Language, Culture and Cognition in East Asian Context

Catalog description

This course is a linguistic introduction to the relationship between language, culture, and cognition with a focus on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. In this course, we study the cognitive linguistic view that human cognition is fundamentally embodied and shaped by various figurative processes such as metaphor and metonymy grounded in our bodily and cultural experiences, and that human thought and language are fundamentally metaphorical in nature. We examine how we think and speak figuratively and conceptualize our experience metaphorically in everyday life, and compare the languages in terms of cognitive universals and cultural variations. The objectives of this course are threefold: (1) to lead language students to a linguistic approach to language analysis so that they learn about how individual linguistic expressions fit into a coherent linguistic system; (2) to enable them to see how linguistic structures reflect underlying cognitive, conceptual structures which are derived from the interplay between human embodiment and cultural environment; and (3) to provide them with a broad perspective on similarities and differences among Chinese, Japanese, and Korean as components that form a coherent category known as "East Asian". Class work will include some lecture but will emphasize guided discussions, literature review writings, student presentations, and research papers. This interactive approach is intended to encourage students' participation, involvement, and cooperation in learning, to help them understand the relationship between language, culture, and cognition, and to assist them in developing both analytic and expressive abilities. This course is designed to count as a BA "Other Cultures" and International Culture. Students can take this course as long as they have an interest in the relationship between language, culture and cognition, especially in the context of East Asia.