Cultural Conceptualizations of Power in the Serbian Language

This chapter identifies and determines cultural conceptualizations in Serbian as regards the concept of power. The qualitative analysis is based on linguistic data obtained from lexicographic resources and a survey completed by native speakers of Serbian. Theoretical and analytical tools of Cultural Linguistics are used in the analysis. Since cultural conceptualizations are encoded in language in different forms and are shared by members of the given speech community, they represent an insight into group-level cognition and the interface of language, culture, and cognition. The results of the study indicate that the concept of power is influenced by culture, which affects the ways this concept is understood and perceived by the speakers.