The Grammar of Well-Being
How to talk about illness and health in an Amazonian society
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3821400 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alexandra Y Aikhenvald (0000-0003-1866-7869, James Cook University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 01-33 |
| Publication date | 2021-02-14 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cadernos de Linguística e Teoria da Literatura (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais) (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2675-4916 • E-ISSN: 2675-4916 |
| Publisher | Associacao Brasileira de Linguistica (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.25189/2675-4916.2021.v2.n1.id322 |
| OpenAlex | W3130524406 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 27 |
Ways of talking about diseases, ailments, convalescence, and well-being vary from language to language. In some, an ailment 'hits' or 'gets' the person; in others, the sufferer 'catches' an ailment, comes to be a 'container' for it, or is presented as a 'fighter' or a 'battleground'. In languages with obligatory expression of information source, the onslaught of disease is treated as 'unseen', just like any kind of internal feeling or shamanic activity. Different stages of disease - covering its onset, progression, wearing off, recovery, and cure - form 'the trajectory of well-being'. Our main focus is on grammatical means employed in talking about various phases of disease and well-being, and how these correlate with perception and conceptualization of disease and its progression and demise. I offer a brief taxonomy of grammatical schemas and means employed across the languages of the world. I then turn to a study of terminologies and grammatical schemas employed in the trajectory of well-being in Tariana, an Arawak language from north-west Amazonia (Brazil), with special focus on cultural and cognitive motivations. The emergence and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected ways of speaking about this disease among the Tariana, especially with regard to the origins and the onset of this affliction
Conceptualization · Feeling · Grammar · Linguistics · Categorization, perception, and language · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |