Mediating between the ‘two cultures’ in academia: The role of conceptual metaphor

Christoph Haase

Mediating between the ‘two cultures’ in academia: The role of conceptual metaphor

Vol.3,No.1(2010)

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This contribution focuses on metaphorical expressions in academic papers in science and in the humanities. It represents an approach to ‘intercultural’ communication in the sense of the so-called ‘two cultures’ after C. P. Snow who referred to the sciences and to the humanities as two different cultures. Unfortunately, within academic discourse today there are few attempts at interdisciplinary communication between sciences and humanities. Only a few fi elds are bridging this gulf (e.g. some of the cognitive sciences). Much of the mediation between the two cultures is carried predominantly by metaphorical expressions. In this contribution, metaphor is analysed as the fi gurative use of verbs of perception within the framework of cognitive linguistics. We will focus on the analysis of source and target domain which are given membership in semantic ontologies.

Keywords:
corpora; academic English; metaphor; cognitive linguistics; conceptualization; conceptual metaphor; cultural linguistics

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