Extract

Abstract: The paper addresses the issue of the situatedness of the language user vis-à-vis the conception of language as a channel of cultural transmission. This research perspective takes as its point of departure the problem of the continuity of imagery in language and culture, where culture is rendered in terms of the community’s conceptual order that allows its members to make sense of experience. While situated nature of human cognition is posited, attention is paid to the role of external representations encapsulating imagery shared in the community, as exemplified by historical data from Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and Troilus and Criseyde, as well as (late) medieval visual culture. Overall, it is argued that both language and artefacts from visual culture may function as repositories, or memory carriers of the community’s symbolic tradition, enabling transmission of conceptual knowledge.

Keywords: language and culture, external representations, imagery, memory, situated cognition.

1. Preliminary remarks