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F. Elizabeth Hart
University of Connecticut, Storrs
Presentation Abstract
You Have to Be Nice to Nature If You Want Him
to Keep Providing:
Gender-Blindness in Cognitive Linguistics
Cognitive linguistics has played an integral role in the paradigm shift now marking the cognitive sciences, a shift from computational and rule-based cognition to models based on mind-embodiment. Embodied cognition poses a fruitful and expanding challenge to the “first-generation” cognitive-science legacy of Frege, Chomsky, Fodor, and many others. And in testimony to the intellectual richness of this new approach, it offers a much wider field of potential intersection between cognitive studies and literary/culture studies than has previously been available. Yet as integral to this paradigm shift as cognitive linguistics has been, problems with certain of its theoretical precepts are preventing it from gaining the recognition from literary/culture theorists that I, for one, believe it deserves. Chief and most striking among these problems is the fact that its claims about what exactly “embodiment” entails have tended to close off a critical discourse on gender. The assumption of a basic (that is, essential) human state of embodiment is a staple in cognitive linguistic rhetoric and demonstration even while the demonstrations themselves belie this assumption, often embedding categorizations based on gender but without subjecting gendered categories to analysis. In this paper, I will suggest that a gender-neutral cognitive linguistics is intellectually dishonest with itself and with its audience, while a gender-conscious cognitive linguistics would lose little of its original integrity, would sacrifice few if any of the insights that have made it a key player in “second-generation” cognitive science. Specifically, I will propose some ways in which gender might viably enter into cognitive linguistic theory. Then I will offer an example, taking my cue from a list of environmental metaphors compiled by George Lakoff, of how sensitivity to gender might actually enrich our understanding of the implications of this new discipline for literary and culture studies.
F. Elizabeth Hart
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Connecticut, Storrs
Research interests
Cognitive theory and early modern studies (particularly Shakespeare);
cognitive linguistics and implications for poststructuralism
Publication List
"Matter, System, and Early Modern Studies: Outlines for a Materialist Linguistics," Configurations 6-3 (Fall 1998): 311-343. Abstract.
"Cognitive Linguistics: The Experiential Dynamics of Metaphor," Mosaic 28-1 (Spring 1995): 1-23. Abstract.
"Theological and Materialist Studies of Shakespeare," The Upstart Crow: A Shakespeare Journal XVIII (1998) (forthcoming).
In progress
Book project with the tentative title "A Matter of Mind: Cognitive Linguistics
and Literary Theory."
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