The Role of Nature and Nurture in Conceptual Metaphors

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 167-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Gilead ◽  
Orian Gal ◽  
Marin Polak ◽  
Yael Cholow

It is unclear whether embodied-cognition effects are caused by the activation of cultural-linguistic metaphors, or whether these metaphors stem from preverbal mechanisms that directly affect both language and behavior. Therefore, we conducted a study wherein 62 Israeli participants ate sweet or spicy snacks and performed a social judgment task. Preverbal mechanisms assign positive hedonic value to sweetness and negative value to spiciness. However, in Israeli culture, “sweetness” is used as a metaphor for inauthenticity, whereas “spiciness” stands for intellectual competence. In accordance with the predictions of a culturally-mediated variant of conceptual-metaphor theory, the results showed that priming participants with spicy (vs. sweet) tastes increased judgments of intellectual competence, decreased judgments of inauthenticity, and increased overall evaluation of a social target.

Author(s):  
Somogy Varga

A particular branch of the embodied cognition (EC) research program explicates abstract concepts and metaphors as grounded in particular domains of bodily experience. This chapter explores conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) and some recent behavioral and neuroscientific research that appears to offer some support for it. While this research indicates that bodily states exert non-negligible influence on cognition and behavior, the influences appear to occur in a way that is insensitive to reflectively endorsed norms. Assuming that the experimental findings extend to real-life situations, the findings raise a number of questions. The chapter offers reflections on particular questions and concerns in the legal realm and explores whether the findings present potential challenges to juridical legitimacy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moses Gatambuki Gathigia ◽  
Ruiming Wang ◽  
Manqiong Shen ◽  
Carlos Tirado ◽  
Oksana Tsaregorodtseva ◽  
...  

Abstract The avoidance of directly addressing human mortality indicates fear of death. This fear elicits psychological, social and religious interdictions in language such that people resort to the use of metaphors to avoid confronting death. Under the premise that metaphor is a conceptual mapping from a concrete source to an abstract target domain, this study aims to identify and categorize euphemistic metaphors of death in six languages: Chinese, Farsi, Gĩkũyũ, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Those metaphors are interpreted via the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). In doing so, 40 speakers in each of the languages were asked to complete a short questionnaire. Various metaphors of death were identified in each language and categorized into four conceptual metaphors: death is a journey; death is the end; death is a rest; and death is a summons. The key finding is that the most common metaphor of death is death is a journey. This holds across linguistic groups regardless of gender and age factors. This study also discusses the role of embodied cognition theories in accounting for how metaphors of death are created and their role within cognition in general.


Author(s):  
Zoltán Kövecses

The chapter reports on work concerned with the issue of how conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) functions as a link between culture and cognition. Three large areas are investigated to this effect. First, work on the interaction between conceptual metaphors, on the one hand, and folk and expert theories of emotion, on the other, is surveyed. Second, the issue of metaphorical universality and variation is addressed, together with that of the function of embodiment in metaphor. Third, a contextualist view of conceptual metaphors is proposed. The discussion of these issues leads to a new and integrated understanding of the role of metaphor and metonymy in creating cultural reality and that of metaphorical variation across and within cultures, as well as individuals.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 777
Author(s):  
Natália Elvira Sperandio

Abstract: Almost forty years ago, the proposal of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory represented a milestone for Cognitive Linguistics studies. From this point, many pieces of research were developed around the analytical category of metaphor. However, the majority of these papers are still in the monomodal field, intending to build a concept resulting from the source and target domains that come specifically from the verbal structures. Taking this into consideration, this paper intends to focus on the metaphorical occurrence in diverse semiotic modes that constitute multimodal texts. In order to fulfill this aim, we outlined a corpus of five editorial cartoons about “fake news”. Our specific objective is to, making use of the concept of multimodal metaphors proposed by Forceville (1996, 2009), presented how the different semiotic modes, in this case the verbal and the visual ones, are interwoven in the building of these metaphors. In this way, in our study, besides validating the thesis proposed by Forceville (2009) about the occurrence of metaphors not only in the verbal mode, it was also possible to verify the importance of multimodal metaphors for the meaning construction process in the analyzed genre.Keywords: metaphors; multimodal metaphors; fake news.Resumo: Há quase quarenta anos atrás um marco nos estudos da Linguística Cognitiva, em especial em sua semântica, ocorreu: a proposta da Teoria da Metáfora Conceitual. A partir desse trabalho, muitas pesquisas foram desenvolvidas em torno da categoria analítica da metáfora. Porém, grande parte desses trabalhos ainda encontra-se no campo dos denominados textos monomodais, visando apenas a construção conceitual resultante de domínios fonte e alvo oriundos especificamente do modo verbal. Diante disso, o presente artigo propõe-se a promover um trabalho dedicado à ocorrência metafórica nos diferentes modos semióticos que constituem os textos multimodais. Para cumprirmos tal objetivo, delineamos como corpus cinco charges que versam sobre o conceito fake news. Nosso objetivo específico consiste em apresentar, através do conceito de metáforas multimodais, proposto por Forceville (1996, 2009), a forma pela qual diferentes modos semióticos, nesse caso em especial o verbal e o imagético, imbricaram-se na construção dessas metáforas. Assim, em nosso estudo, além de vislumbrarmos a validação da proposição de Forceville (2009) sobre a não ocorrência do processo metafórico apenas no modo verbal, foi possível a verificação da importância das metáforas multimodais para a construção dos sentidos do gênero em análise.Palavras-chave: metáforas; metáfora multimodal; fake news.


Author(s):  
Yayoi U. Everett

The advent of high-definition broadcast of opera has transformed the ways in which we attend to opera as film. It establishes a narrative angle through filmic devices that shape the viewer’s multimodal experience in an entirely different way from viewing opera live in a theater. Building on recent studies on embodied cognition of film and multimedia, this chapter examines audio-visual congruence as a key to understanding the viewer’s experience of opera in its remediated form as film. To this end, it refers to the concept of multimodality, Anabel Cohen’s hierarchical model of narrative construction, and Mark Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory. Case studies include recent productions of Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre, John Adams’s Doctor Atomic, and Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Mater. This study examines the distinctive types of audio-visual congruence established in these works and discusses further avenues for exploring opera and film through the lens of hermeneutical and cognitive research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier A. Morras Cortés ◽  
Xu Wen

Abstract The metaphor time is space (Lakoff & Johnson 1999) and the pervasiveness of metaphor and image-schematic structure in human conceptualization (Johnson 1987; Hampe 2005) have been widely accepted among cognitive scientists as constructs that help explain non-spatial and temporal linguistic constructions. However, Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) might not be the whole story. While it is acceptable that moments in time can be construed as being analogous to points in space as in utterances such as at the corner vs. at 2:30, there seems to be much more temporal cognition than previously thought. It turns out that time exhibits its own structure (following Evans 2004, 2013; Galton 2011) that is based on transience. This idea has made some scholars support the weak version of CMT which posits that the temporal meaning of prepositions is represented and processed independently of the corresponding spatial meanings (see Kemmerer 2005 for such a view). The present article supports the idea that spatial and temporal structures complement each other in order to achieve temporal conceptions. This is indeed a conceptual pattern showed by the English preposition at that makes use of an extrinsic temporal reference to activate its temporal semantics. To analyze the different temporal realizations that at may have, the paper aims to identify the topological structure that underlies the conceptual basis of this preposition. This allows us to appreciate how the spatio-conceptual structure of at partially structures temporal conceptions. The paper also identifies the nature of the temporal structure that is involved in temporal realizations. The article concludes with some remarks, among them the pivotal role of the schematic temporal structure that is captured by the extrinsic temporal reference, and the role of conceptual metaphor in underdetermining temporal thinking.


2008 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 168-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltán Kövecses

Despite its popularity in and outside cognitive linguistics, cognitive metaphor theory (CMT) has received a wide range of criticisms in the past two decades. Several metaphor researchers have criticized the methodology with which metaphor is studied (emphasizing concepts instead of words), the direction of analysis (emphasizing a top-down instead of a bottom-up approach), the category level of metaphor (claiming its superordinate status instead of basic level), the embodiment of metaphor (emphasizing the universal, mechanical, and monolithic aspects instead of nonuniversal, nonmechanical, and nonmonolithic aspects of embodiment), and its relationship to culture (emphasizing the role of universal bodily experience instead of the interaction of body and context). In the paper, I respond to this criticism largely based on my own research and propose a view on these issues that can successfully meet these challenges and that can be regarded as an alternative to the “standard theory.”


2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Forceville

Since the publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By (1980), conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) has dominated metaphor studies. While one of the central tenets of that monograph is that metaphors are primarily a phenomenon of thought, not of language, conceptual metaphors have until recently been studied almost exclusively via verbal expressions. Another limitation of the CMT paradigm is that it has tended to focus on deeply embedded metaphors rather than on creative metaphors of the kind that Black (1979) discusses. One result of this focus is that relatively little attention is paid in CMT to the form and appearance a metaphor can assume (cf. Lakoff and Turner 1989). Clearly, which channel(s) of information (language, visuals, sound, gestures, among others) are chosen to convey a metaphor is a central factor in how a metaphor is construed and interpreted. A healthy theory of metaphor as a structuring element of thought therefore requires systematic examination of both its multimodal and its creative manifestations. Conversely, research into non-verbal and multimodal metaphor can help the theorization of multimodality.In this paper it is shown that creative metaphors occurring in commercials usually draw on a combination of language, pictures, and non-verbal sound. After an inventory of parameters involved in the analysis of multimodal metaphors, ten cases are discussed, with specific attention to the role of the various modes in the metaphors’ construal and interpretation. On the basis of the case studies, the last sections of the paper discuss three issues that are crucial for further study: (1) the ways in which similarity is cued in multimodal, as opposed to verbal, metaphors; (2) the problems adhering to the verbalization of multimodal metaphors; (3) the influence of textual genre on the interpretation of multimodal metaphors.


This paper discusses the system of conceptual metaphors reconstructed via analysis of metaphorical expressions (ME) employed by eight popular Ukrainian newspapers (Holos Ukrainy, Uriadovyi Kurier, Den', Dzerkalo Tyzhnya, Gazeta Po-Ukrains'ky, Segodnya, Ukraina Moloda, and Kommmentarii) published in January – June, 2016. The ME describe perceptions of the EU, Ukraine, and their cooperation in the target conceptual spaces of POLITICS and ECONOMY. The data are processed according to an authentic methodology applicable to multiple metaphorical expressions [Zhabotynska 2013a; 2013b; 2016]. Grounded on the findings of Conceptual Metaphor Theory [Lakoff and Johnson 1980], this methodology represents an algorithm for exposure and further description of conceptual metaphors applied in a thematically homogeneous discourse, and manifested by multiple ME. Their analysis, aiming to portray some metaphorical system as a whole, provides an in-depth study of its target and source conceptual spaces and an empirically rigorous account of their cross-mapping influenced by the discourse type. In this study focused on mass media political discourse, the reconstructed system of conceptual metaphors demonstrates Ukraine’s stance on its relations with the EU and contributes to understanding the role of political metaphor as a mind-shaping device.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110481
Author(s):  
Yanli Huang ◽  
Chi-Shing Tse ◽  
Jiushu Xie ◽  
Manqiong Shen ◽  
Ruiming Wang

Whether a cognitive process is operated automatically or in a controlled manner has been a long-standing question in cognitive psychology. However, this issue has not been investigated in the activation of metaphoric association. A primed word valence judgment task is often used to test the activation of metaphoric association, in which participants first see a prime (bright/dark square or fixation point moving up or down from the center of the screen) and then make a valence judgment to a target word. Metaphoric congruency effect occurs when participants make faster judgments to the target with valence being matched with the prime (good followed bright/top prime) than being mismatched with the prime (good followed dark/bottom prime). In the present two experiments, we manipulated prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and proportion of metaphorically congruent trials (congruency proportion) to tease apart the effects of automatic and controlled activation of brightness-valence and spatial-valence metaphoric associations on word valence judgments. Results showed an overall effect of congruency proportion on brightness-valence and spatial-valence metaphoric congruency effect, which was independent of prime-target SOA. The effect was enhanced or reversed when congruency proportion was higher or lower than 0.5, respectively, suggesting that the activation of metaphoric association could be modulated by strategic control. The implications of these findings on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and semantic priming theories are discussed.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document