Multilevel-Grounded Semantics: Creative Negotiation of Meaning in Music, Poetry, and Visual Cognition

DEAS Research Seminar | Fridays at 12 | room G31

October 18, 2024

Prof. Mihailo Antović (University of Niš, Serbia)

Multilevel-Grounded Semantics: Creative Negotiation of Meaning in Music, Poetry, and Visual Cognition

Abstract: Multilevel-grounded semantics (Antović, 2016; 2021; 2022) is the author's theoretical contribution to the explanation of the role of context in negotiating meaning, across symbolical forms and cognitive modalities. Interlinking the notions of "conceptual blending" from cognitive linguistics and "ground" from the philosophy of language, Antović proposes a hierarchical, recursive system which generates semiosis along a six-tier sequence of constraints (perceptual, cross-modal, affective, conceptual, culturally rich, and personal). These lead the conceptualizer from simpler, more perceptual, formal and "biological" toward more complex, conceptual, representational and "social" aspects of interpretation. In the talk, examples will be used from classical music, well-known pieces of fine arts and poetry to suggest how the proposed system works in practice, simultaneously motivating and constraining possibilities for interpretation.

Bio: Mihailo Antović is professor in the English Department and head of the Center for Cognitive Sciences at the University of Niš, Serbia. He was a Fulbright scholar at Case Western Reserve University, junior research scholar at the University of Freiburg, and experienced Humboldt visiting researcher at Humboldt University, Berlin. He has published extensively in the domains of cognitive linguistics and music cognition, with occasional outputs in adjacent fields, such as cognitive poetics and the cognitive science of religion.