Love and the Danish Worldview

A Cognitive Ethnolinguistic Study of the Concept of Kærlighed 'Love' in Danish

Aleksander Kacprzak

• Publisher: V&R Unipress
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9783847018773
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism History & Theory
• Index: Literature

Aleksander Kacprzak approaches the concept of love through the lens of the Danish language, providing insight into its language and culture relative side. In addition to providing a cognitively viable account of the concept of kærlighed 'love', the author allows the reader to explore broader areas of the Danish worldview, which the concept is inherently connected to, such as marriage, sex, gender parity, parenthood, God, friendship and homeland. Altogether, the dynamic and diverse picture of the concept drawn in the analytic parts of the book challenges the common understanding of linguistic categorization, and compels one to perceive worldviews as an organic whole, in which concepts are inextricably tied to one another and cannot be considered in isolation to the culture in which they are immersed.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Body
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Words, cognition and reality
• 2.1. Realism vs. antirealism
• 2.2. Internal realism and the God’s Eye Point of View
• 2.3. Experiential realism
• 2.4. Human categorization of the world and linguistic categorization
• 2.5. (Linguistic) worldview and ethnolinguistics
• 2.6. The possibility of going beyond human concepts
• 3. The many faces of love. Is love universal or culture-relative?
• 3.1. The history of love in European culture
• 3.1.1. The roots of the concept
• 3.1.2. The further development of the concept
• 3.2. love in linguistics
• 3.2.1. love in the light of Wierzbicka’s componential analysis
• 3.2.2. Zoltan Kövecses’s study of love metaphors
• 3.2.3. Boguslaw Bierwiaczonek’s analysis of English love
• 3.2.4. James Underhill’s cross-linguistic perspective
• 3.3. love in the light of contemporary science
• 3.4. Summary
• 4. Danish kærlighed. How much can we tell about the concept as a whole?
• 4.1. Material and method
• 4.2. The lexical exponents of the concept
• 4.2.1. The verb at elske
• 4.2.2. The noun kærlighed
• 4.2.3. The subcategories of kærlighed
• 4.3. kærlighed in the light of corpus analysis
• 4.3.1. What happens with the experiencer when he or she feels kærlighed?
• 4.3.2. How do the symptoms occur with respect to the different parts of the body?
• 4.3.3. What the experiencer feels towards the ok and what behaviors it triggers
• 4.3.4. What happens when kærlighed is mutual?
• 4.3.5. Valuing of kærlighed – kærlighed as a value
• 4.3.6. kærlighed and time
• 4.4. Summary
• 5. kærlighed and its different flavours. The subcategories of Danish kærlighed
• 5.1. Method
• 5.2. Romantic kærlighed (rk)
• 5.2.1. The initial stage
• 5.2.2. The later stages of romantic kærlighed
• 5.2.3. Summary
• 5.3. kærlighed within family relations
• 5.3.1.1. Motherly kærlighed
• 5.3.1.2. Fatherly kærlighed
• 5.3.2. Child’s kærlighed of parent
• 5.3.3. Kærlighed between siblings
• 5.3.4. Summary
• 5.4. The Christian subcategories of kærlighed
• 5.4.1. God’s kærlighed of man
• 5.4.2. Man’s kærlighed of God
• 5.4.3. kærlighed of neighbor
• 5.4.4. The Christian influence on Danish kærlighed and the alternatives to the Christian worldview
• 5.4.5. Summary
• 5.5. The least prototypical subcategories of kærlighed
• 5.5.1. Self-kærlighed
• 5.5.2. Kærlighed of homeland
• 5.5.3. Kærlighed between friends (friendship)
• 5.6. Summary
• 6. Tendencies and idiosyncrasy. Danish kærlighed in percentages
• 6.1. Method
• 6.2. The concept of kærlighed in the light of the main survey
• 6.3. Sociolinguistic aspects of kærlighed
• 6.4. Summary
• 7. Capturing complexity. The structure of the concept of kærlighed
• 7.1. The basic structure of the concept
• 7.2. The subcategories of kærlighed
• 7.3. The individual factor
• 7.4. The role of metaphor and metonymy in the conceptualization of Danish kærlighed
• 7.5. The Christian roots of the concept
• 7.6. The definition of Danish kærlighed
• 8. Final conclusions: a cognitive ethnolinguist’s perspective
• 8.1. What the study tells us about love in the Danish context
• 8.2. What the study tells us about language in general
• 9. References