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

The paper addresses the issue of language-culture relation from a broadly defined Cognitive Linguistic (CL) perspective. Lately, the significance of research into the situated nature of cognition has been recognised by CL scholars working within the framework of sociocultural situatedness (Frank, 2008). Assuming the situated character of human cognition, we examine the question of how language and non-linguistic cultural resources may facilitate transmission of knowledge. The general problem is exemplified with Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale (KT) and Troilus and Criseyde (TR), inspired by Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy (Mann, 2003).

In particular,...