifestations of fear metaphors in the Bayeux Tapestry (Foys 2003), an 11th century embroidered cloth that narrates and depicts the events that led up to the Norman Conquest of England and the invasion itself. The tapestry, which has been described as an example of early narrative art (McCloud 1993: 12-14), shows hundreds of human figures in an astounding range of poses and circumstances. My analysis of the pictorial runes (Kennedy 1982) used in the Bayeux Tapestry to represent fear shows that (1) the same conceptual metaphors are shared by verbal and visual modalities, and that (2) the hot fluid metaphor, frequently presented as the most dominant emotion metaphor, has a peripheral position within the entire range of expressions used in the tapestry. This is highly congruent with recent research on the verbal expression of fear in Old English (Díaz Vera 2011), where the existence of a universal basis for the conceptualization of basic emotions is questioned on the grounds of diachronic onomasiology. Finally it is argued that, like verbal expressions, visual manifestations of metaphors are subject to diachronic evolution and change.

MovEinG: Discourse Genres and Applied Typology

by Carita Paradis y Javier E. Díaz-Vera

The project MovEinG explores the use of motion verbs to express experiences and events of diverse... more The project MovEinG explores the use of motion verbs to express experiences and events of diverse nature. These include the following:

Entities related to motion (e.g. roads, rivers, streets)

1. The road snakes to the port of Shakespeare Bay before climbing over the last hill to Picton.

Spatially extensible entities (e.g. cables, hoses)

2. A garden hose runs along the back fence.

Entities that are neither related to motion nor extensible

3. The Chinese economy will continue to leap forward while the British economy will slip down

4. Dokic sneaks through to the final of Wimbledon.

5. She slanted him a wary look, then forged ahead “I borrowed the money […] He cleared his throat and plowed forward “…” [turns of speech, conversation]

6. Her expression quickly slid into a wry smile.

7. The museum crouches among its neighbours.

8. The flavors of this wine tumble across the palate.

MIDLE: EU Multilingualism, Intercultural Dialogue and Language Education

Co-funded by the European Commission, the Jean Monnet module EU Multilingualism, Intercultural Di... more Co-funded by the European Commission, the Jean Monnet module EU Multilingualism, Intercultural Dialogue and Language Education aims to take EU language policies closer to students of Humanities, the general public and professionals in various fields (language teaching, translation, linguistic services, etc).

Políticas lingüísticas y diálogo intercultural para una Europa multilingüe 6 y 7 de junio de 2016 Ciudad Real, Facultad de Letras

Diachronic Sociolinguistics: Some Problems and Methods

Call for Chapter Proposals

by Edel Porter and Javier E. Díaz-Vera

Cultural Models for Emotions in the North Atlantic Vernaculars: 700-1400, 2021

This volume will reflect the sharp rise over the last ten years in scholarship on the history of ... more This volume will reflect the sharp rise over the last ten years in scholarship on the history of emotions in three interconnected cultural and linguistic areas from the northwest corner of Medieval Europe roughly corresponding to present day Britain, Ireland, the Scandinavian countries and Iceland. By means of this collection, we aim to analyse cultural encounters among medieval North Atlantic peoples with regard to the progressive development of shared emotional models, as well as the creation of incipient, cross-cultural emotional communities in this region. We are also interested in exploring how folk psychologies illustrated in these three of the oldest European vernacular writing traditions (Old Irish, Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic) bear witness to cultural models for emotions developed in pre-Christian times. The list of suggested topics for this volume includes, but is not limited to, the following: • Conceptualising emotions: conceptual metaphor and metonymy in emotional expressions • Expressing emotions in non-verbal modes: emotions in cultural artefacts; emotions in ritual practices • Embodying emotions: body parts, somatic markers and cultural variation • Emotions and identity: Gender, age, race… • Vernacular psychologies in NorthWestern Europe • Adapting classical psychologies into the NorthWest • Emotional encounters in the multicultural NorthWest • Cultural models of emotions across textual types/genres • Medieval emotions: terminology and translation • Individual emotions vs group-based (collective) emotions Therefore, although the main focus will be on 'language and emotion', we welcome proposals related to any of the issues listed above, within at least one of the three cultural areas and the date-range outlined. Special attention will be paid to essays that offer a contrastive approach comparing cultural models for emotions in two or more North Atlantic vernacular textual traditions The final essay should be 9000 words maximum (including notes).