Jörg Zinken
Biographic Data
| ID | 750110 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jörg Zinken |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jörg |
| FAMILY NAME | Zinken |
| SIGNATURE | ZINKEN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leibniz Institute for the German Language |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5728-4767 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 182 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Beyond Deontic Modality
We report a study of expressions of possibility and necessity in the context of sanctioning problematic behaviour: modal sanctions. The study is comparative on two dimensions: We compare across two types of context, oriented to codified rules (playing board games) or to social norms (breakfast with the family), and across four European languages: British English, German, Italian and Polish. We find that (1) only around 16% of sanctioning attempts…
Sequence, gaze, and modal semantics
Two modal verbs of German are regularly used to express deontic possibility: können (‘can’) and dürfen (‘may’). We examine how speakers select between them, focusing on modal inquiries for permission to carry out some action ( darf/kann ich das machen , ‘may/can I do this’). Our data are video-recordings of everyday face-to-face interaction, which we analyze sequentially, drawing on interactional-linguistic methods. We find that local sequential …
The serial reproduction of an urban myth
Recall was also better for a strict (as opposed to a lenient) audience, in line with another prediction from Bartlett's social theory of remembering. Notwithstanding this, we conclude with some critical remarks on the serial reproduction method as an approach to cultural memory
Invoking Rules in Everyday Family Interactions
In this article we examine moments in which parents or other caregivers overtly invoke rules during episodes in which they take issue with, intervene against, and try to change a child’s ongoing behavior or action(s). Drawing on interactional data from four different languages (English, Finnish, German, Polish) and using Conversation Analytic methods, we first illustrate the variety of ways in which parents may use such overt rule invocations as …
Offering an Interpretation of Prior Talk in Everyday Interaction
Sometimes in interaction, a speaker articulates an overt interpretation of prior talk. Such moments have been studied as involving the repair of a problem with the other’s talk or as formulating an understanding of the matter at hand. Stepping back from the established notions of formulations and repair, we examine the variety of actions speakers do with the practice of offering an interpretation, and the order within this domain. Results show ha…
Formulating other minds in social interaction
We examine moments in social interaction in which a person formulates what another thinks or believes. Such formulations of belief constitute a practice with specifiable contexts and consequences. Belief formulations treat aspects of the other person's prior conduct as accountable on the basis that it provided a new angle on a topic, or otherwise made a surprising contribution within an ongoing course of actions. The practice of belief formulatio…
Rule Talk
The present paper explores how rules are enforced and talked about in everyday life. Drawing on a corpus of board game recordings across European languages, we identify a sequential and praxeological context for rule talk. After a game rule is breached, a participant enforces proper play and then formulates a rule with an impersonal deontic statement (e.g. “It’s not allowed to do this”). Impersonal deontic statements express what may or may not b…
The Comparative Study of Social Action
This article makes an empirical and a methodological contribution to the comparative study of action. The empirical contribution is a comparative study of three distinct types of action regularly accomplished with the turn format du meinst x (“you mean/think x”) in German: candidate understandings, formulations of the other’s mind, and requests for a judgment. These empirical materials are the basis for a methodological exploration of different l…
Das Heißt (“That Means”) for Formulations and Du Meinst (“You Mean”) for Repair? Interpretations of Prior Speakers’ Turns in German
The recognizability of a stretch of conduct as social action depends on details of turn construction as well as the turn’s context. We examine details of turn construction as they enter into actions offering interpretations of prior talk. Such actions either initiate repair or formulate a conclusion from prior talk. We focus on how interpretation markers (das heißt [“that means”] vs. du meinst [“you mean”]) and interpretation formats (phrasal vs.…
A Noção de Tempo
Neste trabalho, contestamos a Hipótese do Mapeamento Universal com baseem pesquisa realizada com uma língua Tupi-Kawahib, da Amazônia brasileira: a língua amondawa. Salientamos, entretanto, que não contestamos a hipotética universalidade dos fundamentos cognitivos do mapeamento linguístico espaçotempo
Conceptualizations of Time
As time cannot be observed directly, it must be analyzed in terms of mental categories, which manifest themselves on various linguistic levels. In this interdisciplinary volume, novel approaches to time are proposed that consider temporality without time, on the one hand, and the coding of time in language, including sign language, and gestures, on the other. The contributions of the volume demonstrate that time is conceptualized not only in term…
Assistance and Other Forms of Cooperative Engagement
In their analysis of methods that participants use to manage the realization of practical courses of action, Kendrick and Drew (2016/this issue) focus on cases of assistance, where the need to be addressed is Self’s, and Other lends a helping hand. In our commentary, we point to other forms of cooperative engagement that are ubiquitously recruited in interaction. Imperative requests characteristically expect compliance on the grounds of Other’s a…
Grammar and social agency
AlbertoniPrep_1221345aquesto è da portare ancora di là allora 'this is still to be brought there then' BiscottiPome01_1315415 ce ne deve essere anche per il Gigi 'some of it must be left for Gigi' CampFamPrep_140117 anca questo l'è da brusar vara Guido 'this too is to be burned, look Guido' CampFamPrep_984945 bisom 'che d'enviar via anca la lavatrice ragazzi 'it's necessary to start also the dishwasher guys
Grammar and social agency
Sentence and construction types generally have more than one pragmatic function. Impersonal deontic declaratives such as ‘it is necessary to X’ assert the existence of an obligation or necessity without tying it to any particular individual. This family of statements can accomplish a range of functions, including getting another person to act, explaining or justifying the speaker’s own behavior as he or she undertakes to do something, or even jus…
Contingent control over shared goods. ' Can I have x ' requests in British English informal interaction
Responsibility and Action
We compare the use of two formats for requesting an object in informal everyday interaction: imperatives, common in our Polish data, and second-person polar questions, common in our English data. Imperatives and polar questions are selected in the same interactional “home environments” across the languages, in which they enact two social actions: drawing on shared responsibility and enlisting assistance, respectively. Speakers across the language…
Reformulating place
Working Side by Side? Interaction and Interview Data in Research on Household Conflicts
The article discusses the possibilities and challenges of combining conversation analysis and ethnography in the study of everyday family life. We argue that such a combination requires the decision whether to prioritise interaction data or ethnographic (in particular, interview) data in the analysis. We present a conversation analytic case study of how household work is commonly brought up in the interactions of one couple and bring this to bear…
A feeling for the future
Most cultures have metaphors for time that involve movement, for example, ‘time passes’. Although time is objectively measured, it is subjectively understood, as we can perceive time as stationary, whereby we move towards future events, or we can perceive ourselves as stationary, with time moving past us and events moving towards us. This paper reports a series of studies that first examines whether people think about time in a metaphor‐consisten…
How to Propose an Action as Objectively Necessary
The present study demonstrates that language-specific grammatical resources can afford speakers language-specific ways of organizing cooperative practical action. On the basis of video recordings of Polish families in their homes, we describe action affordances of the Polish impersonal modal declarative construction trzeba x (“one needs to x”) in the accomplishment of everyday domestic activities, such as cutting bread, bringing recalcitrant chil…
When time is not space
It is widely assumed that there is a natural, prelinguistic conceptual domain of time whose linguistic organization is universally structured via metaphoric mapping from the lexicon and grammar of space and motion. We challenge this assumption on the basis of our research on the Amondawa (Tupi Kawahib) language and culture of Amazonia. Using both observational data and structured field linguistic tasks, we show that linguistic space-time mapping …
Aspects of Cognitive Ethnolinguistics
Metaphor and Discourse
Discourse metaphors
Cognitive linguists have long been interested in analogies people habitually use in thinking and speaking, but little is known about the nature of the relationship between verbal behaviour and such analogical schemas. This article proposes that discourse metaphors are an important link between the two. Discourse metaphors are verbal expressions containing a construction that evokes an analogy negotiated in the discourse community. Results of an a…
Metaphor Practices in the German Wende Discourse
This paper introduces a method for computer-based analyses of metaphor in discourse, combining quantitative and qualitative elements. This method is illustrated with data from research on German newspaper discourse concerning the ongoing system transformations of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Methodological aspects of the research procedure are discussed and it is argued that quantitative elements can enhance comparability in cross-cultural and…
When time is not space
It is widely assumed that there is a natural, prelinguistic conceptual domain of time whose linguistic organization is universally structured via metaphoric mapping from the lexicon and grammar of space and motion. We challenge this assumption on the basis of our research on the Amondawa (Tupi Kawahib) language and culture of Amazonia. Using both observational data and structured field linguistic tasks, we show that linguistic space-time mapping …
Responsibility and Action
We compare the use of two formats for requesting an object in informal everyday interaction: imperatives, common in our Polish data, and second-person polar questions, common in our English data. Imperatives and polar questions are selected in the same interactional “home environments” across the languages, in which they enact two social actions: drawing on shared responsibility and enlisting assistance, respectively. Speakers across the language…
Ideological Imagination
This article explores the role that metaphors play in the ideological interpretation of events. Research in cognitive linguistics has brought rich evidence of the enormous influence that body experience has on (metaphorical) conceptualization. However, the role of the cultural net in which an individual is embedded has mostly been neglected. As a step towards the integration of cultural experience into the experientialist framework in cognitive m…
Grammar and social agency
Sentence and construction types generally have more than one pragmatic function. Impersonal deontic declaratives such as ‘it is necessary to X’ assert the existence of an obligation or necessity without tying it to any particular individual. This family of statements can accomplish a range of functions, including getting another person to act, explaining or justifying the speaker’s own behavior as he or she undertakes to do something, or even jus…
How to Propose an Action as Objectively Necessary
The present study demonstrates that language-specific grammatical resources can afford speakers language-specific ways of organizing cooperative practical action. On the basis of video recordings of Polish families in their homes, we describe action affordances of the Polish impersonal modal declarative construction trzeba x (“one needs to x”) in the accomplishment of everyday domestic activities, such as cutting bread, bringing recalcitrant chil…
Contingent control over shared goods. ' Can I have x ' requests in British English informal interaction
Reformulating place
Discourse metaphors
Cognitive linguists have long been interested in analogies people habitually use in thinking and speaking, but little is known about the nature of the relationship between verbal behaviour and such analogical schemas. This article proposes that discourse metaphors are an important link between the two. Discourse metaphors are verbal expressions containing a construction that evokes an analogy negotiated in the discourse community. Results of an a…
Assistance and Other Forms of Cooperative Engagement
In their analysis of methods that participants use to manage the realization of practical courses of action, Kendrick and Drew (2016/this issue) focus on cases of assistance, where the need to be addressed is Self’s, and Other lends a helping hand. In our commentary, we point to other forms of cooperative engagement that are ubiquitously recruited in interaction. Imperative requests characteristically expect compliance on the grounds of Other’s a…
Invoking Rules in Everyday Family Interactions
In this article we examine moments in which parents or other caregivers overtly invoke rules during episodes in which they take issue with, intervene against, and try to change a child’s ongoing behavior or action(s). Drawing on interactional data from four different languages (English, Finnish, German, Polish) and using Conversation Analytic methods, we first illustrate the variety of ways in which parents may use such overt rule invocations as …
Das Heißt (“That Means”) for Formulations and Du Meinst (“You Mean”) for Repair? Interpretations of Prior Speakers’ Turns in German
The recognizability of a stretch of conduct as social action depends on details of turn construction as well as the turn’s context. We examine details of turn construction as they enter into actions offering interpretations of prior talk. Such actions either initiate repair or formulate a conclusion from prior talk. We focus on how interpretation markers (das heißt [“that means”] vs. du meinst [“you mean”]) and interpretation formats (phrasal vs.…
A feeling for the future
Most cultures have metaphors for time that involve movement, for example, ‘time passes’. Although time is objectively measured, it is subjectively understood, as we can perceive time as stationary, whereby we move towards future events, or we can perceive ourselves as stationary, with time moving past us and events moving towards us. This paper reports a series of studies that first examines whether people think about time in a metaphor‐consisten…
Offering an Interpretation of Prior Talk in Everyday Interaction
Sometimes in interaction, a speaker articulates an overt interpretation of prior talk. Such moments have been studied as involving the repair of a problem with the other’s talk or as formulating an understanding of the matter at hand. Stepping back from the established notions of formulations and repair, we examine the variety of actions speakers do with the practice of offering an interpretation, and the order within this domain. Results show ha…
Formulating other minds in social interaction
We examine moments in social interaction in which a person formulates what another thinks or believes. Such formulations of belief constitute a practice with specifiable contexts and consequences. Belief formulations treat aspects of the other person's prior conduct as accountable on the basis that it provided a new angle on a topic, or otherwise made a surprising contribution within an ongoing course of actions. The practice of belief formulatio…
The Comparative Study of Social Action
This article makes an empirical and a methodological contribution to the comparative study of action. The empirical contribution is a comparative study of three distinct types of action regularly accomplished with the turn format du meinst x (“you mean/think x”) in German: candidate understandings, formulations of the other’s mind, and requests for a judgment. These empirical materials are the basis for a methodological exploration of different l…
Grammar and social agency
AlbertoniPrep_1221345aquesto è da portare ancora di là allora 'this is still to be brought there then' BiscottiPome01_1315415 ce ne deve essere anche per il Gigi 'some of it must be left for Gigi' CampFamPrep_140117 anca questo l'è da brusar vara Guido 'this too is to be burned, look Guido' CampFamPrep_984945 bisom 'che d'enviar via anca la lavatrice ragazzi 'it's necessary to start also the dishwasher guys
Ideological Imagination
This article explores the role that metaphors play in the ideological interpretation of events. Research in cognitive linguistics has brought rich evidence of the enormous influence that body experience has on (metaphorical) conceptualization. However, the role of the cultural net in which an individual is embedded has mostly been neglected. As a step towards the integration of cultural experience into the experientialist framework in cognitive m…
Metaphor Practices in the German Wende Discourse
This paper introduces a method for computer-based analyses of metaphor in discourse, combining quantitative and qualitative elements. This method is illustrated with data from research on German newspaper discourse concerning the ongoing system transformations of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Methodological aspects of the research procedure are discussed and it is argued that quantitative elements can enhance comparability in cross-cultural and…
Discourse metaphors
Cognitive linguists have long been interested in analogies people habitually use in thinking and speaking, but little is known about the nature of the relationship between verbal behaviour and such analogical schemas. This article proposes that discourse metaphors are an important link between the two. Discourse metaphors are verbal expressions containing a construction that evokes an analogy negotiated in the discourse community. Results of an a…
Aspects of Cognitive Ethnolinguistics
Metaphor and Discourse
How to Propose an Action as Objectively Necessary
The present study demonstrates that language-specific grammatical resources can afford speakers language-specific ways of organizing cooperative practical action. On the basis of video recordings of Polish families in their homes, we describe action affordances of the Polish impersonal modal declarative construction trzeba x (“one needs to x”) in the accomplishment of everyday domestic activities, such as cutting bread, bringing recalcitrant chil…
When time is not space
It is widely assumed that there is a natural, prelinguistic conceptual domain of time whose linguistic organization is universally structured via metaphoric mapping from the lexicon and grammar of space and motion. We challenge this assumption on the basis of our research on the Amondawa (Tupi Kawahib) language and culture of Amazonia. Using both observational data and structured field linguistic tasks, we show that linguistic space-time mapping …
Working Side by Side? Interaction and Interview Data in Research on Household Conflicts
The article discusses the possibilities and challenges of combining conversation analysis and ethnography in the study of everyday family life. We argue that such a combination requires the decision whether to prioritise interaction data or ethnographic (in particular, interview) data in the analysis. We present a conversation analytic case study of how household work is commonly brought up in the interactions of one couple and bring this to bear…
A feeling for the future
Most cultures have metaphors for time that involve movement, for example, ‘time passes’. Although time is objectively measured, it is subjectively understood, as we can perceive time as stationary, whereby we move towards future events, or we can perceive ourselves as stationary, with time moving past us and events moving towards us. This paper reports a series of studies that first examines whether people think about time in a metaphor‐consisten…
Responsibility and Action
We compare the use of two formats for requesting an object in informal everyday interaction: imperatives, common in our Polish data, and second-person polar questions, common in our English data. Imperatives and polar questions are selected in the same interactional “home environments” across the languages, in which they enact two social actions: drawing on shared responsibility and enlisting assistance, respectively. Speakers across the language…
Reformulating place
Contingent control over shared goods. ' Can I have x ' requests in British English informal interaction
Conceptualizations of Time
As time cannot be observed directly, it must be analyzed in terms of mental categories, which manifest themselves on various linguistic levels. In this interdisciplinary volume, novel approaches to time are proposed that consider temporality without time, on the one hand, and the coding of time in language, including sign language, and gestures, on the other. The contributions of the volume demonstrate that time is conceptualized not only in term…
Assistance and Other Forms of Cooperative Engagement
In their analysis of methods that participants use to manage the realization of practical courses of action, Kendrick and Drew (2016/this issue) focus on cases of assistance, where the need to be addressed is Self’s, and Other lends a helping hand. In our commentary, we point to other forms of cooperative engagement that are ubiquitously recruited in interaction. Imperative requests characteristically expect compliance on the grounds of Other’s a…
Grammar and social agency
AlbertoniPrep_1221345aquesto è da portare ancora di là allora 'this is still to be brought there then' BiscottiPome01_1315415 ce ne deve essere anche per il Gigi 'some of it must be left for Gigi' CampFamPrep_140117 anca questo l'è da brusar vara Guido 'this too is to be burned, look Guido' CampFamPrep_984945 bisom 'che d'enviar via anca la lavatrice ragazzi 'it's necessary to start also the dishwasher guys
Grammar and social agency
Sentence and construction types generally have more than one pragmatic function. Impersonal deontic declaratives such as ‘it is necessary to X’ assert the existence of an obligation or necessity without tying it to any particular individual. This family of statements can accomplish a range of functions, including getting another person to act, explaining or justifying the speaker’s own behavior as he or she undertakes to do something, or even jus…
A Noção de Tempo
Neste trabalho, contestamos a Hipótese do Mapeamento Universal com baseem pesquisa realizada com uma língua Tupi-Kawahib, da Amazônia brasileira: a língua amondawa. Salientamos, entretanto, que não contestamos a hipotética universalidade dos fundamentos cognitivos do mapeamento linguístico espaçotempo
Das Heißt (“That Means”) for Formulations and Du Meinst (“You Mean”) for Repair? Interpretations of Prior Speakers’ Turns in German
The recognizability of a stretch of conduct as social action depends on details of turn construction as well as the turn’s context. We examine details of turn construction as they enter into actions offering interpretations of prior talk. Such actions either initiate repair or formulate a conclusion from prior talk. We focus on how interpretation markers (das heißt [“that means”] vs. du meinst [“you mean”]) and interpretation formats (phrasal vs.…
The Comparative Study of Social Action
This article makes an empirical and a methodological contribution to the comparative study of action. The empirical contribution is a comparative study of three distinct types of action regularly accomplished with the turn format du meinst x (“you mean/think x”) in German: candidate understandings, formulations of the other’s mind, and requests for a judgment. These empirical materials are the basis for a methodological exploration of different l…
Rule Talk
The present paper explores how rules are enforced and talked about in everyday life. Drawing on a corpus of board game recordings across European languages, we identify a sequential and praxeological context for rule talk. After a game rule is breached, a participant enforces proper play and then formulates a rule with an impersonal deontic statement (e.g. “It’s not allowed to do this”). Impersonal deontic statements express what may or may not b…
The serial reproduction of an urban myth
Recall was also better for a strict (as opposed to a lenient) audience, in line with another prediction from Bartlett's social theory of remembering. Notwithstanding this, we conclude with some critical remarks on the serial reproduction method as an approach to cultural memory
Invoking Rules in Everyday Family Interactions
In this article we examine moments in which parents or other caregivers overtly invoke rules during episodes in which they take issue with, intervene against, and try to change a child’s ongoing behavior or action(s). Drawing on interactional data from four different languages (English, Finnish, German, Polish) and using Conversation Analytic methods, we first illustrate the variety of ways in which parents may use such overt rule invocations as …
Offering an Interpretation of Prior Talk in Everyday Interaction
Sometimes in interaction, a speaker articulates an overt interpretation of prior talk. Such moments have been studied as involving the repair of a problem with the other’s talk or as formulating an understanding of the matter at hand. Stepping back from the established notions of formulations and repair, we examine the variety of actions speakers do with the practice of offering an interpretation, and the order within this domain. Results show ha…
Formulating other minds in social interaction
We examine moments in social interaction in which a person formulates what another thinks or believes. Such formulations of belief constitute a practice with specifiable contexts and consequences. Belief formulations treat aspects of the other person's prior conduct as accountable on the basis that it provided a new angle on a topic, or otherwise made a surprising contribution within an ongoing course of actions. The practice of belief formulatio…
Sequence, gaze, and modal semantics
Two modal verbs of German are regularly used to express deontic possibility: können (‘can’) and dürfen (‘may’). We examine how speakers select between them, focusing on modal inquiries for permission to carry out some action ( darf/kann ich das machen , ‘may/can I do this’). Our data are video-recordings of everyday face-to-face interaction, which we analyze sequentially, drawing on interactional-linguistic methods. We find that local sequential …
Psychology (21 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (18 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (18 works) · Linguistics (17 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Action (physics (8 works)