Showing papers in "Metaphor and Symbol in 2014"
TL;DR: The authors examine transcripts of a contentious and ultimately unsuccessful public meeting between police officials and members of the African American community following the fatal shooting of a young African American woman by police officers, and show how contradictory framing between public officials and the community as well as within each group may have contributed to unintended and asymmetrical ironies, and ultimately to the failure of the meeting to achieve the objectives of either group.
Abstract: The concept of framing has been widely used to help understand how aspects of messages can shape people’s expectations and consequently influence the outcomes of communicative interactions. In this study we examine transcripts of a contentious and ultimately unsuccessful public meeting between police officials and members of the African American community following the fatal shooting of a young African American woman by police officers. We show how contradictory framing between public officials and members of the community as well as within each group may have contributed to unintended and asymmetrical ironies, and ultimately to the failure of the meeting to achieve the objectives of either group. We suggest steps that might lead to better outcomes in similar situations in the future.
50 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue for a new orientation to metaphor and metaphoricity based on enactive cognition and distributed language and cognition, and propose an approach to metaphor as a multi-body, multi-party, and multi-timescale phenomenon.
Abstract: A new concept of cognition also implies a novel approach to the study of metaphor. This insight is the starting point of this article presenting two innovations to comprehending and analyzing metaphor, one theoretical and one in terms of methodology. On a theoretical level we argue for a new orientation to metaphor and metaphoricity based on enactive cognition and distributed language and cognition. In recent years enactive and distributed cognition have been developing a new concept of cognition as an inter-bodily and ecologically afforded achievement, and in light of this theoretical development we propose an approach to metaphor as a multi-body, multi-party, and multi-timescale phenomenon. On a methodological level we demonstrate a new way of analyzing metaphoricity in multimodal social interaction based on in-depth video analyses of two real life examples in which we introduce metaphorical identification criteria focusing on doubleness in meaning, affordances for co-action, co-ordination, and co-exper...
43 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that these metaphors help in creating fear and outline how cinematic manifestations of metaphor elaborate and extend metaphorical concepts and ultimately may have a formative role in keeping metaphors alive within a culture.
Abstract: Horror movies consistently reflect metaphorical associations between verticality and affect, as well as between brightness and affect. For example, bad events happen when movie characters are going downwards, or when lights go off. Monsters and villains emerge from below and from the darkness. And protagonists get lost and stuck in dark underground caves, dungeons, tunnels, mines, bunkers or sewers. Even movies that are primarily set above ground or in bright light have the most suspenseful scenes happening beneath the ground and in the dark. An analysis of several horror movies highlights the striking consistency with which the two metaphors “EVIL IS DOWN” and “EVIL IS DARK” are used within this genre. I will argue that these metaphors help in creating fear. Moreover, I will outline how cinematic manifestations of metaphor elaborate and extend metaphorical concepts and ultimately may have a formative role in keeping metaphors alive within a culture.
39 citations
TL;DR: This article investigated the role of cultural artifacts, such as calendars and clocks, in the interpretation of metaphorical expressions about time, and found that people automatically access and use spatial repartitioning.
Abstract: Across cultures, people employ space to construct representations of time. English exhibits two deictic space–time metaphors: the “moving ego” metaphor conceptualizes the ego as moving forward through time and the “moving time” metaphor conceptualizes time as moving forward towards the ego. Earlier research investigating the psychological reality of these metaphors has shown that engaging in certain types of spatial-motion thinking may influence how people reason about events in time. More recently, research has shown that people’s interactions with cultural artifacts may also influence their representations of time. Extending research on space–time mappings in new directions, three experiments investigated the role of cultural artifacts, namely calendars and clocks, in the interpretation of metaphorical expressions about time. Taken together, the results provide initial evidence that, in their interpretation of ambiguous metaphorical expressions about time, people automatically access and use spatial rep...
33 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of culture in the metaphorical/metonymic conceptualizations of fear, a primary emotion, in two languages (Akan (a West African, Kwa language) and English) is examined.
Abstract: This article examines the role of culture in the metaphorical/metonymic conceptualizations of fear, a primary emotion, in two languages—Akan (a West African, Kwa language) and English. The article adopts the general framework of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) to compare and contrast the differences and/or similarities in the conceptualizations as well as the language-specific construals or elaborations of shared conceptual metaphors of fear in the two languages. The analysis of the language-specific realizations of the shared metaphorical/metonymic conceptualizations of the emotion concept reveals both similarities and differences in the two languages, showing support for the cultural embodied cognition thesis, namely, the similarities in the conceptualization of emotions across cultures may be explained in terms of universal embodied cognition from which general metaphorical principles derive. However, the differences in language-specific elaborations may be explained in terms of cultural filtering of ...
28 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the concept of cognitive spacetime is introduced, which allows us to go beyond the space-time dichotomy that is commonly employed in psychology and cognitive science and allow us to explore the notion of time-space in the cognitive sciences.
Abstract: This article introduces the theory of cognitive spacetime. This account allows us to go beyond the space–time dichotomy that is commonly employed in psychology and cognitive science. Linguistic analysis and experimental review is provided to support the notion that what is commonly referred to as spatial cognition (or mental space) in the cognitive sciences always contains time, and that what is commonly referred to as temporal cognition (or mental time) always contains space. For “spatial cognition” the term object-spatiotemporal cognition (or object spacetime) and for “temporal cognition” the term event-spatiotemporal cognition (or event spacetime) is introduced. In order to exemplify the virtue of the new spacetime account (with its two subdomains, object spacetime and event spacetime) with a specific example, it is investigated how this new notion can substantially refine our understanding of space–time conceptual metaphor. A new conceptual-metaphor spacetime typology for cognitive processing underlyi...
22 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a new paradigm that uses auditory stimuli and vocal responses to address the space-time associations has been introduced, where participants made temporal judgments about deictic or sequential relationships presented auditorily along a body-centered sagittal or transversal axis.
Abstract: While we often talk about time using spatial terms, experimental investigation of space-time associations has focused primarily on the space in front of the participant. This has had two consequences: the disregard of the space behind the participant (exploited in language and gesture) and the creation of potential task demands produced by spatialized manual button-presses. We introduce and test a new paradigm that uses auditory stimuli and vocal responses to address these issues. Participants made temporal judgments about deictic or sequential relationships presented auditorily along a body-centered sagittal or transversal axis. Results involving the transversal axis replicated previous work while sagittal axis results were surprising. Deictic judgments did not use the sagittal axis but sequential judgments did, in a previously undocumented way. Participants associated earlier judgments with the space in front of them and later judgments with the space behind them. These findings, using a new approach, p...
20 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a corpus-based evidence of the ubiquitous presence of metaphors in verbal discourse about classical music and the embodied basis of metaphors for musical motion was provided, and the authors analyzed authentic examples extracted from a 5,000-word corpus of texts taken from peer-reviewed music academic journals.
Abstract: This article aims to provide a corpus-based evidence of (a) the ubiquitous presence of metaphors in verbal discourse about classical music and (b) the embodied basis of metaphors for musical motion. We analyzed authentic examples extracted from a 5,000-word corpus of texts taken from peer-reviewed music academic journals. We applied a systematic method to identify metaphor-related words (Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam [MIPVU]; Steen, Dorst, Herrmann, Kaal, Krennmayer, & Pasma, 2010) and to label conceptual metaphors (Babarczy, Bencze, Fekele, & Simon, 2010) that reduces the analyst’s bias in the identification of metaphors. Our main findings are: (a) the presence of metaphors in academic discourse on music (29%) is significantly higher than in academic discourse in general (19%; Steen, Dorst, Herrmann, Kaal, Krennmayer, & Pasma, 2010); (b) most of the identified metaphors to describe musical motion are correlational metaphors (Grady, 1999); and (c) metaphors for musical mot...
17 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the concept of conceptual metaphor theory is explored in a domain of long-standing archaeological interest: settlement structure, and the metaphor "SOCIAL DISTANCE IS PHYSICAL distance" is found in hunter-gatherer campsites worldwide.
Abstract: Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) has been little used by archaeologists. A key barrier is that current metaphor analysis relies on linguistic evidence, a resource that archaeologists rarely have. Methods for interpreting entirely “material metaphors” have yet to develop. This article explores CMT in a domain of long-standing archaeological interest: settlement structure. Anthropologists have long recognized that hunter-gatherers place their dwellings close to those they are close to socially, usually their kin. Archaeologists have assumed the same holds true for prehistory—although without direct evidence. This article explains why people consistently associate with their kin this way, and how the metaphor, “SOCIAL DISTANCE IS PHYSICAL DISTANCE,” structures hunter-gatherer campsites worldwide. Archaeologists can infer the existence of this metaphor in the archaeological record without linguistic support. Furthermore, they can assume it exists in all human societies for as long as human brains have been wi...
17 citations
TL;DR: Investigation of the effect of the expertise level of the designer and different types of intention on metaphor depth indicated that having a pragmatic intention or being a novice designer led to thegeneration of surface metaphors, whereas having experiential intentions or being an expert facilitated the generation of deeper metaphors.
Abstract: In the product-design domain, metaphors are used as a means of communication between designers and users. A designer generates a metaphor by deciding on a quality of a target to highlight and selecting a corresponding source that conveys this quality; the user interprets the designer’s intentions via the end product. The depth of the generated metaphor can be assessed by the extent to which the highlighted quality is salient for the target: Metaphors focusing on a salient quality of the target are termed “surface” metaphors, whereas those focusing on a non-salient quality are called “deep” metaphors. In this article, we investigated both the effect of the expertise level of the designer (i.e., novice or expert) and different types of intention (i.e., pragmatic or experiential) on metaphor depth, through a study in which groups of expert and novice designers were asked to generate metaphors and external judges evaluated the depth of the metaphors created. Results indicated that having a pragmatic intention...
14 citations
TL;DR: Findings support the conclusion that a simulation system might affect to a greater extent comprehensive processing of information based on deduction and interpretation than shallow processing based on information explicitly provided in the text.
Abstract: Recent findings indicate that comprehension of sentences describing metaphorical abstract concepts arises from simulation of motor experience of the described event. Two experiments investigated whether action simulation influences “offline” comprehension at a more global discourse level. Participants read a text describing a protagonist making metaphorical forward movements while their body movement (Experiment 1) and body posture (Experiment 2) were manipulated to be either prepared or not prepared for processing of action-congruent information. “Offline” explicit and implicit processing of discourse were measured on accuracy to comprehension questions and the time it took participants to recognize words from discourse as well as judge sentences as correct or incorrect with respect to the content of text. Results revealed that action simulation affected recognition (Experiments 1 and 2) and judgment times (Experiment 1) regarding explicit comprehension measures, and accuracy and judgment times regarding...
TL;DR: The authors applied signal detection measures to test the hypothesis that activating abstract concepts with strong spatial metaphors (e.g., God is related to up and right, Devil is related with down and left) would orient spatial attention to compatible locations.
Abstract: The present study applied signal detection measures to test the hypothesis that activating abstract concepts with strong spatial metaphors (e.g., God is related to up and right, Devil is related to down and left) would orient spatial attention to compatible locations. In Experiment 1, participants performed a perceptual-discrimination task after judging the meaning of a word that varied in its religious meaning (God-related, Devil-related, or religiously neutral). Perceptual discrimination was better in the up-right quadrant when primed by God-related words. In contrast, enhanced perceptual discrimination was observed in the down-left quadrant when primed by Devil-related words. These metaphor-attention effects were abolished in Experiment 2, when only perceptual analyses of religious words were required in a font-type judgment task. Taken together, these findings support the attentional capture effect of conceptual metaphors and the necessity of semantic encoding of conceptual representations.
TL;DR: This article investigated the metaphorical mappings originating from the same source domain (EATING) onto various target domains in two nonrelated languages, namely Afrikaans (a Germanic language) and Northern Sotho (a Bantu language) gives rise to metaphorical expressions in these two languages.
Abstract: The abundant and systematic presence of metaphor in language has in particular been explored by departing from the embodied nature of many metaphors. In the current research we investigate the manner in which the concept EATING in two nonrelated languages, namely Afrikaans (a Germanic language) and Northern Sotho (a Bantu language) gives rise to metaphorical expressions in these two languages. The two notions of cultural model and metaphor form the cornerstones of our research. The basic question guiding our research is whether the metaphorical mappings originating from the same source domain (EATING) onto various target domains are the same in the two languages and secondly, whether there is any evidence that differences—if any—are culturally motivated.Our study is corpus-based. Lexical items belonging to the source domain of eating were used as search nodes in our corpus search. Our analysis indicates that the metaphorical source-domain–target-domain mappings in the two languages show a large amount of ...
TL;DR: In this paper, a cross-linguistic/cultural study of verbal metaphor compares responses to terrorism in the UK (N = 96) and to urban violence in Brazil (N= 11) and focus groups discussed how violence changes perceptions of risk, decisions of daily life, and attitudes to others.
Abstract: A cross-linguistic/cultural study of verbal metaphor compares responses to terrorism in the UK (N = 96) and to urban violence in Brazil (N = 11). Focus groups discussed how violence changes perceptions of risk, decisions of daily life, and attitudes to others. Metaphor vehicles were identified in transcribed data, then grouped together semantically; 15 vehicle groupings were used with similar frequencies, 16 groupings more in UK data, 14 more in Brazil data. Systematic and framing metaphors were found inside vehicle groupings. A small set of frequent verbal metaphors work as predicted by conceptual metaphor theory. Other verbal metaphor vehicles work much more specifically, as posited by discourse dynamics theory, metaphorizing contextually distinct aspects of living with violence. Major differences were found in responses to violence: UK participants demonstrate feelings of powerlessness and lack of agency through metaphor vehicles relating to Games of Chance, the Concealed nature of terrorist activity, ...
TL;DR: This article analyzed metaphors in Taiwanese oracular poetry, known as tshiam-si, an Eastern genre written in Chinese and used in many temples in Taiwan and found that the conceptual, sociocultural, and pragmatic aspects of these metaphors fit well with some aspects of real-life Tshiamsi interpretations.
Abstract: This study analyzes metaphors in Taiwanese oracular poetry, known as tshiam-si, an Eastern genre written in Chinese and used in many temples in Taiwan. The genre consists of a set of poems representing a myriad of potential divine messages for problem-stricken individuals wanting to seek help from the Divine in the folk religious context. Collected from on-the-spot tshiam-si interpretations conducted in two temples in Taiwan, the data comprised five cases of tshiam-si interpretations. Building on several recent studies that advocate complementary perspectives on metaphor, this article demonstrates how explanations of tshiam-si interpretations benefit from cognitive linguistic and relevance theoretic approaches to metaphors, and how the complementary approaches fit in well with some aspects of real-life tshiam-si interpretations. All in all, by attending to the conceptual, the sociocultural, and the pragmatic of tshiam-si metaphors, this study explores the dynamic coupling of metaphorical cognition and met...
TL;DR: This article examined the role of a noun's concreteness in determining the order of nouns within literal and metaphorical conjunction constructions and found that concretness plays an important role in recalling word order in both literal and metaphorical sentences.
Abstract: The present study examines the role of a noun’s concreteness in determining the order of nouns within literal and metaphorical conjunction constructions. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, 45 participants were asked to recall sentences with canonic and non-canonic order. In Experiment 2, 41 participants performed a lexical decision task to the final word of a canonic or non-canonic sentence. The results show that concreteness plays an important role in recalling word order in both literal and metaphorical sentences. In addition, canonic metaphorical sentences were processed faster than were non-canonic metaphorical sentences. Our findings suggest that concreteness affects element order in conjunction constructions but that the effect of concreteness is more pronounced in metaphorical phrases. These findings are discussed in the context of the class inclusion framework (Glucksberg & Keysar, 1990).
TL;DR: In this article, the noun phrases "spiritual wealth" and "blood-stained wealth" are less similar to each other than they seem to be at first sight, and it is shown that these noun phrases are different from each other.
Abstract: Why are the noun phrases “spiritual wealth” and “blood-stained wealth” less similar to each other than they seem to be at first sight? Karen Sullivan answers this question and many others in her bo...
TL;DR: It has long been noted that clients in psychotherapy demonstrate a marked propensity to use figurative language in order to express their feelings as discussed by the authors, and in recognition of this observation, psychotherapi...
Abstract: It has long been noted that clients in psychotherapy demonstrate a marked propensity to use figurative language in order to express their feelings. In recognition of this observation, psychotherapi...
TL;DR: The fingers fly over the keyboard while I just think of the idea I want to convey, how I drive home without even noticing the passing intersections and turns, how rising the eyes to the sky and
Abstract: How the fingers fly over the keyboard while I just think of the idea I want to convey, how I drive home without even noticing the passing intersections and turns, how rising the eyes to the sky and
TL;DR: In this article, a continuation of Richard Trim's earlier investigation of the historical evolution of figurative language (Trim, 2007) is presented, which is a compelling and informative exploration of how conceptual...
Abstract: This book is a continuation of Richard Trim's earlier investigation of the historical evolution of figurative language (Trim, 2007). It is a compelling and informative exploration of how conceptual...
TL;DR: The authors presents fascinating insights into the progress of research in the emerging field of applied metaphor studies with a broadly cognitive orientation, and provides a good overview of the application of metaphor studies in the literature.
Abstract: This volume presents fascinating insights into the progress of research in the emerging field of what could be called “applied” metaphor studies with a broadly cognitive orientation Its title link
TL;DR: In this article, the Metaphor in discourse: Linguistic forms, conceptual structures, and cognitive representations, is discussed in the context of the METAPHOR Lab at VU University.
Abstract: “Metaphor in discourse: Linguistic forms, conceptual structures, and cognitive representations,” one of the current projects of the Metaphor Lab team headed by Gerald J. Steen at VU University Amst...