Denotational boundary disputes in political discourse

The cognitive semantic analysis of denotational incongruencies by means of comparative investigations of structural field patterns (cf. Jäkel 2001Jäkel, Olaf. 2001. “Denotational Incongruencies: A Very Short Introduction and Typology.” In Echoes in a Mirror: The English Institute after 125 Years (HSAA, vol. 9), ed. by Wolf Kindermann, and Gisela Hermann-Brennecke, 156–169. Münster: LIT., 2003Jäkel, Olaf. 2003. “‘Morning, Noon and Night’: Denotational Incongruencies between English and German.” In Text Transfer: Metonymy and Metaphor, Translation and Expert-Lay Communication, ed. by Cornelia Zelinsky-Wibbelt, 159–178. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter., 2010Jäkel, Olaf. 2010. “Questions of Life and Death: Denotational Boundary Disputes.” In Cognitive Foundations of Linguistic Usage Patterns, ed. by Hans-Jörg Schmid, and Susanne Handl, 33–61. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. ) can also be put to use in the investigation of certain kinds of contested concepts (Lakoff 1993Lakoff, George. 1993. “Cognitive Cultural Theory.” Plenary Presentation at the 3rd International Cognitive Linguistics Conference , July 18–23, 1993, Leuven.), namely cases in which the field patterns themselves are under dispute. The case to be analysed is that of marriage, a cultural concept that has recently come under dispute in the socio-political discourse of Western countries. Competing cultural models (cf. Lakoff 1987Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. ) to be compared in this context include the traditional/conservative model as well as different versions of a more tolerant model and a liberal/progressive model. The analysis will focus on authentic language data from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Germany, supplemented by a diachronic comparison of dictionary definitions as well as the results of a survey done with young German informants.