Space oddity: musical syntax is mapped onto visual space

Increasing evidence has uncovered associations between the cognition of abstract schemas and spatial perception. Here we examine such associations for Western musical syntax, tonality. Spatial metaphors are ubiquitous when describing tonality: stable, closural tones are considered to be spatially central and, as gravitational foci, spatially lower. We investigated whether listeners, musicians and nonmusicians, indeed associate tonal relationships with visuospatial dimensions, including spatial height, centrality, laterality, and size, implicitly or explicitly, and whether such mappings are consistent with established metaphors. In the explicit paradigm, participants heard a tonality-establishing prime followed by a probe tone and coupled each probe with a subjectively appropriate location (Exp.1) or size (Exp.4). The implicit paradigm used a version of the Implicit Association Test to examine associations of tonal stability with vertical position (Exp.2), lateral position (Exp3) and size (Exp.5). Tonal stability was indeed associated with perceived physical space: the spatial distances between the locations associated with different scale-degrees significantly correlated with the tonal stability differences between these scale-degrees. However, inconsistently with musical discourse, stable tones were associated with leftward (instead of central) and higher (instead of lower) spatial positions. We speculate that these mappings are influenced by emotion, embodying the “good is up” metaphor, and by the spatial structure of music keyboards. Taken together, the results demonstrate a new type of cross-modal correspondence and a hitherto under-researched connotative function of musical structure. Importantly, the results suggest that the spatial mappings of an abstract domain may be independent of the spatial metaphors used to describe that domain.

Brother to Brother and the “Place” of Film in Black Queer History

This chapter considers the ways in which Black film enlists the past when engaging in present struggles. It demonstrates how Rodney Evans’s film Brother to Brother (2004) redresses the elision of queer history from accounts of the Harlem Renaissance. Through a close reading of the film’s spatial metaphors, sound design, and visual form, the chapter shows how realism and the disruption of habituation exist side by side as mechanisms for new visions of Black queer life. It concludes that Evans harnesses the power of sound and image to remake history and to account for Black queer desire and erotic life.

Spatial metaphors and the design of everyday things

People use space to think about a variety of non-spatial concepts like time, number, and emotional valence. These spatial metaphors can be used to inform the design of user interfaces, digital and otherwise, in which many of these same concepts are visualized in space. Traditionally, researchers have relied on patterns in language to discover habits of metaphorical thinking. Here we argue that researchers and designers must look beyond language for evidence of spatial metaphors, many of which remain unspoken despite their pervasive effects on people’s preferences, memories, and actions. We propose a simple principle for predicting spatial metaphors from the structure of people’s experiences, whether those experiences are linguistic, cultural, or bodily. By leveraging the latent metaphorical structure of people’s minds, we can design interfaces that help people think.

The Rise of Populism and the Reconfiguration of the German Political Space

The paper explores the notion of a reconfiguration of political space in the context of the rise of populism and its effects on the political system. We focus on Germany and the appearance of the new right wing party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD). The idea of a political space is closely connected to the ubiquitous use of spatial metaphors in political talk. In particular the idea of a “distance” between “political positions” would suggest that political actors are situated in a metric space. Using the electoral manifestos from the Manifesto project database we investigate to which extent the spatial metaphors so common in political talk can be brought to mathematical rigor. Many scholars of politics discuss the rise of the new populism in Western Europe and the United States with respect to a new political cleavage related to globalization, which is assumed to mainly affect the cultural dimension of the political space. As such, it might replace the older economic cleavage based on class divisions in defining the dominant dimension of political conflict. An explanation along these lines suggests a reconfiguration of the political space in the sense that 1) the main cleavage within the political space changes its direction from the economic axis towards the cultural axis, but 2) also the semantics of the cultural axis itself is changing towards globalization related topics. In this paper, we empirically address this reconfiguration of the political space by comparing political spaces for Germany built using topic modeling with the spaces based on the content analysis of the Manifesto project and the corresponding categories of political goals. We find that both spaces have a similar structure and that the AfD appears on a new dimension. In order to characterize this new dimension we employ a novel technique, inter-issue consistency networks (IICN) that allow to analyze the evolution of the correlations between the political positions on different issues over several elections. We find that the new dimension introduced by the AfD can be related to the split off of a new “cultural right” issue bundle from the previously existing center-right bundle.

A Multi-Scale Virtual Terrain for Hierarchically Structured Non-Location Data

Metaphor are commonly used rhetorical devices in linguistics. Among the various types, spatial metaphors are relatively common because of their intuitive and sensible nature. There are also many studies that use spatial metaphors to express non-location data in the field of visualization. For instance, some virtual terrains can be built based on computer technologies and visualization methods. In virtual terrains, the original abstract data can obtain specific positions, shapes, colors, etc. and people’s visual and image thinking can play a role. In addition, the theories and methods used in the space field could be applied to help people observe and analyze abstract data. However, current research has limited the use of these space theories and methods. For instance, many existing map theories and methods are not well combined. In addition, it is difficult to fully display data in virtual terrains, such as showing the structure and relationship at the same time. Facing the above problems, this study takes hierarchical data as the research object and expresses both the data structure and relationship from a spatial perspective. First, the conversion from high-dimensional non-location data to two-dimensional discrete points is achieved by a dimensionality reduction algorithm to reflect the data relationship. Based on this, kernel density estimation interpolation and fractal noise algorithms are used to construct terrain features in the virtual terrains. Under the control of the kernel density search radius and noise proportion, a multi-scale terrain model is built with the help of level of detail (LOD) technology to express the hierarchical structure and support the multi-scale analysis of data. Finally, experiments with actual data are carried out to verify the proposed method.

Contemporary Metaphor Studies and Classical Texts

This article reviews recent studies on metaphor theories applied to the classical corpus and argues that approaches from cognitive linguistics are essential for the re-interpretation of Greek and Latin texts. Its main focus are two monographs, Andreas T. Zanker’s Metaphor in Homer and Tommaso Gazzarri’s Theory and Practice of Metaphors in Seneca’s Prose. The volume of collected papers on spatial metaphors in ancient texts edited by Fabian Horn and Ciliers Breytenbach proposes that the Lakoff-Johnson approach to cognitive metaphor is productive and that mappings from empirically accessible domains construct abstract concepts in spatial models of mental activity.

Spatial Parametrization as a Basis of Conceptual Metaphor In the Language of W. Shakespeare

В статье рассматривается когнитивная основа формирования пространственной метафоры в языке У. Шекспира. Исходя из накопленного опыта в изучении категоризации, концептуализации и вербализации пространства описаны возможные способы интерпретации пространственных (ориентационных) метафор, передаваемых предложными конструкциями. Пространственная параметризация человеком окружающего мира, его первичный опыт взаимодействия с окружающим миром рассматриваются как когнитивная основа для формирования универсальных когнитивных моделей, лежащих в основе пространственных метафор. Модели, репрезентирующие физическое пространство, легко переходят в ментальные пространства, передавая разнообразные абстрактные отношения, что и происходит, в частности, при создании пространственной метафоры. Многочисленные примеры доказывают, что явление метафорического переосмысления пространственных предлогов отнюдь не редко у Шекспира, а, напротив, является отражением его индивидуального мировосприятия, которое в конечном итоге отражается и в неповторимости стиля. Образность и экспрессивность, порождаемые пространственной метафорой, как правило, создают проблемы при переводе, поскольку иной язык накладывает определенные ограничения на буквальное воссоздание авторского образа. В случае с пространственными метафорами замена когнитивной модели (базового образа) не столь существенна по сравнению с полной утратой метафоричности, что значительно снижает экспрессивность в целом. The article discusses the cognitive base of spatial metaphors in the language of W. Shakespeare. Relying on the accumulated experience in the study of categorization, conceptualization and verbalization of space, the author suggests ways of interpreting spatial (orientational) metaphors conveyed by prepositional constructions. Man’s spatial parametrization of the surrounding world, his primary experience in interacting with the environment is regarded as a cognitive base of universal cognitive models which underlie spatial metaphors. Models representing physical space easily pass into mental spaces, conveying various abstract relations, which happens when a spatial metaphor appears. Numerous examples prove that metaphorical use of spatial prepositions is by no means rare in Shakespearean texts. On the contrary, is arises from his individual perception of the world, which ultimately results in the uniqueness of style. Figurativeness and expressiveness generated by spatial metaphor is a challenge in translation, since another language imposes certain restrictions on literal ‘verbal imitation’ of the author's image. As for spatial metaphors, а change of their cognitive model (base image) is a more acceptable loss as compared to the loss of figurativeness, which crucially reduces expressiveness.

The heart’s downward path to happiness: cross-cultural diversity in spatial metaphors of affect

Spatial metaphors of affect display remarkable consistencies across languages in mapping sensorimotor experiences onto emotional states, reflecting a great degree of similarity in how our bodies register affect. At the same time, however, affect is complex and there is more than a single possible mapping from vertical spatial concepts to affective states. Here we consider a previously unreported case of spatial metaphors mapping down onto desirable, and up undesirable emotional experiences in Mlabri, an Austroasiatic language of Thailand and Laos, making a novel contribution to the study of metaphor and Cognitive Linguistics. Using first-hand corpus and elicitation data, we examine the metaphorical expressions: klol jur ‘heart going down’ and klol khɯn ‘heart going up’/klol kɔbɔ jur ‘heart not going down’. Though reflecting a metaphorical mapping opposite to the commonly reported happy is up metaphor, which is said to link to universal bodily correlates of emotion, the Mlabri metaphors are far from idiosyncratic. Rather, they are grounded in the bodily experience of positive low-arousal states, and in that reflect an emic view of ideal affect centered on contentment and tranquility. This underscores the complexity of bodily experience of affect, demonstrating that cultures draw on the available sensorimotor correlates of emotion in distinct ways.