Imagery, broadly defined as all that people may construe in cognitive
models pertaining to vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell, and feeling
states, precedes and shapes human language. In this pathfinding book,
Gary B. Palmer restores imagery to a central place in studies of
language and culture by bringing together the insights of cognitive
linguistics and anthropology to form a new theory of cultural
linguistics.
Palmer begins by showing how cognitive grammar complements the
traditional anthropological approaches of Boasian linguistics,
ethnosemantics, and the ethnography of speaking. He then applies his
cultural theory to a wealth of case studies, including Bedouin
lamentations, spatial organization in Coeur d'Alene place names and
anatomical terms, Kuna narrative sequence, honorifics in Japanese sales
language, the domain of ancestral spirits in Proto-Bantu
noun-classifiers, Chinese counterfactuals, the non-arbitrariness of
Spanish verb forms, and perspective schemas in English discourse.
This pioneering approach suggests innovative solutions to old problems
in anthropology and new directions for research. It will be important
reading for everyone interested in anthropology, linguistics, cognitive
science, and philosophy.