Abstract Elicitation materials like language portraits are useful to investigate people’s perceptions about the languages that they know. This study uses portraits to analyse the underlying conceptualisations people exhibit when reflecting on their language repertoires. Conceptualisations as manifestations of cultural cognition are the purview of cognitive sociolinguistics. The present study advances portrait methodology as it analyses data from structured language portraits of 105 South African youth as a linguistic corpus from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. The approach enables the uncovering of (a) prominent underlying conceptualisations of African language(s) and the body, and (b) the differences and similarities of these conceptualisations vis-à-vis previous cognitive (socio)linguistic studies of embodied language experiences. In our analysis, African home languages emerged both as ‘languages of the heart’ linked to cultural identity and as ‘languages of the head’ linked to cognitive strength and control. Moreover, the notion of ‘degrees of proficiency’ or ‘magnitude’ of language knowledge emerged more prominently than in previous studies of embodied language experience.

中文翻译：

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探索南非青年中语言与身体的相互作用：肖像语料库研究

摘要诸如语言肖像之类的启发性材料对于调查人们对他们所知道的语言的看法很有用。这项研究使用肖像分析人们在思考自己的语言库时所表现出的基本概念。概念化是文化认知的体现，是认知社会语言学的研究范围。本研究改进了肖像方法，因为它从定性和定量的角度分析了来自105名南非青年作为语言语料库的结构化语言肖像的数据。这种方法使得能够发现（a）非洲语言和身体的主要基础概念，以及（b）这些概念相对于先前对具体语言体验的认知（社会）语言学研究的区别和相似之处。在我们的分析中，非洲家庭语言既作为与文化认同相关联的“内心语言”出现，也与认知能力和控制能力相关联的“头部语言”出现。此外，语言知识的“熟练程度”或“数量级”的概念比以前的语言体验研究更为突出。