Cristóbal Pagan, a research fellow within the Public Discourse project of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), has been selected in the first round of the BBVA Foundation Research Grants awarded to innovators and cultural creators. His application was one of 56 chosen from the 1,664 applications they received.

Cristóbal Pagán Cánovas has a degree in Philosophy from the University of Murcia and a Masters of Arts in Classics from University College London. He focuses his work on cognitive linguistics, cognitive poetics, discourse analysis, Greek philology, comparative literature and cognitive science.

Pagan has conducted research in Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Greece. After finishing his doctorate in June 2009, he completed a six-week research stay as a visiting researcher in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley, where he attended summer courses hosted by the Linguistic Society of America and developed the methodological parts of his research.

During his final year as a PhD student, he was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship (International Outgoing Fellowship), with an assessment of 98%, for the development of a project that extended his research to comparison with other literature, as well as furthered the development of his thesis's theoretical framework.

What is your area of research all about?

I work on the relationship between patterns and creative use of language, especially in how the human imagination, through different eras and cultures, uses simple experiments, such as the launching of an object, to structure more complex concepts, like falling in love (e.g., we can think of the arrows of love). To do this, I compare the expression of some of these concepts, especially the emotions and the time period, through various poetic traditions that the most creative cases provide us and they show how far these simple experiments can manipulate the imagination, mixing with others and creating new meanings. I also compare poetic discourse with everyday language to identify the processes that are common and those that are specifically aesthetic.

How is this line of research related to the project that has received funding from the BBVA Foundation?

My project will study the expression of emotions throughout the available twenty-eight centuries of poetry in the Greek language. For this, I will use the theories developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner on the integration of concepts and research on spatial patterns in cognitive development, which was mainly conducted by Jean Mandler. This aims to identify what mix of concepts, such as arrows and love, follow universal patterns of human cognition, and what aspects of the poetic expression of feeling are linked to the cultural and communicative context. This project is based on another, bigger project that studies the expression of emotions by comparing poetry and everyday speech in Greek, Latin, and major European languages.

What led you to focus on this line of research?

I wanted to understand verbal creativity, that is, how language is used to produce new meanings and express complex concepts that are difficult to structure: emotion, the passage of time, abstract ideas, etc. I have studied ancient and modern literature, especially Greek and wanted to take advantage of this language training to collect extensive data on poetic language, which provide clues for how imagination and the main processes of meaning construction work. I am also a writer and I love to conduct research on the creative process. I also think that this research is critical for understanding the human mind, which is essentially imaginative.

What has influenced you in the conception of this project?

First, my language training in classical and modern languages, which taught me to work with multiple texts, to study each in detail in their cultural context and, at the same time, to better understand humanity in general through them. Later, cognitive science, particularly cognitive linguistics, opened my eyes and gave me access to new methods for understanding the processes of meaning, allowing me to connect my work with interdisciplinary research on the human mind, undoubtedly the greatest imaginable scientific challenge.

How is your line of research currently positioned in Spain?

There is a very active community surrounding cognitive linguistics in Spain that is very interested in interdisciplinary work. There is also a great research tradition in classical philology and in many modern languages, especially thanks to the last two or three generations' efforts to modernize.  However, in any field of research, public and private investment is not at all up to par with Spain's place in the world and its current economic capacity. This situation is even more acute in the humanities, despite its important challenge of understanding human beings and giving us the keys to understanding and improving our societies. In this scenario with very few opportunities, especially in the early years of a research career, the BBVA Foundation's support acquires tremendous value. Many more initiatives like this are needed to put us on the same level as our neighboring countries.

How is this grant important for the development of your career?

It will allow me to be a visiting researcher at the flagship project on Cognitive Science and Humanities at the University of Edinburgh called, "A History of Distributed Cognition" and to work closely with the principal investigator, Professor Douglas Cairns, who is also preparing a book on cognitive patterns in the expression of emotions in ancient Greece. In addition to advances in research and connections with colleagues from different fields, the BBVA grant is a big boost for my research, which is unconventional and difficult to fit into a single discipline. The competitiveness of the call and the reviewers' prestige boosts the grant's standing in Spain and in the international context.