Fuzzy Categories: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Brazilian Portuguese and American English
“This thesis was defended almost 25 years ago. I did not want to let it go unnoticed, therefore, I decided to publish it as a jubilee celebration. The research first investigates how graded category membership varies across cultures. Secondly, it examines context effects on category structure causing typicality shifts to occur. The first concern is acomplished by comparing responses given by English-Speaking and Portuguese-English speaking subjects during folk definition interviews and ranking tasks. The second goal is achieved by conducting context experiments in which subjects had to reorganize categories presented in context and perform lexical-choice tasks in different context environments. Results highlight that despite some linguistic correspondences between groups’ performances in ranking the various category members and in describing functions and atributes associated with category members, culturally specific peculiarities also exist and will govern the frequency and the uses of certain semantic relations. As regards the context experiments, results suggest that context is able to influence membership verification decisions and that in making context-bound category membership decisions, individuals’ behaviors appear to be motivated by two broad approaches to category structure: a prototypical approach and a schema-directed approach. It is hoped that the work will provide relevant reading to scholars interested in how categorization behaviors varies across cultures.”
Ficha técnica:
Autora: Ana Cristina Pelosi
Editora: Encontrografia Editora
ISBN: 978-65-88977-63-7
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