The relation between language, culture, and cognition is a complex one that researchers working in different disciplines (e.g., linguistics, anthropology, psychology, cognitive sciences, and even philosophy) have explored from the vantage point of their own specific theoretical and methodological approaches. In this context of varying perspectives and fragmentation, Cultural Linguistics can be seen as a recent attempt to provide an all-encompassing approach that is informed by multi-disciplinary inputs or, in Yamaguchi, Tay, and Blount’s view (2014), as an example of an integrative paradigm that appears to reconcile cognitive linguistics and linguistic anthropology.
The label ‘cultural linguistics’ as such is not new (as also stated in Sharifian, Reference Sharifian and Sharifian2015). Anthropologist Gary Palmer (Reference Palmer1999), indeed, was the first scholar to elaborate a theory of cultural linguistics that brings together cognitive linguistics and three distinct traditions in linguistic anthropology (Boasian linguistics, ethnosemantics, and ethnography of speaking). Furthermore, linguists interested in exploring the relation between language and culture also engage in cultural linguistics research in a broader sense. That said, Farzad Sharifian has defined Cultural Linguistics (with an emphasis on the initial capital letters, CL) as a newly emerged field within linguistics, with its own distinctive nature that makes it different from previous, related research agendas.
Over the last decade or so, Sharifian has been very active and prolific. He has produced several publications (books and articles), founded a journal (International Journal of Language and Culture), and initiated a book series with John Benjamins (Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts), all of which have laid the ground for the emergence of Cultural Linguistics.
Sharifian’s Cultural Linguistics: cultural conceptualizations and language (2017), as the eighth volume in the Benjamins book series Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts, offers its readers both an overview and a state of the art account of the discipline. While the book partly draws on and re-elaborates materials published elsewhere, many aspects make this recent publication unique. In particular, the new topic arrangement, the inclusion of observations concerning research methods and the concise format (171 pages) make the monograph an appealing read for everyone interested in getting an understanding of what the discipline is about, including its theoretical foundations, the analytical tools it utilizes, and above all its applicability in a vast range of, mostly related, domains.
The book consists of 13 short but substantial chapters that almost programmatically delineate the field of CL. The first two chapters are introductory and will be particularly useful for readers with no previous knowledge of CL. They provide the basics or, in other words, they lay the theoretical and methodological foundations that are essential for appreciating the numerous examples of applications and empirical investigations presented in the following chapters. In Chapter 1, after alluding to the multi-faceted research on the relation between language and culture by mentioning Duranti (Reference Duranti2003), Sharifian announces CL as “a recently developed discipline with multidisciplinary origins that explores the relationship between language and cultural conceptualizations” (p. 2, emphasis in the original). The theoretical framework is then briefly outlined, with an emphasis on how the approach of CL has been informed by other disciplines such as distributed cognition (see Hutchins, Reference Hutchins1994) and complexity science (see Waldrop, Reference Waldrop1992). Admittedly, this explanation fits the purpose of the current publication; however, readers would find it useful to consult Sharifian (2011, Part 1) for a more elaborate description of the theoretical and analytical framework of CL, and Sharifian (Reference Sharifian and Sharifian2015) for information on its antecedents (in particular, references to Palmer’s work). The chapter also presents cultural schemas, cultural categories, and cultural metaphors as the analytical tools adopted in CL. These three notions are further explored in Chapter 2, which focuses exclusively on the analytical framework and provides examples from different languages (Aboriginal English, Chinese, Persian, and Australian Aboriginal tongues). Here, the author defines cultural schemas as “a culturally constructed subclass of so-called ‘cognitive schemas’” (p. 11), and locates the notion of ‘cultural schema’ in relation to a research tradition in the cognitive sciences where words such as ‘schema’, ‘schemata’, ‘script’, ‘scenario’, ‘frame’, ‘mental model’, and so on have been used extensively. Beyond that, one might wonder at this point whether connections also exist between ‘cultural schemas’ and the type of mental models investigated by cognitive anthropologists such as Goodenough (e.g., 1964, 1981). This aspect, however, remains unexplored here. Rosch’s research on categorization (e.g., 1973, 1978), among others, provides the basis for Sharifian’s notion of cultural categories. Drawing on the examples provided, cultural categories can be linguistically encoded in the lexicon (e.g., the cultural category of wedding in American English) or in grammar (e.g., noun classifiers in Murrinh-Patha, an Australian Aboriginal language). Cultural metaphors, as the third example of analytical tools in CL, are described as types of culturally constructed Lakovian conceptual metaphors. Given the universalist approach of early research on conceptual metaphors, Sharifian deems it important to stress the point that recent work in Conceptual Metaphor Theory and research in CL share a common view in terms of taking into consideration the cultural component in the analysis of conceptual metaphors. Aboriginal English is then taken as the locus of investigation for discussing three distinct examples of cultural metaphors (cultural metaphors relating to Land, cultural metaphors relating to Medicine, and creative cultural metaphors). Here, an important observation emerging from the data relates to the “cognitive processing continuum of cultural metaphors”, which is explained as stretching from the cultural metaphors perceived as such only from the etic perspective of an outsider to Aboriginal culture up to the conscious creative uses of cultural metaphors by Aborigines.
The book contains two other chapters primarily concerned with theoretical and methodological issues, Chapter 12 (that would also have worked well as the third chapter) and Chapter 4. In Chapter 12, the author makes an important contribution by reviewing linguistic relativity and the so-called Sapir–Whorf hypothesis with a critical eye on how previous literature has put forward fallacious interpretations of the theory, mostly based on partial considerations of its actual contents and intentions. In addition to this, Sharifian positions CL in relation to linguistic relativity by clarifying in which respects the two approaches differ and to what extent similarities can be drawn. This is an important explanation because it helps readers understand which new scientific inputs CL brings to research. In Sharifian’s view, while CL and linguistic relativity appear to share “the ultimate aim of arriving at a better understanding of the relationship between language and cognition” (p. 121), CL does not embrace an essentialist view of culture, is a theoretical and analytical framework rather than a hypothesis, and focuses on conceptualizations rather than on thought/thinking. In Chapter 4, Sharifian elaborates further on methodological concerns. After pointing out that CL and linguistic ethnography share a common epistemology, the author adds that CL is “an open-ended ‘set of procedures’ for data collection and analysis” (p. 41). The claim is supported by examples of the different methodological approaches that have already been adopted in the paradigm of CL. These contemplate a range of research methods, chiefly involving types of conceptual analyses (e.g., word associations and story-telling) but also including corpus-based investigations, semiotic analyses, and historically oriented studies.
Chapter 3, which is about embodied cultural metaphors, stands as a further proof of the multiple links between CL and other closely related fields of research. Specifically, it shows how CL connects to previous research in cognitive linguistics that has been concerned with the notion of embodied cognition (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999) and has taken body part terms as lieux par excellence to explore figurative meanings and polysemy (see, e.g., Nerlich, Todd, Herman, & Clarke Reference Nerlich, Todd, Herman and Clarke2003; Yu, Reference Yu2009). Sharifian focuses on the Persian term del (loosely translatable as ‘abdomen’) and investigates its metaphoric sense extensions in order to illustrate its significance in a range of culturally specific conceptualizations that relate to the domains of emotion, intellect, and personality, and can be traced back via Sufism to ancient Iranian religions and traditions.
Chapters 5, 8, 9, 10, and 11 can be seen as constituting another thematic cluster in that they demonstrate how CL has established a fruitful dialogue with other areas of applied linguistics, namely pragmatics, political discourse analysis, world Englishes, intercultural communication, and teaching English as an international language (TEIL). Each of these chapters provides examples of how CL has benefited from and has been applied to these domains of research.
In Chapter 5, the author applies a CL framework to pragmatic knowledge. Specifically, Sharifian reconsiders the pragmatic notions of speech act/event, pragmeme and pract, and puts them in a hierarchical relation by placing pragmatic cultural schemas on top of the taxonomy. This relation is rendered synthetically as follows: “pragmatic schema > speech act/event > pragmeme > practs” (p. 51). The author then shows how such a pragmatic set can serve as a basis for investigating cultural conceptualizations, and presents a few examples in his mother tongue, Persian.
Chapter 8 focuses on the relevance of cultural conceptualizations in the analysis of political discourse. Three highly pertinent studies are reported, one is about the cultural reconsideration of democracy in the current political context of Ghana, one deals with intra-and cross-cultural variation in the conceptualizations of the nation as a body, and a third concerns conceptualizations of austerity in Portuguese, Irish, and Spanish newspaper discourse. Chapter 8 also reports on a study on cultural metaphors in military English, and takes this as an example of discourse relevant to politics. That military English is relevant to politics is a fact; however, the type of reflections on military English presented here could have perhaps more fittingly expanded the contents of Chapter 11 (‘Cultural linguistics and intercultural communication’). Indeed, as Sharifian states, this study “demonstrates how Cultural Linguistics can be a highly effective vehicle for examining intercultural (mis)understanding in military contexts” (p. 82).
Chapter 9 sheds light on the benefits of adopting new approaches to the study of world Englishes that can substantially complement earlier feature-based investigations in this field. CL is offered as a novel, useful paradigm that can help researchers to identify varieties of English based on their cultural and conceptual uniqueness or, in other terms, on the presence of distinctive cultural conceptualizations. Significantly, this orientation is also in line with recent trends in cognitive (socio)linguistics that have stressed the importance of the socio-cultural and socio-cognitive dimensions of language use (see, e.g., Kristiansen & Dirven, Reference Kristiansen and Dirven2008). The chapter reviews several, representative studies dealing with a large spectrum of cultural conceptualizations as they find expression in specific cultural schemas, cultural categories, and cultural metaphors across a good number of different varieties of English spoken on three continents. The English varieties considered include Indian English, Singaporean English, Hong Kong English, Chinese English, Ghanaian English, West African varieties of English, Australian English, Aboriginal English, and Māori English.
Chapter 10 focuses on inter-cultural communication and its relation to CL. First, it provides an assessment of this field of research based on Wolf (Reference Wolf and Sharifian2015) and Wolf and Polzenhagen (Reference Wolf and Polzenhagen2009). Then, it proceeds by displaying examples of interactions between Aborigines and non-Aboriginal people that involved miscommunication because of a clash or a lack of correspondence between cultural schemas and cultural categories typically, although not equally, shared among members of each of the two groups considered. As mentioned earlier, this chapter could have profited from the inclusion of the discussion on inter-cultural miscommunication in the military context.
Chapter 11 concerns the applicability of a CL approach to a didactic context, and focuses on the Teaching of English as an International Language as a common scenario in a nowadays globalized and multicultural society. Sharifian reviews the debated notion of ‘competence’ (see Hymes’s ‘communicative competence’, Byram’s ‘intercultural communicative competence’, Canagarajah’s ‘multidialectal competence’, and Kramsch’s ‘symbolic competence’), and calls for a new view on it that is more in line with the type of inter- and multicultural nature of today’s communication. He suggests relying on the notion of ‘meta-cultural competence’, which he describes as “competence that enables interlocutors to engage consciously in successful communication and negotiation of their cultural conceptualizations during intercultural communication” (p. 101). In a way that is reminiscent of recent debates in the ELF (English as a lingua franca) and pedagogy domain (see, e.g., Bayyurt & Akcan, Reference Bayyurt and Akcan2015), Sharifian emphasizes the need to develop new tools (through new technology) and look for new aims in the English classroom where English is taught as an international language. Learners’ exposure to the conceptual and cultural diversity characterizing multiple uses of English across the globe should become an asset.
Chapters 5, 8, 9, 10, and 11 show what CL can bring to different disciplines in linguistics. In a similar vein, Chapters 6 and 7 illustrate how CL can contribute to the broader research areas of emotion and religion. Chapter 6 elaborates on conceptualizations of emotions and their linguistic encodings by drawing on examples from Persian, British English, Polish, and Aboriginal English. For instance, Sharifian discusses the Persian emotion concept qam (see meanings below) and explains how its cultural rootedness and semantic complexity make it difficult for outsiders to fully understand it, and how they pose challenges to translators. As argued, qam captures a range of emotions that in Western varieties of English could be variously rendered through the lexemes ‘pain’, ‘grief’, ‘sorrow’, ‘sadness’, and ‘worry’.
Chapter 7 revolves around cultural conceptualizations and related cultural metaphors that are associated with different religions and forms of spirituality. Specifically, Sharifian considers conceptualizations relating to Sufi life, conceptualizations relating to death in Buddhist and Christian eulogistic idioms, and conceptualizations relating to sacred Sites in Aboriginal English.
Overall, Chapters 5 to 11 can be taken as promising signs of an open and inclusive approach in CL and versatile applicability to different research areas in the humanities. In the concluding Chapter 13, Sharifian surveys current research on language and culture by referring to and summarizing contributions in his last two edited volumes (Sharifian, Reference Sharifian2015a, Reference Sharifian2017). Furthermore, he foresees future developments in the field by mentioning current and ongoing research on cultural conceptualizations in ‘vernacular architecture’ (Sharifian, Reference Sharifian and Vellingaforth.; Vellinga, Reference Vellingaforth.), which he explains as “architecture that embodies local needs and draws on available resources as well as cultural traditions, home and the built environment” (p. 148).
To conclude, one important aspect of the book that needs to be emphasized is its usefulness in terms of being a clear and accessible description of the state of the art of research in CL. The monograph offers its readers a synthetic but comprehensive mapping of extant research in the CL paradigm and traces the development of the discipline by providing evidence of its broad scope, interdisciplinary nature, and, perhaps most of all, vast applicability. Furthermore, the book contains numerous references to and summaries of studies in the CL framework, which could serve as starting points for scholars interested in pursuing their own explorations in the field.
Due to the interdisciplinarity of CL and the specific configuration of this publication, the book can be expected to raise interest in a large readership, including linguists (of different traditions), as well as anthropologists, ethnographers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists. Moreover, the monograph can be envisioned as a course book for both BA and MA students in subjects such as applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, and anthropological linguistics, to mention the most relevant.
