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Bodily Sensation in Contemporary Extreme Horror Film provides a theory of horror film spectatorship rooted in the physiology of the viewer. In a novel contribution to the field of film studies research, it seeks to integrate contemporary scientific theories of mind with psychological paradigms of film interpretation. Proceeding from a connectionist model of brain function that proposes psychological processes are underpinned by neurology, this thesis contends that whilst conscious engagement with film often appears to be driven by psychosocial conditions – including cultural influence, gender dynamics and social situation – it is physiology and bodily sensation that provide the infrastructure upon which this superstructure rests. Drawing upon the philosophical works of George Lakoff, Mark Johnson and Alain Berthoz, the argument concentrates upon explicating the specific bodily sensations and experiences that contribute to the creation of implicit structures of understanding, or embodied schemata, that we apply to the world round us. Integrating philosophy with contemporary neurological research in the spheres of cognition and neurocinematics, a number of correspondences are drawn between physiological states and the concomitant psychological states often perceived to arise simultaneously alongside them. The thesis offers detailed analysis of a selection of extreme horror films that, it is contended, conscientiously incorporate the body of the viewer in the process of spectatorship through manipulation of visual, auditory, vestibular, gustatory and nociceptive sensory stimulations, simulations and the embodied schemata that arise from everyday physiological experience. The phenomenological film criticism of Vivian Sobchack and Laura U. Marks is adopted and expanded upon in order to suggest that the organicity of the human body guides and structures the psychosocial engagement with, and interpretation of, contemporary extreme horror film. This project thus exposes the body as the architectural foundation upon which conscious interaction with film texts occurs.

The concept of silence in Ludwig Wittgenstein's early work Abstract The work deals with the concept of silence in the early work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus). The aim is to explore the dichotomy of being silent-speaking and describe cases that fall into each category. Work will concentrate on the criteria of meaningfulness and meaninglessness, according to which the individual sentences classified in one category or the other. The work also offers a comparison of the reference theory in Tractatus and cognitive realism proposed by G. Lakoff and on their background shows the role and importance of silence in shaping the semantic theory of language.

My thesis aims to anatomize the cognitive theory of metaphor and suggests a Peircean semiotic perspective on metaphor study. As metaphorical essentialists, Lakoff/Johnson tend to universalize a limited number of conceptual metaphors and, by doing this, they overlook the dynamic relation between metaphorical tenor and vehicle. Such notion of metaphor is not compatible with the polysemous nature of the sign. The diversity and multivalency of metaphorical vehicle, in particular, cast serious doubts on the hypothesis of “conceptual metaphors” which, being meta-metaphorical constructs, can tell us nothing but a dry and empty formula “A is B”. Consequently, Lakoff/Johnson’s notion of conceptual metaphor is very much a Chomskyan postulation. Also problematic is the expedient experientialism or embodied philosophy they have put forward as a middle course between objectivism and subjectivism. What is missing from their framework is a structural space for dynamic interpretation on the part of metaphor users. In contrast, cognitive linguists may find in Peirce’s theory of the sign a sound solution to their theoretical impasse. As a logician, Peirce sees metaphor as the realization of iconic reasoning at the language level. His exposition on iconicity and iconic reasoning has laid a solid foundation upon which may be erected a fresh epistemology of metaphor fit for the contemporary study of language and mind. Broadly speaking, metaphor in Peirce can be examined from roughly two perspectives. Macroscopically, metaphor is an icon in general as opposed to index and symbol, whereas, microscopically, it is a subdivided hypoicon on the third level as opposed to image and diagram. Besides, Peirce also emphasized the subjective nature of metaphor. Semioticians after Peirce have further developed his theory on metaphor. For example, through his concept of “arbitrary iconicity”, Ersu Ding stresses the arbitrary nature of metaphorization and tries to shift our attention away from Lakoff/Johnson’s abstract epistemological Gestalt to the specific cultural contexts in which metaphors occur. Umberto Eco, on the other hand, sees interpretation of signs as an open-ended process that involves knowledge of all kinds. Encyclopedic knowledge thus serves as unlimited source for metaphorical association. For Eco, the meaning of a metaphor should be interpreted in the cultural framework based on a specific cultural community. Both Ding’s and Eco’s ideas are in line with Peirce’s theoretical framework where the meaning of a metaphor depends on an interpreter in a particular socio-historical context. They all realize that we should go beyond the ontology of metaphorical expressions to acquire a dynamic perspective on metaphor interpretation. To overcome the need for presupposing an omnipotent subject capable of knowing the metaphor-in-itself, we turn to Habermas’s theory of communicative action in which the meaning of metaphor is intersubjectively established through negotiation and communication. Moreover, we should not overlook the dynamic tension between metaphor and ideology. Aphoristically, we can say that nothing is a metaphor unless it is interpreted as a metaphor, and we need to reconnect metaphors with the specific cultural and ideological contexts in which they appear.

The thesis is a contribution to the study of designations of the human body in the Czech language and is based on contemporary theories and methods of cognitive and cultural approaches to language. It focuses on that part of reality which is called noha / nohy by members of Czech linguistic community. First, two terminological perspectives from which the leg / legs can be seen were comapared: the natural perspective of the linguistic picture of the world and the scientific medical perspective. The medical perspective tends to categorize parts of the body very precisely, it also analyses deep structures of the leg / legs. In contrast the natural perspectives only the surface of the leg / legs and distinguishes those categories which are significant for humans and their existence in the world. In the main chapter we attempt to define the meaning of the Czech noha / nohy and of parts of the leg / legs by analysing definitions in Czech monolingual dictionaries, etymology of words, derived words and compounds, synonyms and especially phraseology. Based on the analysis of these sources we determined the systemic connotations and connected semantic profiles. We set down four semantic profiles: 1) appearance of leg / legs; 2) leg /legs as a part of the human body; 3) leg / legs as a means of movement...

The purpose of this three-article dissertation was to expand knowledge and theory regarding digital tool use in biology laboratory courses, such as microbiology, which requires specific laboratory skill development through the perception of instructors and students. Article 1 establishes the broad digital literacy and fluency problem in education by providing definitions and the context behind digital literacy fluency and its impact on acquisition of knowledge in digital learning environments. The study provided a picture of the lack of knowledge about the use of digital tools in education and practical problems around appropriate implementation, infrastructure, and preparedness. Article 2 presents results of a literature research study about the foundational, pandemic-induced, and current digital tool use in biology and microbiology lab courses. Recommendations for improvement in digital tool implementation, pedagogical approach, and appropriate selection to meet learning outcomes were provided. Article 3 describes a 3-layered study to build a new instrument to understand minority-student perceptions of identity and digital literacy and technology barriers on student success in STEM courses. The study identified challenges and benefits of digital tool use in virtual microbiology lab courses, unique challenges of underrepresented populations, and the need to develop an instrument to capture the context of this unique population.

The thesis tries to grasp the meaning of lexeme nos "the nose" in cognitively-linguistic perspective, namely in particular through colocation and idioms, which contains the lexeme nos. The goal of this thesis is to define so-called semantic profiles of concept NOSE and to formulate cognitively cultural definition of nose consequential from its location in the Czech linguistic picture of the world. For this purpose nose first will be subjected to analysis from two different perspectives - from medical perspective, which represent the scientific view on the world, and from the perspective of a common user of the language, which represent so- called naive picture of the world. Data relating to the lexeme nos will be excerpted from Czech monolingual, synonymous, etymological and phraseological dictionaries, the semic analysis will be done and the lexeme nos will be included to systemic relationships in Czech vocabulary. Nose also will be introduced in a ligth of an additional perspectives of an alternative medicine and a pseudoscientific disciplines: the phrenology and the physiognomy. Their knowledges play some role in a formation of a naive picture of a nose. The questionnaire research is too a part of the thesis. The questionnaire research search for which association a common user of the Czech language have...