Choice Of Metaphor Research Articles

Metaphors in the Learning of Science: A discourse focus

AbstractChildren's interpretations of metaphors used in a science text and their teacher's use of explanatory metaphor are analysed and compared to identify key processes in metaphor understanding and to suggest factors that contribute to successful use of metaphor in learning science. The research adopts a Vygotskian socio‐cognitive approach to metaphor in discourse. Participants are children in Years 5 and 6, aged around 10 years, and their teacher, in a UK school. The data include think‐aloud protocols and teacher‐led classroom discourse, analysed for metaphor processing. Sample episodes from the data are used to illustrate how conceptual knowledge is used to interpret metaphor, and how the learning potential of metaphor may be rendered ineffective by interpretation problems or by the choice of metaphor. The mediation of metaphor by a skilled teacher reveals strategies for avoiding such problems and maximising the impact of metaphor on the learning of the formalised concepts of science.

Feminist ethics and the metaphor of AIDS.

This paper looks at a range of metaphors used within HIV/AIDS discussions and research in support of the claim that bioethicists should pay serious attention to metaphors. Metaphors shape the ways we think about problems and the types of solutions we investigate. HIV/AIDS is an especially rich field for the investigation of metaphor, since the struggles for dominance among different metaphorical options has been very evident. In the field of medical research as well as in the area of public policy, different metaphors support different strategies and, therefore, the choice of metaphor has ethical significance. I argue that feminists should engage in these debates since they have an interest in the metaphors selected. They can also learn to be more self-conscious in choosing politically liberating metaphors in other bioethics contexts.

The Square Circle of Margaret Cavendish: the 17th-century conceptualization of mind by means of mathematics

The cognitive theory of metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff and Turner, 1989) is the basis in this article for investigating the significance of the use of mathematical language, and in particular of the metaphor to square the circle in Margaret Cavendish's poem The Circle of the Brain Cannot be Squared. In the article I begin by introducing Margaret Cavendish as the first 17th-century female poet writing on scientific topics. I then explain how mathematics in the 17th century influenced people's view of reality and the extent to which this is mirrored in poetic language. The theory of cognitive metaphor provides the framework for the elucidation of mathematical concepts used to explain 'unknown' realities like mind and emotions and, in particular, of the central metaphor to square the circle in Cavendish's poem. A brief overview of the criteria of Lakoff and colleagues for analysing metaphors shows that the apparently extravagant metaphor to square the circle was simply a novel poetic extension of the conceptual metaphor UNIVERSE IS MATHEMATICS that, like other types of metaphors considered by cognitive linguists, is grounded in everyday experience. Further, Werth's (1994) remarks about the reasons behind the poet's use of particular concepts to explain others help highlight another important aspect at the basis of the production of novel metaphors, namely that of 'poetic choice'. Finally, I elaborate on Werth's remarks by drawing attention to what I term cultural choice, that is, to the influence that common knowledge and beliefs shared by the members of a linguistic community exert on the poet's choice of metaphors. The analysis of the poem shows that the topic and language of the poem, as well as the subtext, that is, the length of lines and the stanza form, depend on metaphoric projections from the domain MATHEMATICS. Through the conceptual metaphor NATURE IS MATHEMATICS, Cavendish explains man's attempt to take control over irrationalia such as fancy and female nature. The impossibility of squaring the circle is used as a proof to demonstrate that nature and fancy cannot be restricted and, at the same time, to give Cavendish a hope of acceptance in the male-dominated world.

A Man Lost in the Gray Zone

The Rudolf Kastner trial was one of the three great scandals that rocked Israeli party politics in the 1950s (the others were the negotiations with Germany for Holocaust reparations and the so-called “Lavon affair”). Although Leora Bilsky describes it as an “almost forgotten trial,” it has not been forgotten by subsequent writers: it makes an important cameo appearance in Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem; it features prominently in Tom Segev's The Seventh Million (1991); Yehuda Bauer's Jews for Sale? (1994) takes pains to refute the charges against Kastner; and it inspired two novels—Amos Elon's Timetable (1980) and Neil Gordon's cerebral thriller The Sacrifice of Isaac (1995). But the legal opinions have never until now attracted the thought or analysis they warrant, and Bilsky deserves gratitude for remedying this omission. With admirable insight and ingenuity, Bilsky focuses on the construction of the legal opinions as a form of literature. Her reading of Judge Halevi's and Justice Agranat's opinions centers on the way in which law is driven by metaphor—in Halevi's case, the metaphor of contract; in Agranat's, the metaphor of administrative decision making. Her article is a major contribution to our understanding of the Kastner case and to the way that, in a situation of intense moral ambiguity, legal analysis can be predetermined by a choice of metaphors.

Laboratories of Democracy? Brandeis, Federalism, and Scientific Management

Although Louis Brandeis is rightly regarded as a champion of federalism, this article suggests that his famous depiction of the American states as “laboratories” of democracy in fact has little to do with federalism and in fad rests on an understanding of public policy inimical to federal diversity. More specifically, it argues that Brandeis's choice of metaphor largely reflects his hope for scientifically based public policy, which in turn reflected the influence of Scientific Management upon his thought. The article concludes that abandoning Brandeis's metaphor would be useful in rethinking the relations among states in the diffusion of innovations.

Metaphor and vocabulary teaching in ESP economics

Metaphors provide insight into particular ways of thinking—both in general terms and in relation to the development of semi-technical registers. In this paper, a case is made for basing vocabulary teaching to ESP economics students on lexis that reflects important underlying metaphors of the subject. These are identified with reference to high frequency lexis in The Economist magazine (as compared with the general magazine section of the Bank of English) and an explanation is offered of their metaphorical basis. Of particular interest is the use of animate metaphors to describe the economy ( growth, depression, etc.) and economic organisations ( parent/sister company, etc.) and inanimate metaphors to describe market movements ( rebounds, slides, etc.). It is proposed that this is because the former are represented as under the control of experts whereas the latter are represented as beyond human control. In the choice of metaphors the economist is able to vary the extent to which predictions and control are presented as feasible.

IT-enabled organizational transformation: a case study of BPR failure at TELECO

This case study describes a business process reengineering (BPR) initiative undertaken by a US telecommunications company (TELECO) in response to imminent survival-threatening competitive pressures in its traditionally monopolistic market. The case study, first, highlights some of the seldom talked-about problems faced during the redesigning of business processes such as: the lack of detailed knowledge about functional areas; hidden agendas of top management; lack of knowledge of (and over-reliance on) computer-based BPR tools; poor choice of metaphors in the organizational language; and the lack of communication. Thereafter, the case study identifies critical problems faced in implementing redesigned processes. These problems include: the difficulty in creating an atmosphere of open communication; pressures against selecting IT vendors on merit; lack of awareness of the lead times associated with IT; uncoordinated implementation of HR and IT strategies; and discontinuities in the leadership. While we hope that the reader will be sensitized to the issues highlighted in the narrative and will individually derive lessons for application in familiar contexts, we nevertheless provide a discussion on three issues that, in our opinion, significantly contributed to BPR “failure” at TELECO.

Conduit or Forum?: Regulatory Metaphors for the Internet

Abstract This essay examines the application of the First Amendment to the Internet in the Communication Decency Act (CDA) cases. It argues that because of case precedent in media related cases, the CDA courts were situated within a well—established conceptual framework that favored particular metaphors and rationales that determined the outcome of the case in the Supreme Court. However, it notes that other metaphorical options were available and even identified in the Supreme Court. According to one Justice, a different choice of metaphors could lead the Court to apply a different lineage of First Amendment cases rather than those traditionally applied to communication media. The essay suggests how a particular shift in the controlling metaphor for the Internet could call forth a different brand of First Amendment analysis, namely, fora analysis. The possibilities of such an analysis are explored along with the ramifications the metaphor shift could have on the global formation and regulation of the Inte...

Mentoring in Advanced Practice Nursing: The Use of Metaphor in Concept Exploration

The concept of mentoring has gained increasing importance in assisting advanced practice nurses to reach professional excellence. Beyond role modeling, mentoring implies an experienced individual taking an active role in the professional and personal development of a less experienced person. A ttributes of the mentor-protigi relationship, with attendant benefits to both, are descr ibed. The concept of mentoring, either in the professional or academic setting, is explored throug h examining the appropriate choice of metaphors, citing toxic exemplars. Metaphorical illustration s are applied to the concept of mentoring as it relates to the nurturing of advanced practice nurs es and the development of the professional discipline.

Towards a critique of cartographical reason

Abstract This paper asks how we find our way in the hitherto unknown. In search of an answer, the author returns to the three Critiques of Immanuel Kant, noting especially their grounding in the geometric mode of (re)presentation and the thingification processes connected therewith. It is argued that Kant's choice of metaphors in effect makes him more of a geographer than of a philosopher. To understand the taken‐for‐granted of thought‐and‐action, the time has therefore come for the writing of a fourth volume entitled A Critique of Cartographical Reason. The focus must there be on the relations between personal pronouns and prepositions, on the one hand, and the powers of tautology, on the other.

Towards a Critique of Cartographical Reason

This paper asks how we find our way in the hitherto unknown. In search of an answer, the author returns to the three Critiques of Immanuel Kant, noting especially their grounding in the geometric mode of (re)presentation and the thingification processes connected therewith. It is argued that Kant's choice of metaphors in effect makes him more of a geographer than of a philosopher. To understand the taken-for-granted of thought-and-action, the time has therefore come for the writing of a fourth volume entitled A Critique of Cartographical Reason. The focus must there be on the relations between personal pronouns and prepositions, on the one hand, and the powers of tautology, on the other.

Mentors, Collaborators, Worlds or Wooden Legs: Some Images of the Role of Computers in Educational Contexts

For most users, including students, the choice of interface metaphors defines the nature, purpose and capabilities of both the computer and its software. In educational contexts the choice of interface metaphors includes consideration of beliefs and theories concerning the nature and purpose of education and the way in which learning takes place. These understandings are modified over time, resulting in changes to the types of metaphors which are felt to be appropriate for educational software. In addition to the choices made deliberately by software designers, most metaphors carry with them a legacy of extraneous understandings or entailments which may not necessarily be in keeping with their intended purposes. This article critically examines a selection of the most common and arguably the most influential of those broader metaphorical conceptions concerning the role of the computer in the classroom which have been responsible for setting the tone of studenth com puter interaction. © IFIP, published by Kluwer Academic Publishers

The Monstrous Personal Chronicles of the Thirties

My epigraph from D.H. Lawrence is partly intended as a nod to my old friend and colleague, Mark Spilka, a major advocate of Lawrence in a time that has grown less sympathetic to him. But it is also meant to introduce my theme, which is the rise, in the period between the two World Wars, of certain narratives-forms of the diary, the journal, and the travelogue (or thinly fictionalized versions of these personal narratives)-to a position of preeminence with, if not domination over, the novel itself. Many of these texts are in fact as vast as Lawrence's enormous mother whales, but my choice of metaphors is motivated by more than size, as I hope to demonstrate later on. However, since we are dealing here with a sub-genre-or quasi-genre-of prose narrative, it may help, at the outset, to make some preliminary distinctions between this kind of text and its closest relatives, the autobiography and the memoir. What I am aiming for is not, in any case, a perfectly closed generic category but a description of certain features of a family resemblance, shared by a set of narrative texts. autobiography is a retrospective narrative. It tells a that has a certain completeness, of which the writer is aware when the writing begins. My monstrous personal are as personal as autobiographies, but they are written closer to the events recounted, before a conclusion is available that would turn such a mere chronicle into a history or story with a definitive ending. memoir resembles these chronicles more closely, in that it, too, lacks a strong narrative structure, but, as its name clearly implies, it is normally based on recollection, with the author looking backward from some distance of age with its implied wisdom, and it attends more to the people and events the writer is recalling than to the writer's own personality. branch of this family of personal narratives that I am attempting to describe consists of diaries and journals rather than memoirs or autobiographies, but diaries that have metamorphosed into something rich and strange, often monstrous. In response to modernism's cultural imperatives-especially the privileging of the artistic genius-these diaries function to establish the author's credentials as a genius or artist, while refusing the responsibility of creating an aesthetic masterpiece. thirties were haunted by the imperative Cyril Connolly expressed so powerfully in the opening sentence of Unquiet Grave (1945): The more books we read, the sooner we perceive that the true function of a writer is to produce a

Courseware development: the next generation

This paper is based on the experiences of TLTP project No 40 (The BITE project). A review of existing models of accounting and management courseware development is documented and it is shown how these are effectively based on the book metaphor and have focused on the automation of teaching rather than addressing the problems of learning. Given that the most common criticism of courseware is that it remains constrained by the book metaphor (“page-turning” software), the role of metaphor in learning is examined and the implications for the design of computer based learning courseware are considered. Developments in computer (interface) technology have provided the opportunity to create effective metaphorical links between users and machines. Thus a framework of six implementable alternatives to the book metaphor (developed for the BITE project) is discussed. The paper concludes with an explanation of the choice of metaphor in the case of BITE and demonstrates its student centred learning approach.

The scientific voice

Tracing the language of science through time and across cultures, Scott Montgomery examines its character, evolution, and cultural origins, and shows the profound influence language has had on scientific thought, discovery, and progress. Drawing on examples from a range of sciences, he shows how the choice of language and metaphors leads to different scientific insights. This process is illustrated through discussions of military metaphors in biomedical writings, a comparison between Japanese and English science, and a fascinating examination of the English translation of Freud's work and how it compares to the original German edition.

Teaching metaphors of student nurses.

This research focused on exploring the metaphors nursing students use to express their experience of university teachers' practice. A social constructivist approach to meaning underlies the process of interpreting student language in this study. The following evolved as major research questions: What are the metaphors students use to describe teaching? How do these metaphors operate? The research concluded that: students readily use metaphors to describe their experiences of teaching within the nursing degree programme; there is a pattern to the choice of metaphors; some of these images function as incremental or constructive metaphors, extending understanding of what it means to teach; others support current understandings and reflect taken-for-granted notions of teaching. Specific metaphors used by students to describe teaching were contextually analysed. A number of them may offer teachers of nursing insight, into their craft. Metaphors such as teacher as umpire, teacher as student, teaching with distance and teaching the big picture may be useful images for teachers to think about to guide their practice.

Unity in Diversity? North Atlantic Evangelical Thought in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Leonard Bacon, minister of the First Congregational Church at New Haven, preaching before the Foreign Evangelical Society in New York in May 1845, found in the Atlantic Ocean a vivid image of an underlying unity which he perceived in the divided evangelical churches that surrounded it. Separated though they were, still influences upon them operated like ‘the tide raised from the bosom of the vast Atlantic when the moon hangs over it in her height, [which] swells into every estuary, and every bay and sound, and every quiet cove and sheltered haven, and is felt far inland where mighty streams rise in their channels and pause upon their journey to the sea’. The choice of metaphor betrayed an aspiration that the North Atlantic itself should become an evangelical lake. Such hopes, Bacon appreciated, would be worse than fruitless if they were driven by a model of Christianity as ‘one and indivisible’. No, the model should be the American, not the French Republic, e pluribus unum, unity in diversity.

Being in Time: Selves and Narrators in Philosophy and Literature (review)

Reviewed by: Being in Time: Selves and Narrators in Philosophy and Literature Ruth Groenhout Being in Time: Selves and Narrators in Philosophy and Literature, by Genevieve Lloyd; 192 pp. New York: Routledge, 1993, $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper. Philosophers have long been telling stories about temporal consciousness. Augustine explained it as an imperfect reflection of the eternal God in whose image persons are made; Kant explained it as the transcendental unity of apperception, assumed in any act of understanding while always just out of range; Nietzsche explained it as eternal recurrence. These issues also appear in literary treatments of the self, particularly those by Proust and Woolf. In this book, Genevieve Lloyd compares a broad range of philosophical discussions to these two writers. [End Page 404] Being in Time argues for several fascinating conclusions, among them a rejection of the claim that modern and premodern philosophy implicitly assumed the existence of a unified subject. Although Proust and Woolf are often held up as paradigmatic of the fragmented self, which also plays a prominent role in Derrida, this is not a postmodern discovery, Lloyd claims; the unified subject has been problematic throughout the Western philosophical tradition. She concludes, nonetheless, that postmodern thought does represent a new departure, at least to the extent that it treats the fragmentation of self not as a problem to be solved, but as a fundamental feature of what it is to be human. Meanwhile, Being in Time also pursues a second theme: the relationship between philosophy and fictional narrative. Drawing on Ricoeur and Aristotle, Lloyd argues that the best way to understand philosophy is to approach it as a story that illuminates and explains the human self by means of metaphor. Literature and philosophy both involve the telling of stories that allow us to make sense of our world and our place in it. Does it follow that literature and philosophy are indistinguishable? They belong to the same family; each offers insight into the human condition, and does so through the medium of myth, story, narrative, or fiction. They are not identical twins, however, since philosophy uses stories and metaphors to draw connections among universals while literature tells its stories about universals by means of particulars. (Compare Hobbes’s State of Nature to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.) For Lloyd, though, it is a mistake to discard the narrative and literary aspects of a philosophical work in an effort to get at what might be considered its real point (namely, deductive arguments). The illuminating power of philosophy lies not in truncated arguments, but rather in the richer narratives, metaphors, and stories that are used to develop and explain them. Her claim for the unique nature of postmodern philosophy may not stand up to scrutiny—from Heraclitus through the skeptics and into the nominalist tradition of the Middle Ages, there has been a strand of Western thought that emphasizes the fragmentary, contingent nature of the self—but Lloyd’s claims for the family resemblance between literature and philosophy should be of interest to students of both subjects, particularly those concerned with the ways in which style, choice of metaphor, and narrative voice are relevant to philosophical study. The book makes an eloquent plea for reading philosophy instead of stripping its arguments of the narrative flesh with which they were originally endowed. Ruth Groenhout Southwest Missouri State University Copyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press

The Metaphorical Logic of (Political) Rape: The New Wor(l)d Order

The 1991 Persian Gulf War dramatically punctuated the importance of metaphor in everyday life and reasoning about politics. Did the Gulf situation more closely resemble Vietnam or World War II? One's choice of metaphor yielded different practical inferences about what the United States and the world community ought to do in response to the Iraqi invasion. Using the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States series, I investigate the metaphors used by former President George Bush to conceptualize the political situation in the Persian Gulf during the prewar period of August 1990 through January 1991. I argue that the analogical reasoning behind the new world order rests on a complex system of metaphors and on Bush's assertion that the expression the rape of Kuwait is literal (nonmetaphorical) language. The practical outcome of accepting Bush's metaphors and his metaphorically projected inferences was the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf.

Repositioning: Center and Margin in Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust

One of first scenes in Julie Dash's Daughters of Dust shows a woman looking through a kaleidoscope given to her by Mr. Snead, a photographer. As Snead explains way instrument works, she delights in changing images. The kaleidoscope is an apt metaphor for Dash's own project in making film. As she told reporter Kevin Thomas, I wanted to take African-American experience and rephrase it in such a way that, whether or not you understood film on first screening, visuals would be so haunting it would break through with a freshness about we already (F15). By twisting kaleidoscope of what we already about African American experience, Dash has created a way of seeing, and reading, that experience. Daughters of Dust gives a portrait of a particular moment in African American history; it also shows by example how that history needs to be constructed, and reconstructed, from an African American perspective. Dash spent 10 years researching Gullah tradition, poring over papers and books in New York City's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, university libraries and Smithsonian in Washington (Smith B35). Yet Daughters of Dust is not a documentary. Rather, it is lyrical and impressionistic, told, as Dash says, in manner of a West African griot, or storyteller, the way an old relative would retell it, not linear but always coming back around. It's all connected, but how you get to information is different. Dash contrasts her storytelling method with that of television and formula films where you know what's going to happen in first five minutes. With 'Daughters of Dust' you can't apply that formula. You're thrust into world of new (qtd. in Rule C17). Dash's approach to narrative is consciously defamiliarizing: I wanted audience to feel as if it was looking at a foreign film - this was very important to me (qtd. in Thomas F15). By twisting audience's kaleidoscope in this manner, Daughters forces us to see a segment of African American history as if for first time. It serves as a concrete example of kaleidoscopic perspective on history articulated by Hayden White, who suggests that we recognize that there is no such thing as a single correct view of any object under study but that there are many correct views, each requiring its own style of representation. This would allow us to entertain seriously those creative distortions offered by minds capable of looking at past with same seriousness as ourselves but with different affective and intellectual orientations. Then we should no longer naively expect that statements about a given epoch or complex of events in past correspond to some preexistent body of raw facts. For we should recognize that constitutes facts themselves is problem that historian, like artist, has tried to solve in choice of metaphor by which he orders his world, past, present, and future. (47) The dominant historical perspective on people such as Gullahs, inhabitants of Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina who are descended from enslaved Africans, has been that they are backward and uncultured, marginal people both figuratively and literally. In his 1949 study Africanisms in Gullah Dialect, Lorenzo Dow Turner quotes some of those denigrating dominant views with respect to Gullah speech patterns, including one by editor of several volumes of Gullah folk tales . . . whose interpretation of dialect has been generally accepted as authoritative, A. E. Gonzales: Slovenly and careless of speech, these Gullahs seized upon peasant English used by some of early settlers and by white servants of wealthier colonists, wrapped their clumsy tongues about it as well as they could, and, enriched with certain expressive African words, it issued through their flat noses and thick lips as so workable a form of speech that it was gradually adopted by other slaves and became in time accepted Negro speech of lower districts of South Carolina and Georgia. …