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1044 eric pederson
chapter 39

COGNITIVE
LINGUISTICS AND
ANTHROPOLOGICAL
LINGUISTICS

gary b. palmer
1. Introduction

Coming from opposite directions on the cognitive-cultural spectrum, linguists are
approaching a theory of grammar in which meaning originates not only in bio-
logically driven cognitive processes and embodied categories of physical and so-
cial experience, but also in cultural traditions. Each of these sources of meaning
provides schemas and more elaborate cognitive models that constitute semantic
categories. Culture takes on heightened significance in this equation when we con-
sider that even embodied categories such as that of ‘container’ may be shaped by
living within dwellings of various architectures or by the sight, feel, and charac-

teristic usage of household cups, bowls, saucers, and baskets (Sinha and Jensen de
Lo
´
pez 2000). This perspective has been called Cultural Linguistics (Palmer 1996),
but it is entirely consistent with Cognitive Linguistics as defined by Langacker
(1999a: 16), who has stated that ‘‘language is an essential instrument and compo-
nent of culture, whose reflection in linguistic structure is pervasive and quite
significant.’’ Similarly, Lakoff has argued that metaphorical idioms involve cultural
knowledge in the form of conventional images and that links in radial semantic
categories are structured by experiential domains, which may be culture-specific
(Lakoff 1987: 95; Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 69).
1
Making the point even more
directly, Geeraerts and Grondelaers (1995: 177) claimed, ‘‘If cognitive models are
cultural models, they are also cultural institutions.’’ Thus, it is clear that Cognitive
Linguistics must keep one eye on culture. It is the shift of focus to culture as a
source of lexicon, grammar, and metaphor that takes us into the realm of An-
thropological Linguistics.
This chapter focuses on the intersection of cultural knowledge with the se-
mantic component of Cognitive Grammar. In the theory of Cognitive Grammar,
the semantic component includes Idealized Cognitive Models and maps, domains
of experience, image schemas, conceptual metaphors and metonymies, prototypes,
complex categories, radial categories, and encyclopedic knowledge (Lakoff and
Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1987; Langacker 1987, 1990, 1991, 2000). These elements almost
always present important cultural components, in that they take specific forms
which speakers learn in the course of socialization and enculturation. Cognitive
models that are culturally specific may be termed cultural models. Though we may
think of cultural models as primarily structuring social interaction and cultural
artifacts, they may also provide specific conceptual structure for cognitive maps of
salient physical domains of nature, such as geography or anatomy (Hallowell 1955;

Wallace 1965; Bickel 1997; Basso 1990; Palmer 1998a). Cultural models of social
action may be termed scenarios (Lakoff 1987; Palmer 1996)orcultural scripts (Schank
and Abelson 1977; Frake 1981; van Dijk 1987; Wierzbicka 1994a, 1994b), depending
on whether one wishes to highlight contingencies and expectations (scenarios) or
fixed sequences with slots for paradigmatic alternatives (scripts).
2
Others simply
refer to them as schemas (Malcolm and Sharifian 2002; Sharifian 2001, 2002)or
scenes (Grady and Johnson 1997). The conceptual content of scenarios may pertain
to any social institutions or domains of discourse, from the mythical and ritual
to the economic and domestic. Lakoff (1987) based his famous interpretation of
Dyirbal noun classifiers on the domain of myth. In Palmer and Woodman (1999)
and Palmer (2006), we centered our analysis of Shona noun classifiers on the do-
mestic activity of pounding grain. Wierzbicka (1994b) presented scripts of discourse
on various topics in Japanese and in American Black and White English.
Examples of cultural structuring of scenes with schemas, scenarios, or scripts
are myriad; but a few examples will make the point. In English, we commonly
conceptualize the future as lying ahead of us on the horizontal plane. When the
speaker of Cora, a Uto-Aztecan language of Mexico, talks about the future, we find
that time marches uphill, curving around the side of the hill on a path leading to
the top (Eugene Casad, p.c.). In southwest Australia, Aboriginal English half refers
to any degree of partiality (Malcolm and Sharifian 2002; also see Sharifian 2001),
which suggests that these speakers apply a different cultural schema than that of
non-Aboriginal English half. In Zapotec, the schemas that in English must be
termed in or under are both referenced by one term whose prototype meaning is
‘stomach’ (Sinha and Jensen de Lo
´
pez 2000). Examples such as these, revealing
conceptualizations that are simultaneously semantic and cultural, could be mul-
tiplied into the thousands. Scholars have been aware of cross-linguistic differences

1046 gary b. palmer
in construal and categorization of common experiences since at least the early
nineteenth century (Humboldt [1836] 1972).
If we subscribe to Langacker’s (1987: 63) assertion that semantic knowledge is
encyclopedic, then semantic schemas may be discovered and recorded by system-
atic ethnographic research. Linguistics that aspires to explain grammatical struc-
ture requires ethnographic methods aimed at discovering and verifying those
cultural models, maps, and scenarios that govern and motivate linguistic usages,
where usage refers not only to grammar, but also to the pragmatic dimension of
language—the uses of language to accomplish social goals (Duranti 1997).
This chapter examines research in two broad semantic domains: (i) agency and
emotion and (ii) spatial orientation. There is no presumption that these categories
have folk or emic status in other languages; their status is merely analytic. In actual
case studies, one seeks to discover how speakers themselves delineate their semantic
domains. One can think of other semantic domains that linguists and anthropol-
ogists have studied—color, kinship, illness, firewood, botany, anatomy, geography,
and the earmarkings of reindeer come to mind. The two discussed in this chapter
are less well publicized than the research on color terms and kinship, but they are
prominent in contemporary research.
3
My purpose is to discuss new approaches
and findings in each of the selected domains that offer promise for Anthropological
Linguistics. I focus on studies demonstrating strong interdependencies between
grammar and culture, but I will show that the findings do not support a strong
Whorfian position on the determination of perception by grammar.
2. Agency and Emotion

Emotion language has been the object of intensive study in recent years, both in
Cognitive Linguistics and in anthropology (see, e.g., Niemeier and Dirven 1997;
Palmer and Occhi 1999; Wierzbicka 1999;Ko

¨
vecses 2000). Much of this research
has focused on the search for universals in emotion language and the debate over
whether any universals can be demonstrated (see, e.g., Geeraerts and Grondelaers
1995 vs. Ko
¨
vecses 1995;Ko
¨
vecses and Palmer 1999;Ko
¨
vecses, Palmer, and Dirven
2002). In this section, I will first show that many verbal expressions of emotion are
governed by conceptual scenarios in which emotions are evoked and lead to sub-
sequent actions and thoughts (see also Dirven, Wolf, and Polzenhagen, this volume,
chapter 46). These scenarios of emotion presume agents and patients who possess
various qualities and degrees of agency that are specific to languages and cultures.
The topic of agency is one that has received much attention in contemporary an-
thropology, especially among critical theorists who study social inequalities per-
taining to race, ethnicity, gender, or class (Ortner 1996;Ahearn1999). In linguistics,
topics pertinent to agency include voice, ergativity, transitivity, and hierarchies of
cognitive linguistics and anthropological linguistics 1047
animacy or empathy, all of which have received extensive study.
4
Thus, it seems
worthwhile to explore connections between the anthropological notion of agency
and the grammatical topic of voice. I propose that morphemes of voice predicate and
profile highly abstract scenarios of agency. To illustrate, I will describe the usage of
grammatical voice in the emotion language of a Tagalog melodrama in which agency
is very much at stake. Emotion language is not the only domain exhibiting con-
nections between voice and agency, but emotional scenes often highlight the links.

2.1. Agency and Grammatical Voice
The grammar of voice should be of high interest to linguistic anthropologists as well
as to linguists, because it provides vehicles for the communication of agency. Lin-
guistic anthropologists take it as axiomatic that agency is not only expressed by
language, but also constructed and maintained by it (Duranti 1997; Ahearn 1999).
Agency is the capacity of an intentional being or social group to make choices, to
perform actions that have intended consequences, to effect results, or to control
situations. It is conferred by political and economic power, which are central to
theories of self, gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Grammatical voice refers to how
linguistic forms and constructions predicate relationships between nominal par-
ticipants in a clause, particularly the degree of influence of active Agents on the
objects of action or attention. Voice covers such phenomena as the English active and
passive voice, the ‘‘middle’’ voice of Greek and Interior Salish languages, reflexive
verbs, noncontrol verbal affixes (which may be misleadingly called ‘‘causatives’’),
experiential verb forms, ‘‘impersonal’’ constructions, and antipassives (Crystal 1991;
Langacker 1991). Ergative markers and active transitive constructions signal rela-
tively high agency in a clausal subject or focal participant. Passive constructions, ab-
solutive markers, and noncontrol or stative verb forms signal relatively low agency in
subjects and focal participants. Thus, these voicing constructions are crucial to dis-
courses involving the assertion, denial, and negotiation of agency.
But agency is not one-dimensional. Prototypically, it involves an Agent who
applies mechanical force to an object or a Patient, but it could also mean applying
social influence or controlling the actions of a secondary active participant. Or
it may involve nothing more than active attention and perception as contrasted
with experience over which one lacks control. Thus, it would appear that there is
no simple semantic model of agency that can be applied cross-linguistically and
cross-culturally. Most probably, the grammar of agency is constructed more or less
uniquely in each language. Here I propose that grammatical morphemes and con-
structions of voice predicate highly schematic scenarios that characterize either the
influence of agents on other participants, the degree of control over events affect-

ing the agent or patient, or the degree of direct involvement of agents in predi-
cated events or processes. These semantic qualities are independent of, but inter-
act with, related potentials in the verb or verb stem. Some of these possibilities are
diagrammed for Tagalog voice constructions in Palmer (2006).
1048 gary b. palmer
To the extent that expressions signaling voice are based either directly or met-
aphorically on scenes involving mechanical forces, their semantics may be repre-
sented by Talmy’s (1988) model of force dynamics (see also De Mulder, this vol-
ume, chapter 12). A well-known feature of Navajo verb morphology demonstrates
that each culture arrives at its own conventional construals of the force dynamics
of events. Navajo can mark a transitive verb construction with one or the other
of the prefixes yi- or bi It was formerly thought that the yi- marked transitive
objects and bi- marked passive subjects, but Witherspoon (1977) has shown this
to be an oversimplification. The bi- is best understood as marking a scenario in
which a controlling subject allows him-/her-/itself to be acted upon by a noncon-
trolling agent. Relative control is defined by a cultural schema that ranks intelli-
gent ‘‘talking’’ beings (mostly people) above less intelligent ‘‘calling’’ beings (mostly
animals), large beings above small ones, and animate beings above inanimate ob-
jects. Infants are ranked with ‘‘calling’’ beings. Thus, Navajo grammar is not simply
marking Agonists and Antagonists as Agents and objects; it is also marking the
Navajo construal of the mental efforts that control events (Palmer 1996: 158), a lin-
guistic development whose appearance in some language or other would have been
predictable from Talmy’s (1988) theory of force dynamics.
In many languages, it is uncommon to explicitly mention agents of transitive
constructions, so that sentence subjects are often Experiencers or objects of tran-
sitive actions. In some of these languages, such as Samoan, a transitive Agent may
require explicit ergative marking, while in others, such as Tagalog, transitive Agents
are given no special marking,
5
but absolutives (objects, Patients, and Experiencers)

are focused. In a study of village council meetings in Western Samoa, Duranti
(1994: 114–43) has shown how the study of grammar in context can reveal estab-
lished patterns of agency as well as bids and concessions thereof. During the be-
ginnings of meetings, participants use few constructions with ergative Agents, re-
vealing a reluctance to assign agency. As meetings progress, ergative constructions
are used only where participants are receiving credit or blame or where the power
of actors is acknowledged. This is most evident in talk about actions of the Al-
mighty, which place the Lord in the ergative case (126). Duranti pointed out that
speaking with ergative Agents constructs relations of power as much as it reflects
them. The powerful may use ergative constructions to frame the situation, but the
less powerful use them at their own risk. Section 2.2 will demonstrate how voice
morphology expresses qualities of agency in Tagalog by predicating scenarios in-
volving direct and indirect agency and noncontrol.
2.2. Agency and Emotion Language
In linguistics, emotion is often regarded as a kind of basic experience that is
expressed or predicated by particular lexemes and constructions, but in linguistic
anthropology, emotion language is more likely to be treated as a kind of discourse
with pragmatic consequences (Rosaldo 1984; Lutz 1988; Palmer and Brown 1998).
cognitive linguistics and anthropological linguistics 1049