‘The sickness stands at your shoulder …’: Embodiment and cognitive metaphor in Hornbacher’sWasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karsten Senkbeil ◽  
Nicola Hoppe
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Eating Disorders ◽  
The Body ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Marya Hornbacher ◽  
Linguistic Approaches

This paper applies cognitive linguistic approaches, particularly conceptual metaphor theory, to the study of literature, and analyses how Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (1998) by Marya Hornbacher communicates embodied experiences such as sickness, hunger, and (self-)loathing with the help of conceptual metaphors. It explores how the author renegotiates and partly recontextualizes highly conventionalized metaphors around eating disorders, mental illness, and identity to create new meaning, and how this strategy helped explain the mindset of a person with anorexia and bulimia to a broad critical readership in the late 1990s. This paper hence hypothesizes that the book’s emphasis on metaphors as a means to articulate bodily experiences surrounding a mental disorder may hint towards larger trends concerning the representation of the body–mind relationship in literature and culture in the last two decades.

Bodily experience as both source and target of meaning making

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Tay
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Image Schemas ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Metaphor Use ◽  
Programmatic Statement

Bodily experiences (BE) are often theorized by cognitive linguists as sources of meaning making, encoded and projected at the levels of grammar, semantics, and discourse. For example, Conceptual Metaphor Theory regards embodied image schemas (Johnson 1987) and, more recently, live simulations of embodied experiences (Gibbs 2013) as vital to the emergence and understanding of conceptual metaphors. Interestingly however, BE also feature as targets or topics in certain discourse contexts, which leads to underexplored scenarios where BE is simultaneously a source and a target of meaning making. This paper presents examples of metaphors in psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a case in point. In psychotherapy, experientially concrete sources are often used to conceptualize abstract issues such as emotions and subjective experiences. In the case of PTSD, however, bodily experiences turn out to be both potential source concepts as well as target topics of therapeutic discussion, a phenomenon seldom discussed in cognitive linguistics. I examine psychotherapy transcripts involving victims of the 2010–12 earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, discuss how this source-target simultaneity of BE is exploited for therapeutic ends, and highlight three strands of implications pertaining to cognitive, discursive, and strategic aspects of metaphor use in psychotherapy. I conclude with a more programmatic statement about psychotherapeutic discourse as a productive site of inquiry for applied cognitive linguistics and applied metaphor research.

scholarly journals Konseptualisasi Citra Hara ‘Perut’ dalam Idiom Bahasa Jepang

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Akhmad Saifudin
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Japanese People ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Cognitive Experience

 Hara simply means belly, but for Japanese people it means more than physical. Hara is a concept, an important concept related to Japanese human life. This paper discusses the conceptualization of hara image for Japanese people. The study utilizes 25 idioms that contain hara ‘belly’ word that are obtained from several dictionaries of Japanese idioms. This paper is firmly grounded in cognitive linguistics, which relates linguistic expressions to human cognitive experience. The tool for analysis employed in this paper is the “conceptual metaphor theory” pioneered by Lakoff and Johnson. This theory considers human perception, parts of the body, and people’s worldview as the basis for the structure of human language. The analysis of this paper results that metaphorically, hara ‘belly’ is an entity and a container, which contains important elements for humans, such as life, mind, feeling, mentality, and physical. The concept of hara 'belly' for Japanese people is to have a spiritual, psychological, social and cultural, biological, and physical image. Keywords: conceptualization, conceptual metaphor, hara ‘belly’,  idioms, imagee.

Reanimating the Body in Conceptual Metaphor Theory

2019 ◽  
pp. 18-46
Author(s):  
Elisabeth El Refaie
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Semiotics ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Body Shapes

This chapter critically reviews the traditional notion of embodiment in Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), arguing that it is characterized by a somewhat inflexible view of the way the human body shapes one’s thinking. Probing more recent developments in CMT, including dynamic systems approaches and cross-cultural studies of metaphor, and confronting these with key theories from phenomenology, psychology, social semiotics, and media theory, the original notion of dynamic embodiment is developed. Accordingly, the degree to which people draw on their own bodies when producing and interpreting metaphors depends not only on the cultural practices and the specific actions in which they are engaged at any given moment, but also on the degree to which they are consciously aware of their physicality, as well as the affordances of the modes and media they are using to communicate.

The Body as Metaphor

2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-39
Author(s):  
Gregory E. Sterling
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
The Body ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Mark Johnson

AbstractThis essay considers Philo of Alexandria’s metaphor in which he used the dual nature of embodied existence (body and soul) to argue that both literal and allegorical readings are legitimate. It examines the metaphor in the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CTM) developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson that argues that experience is the key to meaning. A metaphor occurs when we apply a pattern that we have observed in one setting (gestalt) to another. In this case, Philo has drawn on a Platonic/Stoic understanding of being human and applied it to contested hermeneutics within the Alexandrian Jewish community in an effort to maintain a sense of unity among two groups. The metaphorical experience is the recognition that Scripture is polyvalent in the same way that being human is.

Metaphorical conceptualization of emotion in Spanish

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florencia Reali ◽  
Catalina Arciniegas
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Conceptual Structure ◽  
The Body ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Bounded Space ◽  
Concrete Concepts

Over the last two decades, accumulating work in cognitive science and cognitive linguistics has provided evidence that language shapes thought. Conceptual metaphor theory proposes that the conceptual structure of emotions emerges through metaphorization from concrete concepts such as spatial orientation and physical containment. Primary metaphors for emotions have been described in a wide range of languages. Here we show, in Study 1, the results of a corpus analysis revealing that certain metaphors such as EMOTIONS ARE FLUIDS and EMOTIONS ARE BOUNDED SPACEs are quite natural in Spanish. Moreover, the corpus data reveal that the bounded space source domain is more frequently mapped onto negative emotions. In Study 2, we consider the question of whether the instantiation of metaphorical framing influences the way we think about emotions. A questionnaire experiment was conducted to explore this question, focusing on the Spanish case of locura (‘madness’). Our results show that when madness was framed as a fluid filling a container (the body), people tended to rate symptoms as less enduring and as more likely to be caused by social and environmental factors, compared with when it was framed as a place in space. Results are discussed in the light of conceptual metaphor theory.

scholarly journals Appearances and dis/dys-appearances

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth El Refaie
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
Lived Body ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Dynamic Perspective ◽  
Complex Fluid

This article draws on phenomenological and sociological notions of the ‘lived’ body in order to develop a dynamic perspective on embodiment in Conceptual Metaphor Theory. My main argument is that even our most basic sensorimotor experiences are more complex, fluid, and more deeply imbued with socio-cultural meanings than many metaphor scholars assume. While our conscious awareness is ordinarily directed towards the world, making our physical actions and perceptions appear to be natural and straightforward, at times of dysfunction, such as illness and disability, the body suddenly seizes our attention and is perceived as alien. In these moments bodily experience often becomes not just the source, but also the target of metaphorical mappings. I demonstrate the usefulness of the notion of dynamic embodiment by applying it to the example of verbal and visual cancer metaphors.

Conceptual metaphor theory

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 168-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltán Kövecses
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Standard Theory ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Basic Level

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.”

scholarly journals Towards an embodied poetics of cinema

2012 ◽  
pp. 50-67
Author(s):  
Maarten Coëgnarts ◽  
Peter Kravanja
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Cinema Studies ◽  
Image Schemas ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Aesthetic

Central to Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) is the notion of embodied mind, which states that cognition is shaped by aspects of the body. Human beings make metaphoric use of recurring dynamic patterns of perceptual interactions and motor programmes (image schemas) for abstract conceptualisation and reasoning. According to film scholar David Bordwell the poetics of cinema studies the film as a result of a process of construction. He presents the following key question: how do film-makers use the aesthetic dynamics of the film medium to elicit particular effects from spectators? In this article we want to address an abbreviated case of meaning construction in film, namely the construction of abstract meaning in film. By combining insights from Bordwell as well as CMT, we will demonstrate how the poetics of abstract meaning-making in film is embodied. What does it mean to say that the construction of higher meaning in film is rooted in bodily experience and how can this be grasped without resorting to the confinement of words and sentences? By analysing the stylistics and the visual patterning of particular film scenes we will demonstrate how film-makers often resort to image schemas to come to terms with abstract notions such as time, love and psychological content.

scholarly journals Metaphors to Survive by: Mimicry as Biometaphors, Embodiment of Sign and Cognitive Tools (not only) in Animals?

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-43
Author(s):  
Róbert Bohát
Keyword(s):  
Animal Cognition ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Tools ◽  
Response Behavior ◽  
Theoretical Comparison ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
As Species ◽  
Metaphor Theory

Abstract Can Cognitive Metaphor Theory (CMT) be applied productively to the study of mimicry in zoosemiotics and ethology? In this theoretical comparison of selected case studies, I would like to propose that biological mimicry is a type of biosemiotic metaphor. At least two major parallels between cognitive metaphors in human cognition and mimicry among animals justify viewing the two phenomena as isomorphic. First—from the semiotic point of view—the argument is that both metaphor and mimicry are cases of semiotic transfer (etymologically: metaphor) of the identity / sign of the source onto the perceived identity / sign of the target. This identity transfer, in turn, triggers appropriate changes in the response (behavior) of the surrounding (human or animal) interpreters (e.g. predators). Semiotically, the mimicry turns the body of its bearer into a sign of something else, resulting in the interpreters’ (e.g. predators’) perception of species X as species Y—hence, a type of embodied sign and cognitive metaphor. Second, ecologically, a species occupying one niche (e.g. a moth: non-venomous, herbivorous primary consumer) is perceived and identified as an occupant of a different niche (e.g. a hornet: venomous, omnivorous predator). Thus, a potential predator’s Umwelt is affected by its perceiving a hornet moth as “a hornet” where there is, in fact, a moth, and its response to this stimulus will not be predation but avoidance. In terms of CMT, we could call this a biosemiotic metaphor (bio-metaphor), e.g. “A MOTH IS A HORNET” or “PREY IS A PREDATOR”. Further correspondences between mimicry and metaphor include the fact that this bio-metaphorical identification by mimicry does not typically require a “perfect” resemblance between the source and the target sign (or species); this seems to correspond to the prototype categorization in CMT where categories are “open-ended” and only a partial similarity is sufficient for metaphorical identification (compare Lakoff, Johnson 1980; Rosch 1983). Such an identification of mimicry as metaphor could be based on Prodi’s argument that “hermeneutics is not a late product of culture, but the same elementary movement of life that is born because something obscurely interprets something else” (Eco 2018: 350; Kull 2018, 352—364). Inasmuch as animal Umwelten are interconnected inter alia by this natural hermeneutics, the trans-disciplinary approach to the study eco-zoosemiotic interpretants on the basis of metaphor-mimicry isomorphism could open new opportunities in comparative studies of semiosis in human and animal cognition and interactions.

Symbolism in Flux: The Conceptual Metaphor of "World Liquescence" Across Media, Genres and Realities

2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Kostetskaya
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Conceptual Blending ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Silver Age ◽  
Russian Symbolism ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Visual Discourses

“Symbolism in Flux: the Metaphor of World Liquescence across Media, Genre and Realities” examines cultural implications of conceptual metaphor, in this case the metaphor of liquescence of the human emotional domain. The central question discussed in my paper is how poetics of water is metaphorically present in visual discourses of boundary transgression and blending, both static and dynamic, namely painting and film of the Russian Symbolist period. In my analysis of the painterly and cinematic texts selected, I apply concepts from cognitive linguistics, specifically Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory that see the roots of the human proclivity for metaphor in somatic embodied experiences. They provide tools and terms useful for theorizing discourses that implement the “water principle” as their modus operandi in approaching various metaphysical issues. They are particularly instrumental within the specific historical-cultural context of Russian Symbolism with its close attention to stirrings of the soul which in many cases are expressed via the “water metaphor.” I look at representations of the conceptual blend fusing human and water ontologies in these “Silver Age” texts: two paintings by V. Borisov-Musatov and two scenes from a film by E. Bauer. The innovative aspect of my work is found in my applying it to interacting art forms, which supports the central stance of Conceptual Metaphor Theory: that metaphor is not just a figure of language, but first and foremost, a figure of thought.

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