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The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language
by
Mark Turner
We usually consider literary thinking to be peripheral and dispensable, an activity for specialists: poets, prophets, lunatics, and babysitters. Certainly we do not think it is the basis of the mind. We think of stories and parables from Aesop's Fables or The Thousand and One Nights, for example, as exotic tales set in strange lands, with spectacular images, talking animal...more
Paperback, 198 pages
Published
December 1st 1998
by Oxford University Press, USA
(first published January 1st 1996)
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Mar 19, 2009
Elaine
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
inquisitive minds
Mark Turner belongs to a cadre of linguistics scholars who examine in depth the way ordinary people - indeed, all speakers of a language -- utilize metaphor, metonymy and various modes of mental mapping in all their speech. Unlike his colleagues, writers like George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Turner focuses on the interface between syntax and semantics, and shows, for instance, how an utterance like "people banded together to force him into defeat" takes our perceptions of space, such as pushing s...more
Starts off slow if you are already familiar with the idea of conceptual metaphor (called story and parable here), but develops the notion of blending spaces to explain how source and target interact selectively. Turner then runs with the idea that story, projection and parable are the rudiments of language and not the other way around. A compelling if under-footnoted argument.
a background study on conceptual blending. Not an easy read, but worth the effort. closely linking literature and linguistics, it is one of the seminal books for 'the cognitive turn' in literary studies.
Great book. Turner has some very interesting ideas about the mind and the origin of thought and language. Not a beach read, but worth while.
May 15, 2009
Sarah
added it
The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language by Mark Turner (1998)
Turner, Lakoff and Johnson provide not only a corrective to the positivism of Age 3 capitalism with its handmaidens of neuroscience (as ideology) and eternalism, but do so in such a beautiful and stimulating and human way.
Turner surveys neurological research to construct a theory of how the mind works that is surprisingly simple and powerful. A must-read for anyone who wants to know how everyone else thinks.
very good, very useful. very dry.
Turner says that we relate basic actions to basic story formats, therefore, in our brains, that's why we internalise stories.
Turner says that we relate basic actions to basic story formats, therefore, in our brains, that's why we internalise stories.
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