Linguistics Department Colloquium:

Iwona Kraska-Szlenk (University of Warsaw)

Have you ever wondered why English speakers refer to parts of a clock as a ‘face’ and ‘hands’? Why does a committee have a ‘head’? How do artichokes have ‘hearts’ and mountains have ‘feet’? Why do we use the word ‘back’ to refer to the past? The embodiment theory seeks to answer these questions and explain similar patterns across the world’s languages. Dr. Kraska-Szlenk has written extensively on the embodiment theory and will be talking about her current work along with examples from Polish and Swahili.