Culture, Cognition and Cometence (Cenceptual Metaphor Theory and Metaphoric Competence)

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The Central Institute of Indian Languages was established on July 17, 1969 with an objective to serve as a nucleus of the language related researches in India. The institute is entrusted with the responsibility of developing Indian languages by assisting in documentation, promotion, use in education, administration and mass communication. Apart from working on tribal languages, Institute also encourage core linguistic researches in scheduled languages.

In recent years several linguists, philosophers, psychologists, psycholinguists have begun to challenge many dogmas about some fundamentally important aspects of the study of language. This new approach to the study of language is known as ‘Cognitive Linguistics.’ It has changed our perception and proved useful in the study of a wide variety of linguistic phenomena. Cognitive Linguistics is concerned with investigating the relationship between human language, the mind and socio-physical experience. Research on metaphor occupies a central position in Cognitive Linguistics. Through linguistic evidences it 1S proved that most of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature. Metaphoric chunk of natural languages are human centered and human body serves as a significant source of metaphorisation. It is easier to understand a metaphorical expression if it contains a part of human body because it is closest to any human being both physically and metaphorically.

The present monograph has discussed the theoretical development of Cognitive Linguistics in general and the theory of Conceptual Metaphors and Metonymy in particular. The development of this theory has raised complex methodological issues for research in metaphors in general and identification and analysis of conceptual metaphors and conceptual metonymies in particular. This monograph has briefly presented an overview of different methodological approaches and also outlined the growing significance of corpus-based research in identification and analysis of metaphors. The monograph has also discussed various terms and concepts popularly used in Cognitive Linguistics. It has presented the analysis of Hindi linguistic metaphors of selected body part terms and for the analysis of linguistic metaphors Theory of Conceptual Metaphors and Metonymies is extensively utilized. The monograph has done the justice to its title by showing the impact of culture on cognition which is reflected in the competence.

This monograph is first of its kind in Indian languages. It may be useful for the students, researchers, scholars and for the common readers as well, who is interested in reading about Cognitive Linguistics, Conceptual Metaphors and Metonymies and other relevant topics and issues related to these. I congratulate the author and this Institute for bringing out this monograph.