Conventional Metaphors Research Articles

Resolving Figurative Expressions During Reading: The Role of Familiarity, Transparency, and Context

ABSTRACT Native speakers understand familiar idioms (e.g., over the moon) and conventional metaphors (e.g., describing time as a doctor) quickly and easily. In two eye-tracking studies we considered how native speakers are able to make sense of fundamentally unfamiliar figurative expressions. In Experiment 1 compared with literal paraphrases of the same meaning, known idioms had a clear advantage, unknown idioms showed a significant disadvantage, and conventional metaphors showed no difference between figurative and literal versions. In Experiment 2 readers saw known and unknown idioms (or paraphrases) in contexts that either supported the intended meaning or were neutral. Strength of context had minimal effect on reading patterns for either idiom type and had no effect when readers were asked to subsequently identify the meaning. Context may be helpful in terms of sense selection but not when new senses need to be generated, at which point aspects such as transparency become more important.

Gender stereotypes in translation: stylistic perspective

The article focuses on the means of gender stereotype verbalization in the English-Ukrainian literary translation. Within the framework of the study, gender is represented as a social and cultural phenomenon which, on the one hand, is constructed in the course of interaction with the reality, on the other hand, it is spread in time and space through language. Recurrent characteristics which are traditionally regarded as feminine/masculine lead to the emergence of stereotypes associated with a certain gender. The stereotypical perceptions turn into the mechanisms of human behavior regulation which determine actions, words, position in the society to be expected from a man/woman. However, various cultural environments are capable of different gender conceptualization due to discrepancies in the historical experience, even geographical location or dominant religion. Consequently, the translator may face difficulties related to the cleavage between the characteristics forming the stereotype in the interacting cultures, including cases when such features vary in their intensity. The presence of fixed gender perceptions entails the emergence of standardized formula for their verbalization, conventional metaphors, epithets, etc. In a broader sense, every linguistic choice of the author which determines the construction of gender for all the characters is relevant for the translator whose task consists in coherent reproduction of every aspect of their personality. Meanwhile, the manifestations of feminine/masculine characteristics in the representatives of a certain gender, that are considered completely natural for one linguistic and cultural community, can prove unusual or even unacceptable. The stylistic presentation of the text, thus, becomes a powerful instrument allowing the translator to manipulate the original and the subtlest shades of meanings embedded by the author to meet the needs and, to a certain extent, expectations of the target audience, while the translator’s interference remains almost imperceptible. Still, considering all the similarities of the source and target cultures, the translator may produce a more vivid message in the target text or, on the contrary, blur some of the author’s ideas through the stylistic devices he/she employs.

CONCEPTS OF "LOVE" AND "MARRIAGE" IN THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE PICTURE OF THE WORLD

The article is devoted to the analysis of the concepts of "love" and "marriage" originally as manifestations of the social organization of a society that connects individuals with one another, and its implementation in the Ukrainian language picture of the world. The author analyzes these concepts on the material of the works of Lina Kostenko. It is proved that the verbalized concepts of "love" and "marriage" produce the conceptual information contained in the verbal means of expression. It is stated that the means of expression of the above concepts are multilevel linguistic units, such as: separate tokens, terminological conjunctions, conventional metaphors, established linguistic expressions, paremia, linguistic cliches, etc. It has been determined that the culture of love and family relations in the Ukrainian language picture of the world is closely linked to verbal (literary and everyday) expressions. In the speech of love, the law of speech amplification of emotion works: the statement of emotion enhances the emotion itself, and sometimes even creates it. The linguistic representation of love is embodied in the culturally deterministic means of their verbal expression and is the main explicators of the ideas that have formed in Ukrainian culture regarding this feeling. It has been traced that one of the spheres of human activity that is clearly reflected in phraseology is love, marriage, family, family relations. This is why universal concepts include concepts such as love, betrothal, marriage, marriage, family, family relationships, which form a broad semantic field, or a semantic group consisting of smaller phrase-groups according to the name of the concepts.

Levels of Processing and Producing Conventional Metaphors by English Foreign Language Learners in Written Language

Levels of Processing and Producing Conventional Metaphors by English Foreign Language Learners in Written Language

한중 돈 관련 속담에 나타난 은유의 인지적 분석

The use of metaphors requires special abilities and the metaphors seen at the level of rhetoric were seen as related to human recognition in 1980s. The cognitive linguist argued that human thinking itself is metaphysical. Metaphor is closely linked to our lives and the conventional metaphor is something we have not noticed. Through proverbs, we can experience more directly the metaphors used in our daily lives We compared and analyzed the source domain of the metaphor shown in the Korean-Chinese money proverb in this paper. According to the analysis, the conceptualization process commonly used in Korean and Chinese proverbs has [power], [product], [the cause of a disease], and [drug]. The use of such a source of money is a universal phenomenon not only in Korea and China, but also globally. Or, if [organism] was used as the source of money, Chinese proverbs were showing more diverse aspects. We also saw the difference between Korea and China in the subcategories of [organism] and [plant]. In the area of origin of [animal], the case of Korea involved emotional experience, while the case of China was conceptualizing the sensual experience. The source area of [plant] was found only in proverbs. Or even the use of the source area of food was not easy to find in Korea while China used various kinds. If it appears to be [liquid], it is seen a lot in China, while it has not appeared in Korean proverbs. In particular, money, which appears to be oil or alcohol, is also believed to be related to China's food culture. Finally, in the case of money proverbs with [natural] as the source, it can only be found in China. Through the analysis of the source areas used in the Chinese and Korean money proverbs, we can say that we can understand the cultural phenomena of a country. It can be said that the perception of money is the most basic value of the people, which is consistent with the structure of the most basic conceptual metaphor among its ethnic cultures.

Heroes or criminals: discursive representation of cancer patients in health awareness advertisements

This article compares the use of metaphors in breast and lung cancer awareness advertisements in order to examine the positioning and identity construction of the respective cancer patients. A semantic annotation software tool was used to identify the overuse of semantic fields in each corpus of cancer awareness advertisements and multimodal metaphors were identified following the protocols of Bounegru and Forceville’s (2011) article, ‘Metaphors in editorial cartoons representing global financial crisis’, Forceville’s (2009) essay, ‘Non-verbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognitivist framework: Agendas for research’ and Pérez-Sobrino’s (2017) book, Multimodal Metaphor and Metonymy in Advertising. Findings showed that breast cancer awareness advertisements deployed more positive words than did the lung cancer awareness advertisements and they used a wide range of source domains such as WILD ANIMALS and FIGHTERS, showing the creative representation of deeply entrenched conventional metaphors as well as the use of humour and euphemism. On the other hand, lung cancer awareness advertisements were much less metaphorical and mostly sought to persuade people to quit smoking. The metaphorical use of military weapons showed that ‘shockvertising’ was recurrent in lung cancer awareness advertisements. The present study argues that both types of advertisements partially present the facts of breast cancer and lung cancer, and the guilt-loading of smokers in the lung cancer awareness advertisements invisibly transformed the physical threat appeals into social threat appeals.

The role of metaphor in communication and thought

AbstractMetaphor is pervasive in everyday communication. It is known to help people understand complex topics, communicate efficiently, and influence others. In this paper, we provide a review of the literature on the utility of metaphor, describing key findings and controversies while underscoring recent experimental and theoretical advances. We begin with a brief introduction to metaphor and offer a critical assessment of the claim that conventional metaphors in language reflect underlying conceptual representations and processing, a view associated with Lakoff and Johnson's groundbreaking conceptual metaphor theory (CMT). We then discuss recent research that examines whether and how metaphor shapes attitudes and reasoning, outlining some of the cognitive, affective, and social forces that moderate the efficacy of metaphors on decision making. Throughout the paper, we highlight theoretical implications of the research and identify challenges that warrant further investigation in the study of metaphor. In the end, this work paints a complex and dynamic view of metaphor in communication and cognition.

Creativity in Metaphor Interpretation

This paper looks at corpus- and survey-based evidence of innovative interpretative metaphor use that changes the default meaning of well-established figurative constructions. Specifically, we look at interpretation induced changes in the meaning of corporeal metaphors, on the basis of a corpus of British political discourse and a questionnaire survey of more than 1000 respondents from 31 linguistic backgrounds in 10 countries. The corpus-based evidence consists of metaphor-production data that show how situational variation in metaphor use can over time create a semantic-pragmatic drift that changes the dominant meaning of a conventional metaphor expression. The questionnaire survey reveals four distinct models for BODY focused readings (i.e. NATION AS GEOBODY, AS HIERARCHICAL FUNCTIONAL WHOLE, AS PART OF SPEAKER’S BODY, AS PART OF LARGER BODY), plus a further set PERSON-focused readings. The two most frequent BODY-focused interpretations, i.e. NATION AS GEOBODY and NATION AS HIERARCHICAL FUNCTIONAL WHOLE, as well as the PERSON-stereotypes versions show divergent frequency and elaboration patterns across the Chinese- vs. English-L1 respondent groups, which may be linked to specific cultural conceptual and discursive traditions. Both data sets indicate a strong creative element in metaphor interpretation, which accounts for a significant degree of variation in the creation of new metaphorical concepts.

La fluidez conceptual en la interlengua escrita de aprendientes alemanes de español como lengua extranjera

This paper focuses on the written interlanguage of German college students studying Spanish as a Foreign Language in four different levels (A2-C1). In order to observe the evolution of conceptual fluency, a total number of sixty participants wrote an essay about their Spanish studies without previous instruction on the Theory of Conceptual Metaphor (Lakoff/Johnson 1980). The metaphorical density index was measured with special attention paid to the differences and similarities between the German and Spanish semantic conceptual systems and the metaphors used in each stage of learning. The results show that the L1 plays a fundamental role in the typology of metaphors, while quantitative factors such as the metaphorical density index can also vary depending on the target language and the topics of the essays. Therefore, conventional metaphors play a fundamental role in foreign language learning, as the most significant examples in terms of lack of conceptual fluency have been caused by copying linguistic structures from conventional German metaphors into the target language.

The Brain as Treasury and as Aqueduct

In late antique theological texts, metaphors of the brain were useful tools for talking about forms of governance: cosmic, political, and domestic; failed and successful; interior discipline and social control. These metaphors were grounded in a common philosophical analogy between the body and the city, and were also supported by the ancient medical concept of the brain as the source of the sensory and motor nerves. Often the brain was imagined as a monarch or civic official, governing the body from the head as from an acropolis or royal house. This article examines two unconventional metaphors of the brain in the work of the fifth-century Greco-Syrian bishop Theodoret of Cyrrhus—the brain as a treasure within the acropolis, and the brain as a node in an urban aqueduct—both of which adapt the structural metaphor of governance to reflect the changing political and economic circumstances of imperial Christianity. Drawing upon medical theories of the brain, Theodoret expands upon the conventional governance metaphor of brain function to encompass the economic and the spiritual responsibilities of the bishop-administrator. Just as architectural structures (acropolis, aqueduct) contain and distribute valuable resources (treasure, water) within the city, so the brain accumulates and redistributes nourishing substances (marrow, blood, pneuma) within the body; and just as the brain functions as a site for the transformation of material resources (body) into spiritual goods (mind), so the bishop stands as a point of mediation between earthly wealth and the treasures of heaven.

Comprehending Non-literal Language: Effects of Aging and Bilingualism.

A pressing issue that the twenty-first century is facing in many parts of the developed world is a rapidly aging population. Whilst several studies have looked at aging older adults and their language use in terms of vocabulary, syntax and sentence comprehension, few have focused on the comprehension of non-literal language (i.e., pragmatic inference-making) by aging older adults, and even fewer, if any, have explored the effects of bilingualism on pragmatic inferences of non-literal language by aging older bilinguals. Thus, the present study examined the effects of age(ing) and the effects of bilingualism on aging older adults' ability to infer non-literal meaning. Four groups of participants made up of monolingual English-speaking and bilingual English-Tamil speaking young (17–23 years) and older (60–83 years) adults were tested with pragmatic tasks that included non-conventional indirect requests, conversational implicatures, conventional metaphors and novel metaphors for both accuracy and efficiency in terms of response times. While the study did not find any significant difference between monolinguals and bilinguals on pragmatic inferences, there was a significant effect of age on one type of non-literal language tested: conventional metaphors. The effect of age was present only for the monolinguals with aging older monolinguals performing less well than the young monolinguals. Aging older bilingual adults were not affected by age whilst processing conventional metaphors. This suggests a bilingual advantage in pragmatic inferences of conventional metaphors.

On metaphorical views, dynamite, and doodlings

AbstractThis paper offers a systematic, bottom-up, investigation of the role of adjectives as metaphor signals in metaphorical domain constructions (MDCs) such as ‘budgetary anorexia’ and ‘economic crash’ within the framework of Deliberate Metaphor Theory (e.g.,Steen, 2017). To this end, we analyse all MDCs in the VU Amsterdam Metaphor Corpus. Results of our analyses demonstrate that domain adjectives in MDCs do not by definition constitute signals of metaphor, and that not all nouns in MDCs are identified as potentially deliberate metaphors. We identify three different functions of domain adjectives: (1) signal of novel metaphor; (2) signal of conventional metaphor; (3) non-signal. The analyses in this paper provide new insights into both the role of domain adjectives in MDCs, and the position of MDCs as a typical manifestation of potentially deliberate metaphor.

Movable text

During the early adoption of e-books, this unfamiliar digital format was made more palatable through analogy to the printed book. Texts were divided into ‘pages’ that could turn on screen, and e-book repositories were referred to as ‘libraries’. However, as digital texts have increasingly taken on characteristics of digital systems, the metaphor of the printed book has lost currency. Given the limitations of this conventional metaphor for the digital text, I propose an alternative conception, one that is as archaic in origin as the printed-book metaphor, yet surprisingly robust for describing the customizable texts of today’s Academy: the metaphor of movable text. The image derives from German printer Johannes Gutenberg’s 15th-century innovation for the mass production of books, a mechanical system that used paper, ink and the relatively cheap and reusable display of cubed, metal letters that could be arranged and rearranged into words on a tray ready to be pressed into print. This metaphor of book-as-movable text is useful in that it captures how the form of the academic textbook is now entangled with its process, as much as its context. But, how does this metaphor apply to the academic text in particular? If a movable academic book asks to be interpreted, does the mobility of meaning that it creates defy such interpretative engagement? In this article, I argue that when automated texts are effectively scaffolded by cultural critiques, they can support deep research processes. To become more effective, these searches demand focus as much as evaluation and thus drive towards the crafts of collation, synthesis and eventual reconfiguration.

Creative Argumentation: When and Why People Commit the Metaphoric Fallacy.

This article aims to understand when and why people accept fallacious arguments featuring metaphors (metaphoric fallacy) as sound arguments. Two experiments were designed to investigate, respectively, when and why participants fell into the metaphoric fallacy. In the first experiment, participants were provided with a series of syllogisms, presented in natural language, containing in their first premise either a lexically ambiguous, literal middle term or a metaphorical middle term, i.e. the term that “bridges” the first premise with the second premise, and ending with a true, false or plausible conclusion. For each argument they were asked to evaluate whether the conclusion followed from the premises. Results show that the metaphoric fallacy is harder to detect in case of arguments with plausible conclusion with a conventional metaphor rather than a novel metaphor as middle term. The second experiment investigated why participants considered the metaphoric fallacy with plausible conclusion as a strong argument. Results suggest that participants’ belief in the conclusion of the argument, independent from the premises, is a predictor for committing the metaphoric fallacy. We argue that a creative search for alternative reasons justifies participants’ falling into the metaphoric fallacy, especially when the framing effect of a metaphor covertly influences the overall reading of the argument. Thus, far from being a source of irrationality, metaphors might elicit a different style of reasoning in argumentation, forcing participants to find an alternative interpretation of the premises that guarantees the believed conclusion. In this process, conventional metaphors are revitalized and extended through the second premise to the conclusion, thereby entailing an overall metaphorical reading of the argument.

Metaphor Comprehension in Low and High Creative Individuals.

The comprehension of metaphors involves the ability to activate a broader, more flexible set of semantic associations in order to integrate the meanings of the weakly related parts of the metaphor into a meaningful linguistic expression. Previous findings point to a relation between levels of creativity and efficiency in processing metaphoric expressions, as measured by reaction times (RTs) and error rates. Furthermore, recent studies have found that more creative individuals exhibit a relatively more flexible semantic memory structure compared to less creative individuals, which may facilitate their comprehension of novel metaphors. In the present study, lower and higher creative individuals performed a semantic relatedness judgment task on word pairs. These word pairs comprised four types of semantic relations: novel metaphors, conventional metaphors, literal word pairs, and meaningless word pairs. We hypothesized that the two groups will perform similarly in comprehending the literal, unrelated, and the conventional metaphoric word pairs. However, with respect to novel metaphors, we predicted that higher creative individuals will demonstrate better performance compared to lower creative individuals, as indicated by smaller RTs and more accurate responses. Our main finding shows that higher creative individuals were faster in comprehending both types of metaphors, conventional and novel, compared to lower creative individuals. Furthermore, higher creative individuals were significantly more accurate than lower creative individual only in comprehending novel metaphors. The findings are discussed in light of previous findings regarding the relation between metaphor comprehension, semantic memory, and creativity.

Fluency or Similarities? Cognitive Abilities that Contribute to Creative Metaphor Generation

This study focused on the cognitive abilities that contribute to creative metaphor generation. A concept explanation task was used to test conventional and novel (creative) metaphor generation. Conceptual fluency and similarities were measured using the Tel-Aviv Creativity Test (TACT). The main goal was to investigate how fluency of ideas and similarities contribute to creative metaphor generation. Fifty-four children (M = 12.59, SD = 2.05) participated in the study. The findings demonstrated that fluency of ideas contributed to the prediction of creative potential, but not conventional metaphor generation, beyond similarities, cognitive abilities, executive functions, verbal abilities, and age. The results thus show that novel metaphor generation is unique and separate estimate of creative potential, which is reciprocally related to conceptual fluency.

What makes a good metaphor? A cross-cultural study of computer-generated metaphor appreciation

ABSTRACTComputers are now able to automatically generate metaphors, but some automatically generated metaphors are more well received than others. In this article, we showed participants a series of “A is B” type metaphors that were either generated by humans or taken from the Twitter account “MetaphorIsMyBusiness” (@MetaphorMagnet), which is linked to a fully automated metaphor generator. We used these metaphors to assess linguistic factors that drive metaphor appreciation and understanding, including the role of novelty, word frequency, concreteness, and emotional valence of the topic and vehicle terms. We additionally assessed how these metaphors were understood in three languages, including English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese, and whether participants thought they had been generated by a human or a computer. We found that meaningfulness, appreciation, speed in finding meaning, and humanness ratings were reliably correlated with each other in all three languages, which we interpret to indicate a more general property of “metaphor quality.” We furthermore found that in all three languages, conventional metaphors and those that contained an “optimal” (intermediate) degree of novelty were more likely to be perceived to be of higher quality than those that were extremely creative. Further analysis of the English data alone revealed that those metaphors that contained negatively valenced vehicle words and infrequent vehicle terms (in comparison with the topic terms) were more likely to be considered high-quality metaphors. We discuss the implications of these findings for the (improvement of) automatic generation of metaphor by computers, for the persuasive function of metaphor, and for theories of metaphor understanding more generally.

Hemispheric processing in conventional metaphor comprehension: The role of general knowledge

This study explored the relation between general knowledge and the hemispheric processing of metaphoric expressions in college age students. We hypothesized that prior knowledge influences how the hemispheres process metaphors in these individuals. In this study, 97 young (college-aged) adults completed a general knowledge and vocabulary test, and were then divided into high-knowledge/high-vocabulary and low-knowledge/low-vocabulary groups. Next, participants viewed word pairs consisting of conventional metaphors, novel metaphors, word pairs with a literal meaning, and unrelated word pairs. The first word in each pair was presented centrally, and the second was presented to the right visual field-left hemisphere (rvf-LH) or the left visual field-right hemisphere (lvf-RH), and participants indicated whether each pair was a meaningful expression. Accuracy results showed an interaction between general knowledge and visual-field hemisphere. Low-knowledge participants were more accurate for metaphors presented to the rvf-LH than the lvf-RH, whereas high-knowledge participants showed no accuracy differences between the hemispheres. We also found an interaction between vocabulary and visual field-hemisphere for conventional metaphors. Specifically, low-vocabulary participants showed a left-hemisphere accuracy advantage, but high-vocabulary participants showed similar accuracy patterns in both hemispheres. These results suggest that young adult readers who have more general knowledge process conventional metaphors similarly in both hemispheres, whereas young adult readers who have less general knowledge may rely more heavily on left-hemisphere processes during conventional metaphor comprehension.

The Comprehension of Familiar and Novel Metaphoric Meanings in Schizophrenia: A Pilot Study.

Miscomprehension of nonliteral (“figurative”) language like metaphors, proverbs, idioms, and ironic expressions by patients with schizophrenia is a phenomenon mentioned already in historical psychiatric descriptions. However, it was only recently that studies did differentiate between novel and conventional metaphors, a factor that is known to influence the difficulty of comprehension in healthy subjects. Further, familiarity with stimuli is an important factor for comprehension, which was not recommended in utmost previous studies. In this study, 23 patients with DSM IV schizophrenia and 19 healthy control subjects performed a newly-developed German metaphor comprehension test with three types of stimuli: novel metaphors, conventional German metaphors, and meaningless statements. During the test procedure, participants indicated familiarity with the stimulus and then matched the meaning with one out of four given alternatives. Familiarity rankings did not significantly differ between patients and control subjects. However, on descriptive level, there was a tendency for healthy controls to be more familiar with conventional metaphors than schizophrenic patients. Further, comprehension of conventional and novel metaphors differed significantly between the groups, with higher performance in healthy controls. Considering only those metaphors that had been ranked as familiar, patients only revealed significant lower performance opposed to controls regarding novel metaphors, while they did not differ in conventional metaphors. Taken together, the results indicate that patients with schizophrenia might show an altered way of comprehension in novel metaphors, leading to more misunderstandings. However, their previously reported impairments in conventional metaphors might rather be due to a lack of familiarity with the stimuli—making conventional metaphors to novel metaphors in the individual case.

Metaphor as the means of creating the political leader image in the German media discourse

The specification of the metaphorical models as the means of formation of the political leader image in the modern German media discourse, comprises the objective of the research. The metaphor serves as the reflection of the continuous processes and the establishment of the individual global picture, and image construction in particular. The image of a modern political leader is presented as a complex psychosocial phenomenon as well as a linguo-cognitive phenomenon that has occurred due to an impact of a certain culture. In our research, we have analyzed 120 examples of conventional metaphors that have been employed in the formation of the political image. The results confirm that the following conventional metaphorical domains are utilized in order to form the political image: anthropomorphic domain (ORGANISM, DISEASE, AND FAREWELL), artifactual domain, social occurrence domain (THEATER, STRUGGLE), organic domain (NATURAL PHENOMENA). The encountered metaphorical models are represented via the basic model formula X → (Y2) + Y + Y1 as well as the sub-model formula X → (Y2) + (Y + Y1). The majority of metaphorical models are connotatively ambivalent and may be employed in order to form a positive image and a negative one alike. The lion’s share of the analyzed metaphors assembles the associative field containing a positive evaluation of A. Merkel and a negative evaluation of her opponents. The metaphorical transference is unsuccessful in case the receiver fails to identify the donor sphere due to the lack of background knowledge.