A human is not only part of the physical world but also a major actor in a complex sociocultural space. Human interaction is always imbedded in sociocultural frameworks within which cognitive content gets its shape in form of conceptions and attitudes. Vectors of cultural and linguistic development are unprogrammable, yet most content if “translated” is mutually intelligible. But how does it actually work? How can we lend our thoughts without lending the language? What is universal and what specific in the ways we construct concepts? Here, scholarly opinions diverge significantly.
Knowing which constituents of conceptual formulae are variable and which invariable and how they interplay helps to reanalyze cognitive underpinnings of cultural and linguistic diversity and reshape theories of cultural logic.
Pursuing the answers the project introduces several novel perspectives – in focus, theory and methods, and data sourcing.
PI Katsiaryna Ackermann
affiliated researchers
