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2 - Construal in Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2024

Shu-Ling Wu
Affiliation:
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Lihong Huang
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Carl Polley
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii
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Summary

Chapter 2 introduces the concept of construal and explains how identical objects or real-world events can be perceived and described differently by multiple speakers, due to differences in individual speakers’ perspectives, the impact of culture as a lens on cognition, and the linguistic options available in a language. For instance, although Chinese shares similar concepts of time as English, associating time and space so that front and back can refer to temporal relationships, Chinese also exhibits a tendency to construct time vertically, in which the past is up and the future is down. Systematic crosslinguistic differences can also be found in descriptions of motion events across world languages. Learning to express time and motion in L2 Chinese often entails adjustment to new perspectives that are not articulated in a learner’s native language. L2 Chinese speakers therefore need ample opportunities to use the L2 functionally before they can develop L2-specific ways of thinking-for-speaking patterns.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • Construal in Language
  • Shu-Ling Wu, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Lihong Huang, Georgetown University, Washington DC, Carl Polley, University of Hawaii
  • Book: Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition of Chinese
  • Online publication: 01 February 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009186711.003
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  • Construal in Language
  • Shu-Ling Wu, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Lihong Huang, Georgetown University, Washington DC, Carl Polley, University of Hawaii
  • Book: Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition of Chinese
  • Online publication: 01 February 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009186711.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Construal in Language
  • Shu-Ling Wu, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Lihong Huang, Georgetown University, Washington DC, Carl Polley, University of Hawaii
  • Book: Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition of Chinese
  • Online publication: 01 February 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009186711.003
Available formats
×