Cognitive concept of game in American English and Hungarian
Abstract
Scope and Method of Study: This study explores the meaning of the concept of game for speakers of American English and Hungarian by investigating the exemplars of the category, their attributes, and their links to the findings of a linguistic examination of texts written on a specific game, chess. The main goal is to pin down similarities and differences between typical and less typical members of the category for the two populations as well as explore in more detail the main game frames for the two groups. Findings and Conclusions: Surveys conceived of in the traditions of prototype category inquiry reveal that, apart from a basic overlap in contents, for Americans, game first of all means sports, whereas for Hungarians, board games lead the way. Moreover, children and joy appear to be more prominent aspects of games for Hungarians, and Americans link games first of all to fun and competition. Interviews add the strategy and company dimensions to games for Americans, and for Hungarians, purity and competition appear as significant aspects. The domain analysis of chess metaphors shows a substantial overlap in source domain usage between the two languages. On the other hand, and in support of the quantitative data, Hungarian proves to use expressions of more violent actions and relies more on the supernatural when describing this game. A construction and frame analysis of a number of phenomena described in a chess game also bears out the subtle differences in the two populations' concept of chess. A secondary aim of the study is to investigate the structure of the category in the two languages. Contrary to earlier findings with categories of natural objects, the present study did not find a correlation between typicality and family resemblance. At the same time, the amount of property overlap between members of the category and the superordinate seem to be correlated with typicality. The results of this study indicate that despite the similarities between the contents of the concept of game for speakers of American English and Hungarian, the significant differences in how people perceive this concept also translate into the ways how descriptions of games are linguistically constructed.
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- OSU Dissertations [11222]