MORALITY, MIND AND MEANING:A COGNITIVE LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF MORAL CONCEPTS

Abstract

This work aims to elucidate the structure and form of moral concepts in a multidisciplinary manner, combining both philosophical and empirically-driven praxes. Loosely situated within the field of Cognitive Linguistics, the guiding assumption made is that the analysis of language can be instrumental in uncovering both conceptual structure and form. The work is comprised of three main studies which explore distinct facets of moral concepts: 1. The first study, in aiming to elucidate conceptual structure, argues that moral concepts RIGHT and WRONG are emotionally embodied and reducible to emotion-dispositional concepts. 2. The second study examines the effectiveness of Conceptual Metaphor Theory as a framework through which the structure of the conceptual domain MORALITY and its constituent concepts RIGHT and WRONG can be uncovered. 3. The third study explores the conceptual form of RIGHT and WRONG as binary opposite concepts, endeavouring to understand whether they are mentally represented as mutually exclusive or gradable via analysis of the antonyms right/wrong.

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