Embodiment in Language ― Food, Emotion and Beyond

This book provides useful strategies for language learning, researching and the understanding of social factors that influence human behavior. It offers an account of how we use human, animal and plant fixed expressions every day and the cultural aspects hidden behind them. These fixed expressions include various linguistic vehicles, such as fruit, jokes and taboos that are related to speakers’ use in the real world. The linguistic research in Mandarin Chinese, Hakka, German and English furthers our understanding of the cultural value and model of cognition embedded in life-form embodiment languages.

Shelley Ching-yu Depner is a professor at Department of Foreign Languages and Literature in National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. She has a PhD in Linguistics from Tubingen University, Germany in 2001. The focus of her research is a cross-cultural comparison of the cognitive semantics and sociolinguistics of Mandarin Chinese and German.