Corpus-driven Cognitive Linguistics. The Conceptualisation of Body Shape

The issues of body shape and living up to an ideal is a topic not only commonly discussed in the media but also a subject occupying many peoples’ minds on an everyday basis. Eating disorders are common and obesity is an increasing topic for discussion. The media shows images of tall and increasingly slim models while statistics indicate that the average person is gaining weight over time. Dictionaries state that being skinny is a negative term describing a person that is too thin and who needs to eat more (Cambridge Dictionary 2011). At the same time, people around the world dream about becoming slimmer. With a Cognitive Linguistic approach and a modern corpus driven method this essay will operationalise the concept of body shape. It will aim to go beyond both the media and statistics in order to illustrate the actual opinions and thoughts of individual people. In the process of doing this, different dialects and their cultures will be discussed and dictionary meanings will be questioned and set in relation to speakers’ actual conceptualisation of body related linguistic terms