James W. Underhill
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748643158
- eISBN:
- 9780748651566
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748643158.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, English Language
Encouraging readers to reflect upon language and the role metaphor plays in patterning ideas and thought, this book first offers a critical introduction to metaphor theory as it has emerged over the ...
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Encouraging readers to reflect upon language and the role metaphor plays in patterning ideas and thought, this book first offers a critical introduction to metaphor theory as it has emerged over the past thirty years in the States. The book then widens the scope of metaphor theory by investigating not only the worldview our language offers us, but also the worldviews that we adapt in our own ideological and personal interpretations of the world. The book explores new avenues in metaphor theory in the work of contemporary French, German, and Czech scholars. Detailed case studies marry metaphor theory with discourse analysis in order to investigate the ways the Czech language was reshaped by communist discourse, and the way fascism emerged in the German language. The third case study turns metaphor theory on its head: instead of looking for metaphors in language, it describes the way language systems (French and English) are understood in terms of metaphorically framed concepts evolving over time.Less
Encouraging readers to reflect upon language and the role metaphor plays in patterning ideas and thought, this book first offers a critical introduction to metaphor theory as it has emerged over the past thirty years in the States. The book then widens the scope of metaphor theory by investigating not only the worldview our language offers us, but also the worldviews that we adapt in our own ideological and personal interpretations of the world. The book explores new avenues in metaphor theory in the work of contemporary French, German, and Czech scholars. Detailed case studies marry metaphor theory with discourse analysis in order to investigate the ways the Czech language was reshaped by communist discourse, and the way fascism emerged in the German language. The third case study turns metaphor theory on its head: instead of looking for metaphors in language, it describes the way language systems (French and English) are understood in terms of metaphorically framed concepts evolving over time.
Hsiu-Chuang Deppman
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824833732
- eISBN:
- 9780824870782
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824833732.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter explores a paradigmatic East-West and city-country cultural encounter through the lens of a film director adapting his own bestselling novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress ...
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This chapter explores a paradigmatic East-West and city-country cultural encounter through the lens of a film director adapting his own bestselling novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (novel 2000; film 2002). Set in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, both the novel and film describe the experience of two urban teenagers sent to the countryside to be re-educated by peasants. An inside-outsider with a unique perspective, Dai Sijie writes in French about his intimate but distant Chinese memories and constructs a dialogic picture of China that has a complex, evolving cultural and class makeup. While Dai’s novel highlights, often humorously, divisive and discursive cultural practices—official Communist discourse, antiofficial Western romanticism, and nonofficial local parody, among many others—his film imagines a native land that mitigates class conflicts and nostalgically personifies a magnanimous “China.”Less
This chapter explores a paradigmatic East-West and city-country cultural encounter through the lens of a film director adapting his own bestselling novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (novel 2000; film 2002). Set in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, both the novel and film describe the experience of two urban teenagers sent to the countryside to be re-educated by peasants. An inside-outsider with a unique perspective, Dai Sijie writes in French about his intimate but distant Chinese memories and constructs a dialogic picture of China that has a complex, evolving cultural and class makeup. While Dai’s novel highlights, often humorously, divisive and discursive cultural practices—official Communist discourse, antiofficial Western romanticism, and nonofficial local parody, among many others—his film imagines a native land that mitigates class conflicts and nostalgically personifies a magnanimous “China.”
