ABSTRACT We examine the processing of various conceptual relations between two nominal referents, construed as hyponymy, metonymy, metaphor, and tautology in the copular construction [NP-COP-NP], differing minimally at the predicational NP. While the four arguably share conceptual class-inclusion, they vary in combinatorial meaning transparency, informativity of the literal reading, and logical truthfulness. Metaphor recruits a cross-domain mapping between two concepts, whereas metonymy involves a within-domain part-whole mapping. Tautology manifests a stereotypical token-type relation with pragmatic inference. Results of our self-paced reading experiment showed: 1) an effect of compositional meaning transparency, with faster comprehension for hyponymy denoting explicit class-inclusion; 2) greater cost for metonymy and metaphor at the predicational NP, reflecting the within- and cross-domain mappings; 3) the cost of metonymy persisted longer than metaphor, presumably because comprehenders backtracked to the subject NP to retrieve its metonymic meaning after encountering the predicational NP; and 4) tautology exhibited an initial facilitation at the predicational NP followed by increased cost sentence-finally, likely associated with noun repetition and information integration respectively. The findings reveal divergent processing profiles for distinct conceptual relations construed in the copular construction, with the computation load of the nontransparent metonymy, metaphor, and tautology peaking at different time windows during real-time comprehension.

ABSTRACT Metaphor research is currently undergoing renewed interest in the concrete-abstract continuum. Lexical processing research shows that concrete words like “cat,” “vase,” and “book” are processed more quickly and with clearer mental imagery than abstract words such as “government,” “accident,” and “dream.” This poses some interesting questions about metaphor processing, as metaphors often show a conceptual asymmetry where Topic terms are abstract, and Vehicles are concrete. While this pattern suggests that disparity in this dimension may be an enabling or constraining feature of metaphor interpretation, we contend that concreteness should be viewed instead as a fluid and adaptable dimension of lexical concept interaction. According to Interaction Theory, metaphors have a powerful ability to reshape our perception of concepts, and we seek to investigate how this relates to the concreteness of both the Topic and the Vehicle. Through a qualitative analysis of metaphor appreciation, we examine the cognitive processes that facilitate navigation between abstraction and concretion. We propose that the characteristic adaptability of concepts’ concreteness necessitates an ad hoc model of mental representation in metaphor, moving beyond the traditional fixed models that have long underpinned theories of metaphor.

ABSTRACT Suicide is a major public health concern worldwide that has been tackled from different disciplines, but it is a topic still practically unexplored by cognitive linguistics. The aim of this paper is to analyze the main conceptual metaphors used in the press to talk about suicide and its causes and prevention, and thereby increase the understanding of this topic and how the mass media treats it. The research uses a corpus linguistics methodology and focuses on the Spanish press, analyzing a corpus of 243 news items on suicide published in three of the leading daily newspapers in Spain during the period 2020–2023. The work offers both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the main source domains to metaphorically conceptualize suicide, analyzing their uses and functions. The results show that the current Spanish press not only discusses suicide openly, but also uses metaphorical language favoring the visibility and destigmatizing of suicide, inasmuch the most frequent conceptual metaphors of suicide are used to talk about the taboo surrounding this form of sudden traumatic death. However, the research also detected some metaphors that could have a negative impact and a potential stigmatizing effect, which should therefore be used with caution.

ABSTRACT We examined the contextual factors that may trigger sarcasm in conversations between close friends and colleagues. Experiment 1 provided situations in which a close friend behaved in neutral or non-neutral (silly/annoying) manners. Sixty participants freely responded and rated the level of sarcasm of their responses and their communicative intent. These self-reported ratings were compared to ratings provided by 360 external observers in Experiment 2, who evaluated the same situations and responses. Both self- and other-reported ratings were higher when the preceding context was perceived as non-neutral, and when the intended/perceived intent was to mock the addressee or make clever remarks. Only observers associated higher sarcasm ratings with the intent to criticize. Experiment 3 tested sarcasm-triggering context types in finer granularity and textually manipulated the social relationship between interlocutors. Situations in which the addressee failed to recognize their own flaws, behaved silly, or talked about uninteresting topics triggered stronger sarcasm use than neutral situations. Situations in which the addressee behaved in entitled or demanding manners triggered stronger sarcasm if the speaker found them funny, but weaker sarcasm if they found them annoying. The social relationship between the speaker and the addressee did not affect the frequency of sarcasm use. Taken together, sarcasm was consistently associated with a light level of negativity, which appeared when the context evoked emotional reactions such as silliness or annoyance. Nonetheless, speakers and observers alike evaluated sarcasm as a humorous and bond-enhancing tool of communication in general.

ABSTRACT From the perspective of embodied metaphor, individuals often subconsciously materialize abstract concepts as concrete and perceptible container images, and then build a cognitive bridge to understand abstract concepts by relying on the internal or external orientation attributes of entities located in the container. In order to reveal the potential metaphorical thinking mechanism in the process of human cognition of the concepts of introversion/extroversion personality, this study explores the connection and mapping between the concepts of introversion and extroversion personality and the metaphor inside/outside the container through three experiments. Experiment 1 adopted the Spatial Stroop Paradigm, while Experiments 2 and 3 both adopted the Semantic Priming Paradigm. The results show that, in the Spatial Stroop Paradigm, there was a metaphorical link between the introverted and extroverted personality concepts and the metaphors of the insides and outsides of containers. In the Semantic Priming Paradigm, there was a strong metaphorical interaction between the introverted and extroverted personality concepts and the metaphors of being inside or outside the container. Additionally, the results indicate that there is a metaphorical link between the introverted and extroverted personality concepts and the metaphors of the insides and outsides of containers, and this metaphorical link is bi-directional in the mapping relationship.

ABSTRACT Animal metaphors are pervasive in languages as many aspects of people’s conduct are understood via animal behavior. Such conceptualizations may be negative or even highly offensive, reinforcing hostility and exclusion. This research draws on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and approaches to multimodal metaphors to examine animal metaphors in Internet memes created and circulated by Ukrainian Internet users during the first year after the Russian full-scale invasion (March 2022–March 2023). Previous scholarship suggests that this digital participatory practice serves not only as a coping mechanism but also as a form of sociopolitical critique. Following this idea, the present study analyzes a corpus of 151 Internet memes to investigate how the image of the aggressor is conceptualized through dehumanization and what purposes it has. The findings reveal that animal metaphors are strategically used to construct the image of the aggressor as ignorant, incompetent, despicable, and monstrous, and that the resultant memetic discourse creates a counter-narrative to Russian media propaganda while serving as a form of resistance.

ABSTRACT A set of conceptual metaphors of the mind in Japanese Sign Language (JSL) is explored from the perspectives of universality and cultural specificities, considering the influences of Eastern Asian and Deaf cultures. The image-schematic metaphors, ideas are objects and mind is a container, are common in JSL, similar to other spoken and sign languages (SLs). Conversely, the locations associated with mental activities in JSL are unique to the culture, with meanings, memory, and understanding being located beneath the surface, in the head, and around the chest, respectively. This differs from the structures reported in extant Western studies on SLs. Notably, the abdomen-centering conception of understanding is a cultural-specific feature that is shared by JSL and spoken Japanese. Additionally, the mind metaphors in JSL are not often shared with the ambient hearing culture. Our results reveal that (1) the metaphorical mapping from vision to cognition, as well as the use of visual-spatial representation, are specific to the metaphors in JSL and that (2) an etymological understanding of mental activity based on the experience of deaf people is manifested in the sign meaning, “to learn,” denoted by the action, “to steal the techniques by eyes.”

ABSTRACT Research on identity-based motivation shows that people are motivated to take action to achieve their long-term goals when they perceive a connection between their current identity (i.e. “today me”) and an image of an accomplished identity in the future. Research inspired by Conceptual Metaphor Theory reveals that this connection can be strengthened by framing goal pursuit metaphorically as a journey along a continuous path connecting current and possible future identities. Journey-metaphoric framing has been shown to improve motivation across domains, but no research has tested its potential effectiveness motivating political ambition. To fill this gap, we test whether exposure to journey-metaphoric framing connecting one’s current identity to a possible identity as an elected political officeholder increases women’s political motivation. We randomly assigned college-aged women enrolled in a leadership program to receive either a journey-metaphoric framing or an equivalent literal framing of their current identity and possible future officeholder identity. We measured several indices of motivation to participate in elective political office. We also content-coded the language participants used to describe these two identities. Results point to a potential motivational benefit of a situationally activated journey metaphor, but also highlight the persistent challenge posed by encouraging candidate emergence among women.

ABSTRACT This study investigates the mental representation and processing of the two types of metaphorical senses in Russian polysemous verbs and adjectives using eye-tracking, sensicality judgment, and semantic clustering tasks. The metaphorical senses under study differ in their semantic proximity to the literal sense, with “proximal” metaphors (e.g. “raise prices”) retaining more semantic components, and “distal” metaphors being semantically bleached (e.g. “raise alarm”). Metaphors differed in their mental representations and processing patterns based on semantic proximity and part of speech. In semantic clustering, proximal metaphors were miscategorized with literal senses more often than distal metaphors. Proximal metaphors in adjectives were more often miscategorized with literal senses, while in verbs they were miscategorized with distal metaphors. In sensicality judgment, verbs showed longer reaction times for proximal metaphors, while adjectives demonstrated higher accuracy for distal metaphors compared to literal senses. In eye-tracking, adjectival distal metaphors triggered more regressions on disambiguating nouns than literal senses. Our findings suggest that distal metaphors are stored and processed as distinct, non-compositional units, while proximal metaphors overlap with literal senses and are processed compositionally. Proximal metaphors in adjectives are closer to literal senses, while in verbs they are closer to distal metaphors, explained by different semantic derivation mechanisms.