Embodied Cognition Studies in the Light of the Qualitative Paradigm: Mental Imagery in Verbal Tasks

DOI: 10.5176/2251-1865_CBP13.56

Authors: Olga Shcherbakova, Yanina Ledovaya

Abstract:

The increasing body of data on language embodiment research raises the question of integration between biology, linguistics, neurology, psychology and other natural sciences from the one hand, and social sciences and humanities, from the other hand. The only problem is that even psychologists tend to ignore the subjective reality of qualia underlying both linguistic phenomena and brain processes. This article describes two separate studies which were run in the qualitative paradigm. Both of them were aimed to reveal the kinaesthetical components of mental representations underlying either comical texts’ understanding or abstract and concrete words’ conceptualization. We tried to demonstrate the general heuristicity of the qualitative approach to the embodied cognition studies and to describe the structure and functions of subjective mental imagery in verbal tasks performing in particular.

Keywords: embodied cognition, embodied language, abstract and concrete concepts, motor components of mental representations, qualitative paradigm, texts' comprehension