Book recommendation: Semantics and Congnitive linguistics

nospam@example.com (Klaus) — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 02:40:00 +0200

Haser, Verena. 2005. Metaphor, metonymy and experientialist philosophy: challenging cognitive semantics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

In this brilliant indictment of Lakoff and Johnson's theory of metaphor (and language as metaphor), Verena Haser points out many inconsistencies and circular reasoning in the works of Lakoff and Johnson and other prominent cognitive linguists. This book is a must read for anyone who has anything to do with semantic theory or cognitive linguistics.

The synopsis taken from Amazon:

The present book provides a detailed criticism of experientialist semantics, focusing both on philosophical issues connected with experientialism and on cognitive approaches to metaphor and metonymy. Particular emphasis is placed on the works of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, but other cognitivists are also taken into consideration. Verena Haser proposes a new approach to the distinction between metaphor and metonymy, which contrasts with familiar cognitivist models, but also builds on some insights gained in cognitivist research. She also offers an account of metaphorical transfer which dispenses with the notion of conceptual metaphors in the sense of Lakoff and Johnson. She argues that conceptual metaphors are not a useful construct for explaining metaphorical transfer, and that the clustering of metaphorical expressions is better accounted for in terms of family resemblances between metaphorical expressions. Another major goal of this work is a reassessment of the relationship between experientialism and traditional Western philosophy (often subsumed under the vague term "objectivism"). This book contrasts with most other critical approaches to experientialism by providing close readings of key passages from the works of Lakoff and Johnson, which enables the author to pinpoint theory-internal inconsistencies and other shortcomings not noted in previous publications. This book will be relevant to students and scholars interested in semantics and cognitive linguistics, and also in psychology and philosophy of language.

(Full disclosure: I was asked to read this work at an earlier stage. I studied under Bernd Kortmann, one of the editors of the series in which this was published, at the University of Freiburg.)

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Book recommendation: Semantics and Congnitive linguistics