Departmental Seminar on 22 May 2009
Title: Cognitive Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis
Speaker: Professor Paul Chilton, Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University
Date: May 22, 2009 (Friday)
Time: 4:30pm - 6:00pm
Venue: AG 507, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Abstract:
Critical Discourse analysis (CDA) a broad cluster of methodologies in which the linguistic details of text and talk (i.e. ‘discourse’) is related to structures, processes and trends in society. The analysis of discourse requires linguistic description, combined with interpretation in relation to the analyst’s understanding of society. How is such linguistic description best carried out? Different analysts, from the 1980s to the present time, have drawn on various linguistic theories, but the main tendency has been to use Systemic functional Grammar based on the work of M. A. K. Halliday. This is not to say that other linguistic frameworks have been absent from CDA: for instance, metaphor, which is an important strand of cognitive Linguistics, has often been studied in CDA work. At the present time, there exists some diversity and even confusion in the linguistic approaches used by CDA scholars. This talk will explain the main approaches of Cognitive Linguistics and show how it can be used to supplement, or even move beyond, the SFG-based approaches to the critical investigation of discourse. In particular the talk will focus on e.g. perspective, categories, frames, image schemas, and metaphor.
About the speaker:
Paul Chilton is a cognitive linguist and discourse analyst working in an inter-disciplinary and inter-cultural context. He obtained his first degree and doctorate at Oxford University. He has held posts at Nottingham, Warwick, Aston and the University of East Anglia. Currently, he is a Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University. In the field of cognitive linguistics he has published books and articles on metaphor and spatial conceptualisation and has developed a model of discourse on geometrical principles. In discourse analysis he has investigated numerous aspects of political discourse and critically examined the methods of CDA. He is also principal coordinator of the Leverhulme-funded project New Discourses in Contemporary China. Amongst his publications are Security Metaphors, which uses a cognitive-linguistic approach to the metaphor in international discourse, and Analysing Political Discourse, which combines a variety of approaches from CDA and from cognitive linguistics.
