The Meeting

Tacit Knowledge: a Cognitive Structure for Cultural Understanding is the overall theme of a collaborative research proposal submitted to the EuroUnderstanding Project of the EUROCORES programme.

The first work meeting of this project network will take place on May 24, at the Research Center for Communication and Culture. The following research partners will participate in this event: Jordan Zlatev (Lund University, Sweden), Kristian Tylén (Aarhus University, Denmark), Maria Giulia Dondero (Liège University, Belgium), Per Aage Brandt (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA), and Peter Hanenberg and Ana Margarida Abrantes (CECC, Lisbon, Portugal).

The meeting will be an opportunity to discuss the concept of tacit knowledge, to lay out the foundation for a common position paper, and to present an outline of each individual project as well as the workflow for the network.

Venue: Catholic University of Portugal, Lisbon, May 24th

CECC - Research Center for Communication and Culture

Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas

Palma de Cima

1649-023 Lisboa, Portugal

http://www.cecc.com.pt/

The Programme

AGENDA

Sala da Sociedade Científica

9.30 – 10.00: Welcome; address by the director of the Faculty for Human Sciences. Brief round of presentations: who’s who in the network; valences

10.00-10.30: Background to the EUROCORES CRP: from cognitive culture studies to tacit knowledge as a research object at the Research Center for Communication and Culture (P. Hanenberg)

10.30 – 11.00: Tacit knowledge: scope and potential of the concept (A. M. Abrantes)

11.00 – 11.30: Coffee break

11.30 – 12.00: Presentation of subproject, Cleveland. Laughter in Europe (P. Aa. Brandt)

12.30 – 13.00: Presentation of subproject, Liège. The tacit dimension of visual perception in contemporary religious iconography (M. G. Dondero)

13.00 – 14.30: Lunch break

14.30 – 15.00: Presentation of subproject, Krems. The role of artefacts in externalising and communicating tacit knowledge across cultures. An ethnographic analysis of user-centred IT development teams (A. M. Abrantes, on behalf of H. Risku and E. Mayr)

15.30 – 16.00: Presentation of subproject, Aarhus. Towards a cultural interobjectivity (K. Tylén)

16.00 – 16.30: Presentation of subproject, Lund. Our tacit knowledge of emotions: Interaction between subjective experience and linguistic mediation (J. Zlatev)

16.30 – 17.00: Coffee break

17.00 – 17.30: Presentation of subproject, Lisbon. Cognitive schemas, cultural variation and the tacit dimension of intercultural exchange (P. Hanenberg, A. M. Abrantes)

17.30 – 18.00: Overview. Laying the basis for a common position paper. Workflow for the research network; plan for a publication/project (all)

18.00: Closing

The Collaborative Research Project

Cultural contact and intercultural communication involve the sharing of knowledge between individuals and groups. This knowledge is partly explicit and can be communicated in the form of contents and information. Part of this knowledge is tacit and cannot be explicitly formulated. However, it influences and constrains the interaction in fundamental ways, as it is manifested in skills, understanding and beliefs acquired individually in the framework of a specific culture. Tacit knowledge is constrained and enabled by cognitive processes, such as attention, memory and intersubjectivity, and it is manifested both in individual action and in social interaction. Though tacit knowledge cannot be verbalized, it can be shared, it is imparted through education and modulated by culture.

For the study of cultural contacts, it is thus important to understand tacit knowledge and to capture its nature and its consequences: here, tacit knowledge is manifested in cultural representations – both of the own culture and of others – which inform (inter)action. Understanding tacit knowledge, what constrains and shapes it, can reveal how it influences the process of cultural understanding and misunderstanding.

This CRP aims at studying tacit knowledge in the intersection of cognitive science and culture studies: on the one hand, it aims at describing the cognitive conditions – both individual and social – that enable the acquisition and sharing of tacit knowledge. On the other hand, the project aims at studying how tacit knowledge shapes intercultural exchange. These two generic objectives are further specified in particular goals, covered by the related individual projects proposed.

The Individual Projects

Per Aage Brandt, Case Western Reserve University

Laughter in Europe

The role of humor in mutual interpretation and understanding. A cognitive-semiotic analysis of intercultural representations and identitary passions expressed through inter-ethnic, inter-gender, and inter-nation stereotypes in European anecdotes, jokes, and cartoons as tokens of The Laughable Other.

Jean-Marie Klinkenberg, Maria Giulia Dondero, University of Liège

The tacit dimension of visual perception in contemporary religious iconography

This project aims at demonstrating the ability of visual language to incorporate the tacit and more or less explicit vision of the transcendental dimension in contemporary life. Studying the multiple visualisations of contemporary iconography of the transcendence (and particularly fine art photography and documentary one) will allow us to understand how tacit knowledge influences the process of producing images and interpreting (one’s own and other) cultures.

Søren Overgaard, University of Copenhagen

The tacit dimensions of mindreading: A phenomenological approach

Discussions on social cognition typically revolve around two families of views: “theory-theorists” claim that we use tacit knowledge and inferences to attribute mental states to others, whereas “simulation theorists” stress the role of simulation routines. Phenomenologists generally contest both these views, maintaining that the mental states of others can be more immediately accessible, given an appropriate context (including a common cultural background). So far, however, the structure of this enabling context – including, in particular, its tacit intentional “horizons” – has not been analyzed phenomenologically. This is what the project undertakes to do.

Hanna Risku, Eva Mayr, University of Krems

The role of artefacts in externalising and communicating tacit knowledge across cultures. An ethnographic analysis of user-centred IT development teams

Tacit knowledge is one of the hidden “powers” of situated action and cognition, but it is externalised in the design of artefacts. Artefacts are a central part of the cultural curriculum; the ability to form, use and interpret them in a culture-specific way is acquired during the socialisation within a culture.

The aim of this project is to study how tacit knowledge influences the design of artefacts. We focus on the question of how artefacts that are shared across cultures can mediate between two cultures as boundary objects: Can they reduce misunderstandings? Do they facilitate tacit knowledge exchange and the generation of a common ground across cultures (and if so, how)?

Kristian Tylén, Aarhus University

Toward a cultural interobjectivity

How is tacit cultural cognition manifested in the way we employ material structures, objects and technologies to enable, constrain and sustain social interactions and relations? How do objects become invested with cultural meanings by a history of interactions and manipulations? And how do they come to shape tacit cognitive processes in cultural practices on various time scales?

Jordan Zlatev, Lund University

Our tacit knowledge of emotions: Interaction between subjective experience and linguistic mediation

As well known, emotions affect our cognition and behavior strongly, and are at the same time difficult to fully express in language. Non-verbal means in the form of facial expressions and gestures may be to some extent universal (as claimed by Ekman and colleagues), but beyond a core of “basic emotions” there is extensive cross-cultural variation. Hence, emotional knowledge appears to be a prime case of tacit knowledge – with is potentials for understanding, and risks for misunderstanding. The project will focus on the linguistic expressions of emotions, both non-metaphorical (e.g. jealousy, hate, sad) and metaphorical (e.g. crush, soar, depress) across languages and cultures. Previous such comparisons have revealed both differences and commonalities, but no comprehensive study has so far attempted to map these out in detail. As a step in this direction, the project will provide an extensive analysis of emotion expressions of 4 Indo-European and 4 non-Indo-European languages and in this way help understand the complex interaction between (possibly pan-human) emotional experiences, and their cultural and linguistic representations.

Peter Hanenberg, Ana Margarida Abrantes, CECC, Lisbon

Cognitive schemas, cultural variation and the tacit dimension of intercultural exchange

The study of cultural phenomena encompasses both a comparative dimension with a focus on the variable manifestations across different cultural communities, and a descriptive dimension, which arises from the former and seeks to recognize and describe what remains constant and stable above cultural variation. This project aims at studying how these two dimensions are combined, and moreover at describing what the role of tacit knowledge contributes to this process. The point of departure will be an experimental design, intended for a comparative intercultural survey: subjects from different cultural backgrounds will be prompted with a skeletal representation of force dynamic schemas. They will be elicited to verbalize the events implied by the schemas. The preliminary hypothesis is that whereas the schemas will remain stable, as they are cognitively shared, the actualization of the schemas in verbalization will reveal variable cultural imprint. A follow up survey (contrastive) will help determine in how far this variation derives from the tacit dimension of the subjects’ knowledge: a latent ineffable dimension of knowledge, which is constrained by an individual’s development in a given cultural environment.

The Partners

Per Aage BRANDT

Professor of Cognitive Science

Department of Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Ohio, USA

Per Aage Brandt worked as an Associate Professor at the Universities of Copenhagen and Roskilde between 1971 and 1975 and then as a Full Professor at the University of Aarhus, where he directed the Center for Semiotics. In 2005 he joined the Department of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University as Professor of Cognitive Science and Director of the Center for Cognition and Culture.

He has collaborated as a guest lecturer with the Universities of Bologna, Harvard, Cambridge, Louvain, Berkeley and Urbino. He is the founding editor of the journal Cognitive Semiotics.

In 2002, he was awarded the Grand Prix de Philosophie by l'Académie Française and was made Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.

As a scholar trained in Romance Philology (French and Spanish), he has worked his way through structural linguistics and structural semantics, and elaborated a series of models - in particular related to the technical and formal representations of textual phenomena such as enunciation, diegesis, and modal schematisms - for describing patterns of meaning in the framework of a discourse-oriented (Greimas) and later a formalized phenomenological (Thom, Petitot) and cognitively (Talmy) oriented semiotics.

Per Aage Brandt is Professor of Cognitive Science and Director of the Center for Cognition and Culture at Case Western Reserve University. He is editor-in-chief of the international peer reviewed journal Cognitive Semiotics.

Publications (selected):

Brandt, P. Aa. (forthcoming). What is culture? A grounding question for cognitive semiotics. In: Abrantes, A.M. & Hanenberg, P., eds. Cognition and Culture. An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. Bern: Peter Lang.

Brandt, P. Aa. (2008). Music and how we became human. In: Malloch, S. & Trevarthen, C., eds. Communicative Musicality. Exploring the basis of human companionship. Oxford University Press, 31-44.

Brandt, P. Aa. (2007). On consciousness and semiosis. Cognitive Semiotics, 1, 46-64.

Brandt, P. Aa. (2006). Form and meaning in art. In: Turner, M., ed. The Artful Mind. Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity. Oxford University Press, 171-188.

Brandt, P. Aa. (2004). Spaces, Domains, and Meaning. Essays in Cognitive Semiotics. Bern: Peter Lang.

Jean-Marie KLINKENBERG

Professor of Semiology and Rhetoric

Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, Dept. of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Liège, Belgium

Jean-Marie Klinkenberg received his Masters (1967) and his Doctorate (1971) in Romance Philology. He teaches language studies at the University of Liège, focusing on rhetoric and semiology. He also teaches French-language literature (particularly Belgian and Québecois). His professional activities focus on two areas: linguistics/semiotics and French-speaking cultures.

In the first area, he made his mark in the late 1960s by revitalizing the field of rhetoric as a member of the interdisciplinary team known as the μ Group. More recently, he has helped to steer semiotics in a social, cognitivist direction. His writings on semiotics and rhetoric have been translated into 15 languages.

In the second field, he has modernized the study of the arts in Belgium by casting them in a social and institutional light, an approach that can be readily transferred to the other French-speaking cultures he has studied (such as Quebec's) and by establishing inter-university research programs. He founded and chairs Belgium's Centre d'Études des Lettres Francophones.

Jean-Marie Klinkenberg is president of the International Association for Visual Semiotics.

Publications (selected):

Klinkenberg, J.-M. & Edeline, F. (2008). René Magritte. Il paradosso in pittura. In: Migliore, Tiziana (ed.) Argomentare il visibile. Esercizi di retorica dell’immagine. Bologna: Società Editrice Esculapio, Progetto Leonardo, 283-286.

Klinkenberg, J.-M., Badir, S., Brunetière, V. & Houdebine, A.-M., eds. (2008). Les aventures de l’Interprétation. Paris: Laboratoire DynaLang.

Klinkenberg, J.-M., Edeline, F. (2008). L’aventure des modèles interprétatifs, ou la gestion des résidus. In: Klinkenberg, J.-M., Badir, S., Brunetière, V. & Houdebine, A.-M., eds., Les aventures de l’Interprétation. Paris: Laboratoire DynaLang, 22-35.

Klinkenberg, J.-M. & Denis, B. (2005). La littérature belge. Précis d'histoire sociale. Bruxelles, Labor.

Klinkenberg, J.-M. & Gauvin, L. (1991). Écrivain cherche lecteur. L’écrivain francophone et ses publics. Montréal/Paris, V.L.B./Créaphis.

Klinkenberg, J.-M. (2000) [1996, Bruxelles, De Boeck]. Précis de sémiotique générale. Paris, Le Seuil.

Klinkenberg, J. M. & Groupe μ (1992). Traité du signe visuel. Pour une rhétorique de l'image. Paris, Le Seuil.

Søren OVERGAARD

Post doc

Danish National Research Foundation: Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen

Søren Overgaard – PhD in Philosophy, University of Aarhus (2002) – is a post doctoral researcher at the Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen. Previous appointments include: RCUK Academic Fellow and Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hull (UK) (2006-2010) and post doctoral researcher at the Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen (2003-2006). Between 2003 and 2005 his research was funded by a grant from the Carlsberg Foundation. Since 2007, he is member of the Editorial Committee of the international, peer-reviewed journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (Springer).

Publications (selected):

Overgaard, S. (2010). On the Looks of Things. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91 (forthcoming).

Overgaard, S. (2010). Ordinary Experience and the Epoché. Continental Philosophy Review 43 (forthcoming).

Overgaard, S. (2010). The Problem of Other Minds. In: Gallagher, S. & Schmicking, D., eds. Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media B.V., 254-268.

Overgaard, S. & Zahavi, D. (2009). Phenomenological Sociology: The Subjectivity of Everyday Life. In: Jacobsen, M.H., ed. Encountering the Everyday: An Introduction to the Sociologies of the Unnoticed. Basingstoke: Macmillan. 93-115.

Overgaard, S. & Zahavi, D. (2009). Understanding (other) Minds: Wittgenstein’s Phenomenological Contribution. In: Zamuner, E. & Levy, D., eds., Wittgenstein’s Enduring Arguments. London: Routledge, 60-86.

Overgaard, S. (2008). How to Analyze Immediate Experience: Hintikka, Husserl, and the Idea of Phenomenology. Metaphilosophy 3, 282-304.

Overgaard, S. (2007). Wittgenstein and Other Minds: Rethinking Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity with Wittgenstein, Levinas, and Husserl. New York: Routledge.

Overgaard, S. (2005). Rethinking Other Minds. Inquiry 48, 249-274.

Overgaard, S. (2004). Exposing the Conjuring Trick. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 3, 263-286.

Overgaard, S. (2004). Husserl and Heidegger on Being in the World. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Hanna RISKU

Professor for Applied Cognitive Science and Technical Communication

Department for Knowledge and Communication Management

Danube University Krems, Austria

Hanna Risku is full professor for Applied Cognitive Science and Technical Communication, and Head of the Department for Knowledge and Communication Management at the Danube University Krems, Austria. Previous positions: Lecturer at the University of Tampere/Finland, University of Vienna, University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt, University of Skövde/Sweden, University of Granada/Spain and Danube University Krems. Further studies of Open and Distance Education at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. President of the European Society for Technical Communication (TCeurope), Head of International Relations at tekom e.V., Subst. General Secretary of the Austrian Society for Cognitive Science (ASoCS), Member of the scientific committee of the Institut für Wissensorganisation (IWO). Jury member and reviewer at different national and international journals, conferences, federal awards, funds and universities. Research areas: Cognitive Scientific foundations of communication, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Usability, Knowledge Management and Transcultural Communication.

Publications (selected):

Risku, H. (2002). Situatedness in translation studies. Cognitive systems research, 3, 523-533.

Risku, H. (22009). Translationsmanagement. Interkulturelle Fachkommunikation im Informationszeitalter [Translation management. Intercultural professional communication in the information age]. 2nd revised edition. Tübingen: Narr.

Risku, H. (in press). A cognitive scientific view on technical communication and translation: Do embodiment and situatedness really make a difference? TARGET, 22(1).

Risku, H., Mayr, E., & Smuc, M. (2009). Situated interaction and cognition in the wild, wild, world: Unleashing the power of users as innovators. Journal of Mobile Multimedia, 5, 287-300.

Risku, H. & Pircher, R. (2008). Visual aspects of intercultural technical communication: A cognitive scientific and semiotic point of view. Meta: Translators' Journal, 53, 154-166.

Kristian TYLÉN

Post.doc, PhD, Center for Semiotics & Center for Funtionally Integrative Neuroscience, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Kristian Tylén is holding a post doc position at the Center for Semiotics and Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience at the University of Aarhus as part of “the Cognitive and Phenomenological Aesthetics Project”, funded by the Velux Research Foundation. He is originally trained in Russian linguistics and literary studies from the Slavonic Department, University of Aarhus. In 2003, he completed his Master in Cognitive Semiotics at the Center for Semiotics, University of Aarhus and his thesis on cognitive approaches to narratology was awarded the University’s gold medal. In 2009 he obtained a PhD degree in Linguistics from the Institute of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark after which he worked as a research assistant at the Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, University of Aarhus, partly affiliated with the EUROCORES program BASIC (Brain, Agency, Subjectivity, Intentionality, Consciousness). Kristian Tylén is currently member of the board of the Scandinavian Association for Language and Cognition, SALC (http://www.salc-sssk.org/), member of the international network Distributed Language Group (http://www.psy.herts.ac.uk/dlg/), and member of the research unit the Interacting Minds Group (http://www.interacting-minds.net). His research interests include cognitive and experimental semiotics, cognitive linguistics, cognitive aesthetics, neurolinguistics, gesture studies, and intersubjectivity.

Publications (selected):

Tylén, K., Weed, E., Wallentin, M., Roepstorff, A., Frith, C.D. (2010). Language as a tool for interacting minds. Mind & Language, 25 (1),

Tylén, K., Wallentin, M. & Roepstorff, A. (2009). Say it with flowers! An fMRI study of object mediated communication. Brain and Language 108 (3), 150-166.

Tylén, K. (2009). Roses, Icebergs, Hoovers and all that language, PhD dissertation, SDU.

Tylén, K., Allen, M. (2009). Interactive Sense-Making in the Brain. Enacting Intersubjectivity, 224-241.

Tylén, K., Philipsen, J.S., Weed, E. (2009). Taking the Language Stance in a Material World. Pragmatics & Cognition, 17 (3), 573-595.

Tylén, K. (2007). When Agents Get Expressive: towards a theory of semiotic agency, Cognitive Semiotics, 0: 84-101.

Jordan ZLATEV

Associate Professor, Linguistics

Center for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Sweden

Jordan Zlatev is Associate Professor at the Centre for Languages and Literature of Lund University. He is one of the two coordinators of the Centre for Cognitive Semiotics (CCS), a multidisciplinary research program, financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ), which studies the biological and historical conditions that led to the unique cognitive evolution of human beings in comparison to other species. His research concerns, in most broad terms, the relationship between language and consciousness, in its various forms, including emotional experience. Previous positions include lecturer appointments at Thammasat University (Bangkok), Umeå University (Sweden) and Copenhagen Business School (Denmark).

Publications (selected):

Zlatev, J., Blomberg, J. and Magnusson, U. (in press). Metaphor and subjective experience: A study of motion-emotion metaphors in English, Swedish, Bulgarian and Thai. In A. Foolen, U. Luedke, J. Zlatev and T. Racine (Eds.) Moving Ourselves, Moving Others, Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Zlatev, J. & Andrén, M. (2009). Stages and transitions in children’s semiotic development. In Zlatev, J., Andrén, M., Lundmark, C. Johansson, M., (Eds.) Studies in Language and Cognition. London: Cambridge Scholars.

Zlatev, J. (2009). The Semiotic Hierarchy: Life, Consciousness, Signs and Language, Cognitive Semiotics, #4, 169-200.

Zlatev, J. (2008). From proto-mimesis to language: Evidence from primatology and social neuroscience. Journal of Physiology, 102 (1-3), 137-151.

Zlatev, J. (2008). The dependence of language on consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15(6), 34-62.

Zlatev, J. (2008). Stages in the development of perceptual intersubjectivity. In: Morganti, F. Carassa, A. & Riva G., eds. (2008). Enacting Intersubjectivity: A cognitive and Social Perspective of the Study of Interaction. Amsterdam: IOS Press.

Zlatev, J., Racine, T., Sinha, C. & Itkonen, E., eds. (2008). The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Zlatev, J. (2007) Language, embodiment and mimesis. In Body, Language and Mind. Vol 1. Embodiment, Ziemke, T., Zlatev, J. and R. Frank (eds.), 297-337. Berlin: Mouton.

CECC Members

Peter HANENBERG

Associate Professor

Faculty of Human Sciences, Catholic University of Portugal

Research Line Coordinator, Research Center for Communication and Culture, CECC

Master of Arts (1988) and Dr. phil. (1993) in german Studies and Philosophy at the University of Bamberg (Germany), Doutor em Letras by Coimbra University (1997), scholarship by the German National Academic Foundation (1983-1988), research and teaching assistant at the Institute of Modern German Literature in Bamberg 1988-1995, from 1995 to 2001 Profesor Auxiliar at the Catholic University of Portugal in Viseu, since 2001 Professor Associado at the same University in Viseu (until 2006) and in Lisbon (since 2006), from 1997 to 2006 Director of the research group on Representations of Europe in German Literature at the University Center for German Studies (CIEG) in Coimbra (financed by FCT and evaluated as excellent), guest lecturer at the Universities of Bamberg (Germany), Galway (Ireland) and Minho (Portugal), since 2006 President of the Portuguese Association for German Studies, since 2007 coordinator of the research group on Translating Europe across the Ages at the Communication and Culture Research Centre at the Catholic University in Lisbon, translator of Portuguese Literature into German.

Publications (selected):

Hanenberg, P. (2008). "Europa eine Seele geben". Übersetzung als kulturelles Fundament Europas. In: Kritische Ausgabe. Zeitschrift für Germanistik & Literatur12 (2008/09), S. 16- 19.

Hanenberg, P. & A. Abrantes, Org. (2005). Cognição, Linguagem e Literatura. Contributos para uma Poética Cognitiva. Coimbra: Minerva/Cieg.

Hanenberg, P. (2004). Europa. Gestalten. Studien und Essays. Frankfurt/M. etc.: Peter Lang.

Hanenberg, P. (1993). Peter Weiss. Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Schreiben. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag.

Hanenberg, P. (1989). Geschichte im Werk Wolfgang Hildesheimers. Frankfurt/M. etc.: Lang.

Hanenberg, P. (1997). Aquilino Ribeiro: Deutschland 1920. Eine Reise von Portugal nach Berlin und Mecklenburg. Translated and anotated by PH, Bremen: Atlantik.

Hanenberg, P., U. Knefelkamp, and M. dos Santos Lopes. (1995). Portugal und Deutschland auf dem Weg nach Europa. Portugal e a Alemanha a caminho para a Europa. Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus.

Together with Marília dos Santos Lopes editor of the series passagem, Studies in Cultural Sciences (Frankfurt/M.: Lang 2006ff.).

Ana Margarida ABRANTES

Postdoc

Research Center for Communication and Culture, CECC

Faculty of Human Sciences, Catholic University of Portugal

Post-doc researcher at the Research Center for Communication and Culture, Catholic University of Portugal.

Ana Margarida Abrantes studied German and English at the Universities of Aveiro, Essen and Innsbruck. She completed her MA in cognitive linguistics and received her PhD in German language and literature from the Catholic University of Portugal in 2008, with a study in cognitive poetics. Previous appointments include an assistant position in the Department of German Studies, Catholic University of Portugal. She received a grant from the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian to develop her research at the Center for Semiotics of the University of Aarhus, from February until November 2006. As a post-doc scholar supported by the Portuguese research foundation FCT, she was a visiting researcher at the Department of Cognitive Science of Case Western Reserve University (USA) between 2007 and 2009. She is currently senior researcher at the Center for Communication and Culture (CECC) at the Catholic University of Portugal in Lisbon. She is a member of the editorial board of the international peer reviewed journal Cognitive Semiotics.

Her research interests include cognitive literary studies, cognitive semiotics, cognitive culture studies and German language and literature.

Publications (selected):

Abrantes, A.M. (in press). Temporal minds, timeless tales. Experiencing time in theater, Journal of the Semiotics Society of America.

Abrantes, A.M. (in press). Cognition and Culture. A Semiotic Perspective, Journal of the Semiotics Society of America.

Abrantes, A.M. (2010). Meaning and Mind. A Cognitive Approach to Peter Weiss’ Prose Work. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang.

Abrantes, A.M. (2009) Poetry in the subway: Deixis and cognition in a journey through Lisbon, POST. Online Journal of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies. Mater Dei Institute, University of Dublin.

Abrantes, A.M. (2008) Gestalt, perception and literature. Journal of Literary Theory. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 181-196.