Six Steps from Visual Metaphors to Knowledge Transfer

Ekaterina Isaeva,Svetlana Mishlanova

doi:10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s5p228

Ekaterina Isaeva, Svetlana Mishlanova

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s5p228

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Abstract

The paper presents evidence from research into the problem of knowledge transfer modalities and cognitive powers of the visual metaphor. We aim at developing a reliable method for visual metaphors identification. For this purpose we have employed up-to-date methods for linguistic metaphor identification and conceptual metaphors modelling, which have been modified in compliance with the data specifics. The Procedure has been applied for the extraction of knowledge, transferred via visual metaphors in the World War II propaganda posters by KUKRYNIKSI. The results obtained include visual metaphors and conceptual metaphor models simulated in the process of the six-step visual metaphor analysis, which provide deeper understanding and profound interpretation of the artists’ intention; modification and validation of the methods for visual metaphors identification. In conclusion we discuss the perspectives of using the methods for other types of data. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s5p228

Highlights

Anthropocentrism in modern science encouraged linguistics to go beyond the study of phonemes, morpheme, syntax and other discrete language units
Steen (2007), that allows identifying metaphor related words and context related conceptual metaphors in text into a procedure convenient for visual metaphor interpretation. Whereas interpretation of both linguistic and visual metaphors are triggered by the same incongruity perception mechanism, we employ the method for linguistic metaphor identification (MIPVU) with minimal changes: I
‘Metaphor focus identification’, involves the identification of a metaphorical visual element used non-literally in the picture – ‘The focus activates a concept which cannot be literally applied to the referents in the world evoked by the text.’(Steen, 2009: 197) Identification of metaphor focus is carried out in the current research with the exploitation of modified MIPVU

Summary

Introduction

Anthropocentrism in modern science encouraged linguistics to go beyond the study of phonemes, morpheme, syntax and other discrete language units. According to Kibrik (2010) the attempts to separate language from communication, thinking, and behaviour are low constructive, non-natural, determined only by logic of scientific development but not the way things are. Due to this modern science turns its attention to various external stimuli of communication, namely to its multimodal constituent. The linguistic term ‘multimodality’ is adopted from psychology, neurophysiology, and informatics, which exploit the notion ‘modality’ defined as the type of external stimulus, perceived by sense organs, visual and acoustic organs Such linguistic issues as prosody units, namely pauses, accents, tones, tempo, length, reduction and others are considered topical. For instance a multimedia audiovisual subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus with gesture tagging has been developed (http://www.ruscorpora.ru/en/ index.html)

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Results

Conclusion