Conceptualization, metaphor scenarios and interculturality in the sociocognitive and critical analysis of political and social phenomena

Abstract

Tânia Gastão Saliés and Augusto Soares da Silva interview Dr. Andreas Musolff.

Professor Andreas Musolff is a distinguished Research Professor of Intercultural Communication at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is considered one of the first scholars to research language and communication within a cognitive linguistics, sociocultural/ discursive framework. In this effort, Musolff has promoted the synergy between Critical Discourse Analysis and Conceptual Metaphor Theory, advocating for the cultural roots of metaphors and for social cognition. He has previously taught at the Universities of Dűsseldorf and London and was a Visiting Fellow at the Truman Institute, Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the Queen Mary University of London. Musolff is a man of far-ranging intellectual interests who has demonstrated a remarkable talent for applying the concepts of Cognitive Linguistics to other fields of knowledge, including: Political Science, Intercultural Communication, Philosophy, Historical Semantics, Psycholinguistics, Sociolinguistics, Linguistics Anthropology, Pragmatics and Applied Linguistics. His most recent research explores competition metaphors in the context of COVID-19 (2022), metaphor use in political discourse cross-culturally (2021), language and racism (2019), and proverbs (2020) in everyday communication. Professor Musolff has been as kind as to accept our invitation for this interview. His words will surely inspire our critical reflection and research agenda.