Cariola, Laura A.

Lancaster E-Prints

Embodied cognition in the barrier personality

Edinburgh Research Explorer

     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      Embodied cognition in the barrier personalityCitation for published version:Cariola, LA 2014, 'Embodied cognition in the barrier personality'.Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Peer reviewed versionGeneral rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 05. Apr. 2019Abstract for Cognitive Futures in the Humanities Durham  Title: Embodied cognition in Barrier personalities   Name: Laura A. Cariola  Affiliation:  Lancaster University  Department of Linguistics and English Language  County South Lancaster LA1 4YL  Lancashire United Kingdom  E-mail: l.cariola@lancaster.ac.uk   Abstract Psychodynamic-informed content analyses of body boundaries provide an empirical method to provide an in-depth interpretation of cognitive influences that motivate linguistic constructions of political texts, autobiographies and memories and other forms of literary text. Consistent with cognitive linguistics, psychological, psychodynamic views that perceive semiotic processes and a coherent bodily self to be acquired in early socialization experiences (Fisher & Cleveland, 1958; Winnicott, 1971; Violi, 2012), this study provide further insights how individuals that vary in their body boundary finiteness differ in narrating everyday events. A corpus-based analysis using the USAS tool (Rayson et al., 2004) identified salient semantic domains in written narratives of autobiographical narratives of High and Low Barrier personalities. As predicted, High Barrier personalities used more semantic domains representing CONTAINER-schematic imagery (Johnson, 1987) and primordial mental activity (e.g., bodily, sensory, motion and spatial references) that represent structural elements of embodied image schemata (Bergen & Chang, 2007) (i.e., TRAJECTORY-LANDMARK, SOURCE-PATH-GOAL) as well as PART-WHOLE schemas, compared to the semantic domains related to conceptual thought (e.g., knowledge and emotion references) in Low Barrier personalities. Whereas Low Barrier personalities communicate their thoughts and emotions directly, High Barrier personalities expressed their emotions figuratively by mapping emotions onto bodily parts and processes. Such an indirect expression of emotions relates to an increased inhibitory control to minimize the threat of negative social evaluations (cf. O’Keefe & Nadel, 1978). In summary, the results indicate that the inflation of motion image schemata and embodiment of emotions in High Barrier personalities symbolize the Freudian (creative) mode of primordial functioning in relation to the external bodily functions, whereas Low Barrier personalities align with conceptual cognitive functioning. The discussion relates these findings to the interpretation of historical and political texts, as well as its implication within the wider empirical realm of cognitive linguistics as a science of developmental socialization process, such as proposed by psychodynamic theories.  References Bergen, B. K., & Chang, N. (2004). Embodied construction grammar in simulated-based language understanding. In V. Evans, B. Bergen & J. Zinken (Eds.), The Cognitive linguistics reader (pp. 601-637). London, UK: Equinox.  Fisher S., & Cleveland, S. (1958). Body image and personality. New York, NY: Dover Publications.  Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind. Chicago, Il: University of Chicago Press.    O’Keef, J. & Nadel, L. (1978). The hippocampus as a cognitive map. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.  Rayson, P. Archer, D., Piao, S. L., & McEnery, T. (2004). The UCREL semantic analysis system. In Proceedings of the workshop on Beyond Named Entity Recogniton Semantic labelling for NLP tasks in association with LREC 2004 (pp. 7-12). Lisbon, Portugal.  Winnicott, D. W. (1971) Playing and reality. New York, NY: Routledge.   Violi, P. (2012). How our bodies become us: Embodiment, semiois and intersubjectivity. Cognitive Semiotics, 4. Retrieved from http://www.cognitivesemiotics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2-violi.pdf ‎ =  

https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/28636030/Cognitive_Futures.pdf

Embodied cognition in the barrier personality

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Lancaster E-Prints

Edinburgh Research Explorer