Creative Metaphors Research Articles

Metaphor creation: a measure of creativity or intelligence?

The goal of the present study was to verify whether the “Metaphor Creation Test” would really be a measure with unique characteristics of creativity, or a different way of evaluating constructs already known as intelligence. Two differentiated groups were considered: group 1 was comprised by 90 late course students, and group 2 included 73 undergraduate students from Architecture and Urbanism courses. The results showed lower correlation between metaphors production and abstract reasoning (

Creación de metáforas: ¿Una medida de creatividad o inteligencia?

El objetivo del presente estudio fue comprobar si el "Test de creación de metáforas" sería realmente una medida con características únicas de la creatividad, o una manera diferente de evaluar constructos ya conocidos como la inteligencia. Se consideraron dos grupos diferenciados: el grupo 1 estaba formado por 90 estudiantes mayores en un programa de educación de adultos, y el grupo 2 incluyó a 73 estudiantes universitarios de las titulaciones de Arquitectura y Urbanismo. Los resultados mostraron correlaciones más bajas entre la producción de metáforas y el razonamiento abstracto (r =. 31) en comparación con la prueba de razonamiento verbal (r =.48). Las correlaciones entre los constructos concuerdan con las ya obtenidas en otros estudios, es decir, la inteligencia y la creatividad están relacionadas, aunque no con una intensidad, tal como, para afirmar que son el mismo constructo, por consiguiente, son constructos diferentes pero relacionados entre sí.

Sociology and the Mix Tape: A Metaphor of Creativity

Creative endeavors often resemble one another. This paper explores similarities between sociology and art based on the use of conventions and creativity. More specifically, by comparing the construction of musical mix tapes, the author draws parallels between creating sociology and mix tapes. Looking at the process of how a mix tape is created using other artists’ songs and music for a specified purpose illuminates sociology and our roles as sociologists in a new light that leaves open new possibilities.

Metaphor, creativity, and discourse

On the "standard" view of conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Kövecses 2002), metaphorical creativity arises from the cognitive processes of extending, elaboration, questioning, and combining conceptual content in the source domain (Lakoff and Turner 1989). I will propose that such cases constitute only a part of metaphorical creativity. An equally important and common set of cases is comprised by what I call "context-induced" metaphors. I will discuss five types of these: metaphors induced by (1) the immediate linguistic context itself, (2) what we know about the major entities participating in the discourse, (3) the physical setting, (4) the social setting, and (5) the immediate cultural context. Such metaphors have not been systematically investigated so far, though they seem to form a large part of our metaphorical creativity.

From Viruses to Russian Roulette to Dance: A Rhetorical Critique and Creation of Genetic Metaphors

This article critiques and creates metaphoric genetic rhetoric by examining metaphors for genes used by representatives of the lay American public. We assess these metaphors with a new rhetorical orientation that we developed by building onto work by Robert Ivie and social scientific qualitative studies of audiences. Specifically, our analysis reveals three themes of genetic metaphors, with the first two appearing most frequently: (1) genes as a disease or problem, (2) genes as fire or bomb, and (3) genes as gambling. We not only discuss the problems and untapped potential of these metaphors, but also we suggest metaphorically understanding genes interacting with the environment as a dance or a band. This article has implications for rhetorical criticism, science studies, and public health.

Using Winnie the Pooh Characters to Illustrate the Transactional Analysis Ego States

Utilizing creative techniques within the counseling session makes the content come alive for both counselor and client. When combined with a solid theoretical foundation, creative metaphors provide a powerful tool for empowering clients and helping them sustain change. This article describes a creative way to use the Winnie the Pooh characters to illustrate the Transactional Analysis ego states. Case examples are included.

Cognitive Theory, Conscience, and Law

The claim of conscience is one that relies on a norm, some ultimate sense of rightness that is not reducible to mere social norm or social construction. Is it still possible, however, for us responsibly to appeal to a sense of conscience when cognitive theory - the science of the brain and mind - describes human consciousness as a function of our biology? May we retain, then, a notion of conscience as an appeal to some transcendent value that is not simply the product of our physical constitution? In this Article, I defend the viability of a notion of conscience, not through avoidance of the insights of cognitive theory but through a demonstration of the space that this theory leaves open for conscience on the basis of cognitive science's own criteria. In my presentation of cognitive theory, I concentrate on its portrayal of human categorization. Cognitive theory demonstrates the reliance of categorization - including legal categorization - on the structuring of the human mind and brain. The more general insight is that we humans have no direct access to reality. Our understanding of reality, whatever it is, is mediated through our structured conceptual systems in the mind. My reservations about cognitive theory turn on whether human and legal categorization lead to the degree of predictability it contends they do. I do not deny that reasoning is structured but maintain that this structuring permits more play than cognitive theory argues. At the heart of my criticism lies an objection that cognitive theory permits an insufficient role for creative metaphor. Creative metaphor is true to cognitive theory in that it operates throughout human categorization, not just in poetry. Contrary to the claims of cognitive theory, however, creative metaphor does not simply build on existing categorization, it also disrupts and transforms categorization. This space for creative metaphor is located outside existing conceptual structures and provides an opening for an appeal to values and norms that, precisely, transcend existing conceptual structures. This is the space for conscience.

Abstraction as a basis for the computational interpretation of creative cross-modal metaphor

Various approaches to computational metaphor interpretation are based on pre-existing similarities between source and target domains and/or are based on metaphors already observed to be prevalent in the language. This paper addresses similarity-creating cross-modal metaphoric expressions. It is shown how the “abstract concept as object” (or reification) metaphor plays a central role in a large class of metaphoric extensions. The described approach depends on the imposition of abstract ontological components, which represent source concepts, onto target concepts. The challenge of such a system is to represent both denotative and connotative components which are extensible, together with a framework of general domains between which such extensions can conceivably occur. An existing ontology of this kind, consistent with some mathematic concepts and widely held linguistic notions, is outlined. It is suggested that the use of such an abstract representation system is well adapted to the interpretation of both conventional and unconventional metaphor that is similarity-creating.

Reflections on zero and zero‐centered spirituality in organizations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to invite managers and practitioners to reflect on the meaning and implications of the concept of zero for individual and organizational spiritual growth.Design/methodology/approachBuilding on spirituality and complexity literatures, this paper stimulates non‐traditional thinking in organizational change and leadership. The paper uses the concept of zero as a creative metaphor for organizational development.FindingsThe paper introduces a systemic, unified, multidimensional, holistic, complex, chaotic and dynamic paradigm for organizations based on spirituality: paradigm zero. Zero represents paradox, transcendence, interconnectedness, balance, modesty, creativity, inspiration, and the essence and mystery of human existence.Practical implicationsThis paper invites managers to consider a futurist perspective called zero‐centered thinking that enables creativity and reflection in the middle of complexity.Originality/valueThis paper builds on cutting edge spirituality and complexity concepts to enable new thinking for twenty‐first century managers and professionals. Zero philosophy provides organizations a new trans‐disciplinary paradigm based on spirituality, complexity, chaos, systems sciences, quantum physics, emergence, and Sufism.

Similarity based and knowledge creating metaphors - a didactic framework for informing design

Metaphors are pervasive in language and thought. Metaphors can imply a change in knowledge and thereby create insight. The concept of metaphors has been widely used in research on design and learning. For that reason, I wish to bring attention to a distinction between two ways of using metaphors: A similarity based use of metaphors and a similarity creating use. In addressing the metaphorical mechanism from these two angles, I argue that the similarity based use of metaphor is well suited for practical design purposes in connection to the development of course design. On the other hand, when occupied with methodological issues concerning didactic design, we, as designers, have to be avant-garde. To help us behave as front-runners, we need tools for reflection about our creative practice. Therefore, I argue that we might turn to the use of metaphors in a similarity creating manner, since this use of metaphor can facilitate the creative exploration of new ideas by which we gain insight into the unique qualities of virtual learning cultures and environments. In this setting, the similarity creating potential of the metaphor is brought into focus as a useful mechanism for reflection about design. By means of a similarity based use of metaphors we can highlight certain features already dominant in a given source area in order to carry over a familiar understanding of a new environment. Making the unfamiliar familiar enables us to design a platform supportive of a given practice of learning, since a similarity based use of metaphor generates a conceptual fit between different areas. By introducing a similarity based use of metaphors in design we are able to establish a platform that reflects and supports a given didactic practice. Different metaphors points to different ways of conceptualizing a situation and bring about different ways of acting. However, at the same time, we have to be careful in choosing metaphors in view of the fact that they also narrow down our perspective. The metaphorically based ability of highlighting certain aspects of a situation naturally results in constraining items deemed irrelevant in a given context. Thus, bearing the similarity based use of metaphors in mind; we see and act, supported by metaphors that recast an already existing practice or perspective in a new setting. Therefore, I bring in a similarity creating use of metaphors, which might support a pro-active development of didactic design strategies within the field of networked learning. This use of metaphors highlights their creative power in emphasizing the mechanism by which the juxtaposition of different objects and situations may provide for a very new understanding of a domain to emerge in revealing an aha-experience. From a methodological point of view, it makes good sense to move beyond the similarity based use of metaphors, since looking at how the new world resembles the well known is not sufficient to ensure a forceful development of a theoretically based framework on the topic of design strategies. As a first step, to promote creative metaphor building, one might force a creation of similarity by, in the first place, deliberately making the familiar unfamiliar. Thus, from this foundation, we might carry on and concentrate to see if we can create new links between domains without previous similarities. By a similarity creating approach towards metaphor building, we are provided with a tool that may enable us to reflect upon creative design ideas supportive of strategies for future didactic design.

Rembrandt's Creation of the Pictorial Metaphor of Self

Rembrandt van Rijn created the largest number of self-portraits of any major artist in history. On the basis of the interactionist conception of created metaphor, Rembrandt's production of an artistic genre of pictorial metaphor of self is described. Through a consistent compositional and content unification of the expressive portrait mouth with diverse types of costumes, he created an organic artistic model of meaningful and beautiful self-portraiture. Rembrandt's self as presented metaphorically represents the universe of art and artist. Because this compositional pictorial metaphor of self feature has not previously been recognized, a controlled empirical study was done indicating the significant characteristic association with Rembrandt's oeuvre. Creation of this metaphor is postulated as resulting from his use of the cognitive creative homospatial process—actively conceiving two or more discrete entities occupying the same mentally represented space, a conception leading to the articulation of new identities.

Thinking in space: the lexis of thinking from a cognitive perspective

ABSTRACTAn in-depth account of how English speakers think about thinking, using perspectives from etymology, metaphor and cognitive linguistics. Cognitive linguistics addresses how we conceptually structure and linguistically categorize experience in order to render our world coherent and accessible. One of the ways we do so is through the creation of spatial metaphors. In cognitive theory, language is not regarded as a representation of objective reality, but rather, as the product of our interaction with the world as entities in three-dimensional space. The metaphors we use to structure experience conceptually are grounded in this interaction. Our ability to generate metaphors makes it possible for us to get a mental and linguistic grip on abstract concepts by representing them as tangible, concrete entities situated in space. Hence, from a cognitive perspective, metaphors are much more than occasional ornamental figures of speech occurring primarily in literary contexts; rather, they are all-pervasive components of everyday language and reflections of how we cognitively structure our world. It should come as no surprise then that, as we shall see, metaphorical expressions are particularly prevalent in the lexis of that most abstract of realms, the realm of thinking.

Metaphorical conceptualization of some notions in depressive disorders: Is PLEASURE an insipid milky jelly?

Metaphorical conceptualization of some notions in depressive disorders: Is PLEASURE an insipid milky jelly?The study concerned the process of metaphor creation in a group of depressive and of non-depressive people. It was assumed that due to some deficits in working memory and inhibition processes, depressive people would have difficulties with metaphorical processing and would produce fewer metaphors than do healthy individuals. It was also presumed that subjects with depression as compared to non-depressive individuals would produce more metaphors for negative notions, and generally would create more negative metaphors, independently of the semantics and valence of a notion. The results obtained in this study aren't univocal. However, it seems that there exists a tendency to produce a smaller number of metaphors in depressive people (especially concerning the notion of FUTURE), which could indicate the existence of some difficulties in metaphorical processing connected with depression. Furthermore, depressive subjects produced more negative metaphors for some notions but not for all of them. This points to the need of attention to semantics in studies on the mechanisms of metaphorical processing in a group of depressive people.

Metaphors to Drive By: Exploring New Ways to Guide Human - Robot Interaction

Autonomous behaviors created by the research and development community are not being extensively utilized within energy, defense, security, or industrial contexts. This paper provides evidence that the interaction methods used alongside these behaviors may not provide a mental model that can be easily adopted or used by operators. Although autonomy has the potential to reduce overall workload, the use of robot behaviors often increased the complexity of the underlying interaction metaphor. This paper reports our development of new metaphors that support increased robot com- plexity without passing the complexity of the interaction onto the operator. Furthermore, we illustrate how recognition of problems in human-robot interactions can drive the creation of new metaphors for design and how human factors lessons in usability, human performance, and our social contract with technology have the potential for enormous payoff in terms of establishing effective, user-friendly robot systems when appropriate metaphors are used.

Precisão de avaliadores na avaliação da criatividade por meio da produção de metáforas

A criatividade é um dos temas da psicologia cuja mensuração está circundada de dificuldades, já que é uma área carente de bons instrumentos. Metáforas como "O camelo é o barco do deserto" são meios de expressão de aspectos diferente de algum conceito (camelo) por meio da associação de idéias. A elaboração de metáforas desse tipo pressupõe a execução de processos cognitivos básicos, tais como o raciocínio analógico e as associações remotas, processos esses que estão associados aos componentes cognitivos da criatividade. Objetivou-se nesta pesquisa estudar a precisão de critérios de pontuação de um instrumento de avaliação da criatividade por meio de produção de metáforas que avalia respostas metafóricas a partir de um estímulo do tipo "O camelo é o ______ do deserto". Participaram deste estudo 19 sujeitos e nove juízes. O teste de metáforas é composto por nove itens, aos quais os sujeitos deram um total de 513 respostas. Cada resposta foi avaliada independentemente pelos juízes, em uma escala de 0 a 3, indicando o nível de elaboração da metáfora. A precisão foi calculada a partir do modelo de Rasch, assumindo cada idéia como um caso e cada juiz como um item de um teste hipotético, aplicando-se um procedimento chamado rede de juízes ancorados. A precisão de avaliadores variou de 0,52 a 0,83, com média 0,74 (DP=0,08), indicando uma boa precisão de avaliadores.

Celluloid Dreams in Shashi Tharoor’s Show Business

This paper explores the dynamics that sustain the ‘life imitating art’ of Indian filmdom in Shashi Tharoor’s Show Business. It particularly focuses on Tharoor’s experimental narrative artifice that consists in reconfiguring film scripts to present ‘illusion’ as the only reality in the multi-dimensional fictional space of his novel. It also shows how Tharoor elevates the importance of cinema by presenting his story in cinematic and fragmentary ‘takes’ and ‘shots’. Identifying ‘creativity’ as the novel’s most crucial dynamic, the paper concludes that Shashi Tharoor engages in this new creative metaphor to highlight the influence of Bollywood on the postcolonial spectator-reader.

Multimodal Metaphor in Ten Dutch TV Commercials

Since the publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By (1980), conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) has dominated metaphor studies. While one of the central tenets of that monograph is that metaphors are primarily a phenomenon of thought, not of language, conceptual metaphors have until recently been studied almost exclusively via verbal expressions. Another limitation of the CMT paradigm is that it has tended to focus on deeply embedded metaphors rather than on creative metaphors of the kind that Black (1979) discusses. One result of this focus is that relatively little attention is paid in CMT to the form and appearance a metaphor can assume (cf. Lakoff and Turner 1989). Clearly, which channel(s) of information (language, visuals, sound, gestures, among others) are chosen to convey a metaphor is a central factor in how a metaphor is construed and interpreted. A healthy theory of metaphor as a structuring element of thought therefore requires systematic examination of both its multimodal and its creative manifestations. Conversely, research into non-verbal and multimodal metaphor can help the theorization of multimodality.In this paper it is shown that creative metaphors occurring in commercials usually draw on a combination of language, pictures, and non-verbal sound. After an inventory of parameters involved in the analysis of multimodal metaphors, ten cases are discussed, with specific attention to the role of the various modes in the metaphors’ construal and interpretation. On the basis of the case studies, the last sections of the paper discuss three issues that are crucial for further study: (1) the ways in which similarity is cued in multimodal, as opposed to verbal, metaphors; (2) the problems adhering to the verbalization of multimodal metaphors; (3) the influence of textual genre on the interpretation of multimodal metaphors.

Emergent representations, interaction theory and the cognitive force of metaphor

We focus here on the problem of how new representations emerge through a cognitive agent's interaction with the environment. We address this problem within a framework where representation-building mechanisms operate to create new representations against a backdrop of existing representations, and argue that novel and creative metaphors in any language provide a prime example of this phenomenon. Our approach to modeling the emergence of representation integrates ideas from three different streams of research: (1) the interaction theory of metaphor proposed by Black and others to account for the creativity of metaphors; (2) gestalt theories of perception; and (3) contemporary research supporting a constructivist and action-oriented view of perception and cognition. Combining these insights together, we outline our Gestalt projection model, and discuss three different ways in which new representations might emerge through metaphors. Finally, we propose that metaphor may be viewed as a cognitive force through which a cognitive agent asserts its creative spirit onto the environment.

An analogy-oriented type hierarchy for linguistic creativity

Metaphor and analogy are perhaps the most challenging aspects of linguistic creativity for a conceptual representation to facilitate, since by their very nature they seek to stretch the boundaries of domain description and dynamically establish new ways of determining inter-domain similarity. By solving the vexing representational problems posed by these phenomena, we can create a more fluid conceptual organization that is more suited to creative processing in general. Toward this end, this paper considers the problem of how a conceptual system structured around a central taxonomy can dynamically create new categories or types to understand creative metaphors and analogies. We demonstrate that the conventional wisdom regarding metaphor and analogy – that such processes are creative because clever word-play is indicative of an underlying mental agility and suppleness of conceptual structure – also withstands theoretical scrutiny when considered from the perspective of current creativity research.

A Conceptual Structure of Visual Metaphor

The study of metaphor involves numerous fields in recent history from cognitive neuroscience to linguistics. Visual metaphor research occupies an underrepresented area of inquiry. With the development of the cognitive sciences, a cognitive view of metaphoric thinking is emerging. This calls for a reconsideration of visual metaphor in the practices of artists and leads to the central research question: Is there a conceptual structure to the creation of visual metaphors by artists that closely aligns with the cognitive view of metaphoric thinking? This question is addressed in a qualitative, phenomenographic research study of a consortium of artists brought together for an exhibition. Findings highlight the cognitive, social and personal domains contributing to their creation of metaphor. The result is a conceptual structure of visual metaphor derived from the practices and exhibition of the artists. The article concludes with implications of the conceptual structure of visual metaphor for art education.