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Elphinstone Institute Public Lecture
One of the main insights of linguistics in recent years is the extent to which ordinary language is metaphorical. Moreover, such metaphors are systematic, forming regular patterns whereby whole areas of vocabulary are mapped onto each other. Some of these mappings, such as UNDERSTANDING IS SIGHT, may be common to all the world’s languages. Also potentially universal is the well-known LANDSCAPE IS A BODY metaphor in place-names. Found in some of the most ancient strata of Scottish toponymy through to recent coinages such as Foggy Belly and Catlug (Fife), references to body parts have much to tell us about human conceptualisation of the landscape. Drawing on results from two AHRC-funded projects at the University of Glasgow, Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary and Scottish Toponymy in Transition: Progressing County Surveys of the Place-Names of Scotland, this lecture will first outline recent advances in the understanding of metaphor, and will then investigate the extent to which body metaphors are systematic in place-names, examining the motivation(s) underlying them, and drawing attention to other, less easily recognised metaphors in the Scottish namescape.
Carole Hough is Professor of Onomastics at the University of Glasgow, where she has worked for nearly 20 years. Her research interests include Scottish and English place-names and personal names, names in literature, onomastic theory, Old English and semantics. As a historical linguist, she is particularly interested in place-name evidence for the history of the Germanic languages of Britain, and in the relationship between names and other areas of language. She is currently Convener of the Scottish Place-Name Society, and President of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences. Further details, and a list of around 300 publications, are available at http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/critical/staff/carolehough/
- Speaker
- Carole Hough, University of Glasgow