Despite growing interest in spiritual matters throughout society, definitions and descriptions of spirituality seem incomplete or otherwise unsatisfactory. In this article, the authors consider the possibility that such incompleteness is perhaps necessary and welcomed in addressing spirituality. In particular, they investigate the challenges of using metaphor and metonymic approaches to "languaging" spirituality. By exploring these figures of speech they hope to diversify how nurses articulate deeply personal and perhaps enigmatic human phenomena such as spirituality. Metaphoric language uses everyday structures to help make sense of complex, emotional, and abstract experience. Whereas metaphor creates substitutive relationships between things and provides insights into conceptualizing spirituality, metonymy and metonymic writing establish relationships of contiguity. Whereas metaphor functions to represent and facilitates understanding and feelings about spirituality, metonymy disrupts while opening possibilities of moving beyond binary thinking. Attending to language and its various ontological assumptions opens diverse and potentially more inclusive possibilities.

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Metaphors We Live by

Language and the (Im)possibilities of Articulating Spirituality

/pdf/seeking-the-nature-of-idioms-a-study-in-idiomatic-structure-29730uciea.pdf

Seeking the nature of idioms: a study in idiomatic structure

Only recently, the broad research program of embodied cognition has fuelled a substantial and ongoing body of research at the crossroads of cognitive science and film studies. Two influential theories of embodiment that have received considerable attention among film scholars are: Conceptual Metaphor Theory (originated in the field of cognitive linguistics) and Embodied Simulation Theory (originated in the field of neuroscience). Despite their intimate relationship, both theories have been rarely addressed together in the context of film studies. This article takes on the challenge of combining both perspectives into a unified embodied model for understanding conceptual meaning in cinema. The study is driven by two key assumptions, namely: (1) that meaning in film is metaphorically mapped within our sensory-motor system and (2) that embodied simulation processes in the brain allow for the viewer to infer this meaning from the evidence provided by the film. To clarify both assumptions, the article will present a discussion of the theme of embodiment at three levels of analysis: the conceptual level (how is meaning embodied in the human mind?), the formal level (how is this meaning structured in the visual mode of expression?) and the receptive level (how is the viewer able to infer this meaning on the basis of the evidence provided by the form?). The grounding problem of fictional subjectivity in cinema (that is, how are viewers able to attribute mental states to fictional characters in films?) will be used to test the validity of both claims.

/pdf/cinema-and-the-embodied-mind-metaphor-and-simulation-in-1xuzaen7at.pdf

Cinema and the embodied mind: metaphor and simulation in understanding meaning in films

The purpose of this study is to give a thorough and detailed account and analysis of the semantics of twelve Swedish dimensional adjectives: hog ‘high/tall', lag ‘low', bred ‘broad/wide', smal ‘narrow/thin', vid ‘broad', trang ‘narrow', tjock ‘thick', tunn ‘thin', djup ‘deep', grund ‘narrow', lang ‘long' and kort ‘short'. Focus has been placed on their spatial, non-metaphorical sense. The study was written within the framework of cognitive linguistics, where lexical definitions may be given in terms of prototypical and peripheral uses. Four sources of data have been considered: a corpus, consisting of contemporary fiction, an elicitation test, designed for the purpose, dictionary articles on the pertinent adjectives, and the author's own linguistic intuition as a native speaker. The methodology has involved categorisation of combinations of adjective and noun, based upon three major themes: orientation, function, and shape. In order to determine prototypical uses, precedence has been given to the outcome of the elicitation test over the corpus search. For both sources, frequency has played an important part. The ranking of senses as stated in the dictionary articles has also been considered. The results indicate that the dimensional adjectives differ quite markedly from each other, as opposed to a structural view where the adjectives traditionally have been regarded as forming a neat patchwork. Adjectives overlap each other for some uses (hogt gras ‘high grass', langt gras ‘long grass' and even djupt gras ‘deep grass'), while there are also situations in which no dimensional adjective can describe an object. Furthermore, adjectives forming pairs, such as djup – grund ‘deep – shallow', do not exhibit full antonymy, despite the fact that dimensional adjectives are traditionally cited as examples par excellence concerning antonymy.

/pdf/swedish-dimensional-adjectives-13ebaipf1r.pdf

Metaphors We Live by

Citations

Language and the (Im)possibilities of Articulating Spirituality

Seeking the nature of idioms: a study in idiomatic structure

Cinema and the embodied mind: metaphor and simulation in understanding meaning in films

Swedish Dimensional Adjectives

Complex adaptive systems, attractors, and patching: a complex systems science analysis of organizational change

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