Meaning in Subtitling: Toward a Contrastive Cognitive Semantic Model: 29 (Lodz Studies in Language)

The book’s principal argument is that the concepts of Cognitive Linguistics offer considerable explanatory potential which can be systematically used in accounts of translation, and especially of subtitling as its more specifically constrained audiovisual mode. Authentic English-to-Polish subtitling data are explored to uncover patterns of construal reconfiguration which can be categorised with the use of cognitive semantic constructs. The author also examines other hypotheses: spatio-temporal constraints, for example, do not always directly account for the reductionist alterations of the source text in subtitling. Also, target construals need not display lower granularity levels than original construals and granularity can de facto be boosted via subtitling. And last, but not least, the conventionalisation of language structures used in subtitles can be higher than that of the original expressions.

Mikołaj Deckert works as an assistant professor at the University of Łódź (Poland). His main research interests are translation, language and cognition, media discourse, pragmatics, and corpus linguistics.