Naslov
Love and Anger in Today`s Business World ; Cross-cultural analysis of American & British vs. Croatian business environment

Autori
Juretić, Ksenija ; Ivanetić, Nada

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Izvornik
10th international cognitive linguistics conference cognitive linguistics in action: from theory to application and back / Gruyter , Mouton de - Berlin : New York : John Benjamins Publishing, 2007, 111-112

Skup
ICLC 10 - 10th International cognitive linguistics conference cognitive linguistics in action: from theory to application and back

Mjesto i datum
Kraków, Poljska, 15.07.2007. - 20.07.2007

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
metaphor; pre-conceptual structures; conceptual system; holistic gestalts; conceptual integration networks; cultural models; time; money; work; values

Sažetak
Taking into consideration that in terms of economics, our success in business is measured by profitability, invested work, time and knowledge, and values primarily by money, we started our investigation with three crucial questions: If BUSSINESS IS A SPORTING EVENT in American cultural background, why is it conceptualized differently in Croatian business environment? What is SUCCESS and where does THE ROAD TO SUCCESS lead? If the conceptual metaphor TIME IS MONEY (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980 ; Lakoff 1996) is universal, why is it conceptualized differently in Croatian culture? Since the metaphor MONEY IS A LIQUID (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980 ; Lakoff 1996) is universal, what type of liquid is it in different cultural backgrounds? Our fundamental hypothesis is that BUSINESS, SUCCESS and MONEY make today’ s “ imperfect world of perfect markets” (Riddersträle and Nordström, 2004) go round. They are the name of the game and are highly charged with emotions of LOVE and ANGER. It is the love story of today. Therefore, our research was based on analyzing metaphors and image schemas extracted from a large domain-specific corpus (marketing, management, organizational structures and time management) in English and testing data taken from the same domain in the Croatian language. Most of our evidence about cross-cultural differences has come from contrasting two languages - English and Croatian. Since each language has its own symbolic structure (Langacker, 1987), differences between English and Croatian metaphorical mappings have been expected. However, differences in physical and business environment, values, beliefs, priorities and traditions of Anglo-Americans, who share the same language with the British and whose culture is deeply rooted in Anglo-Saxon culture, became surprisingly obvious while analyzing differences between British and American usage of metaphors, and in this way, our research has proved that metaphors reveal the whole mechanism of human conceptual system and cognition which is primarily unconscious. The data of scientific research in economics and anthropology compared to the results of our in-depth analysis of primary meanings of words and phrases in economic literature - based on contrasting three cultural models – proved to be concurrent with the major findings of cognitive linguistics. We may conclude that our research has neither ended up in the sum of cultural differences nor in a mere list of conventional and innovative metaphors, but has proved that metaphors are not a matter of words, not a matter of “ out-of-the-ordinary linguistic expressions” , but “ principle vehicles for understanding” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), which reflect the way we function in our physical and business environment ; the way we conceptualize values, our experience and interact with other people within our culture. Therefore, we hope that our research will contribute to further interdisciplinary research into the extensive role of metaphors in the language of science, economics as well as in applied linguistics.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Ekonomija

POVEZANOST RADA