Metaphor Scenario Analysis as Part of Cultural Linguistics
Metaphor Scenario Analysis as Part of Cultural Linguistics

Summary/Abstract: The study of metaphor as part of Cultural Linguistics highlights the culture-specific aspects of figurative language. This study focuses on the reception and interpretation aspect and reviews cross-cultural metaphor interpretation as well as presents new data from a survey of differential understanding of the nation-as-body metaphor. It is based on a questionnaire survey, administered in 10 countries to students who were given the task of applying the metaphor of the “body politic” to their home nation. The results show systematic variation between four main interpretations, i.e. nation as geobody, as functional whole, as part of self and as part of global structure, as well as evidence of further pragmatic and polemical elaboration. The two dominant versions, i.e. nation as geobody and nation as functional whole, were represented across all cohorts but showed opposite frequency patterns for Chinese vs. Western cohorts, which can be linked to culture specific discourse and traditional cultural conceptualisations. This finding contributes to a constructivist, non-essentialising definition of cultural cognition as a central issue of Cultural Linguistics.

• Details
• Contents