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Invited speakers Judit Baranyiné Kóczy, University of Pannonia (Hungary) Exploring Metaphors in World Englishes: Perspectives on Stability and Dynamicity This keynote addresses some issues within the study of World Englishes through the theoretical lens of Cultural Linguistics (Hans-Georg & Polzenhagen, 2009; Sharifian, 2011), with a particular focus on its central notion, cultural conceptualizations. The primary research question posed here concerns the nature of the relationship between cultural-conceptual metaphors (Baranyiné Kóczy & Szelid, 2024; Polzenhagen et al., 2024) embedded in various English varieties and their cognitive entrenchment within the cultural communities that employ them. This is explored through two main questions. First: What factors determine the stability and dynamicity of metaphorical language in a culture? In this context, additional questions arise, such as: Where do these metaphors originate, how do they evolve over time, and how are traditional metaphors reconceptualized in contemporary (humorous and political) discourse? These questions are addressed within the context of Hungarian, drawing on case studies of the Hungarian cultural category moustache and the metaphor life is horse-riding, as represented in lexicon, idioms, and contemporary multimodal representations. The second question is: Can a community’s cultural conceptualizations about its own language influence the representation of its metaphors in the English variety they use? To explore this, I present how metaphors related to moustache and horse-riding are manifested in blended (Hungarian English, i.e., Hunglish) multimodal representations, explaining them in relation to Hungarians’ cultural conceptualizations of the hungarian language. The argument is made that metaphors are dynamic conceptual structures, subject to temporal changes due to environmental and various socio-cultural factors. Their presence in English varieties may be profoundly shaped by how speakers perceive their native language, the role of English, and the relationship between the two. This approach aims to offer novel insights into the study of World Englishes and the interaction of cultural conceptualizations across languages and English varieties, with the potential to refine research methodologies by integrating new, relevant dimensions. References Baranyiné Kóczy, Judit, & Szelid, Veronika. (2024). Introduction: Cultural Linguistics and (Re)conceptualized Tradition: Past in Present. In: Baranyiné Kóczy, Judit, and Szelid, Veronika (Eds.), Cultural Linguistics and (Re)conceptualized Tradition. Singapore: Springer. Kim Ebensgaard Jensen, University of Copenhagen (Denmark) Metaphors and corpus methodology Corpus linguistics has become part and parcel of cognitive-linguistic research as one of the most widely used empirical methodologies applied in the study of actual language use. Moreover, corpus methodologies have seen use in variationist studies in socliolinguistics. A range of analytical techniques, from simple corpus searches to complex statistical models, have been applied in the study of metaphor, and several more have the potential to be useful tools in gaining insight into the workings of metaphors in actual discourse and the underlying conceptual structures. Thus, it seems, corpus-linguistic methodology can be very useful in addressing linguistic and conceptual variation in metaphors across varieties of English. In this talk, we will discuss a range of (potentially) useful corpus-analytical techniques to cognitive linguists with an interest in metaphor variation within, and beyond, World Englishes. In addition to discussing the techniques themselves, we will address their alignment with principles from corpus linguistics, such as corpus-based vs. corpus-driven approaches and total accountability as well as more theoretical principles from the cognitive-linguistic study of variation, such as for example onomasiology and semasiology. It is hoped that this talk will, inspire the audience to not only consider relevant application of corpus-linguistic methodology in the cognitive-linguistic study of metaphor, but also to critically assess such methods against the backdrop of theoretical and practical considerations. Carsten Levisen, Roskilde University (Denmark) Where Metaphor Ends This crossroads lecture explores "metaphor and metaphors" in a cultural-linguistic framework, with a focus on Nordic and Anglo-Pacific empirical contexts, and drawing on new perspectives from (i) postcolonial/decolonial linguistics, and (ii) blue pragmatics/blue humanities. Case Study 1: Metaphors to the End of the World? "Light and darkness" metaphors in the historical context of Anglophone Christian world mission – and local Anglo-Pacific reconfigurations. Postcolonial/decolonial challenges: "Anglocentrism" and metaphor Case Study 2: Metaphors at the Bottom of the Sea? "Life and death" metaphors in the Danish and Nordic contemporary discourses of fjords. Blue pragmatics/humanities challenges: "Anthropocentrism" and metaphor Case Study 3: Metaphors without Limits? Conversing with the works of two forgotten theorists of metaphor, Mary B. Hesse’s "pan-metaphorism", and Elaine Botha’s critique of the "double language hypothesis", the final case explores some of the challenges raised in case study 1 and 2, proposing a new theoretical synthesis. Hans-Georg Wolf, University of Potsdam (Germany) Cultural conceptualizations in colonial texts and images Picking up on the chapter by Polzenhagen, Finzel, & Wolf (2021), my talk will chisel out and systematize cultural conceptualizations found in a variety of British, French, and German sources produced in the colonial era and with reference to the African context (e.g., letters written by missionaries, colonial subjects, colonial administrators legal documents, minutes of League of Nations meetings, traveling accounts). Examples will be given for cultural schemata, cultural categories, and cultural metaphors. These conceptualizations are not always consistent but representative of the colonial mindset and revealing of differences between the worldviews of the colonizers. The data shows that the colonized were not merely at the receiving end of imperial action, but that colonizer-colonized-interaction is more accurately described as mutually constitutive (cf. Brutt-Griffler 2002), as evidenced, for example, in the lexical appropriation of a local cultural concept by the British colonizers and in their legally acknowledging certain cultural practices.
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