scholarly journals Analysis of water-related metaphors within the theme of religious harmony in Swami Vivekananda’s Complete Works

Author(s):  
Suren Naicker

This article focuses on the metaphors employed by Swami Vivekananda. The aim was to explain otherwise abstruse philosophical principles within the Hindu school of thought, with especial emphasis on Swami Vivekananda’s version of Advaita Vedanta, which maintains that there is no duality of existence despite the appearance of such. Using conceptual metaphor theory as a framework, and corpus linguistics as a tool, the metaphors used in Vivekananda’s Complete Works have been explored and it is concluded that he more often than not draws on the water frame to explain concepts. This is contrary to mainstream Western religions, which seem to employ primarily the family frame to conceptualise God metaphorically; this is not so within Vivekananda’s Hinduism – though he does use the said frame. Hence, Vivekananda’s water-related metaphors are analysed here under various themes, and parallels are drawn between Christian mysticism and Vivekananda’s Hinduism, showing that there are significant similarities between these two influential traditions.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huijuan Li ◽  
Jijia Zhang ◽  
Entao Zhang

Abstract concepts can be represented in the brain by means of metaphors. Generation refers to seniority in the family or clan, implies the implementation of different attitudes required by kinship, and contains profound psychological, emotional, and social factors. Generation as an abstract concept is related to concepts such as power, social status, importance, and time. The conceptual metaphor theory based on the embodied theory proposes that abstract concepts are represented by actual sensorimotor experiences. Generation implied in Han kin terms is often represented by multiple spatial terms. According to conceptual metaphor theory, the current study predicted that generation could be represented by multiple spatial metaphors. We designed six experiments to investigate this issue. The results showed that (1) the up–down and left–right positions in which kinship words were presented affected the processing of the concept of generation; (2) the processing of kinship words also affected up–down and left–right spatial information perception; and (3) the processing of the concept of generation could also automatically activate the front–back spatial operation and induce the embodied simulation of body movement. In sum, the results suggested that generation might be represented by the three-dimensional spatial metaphor of vertical, horizontal, and sagittal axes, which are influenced by the sensorimotor system.


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 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Omar Bani Mofarrej ◽  
Ghaleb Rabab'ah

The present paper examines the metaphorical and metonymical conceptualizations of the heart in Jordanian Arabic (JA) within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). The main aim is to explore how the human heart is conceptualized in JA, and to test the applicability of the different general cognitive mechanisms proposed by Niemeier (2003 and 2008) to those found in JA. The data were extracted from Idioms and Idiomatic Expressions in Levantine Arabic: Jordanian Dialect (Alzoubi, 2020), and other resources including articles, dissertations and books of Arabic proverbs. The findings revealed that all the four general cognitive mechanisms suggested by Niemeier (2003 and 2008) are applicable to JA. The findings also showed that the similarity derives from the universal aspects of the human body, which lends tremendous support to the embodiment hypothesis proposed by cognitive linguists. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-140
Author(s):  
David J. Neumann

AbstractSwami Vivekananda was the most influential pioneer of a Yogi Christ, illustrating well over a century ago how the life and teachings of Jesus might be incorporated within a larger Hindu worldview—and then presented back to Western audiences. Appropriation of Jesus, one of the central symbols of the West, might be viewed as the ultimate act of counter-Orientalism. This article begins by providing a brief biography of Vivekananda and the modern Hinduism that nurtured him and that he propagated. He articulated an inclusivist vision of Advaita Vedanta as the most compelling vision of universal religion. Next, the article turns to Vivekananda's views of Christianity, for which he had little affection, and the Bible, which he knew extraordinarily well. The article then systematically explores Vivekananda's engagement with the New Testament, revealing a clear hermeneutical preference for the Gospels, particularly John. Following the lead of biblical scholars, Vivekananda made a distinction between the Christ of the Gospels and the Jesus of history, offering sometimes contradictory conclusions about the historicity of elements associated with Jesus's life. Finally, the article provides a detailed articulation of Vivekananda's Jesus—a figure at once familiar to Christians but, in significant ways, uniquely accommodated to Hindu metaphysics. Vivekananda demonstrated a robust understanding and discriminating use of the Christian Bible that has not been properly recognized. He deployed this knowledge to launch an important and long-lived pattern: an attractive, fleshed out depiction of Jesus of Nazareth, transformed from the Christian savior into a Yogi model of self-realization. Through his efforts, Jesus became an indisputably Indian religious figure, no longer just a Christian one. The Yogi Christ remains a prominent global religious figure familiar to Hindus, Christians, and those of other faiths alike.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-285
Author(s):  
Mason D. Lancaster

This article provides an overview of metaphor theories and research on their own terms, as well as their use in Hebrew Bible (HB) studies. Though metaphor studies in the HB have become increasingly popular, they often draw upon a limited or dated subset of metaphor scholarship. The first half of this article surveys a wide variety of metaphor scholarship from the humanities (philosophical, poetic, rhetorical) and the sciences (e.g., conceptual metaphor theory), beginning with Aristotle but focusing on more recent developments. The second half overviews studies of metaphor in the HB since 1980, surveying works focused on theory and method; works focused on specific biblical books or metaphor domains; and finally noting current trends and suggesting areas for future research.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNAMARIA KILYENI ◽  
NADEŽDA SILAŠKI

Abstract Under the theoretical wing of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, we present a contrastive cognitive and linguistic analysis of the women are animals metaphor as used in Romanian and Serbian. Our main aim is to establish whether the names of the same animals are used in the two languages to conceptualise women and their various characteristics (particularly physical appearance and character traits), or alternatively, whether the two languages exhibit any linguistic or conceptual differences in this regard.


Author(s):  
Nenad Blaženović ◽  
Emir Muhić

An analysis was carried out with two interviews given by the tennis-player Novak Djokovic, one of which was in English and the other in his native Serbian. In both instances, Novak Djokovic used many conceptual metaphors throughout his speech, some of which were analysed in more detail. The main premise of the research was that people’s personalities change in accordance with language they speak at any given time and that they use different conceptual metaphors to describe the same events in different languages. The aim of the paper was to investigate whether personality shift in bilingual speakers can be observed through the speaker’s use of conceptual metaphors in different languages. Through the framework of conceptual metaphor theory, it was shown that Djokovic’s personality does change with the language he speaks. This change was shown through the conceptual metaphors, i.e., source and target domains that Djokovic used during the interviews. He does indeed use different source domains to conceptualise the same target domains in different languages.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-298
Author(s):  
Sakineh Navidi-Baghi ◽  
Ali Izanloo ◽  
Alireza Qaeminia ◽  
Alireza Azad

Abstract The molecular structure of a complex metaphor comprises two or more atomic metaphorical parts, known as primary metaphors. In the same way, several molecular structures of metaphors may combine and form a mixture, known as mixed metaphors. In this study, different types of metaphoric integrations are reviewed and illustrated in figures to facilitate understanding the phenomena. Above all, we introduce double-ground metaphoric chain, a new form of metaphoric integration that has not been identified in the previous literature. Also, a distinction is made between single-ground and double-ground metaphoric chains. In the former, which has already been introduced, two basic metaphors are chained with the same form and have the same ground, while the latter includes two chained metaphors, one main metaphor plus a supportive one, with different grounds. In this analysis, we benefited from Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) to analyse double-ground metaphoric chains. This study suggests that each metaphoric integration leads to a multifaceted conceptualization, in which each facet is related to one of the constituent micro-metaphors.


Author(s):  
Bérengère Lafiandra

This article intends to analyze the use of metaphors in a corpus of Donald Trump’s speeches on immigration; its main goal is to determine how migrants were depicted in the 2016 American presidential election, and how metaphor manipulated voters in the creation of this image. This study is multimodal since not only the linguistic aspect of speeches but also gestures are considered. The first part consists in presenting an overview of the theories on metaphor. It provides the theoretical framework and develops the main tenets of the ‘Conceptual Metaphor Theory’ (CMT). The second part deals with multimodality and presents what modes and gestures are. The third part provides the corpus and methodology. The last part consists in the corpus study and provides the main source domains as well as other rhetorical tools that are used by Trump to depict migrants and manipulate voters.


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