scholarly journals An investigation into metaphor use in learner language: the interaction of word class and L1

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Yaser Hadidi ◽  
Nastaran Behshad
Keyword(s):  
Word Class ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Text Type ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Word Classes ◽  
Metaphor Use ◽  
Argumentative Essays ◽  
Novice Writers ◽  
Learner Language

This study aims at investigating the use of metaphor in learner language with a focus on interaction of word class and L1. The findings of previous studies on metaphor use in learner language point to the fact that metaphor is found in all word classes in learners’ written production, but that some word classes clearly favor metaphorical usage more than others. In similar fashion, the present investigation looked into the interaction between metaphor, word class, and L1, although within a single register and text type, i.e. argumentative essays produced by 20 novice writers. The model underlying the current study was Conceptual Metaphor Theory by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). Identification of metaphors was carried out based on MIP (Metaphor Identification Procedure) (Pragglejaz Group, 2007), a reliable and explicit tool for marking and identifying metaphorically used words. The hypothesis, based on previous research establishing this finding, was that prepositions top the list in this regard, being by far the most metaphorical word class. The cognitive predispositions made available by the student’s L1 are also of importance in this equation. Similar research would advance our understanding of the role of metaphor teaching, and in what form and to what degree it should be explicitly carried out.

scholarly journals Metaphor in communication: the distribution of potentially deliberate metaphor across register and word class

Corpora ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Gudrun Reijnierse ◽  
Christian Burgers ◽  
Tina Krennmayr ◽  
Gerard J. Steen
Keyword(s):  
Special Role ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Word Classes ◽  
Metaphor Use

There is renewed interest in the special role that metaphor can have in its communicative status as metaphor between language users. This paper investigates the occurrence of such deliberate metaphors in comparison with non-deliberate metaphors. To this end, a corpus of 24,762 metaphors was analysed for the presence of potentially deliberate (versus non-deliberate) metaphor use across registers and word classes. Results show that 4.36 percent of metaphors in the corpus are identified as potentially deliberate metaphors. News and fiction contain significantly more potentially deliberate metaphors, while academic texts and conversations exhibit significantly fewer potentially deliberate metaphors than expected. Moreover, nouns and adjectives are used relatively more frequently as potentially deliberate metaphors, while adverbs, verbs and prepositions are used relatively less frequently as potentially deliberate metaphors. These results can be explained by referring to the overall communicative properties of the registers concerned, as well as to the role of the different word classes in those registers.

Metaphor, Cognition, Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltán Kövecses
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
The Other ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Conceptual Metaphors ◽  
Culture And Cognition ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
The One ◽  
Cultural Reality ◽  
Metaphor And Metonymy

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.

scholarly journals The role of multimodal metaphors in the creation of the fake news category: a proposal for analysis / A atuação das metáforas multimodais na criação da categoria fake news: uma proposta de análise

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 777
Author(s):  
Natália Elvira Sperandio
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Multimodal Texts ◽  
Specific Objective ◽  
Editorial Cartoons ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Analytical Category

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.

A cross-linguistic study of metaphors of death

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moses Gatambuki Gathigia ◽  
Ruiming Wang ◽  
Manqiong Shen ◽  
Carlos Tirado ◽  
Oksana Tsaregorodtseva ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Age Factors ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
Target Domain ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Conceptual Mapping ◽  
Gender And Age ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Linguistic Groups

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.

Visual Metaphor and Embodiment in Graphic Illness Narratives

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth El Refaie
Keyword(s):  
Illness Narratives ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Illness Narrative ◽  
Social Semiotics ◽  
Individual State ◽  
Visual Metaphor ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Sociocultural Practices ◽  
Metaphor Use

This study uses the analysis of visual metaphor in 35 graphic illness narratives—book-length stories about disease in the comics medium—in order to re-examine embodiment in traditional Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and propose the more nuanced notion of “dynamic embodiment.” Building on recent strands of research within CMT, and drawing on relevant concepts and findings from other disciplines, including psychology, phenomenology, social semiotics, and media theory, the book develops the argument that the experience of one’s own body is constantly adjusting to changes in one’s individual state of health, sociocultural practices, and the activities in which one is engaged at any given moment, including the modes and media that are being used to communicate. This leads to a more fluid and variable relationship between physicality and metaphor use than many CMT scholars assume. For example, representing the experience of cancer through the graphic illness narrative genre draws attention to the unfathomable processes going on beneath the body’s visible surface, particularly now that digital imaging technologies play such a central role in the diagnosis and treatment of the disease. This may lead to a reversal of conventional conceptualizations of knowing and understanding in terms of seeing, so that vision itself becomes the target of metaphorical representations. A novel classification system of visual metaphor, based on a three-way distinction between pictorial, spatial, and stylistic metaphors, is also proposed.

Unweaving the embodied nature of English temporal prepositions

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier A. Morras Cortés ◽  
Xu Wen
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Weak Version ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Temporal Reference ◽  
Temporal Semantics ◽  
Temporal Cognition ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Temporal Structures

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.

Metaphor and the notion of control in trauma talk

2015 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Tay ◽  
Jennifer Jordan
Keyword(s):  
External Source ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Therapeutic Interaction ◽  
Therapeutic Setting ◽  
Psychotherapy Practice ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Subsequent Discussion ◽  
Metaphor Use ◽  
Initial Target

AbstractMetaphor use in psychotherapy practice has been influenced by conceptual metaphor theory and the “internal target–external source” assumption, where targets comprise abstract therapeutic issues, while sources comprise concrete conceptual materials external to the therapeutic setting. The relevance of metaphor is hence questionable in trauma talk, since traumatic events involve intense bodily experiences which are already concrete and do not require any external inferential support. We examine transcripts of semi-structured interviews with 14 subjects following the 2010–2012 earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, focusing on the role of metaphor in their conceptualization of a sense of “control” over their immediate physical environment, and more abstract aspects of their lives in the earthquakes’ aftermath. We discuss four discursive patterns which show how speakers used metaphor as a mechanism to extend or refocus initial discussion of physical control, to subsequent discussion of abstract control. This suggests that metaphor goes beyond a conceptualization role to play a “scaffolding” role in trauma talk, where an initial target topic may serve as a source concept for a subsequent target topic. Therapists therefore do not necessarily have to “look externally” for productive source domains, but could capitalize upon conceptual materials which present themselves as therapeutic interaction unfolds.

A deep semantic corpus-based approach to metaphor analysis

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 256-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen K. Dodge
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Metaphor Analysis ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Computational Tools ◽  
Source Domain ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Metaphor Use

This paper demonstrates the fruitful application of the formalization of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, combined with metaphor constructions and computational tools to a large-scale, corpus-based approach to the study of metaphor expressions. As the case study of poverty metaphor expressions illustrates, the representation of individual metaphors and frames as parts of larger conceptual networks facilitates analyses that capture both local details and larger patterns of metaphor use. Significantly, the data suggest that the two most frequently used source domain networks in poverty metaphor expressions each support different types of inferences about poverty, its effects, and possible ways to reduce or end it.

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 Multimodal Metaphor in Ten Dutch TV Commercials

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Forceville
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Conceptual Metaphors ◽  
Structuring Element ◽  
Systematic Examination ◽  
Central Factor ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Tv Commercials

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.

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