A Cultural Linguistics Approach to Language Pedagogy: The Role of Cultural Conceptualizations in Teaching Hungarian Body Part Expressions
摘要
A widely disputed field in foreign language education is how to teach figurative language and the cultural knowledge that underpins its meanings. Previous research has shown that introducing figurative expressions to students systematically and providing their cultural-etymological background supports students’ comprehension and performance regarding these expressions. This chapter argues that implementing cultural conceptualizations in foreign language education is a prosperous way to introduce figurative language and its underlying cultural motivations in an organized way. ‘Cultural conceptualizations’, the central notion of Cultural Linguistics, is a cover term for culturally and conceptually structured metaphors, schemas, and categories, which encode different aspects of a cultural group’s beliefs and ideas about the world. In the study, figurative language based on a specific group of Hungarian lexicon—body part terms—is analyzed from the perspective of Cultural Linguistic methodology. The analysis focuses on identifying culturally specific categorization issues that can be introduced to students, demonstrating how body part expressions encompassed by cultural schemas can be linked, and explaining how cultural metaphors provide meaning to a group of figurative expressions. It is shown that raising awareness of the cultural conceptualizations related to Hungarian body parts opens the door to systematically introducing packages of expressions to students while they also benefit from anchoring their newly acquired knowledge to the cultural worldview of the Hungarian language speakers’ community. In this way, students gain a thorough understanding of specific figurative networks present in the foreign language they study.