Filtyp
This thesis investigates a possible influence of language on thought in the domain of motion event descriptions using a cognitive-semiotic framework. Previous studies (e.g., von Stutterheim et al., 2012) have claimed that speakers of languages who construe situations as temporally ongoing through morphological aspect tend to focus more on the action itself and less on other details such as possibl
The present thesis investigates motion-emotion metaphors in Estonian and compares them cross-linguistically with Finnish, English and Swedish. Motion-emotion metaphors (e.g. I fell into depression) are expression types that denote affective responses, which imply conspicuous bodily changes, using motion verbs and other linguistic expressions that typically express actual motion. Metaphor has been
When in need to tell stories we often find ourselves using not only our words but also accompanying gestures, as well as pictures. However, what if we were to use only gestures to narrate? Would the stories we tell be clear enough to understand? The thesis investigates the potentials and limitations of pantomime, which consists mostly of gesture, for storytelling. Concretely, through a unique two-
Empathy is our ability to experience and understand the mental states of others. In movement perception, and in particular in dance spectatorship, it has been argued that we experience observed movements through our own bodies: kinesthetic empathy. However, it has been unclear what exactly kinesthetic empathy encompasses on an experiential level as dance spectatorship research has been dominated b
In this thesis the aim is to investigate linguistic strategies of blame avoidance in two parliamentary debates about LSS (The Swedish Act concerning Support for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments). Focus lies upon how representatives from the government parties use linguistic strategies to avoid being made responsible for the many cases of decreased and withdrawn assistance. This is analy
Previous studies of the Chinese imperative have treated syntax and prosody separately, have not considered gestures, and have looked at sentences in isolation and not in discourse. This study therefore investigated how the relationship between grammatical components, intonation (perceived stress), and gesture are co-organized and interact in the 把 bǎ ‘Ba’ construction (i.e., BA) of Chinese imperat
Musical meaning is multifaceted: both highly sensory and yet often abstract, able to cross cultural boundaries and yet embedded in specific traditions. For the most part it is not denotational (Monelle, 1991). Nevertheless, in “programmatic music”, musical themes are intended to refer to worldly objects and events on the basis of iconic (and indexical) grounds. Such non-arbitrariness of the sound-
One component in writing development is a more efficient use of syntactic tools. Later syntactic development, specifically that of the noun phrase, is an understudied area, notably so for Swedish. The demand for specified and concise information in an expository text, and the availability of more planning time in the written modality, are important factors contributing to more complex noun phrases
This thesis investigates the semiotic foundations of recurrent gestures through a cross-cultural study of the Two-Handed-Alternation-Sagittal (2HAS) gesture in Japanese and Swedish. Drawing on the Motivation & Sedimentation Model (MSM)––a cognitive-semiotic model of meaning-making––the study explores how recurrent gestures emerge from the dynamic interplay between embodiment and sedimentation.
Previous research has shown that some bilinguals report feeling as though they have two different personalities in their different languages. For some this experience is stable, for others situational or linked to life stages, while many claim never to have felt it. Despite extensive research, there is no consensus on the topic, including on what exactly is meant by “personality” in the context. S
This thesis explores how bilingual and trilingual children aged 7–11 develop their English pronunciation in an international school where English is the main language of learning and play. Recordings from a storytelling task were rated for accent and comprehensibility, and background data from parental questionnaires provided detailed language profiles. Analyzing these data, it examines (a) whethe
Political discourse has been and remains a central topic of scholarly inquiry due to its role in shaping public opinion, ideologies, and social interactions. It constitutes a highly polysemiotic form of communication in which hand expressions play a central role in the organisation and interpretation of interactions. This thesis investigates hand expressions in televised political discourse from
This thesis investigates the empathic relation between the audience, as the experiencing subject, and narrative characters of a fictional story, by introducing the concept of narrative empathy. A part from elaborating this concept, the thesis seeks to empirically investigate how two different media, film and novel, modulate this relationship and which narrative categories (perspective, direct spee
The present perceptual learning study was conducted in an attempt to investigate to which extent naïve listeners’ L1 prosodic background affected their learning performance of a lexical tone language and whether an auditory-image (AI) training paradigm curtailed the online-learning process of lexical tones. Thirty-three Mandarin-naïve Swedish-native listeners (NS listeners) and 33 Mandarin-naïve E
Against the backdrop of universality proposals claiming that all the world’s languages share the way they conceptualise and express THINKING, this study investigates verbs of thinking in German and Swedish in a comparative perspective. In particular, it examines semantic specificity in verbs of thinking (the restricted availability of only one specific verb in a certain context), and the potential
All words in Swedish have a particular melody. There are two tonal patterns that are observed in different prosodic and morphological contexts – accent 1 and accent 2. The tone of accent 1 is the default melody in Swedish and is said to be of intonational nature. The melody of accent 2, on the other hand, only occurs in presence of certain suffixes in the word, hence, accent 2 is claimed to be a p
“Choice blindness” (CB) refers to a certain tendency to accept a choice that is presented to us as if it were our own, even when we have never made it. In the last decade, CB has been treated as a research tool in a series of experiments in different domains and modalities (e.g. Johansson et al. 2005, 2008; Hall et al. 2010, 2013; Sagana et. al 2014; Cochran et al. 2016) in order to study the rela
Audiovisual content is heavily prevalent in many modern societies. Film, in particular, is a favourite form of entertainment to many. Film is by nature both multimodal and polysemiotic, employing the modalities of visual and auditive as well as the semiotic systems of language, gesture, depiction and music. Some audiences do not have immediate access to content using either the auditive or visual
This thesis considers any existing representations of tragic themes in Plutarch's Lives of Demetrius and Antony. There is a modern debate regarding the nature of the tragic, which is initially adressed. The proposed themes are treated from the perspective of Plutarch's literary and moral intentions, namely the presentation of negative examples.
