Cultural Metaphors Research Articles

Culture as Nature

Metaphors are widely employed in academia and beyond to render complex concepts more accessible. This paper investigates the use of metaphors drawn from nature to approach culture and culture contact in the ancient Mediterranean, focusing on examples evoking the three fundamental states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. Although the Mediterranean is celebrated as ‘the mother of all metaphors’, this has not attracted any systematic analysis, nor has it been problematized. States of matter metaphors are widely used in the study of Mediterranean antiquity and can be shown to be more than figures of speech or heuristics; they convey particular modes of conceptualizing culture which depend on a range of empirical and theoretical approaches developed across the humanities and social sciences, including some that are outdated and that fail to capture the complexity of culture. My critical examination of such metaphorical thinking covers a heterogenous body of material that has become interwoven through selective and messy exchanges of ideas across different disciplines and between disciplines and popular culture. In such exchanges, the pedigree and conceptual load of associated terms is often forgotten or neglected. My aim is to identify the main threads and investigate how shifts in the use of states of matter metaphors for Mediterranean culture and culture contact relate to broader shifts in approaches to the topic. The exercise reveals how states of matter metaphors are also applied to different phases of the historiography of the ancient Mediterranean, as well as to the periodization of modernity. Liquid metaphors are found to predominate, solid ones are often employed only to be dismissed and gaseous ones are rarely attested. In some cases, the shift from one set of metaphors to another can be shown to relate to broader changes in theoretical approaches.

Book Theft as Social Deviance in Modern China: An Elegant Offense or the Intellectual Robin Hood

During China’s transition from pre-modern to modern society, book theft, as a form of social deviance, reflected the multifaceted cultural metaphors of books in modern Chinese social life. The shift from the notion that “common thieves do not steal books” to book theft as a representation of cultural power struggles exemplifies the media cultural transformation in modern Chinese society. Contemporary attitudes towards book theft reveal complex tensions between economic order, publishing supply and demand, social mentality, cultural capital, knowledge power, media discourse, and public opinion during this period of societal change. In this context, book theft can be seen as a dual phenomenon, embodying both a clever and sophisticated act that challenges dominant norms and values on one hand, and a form of rebellion that seeks to redistribute power and knowledge, akin to the legendary outlaw Robin Hood, on the other.

Cultural metaphors of death in some Ewe proverbs

This study investigates the cultural significance of metaphors used in some Ewe proverbs on the schema of death. Employing the theoretical lens of cultural linguistics whose thrust is that aspects of a people’s culture can be unearthed through their use of language on any given topic, this study uses an aspect of this theory called cultural metaphors. Cultural metaphors are the implicit or explicit comparison of one idea or concept with another. A purposive sample of sixteen proverbs on the concept of death were collected from an anthology of Ewe proverbs, with the purpose of identifying the cultural metaphors used in these proverbs, and their significance. Findings reveal that the Ewe view death as not altogether bad and that one can defeat death with good deeds and gain immortality by qualifying to become an ancestor and live forever in the spirit realm. In addition, the Ewe acknowledge the unpredictability of and humanity’s helplessness before death. The implication for this study is that cultural linguistics is an effective tool for analysing proverbs. This framework should be adopted in investigating proverbs of minority languages as a way of preserving their cultures.

WHAT DOES LOONG (龙) MEAN TO THE CHINESE PEOPLE? A CULTURAL COGNITIVE LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE

This present study discusses the mythology of Loong in Chinese culture, analyzes the cultural metaphors of Loong, and elaborates on the cultural values of Loong. Through the discussion, it can be seen that the Chinese cultural values of Loong have a profound influence on cultural conceptualizations of Loong, not only manifested in language but also in many other aspects.

Cultural–Cognitive Study of Selected Death-Oriented Personal Names in Igbo

Working chiefly within the tenets of Cultural Linguistics (CL), this study examines the cultural and cognitive motivations that underlie selected death-oriented personal names among the Igbo of South-eastern Nigeria. Based on the cultural linguistic perspective, the analytical tool for the study is shaped by insights from cultural schemas, cultural categories and cultural metaphors as signifiers of ideation and social meaning. The cultural frames enable the language user to have a better understanding of the cultural and cognitive motivations that underlie the conceptualization of names and naming among the Igbo. Much has been done on the structure and sociological forms of Igbo personal names and their meanings, but only a few studies have been undertaken on the names that express the notions of death and dying in Igbo. More importantly, no previous study has used insights from Cultural Linguistics (CL) or the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) to explain the motivations for the preponderance of death-oriented names among the Igbo people. Thus, this study specifically aims to address the lacuna. The study reveals that the Igbo, like most African and other human societies, recognize and accept the inevitability of death. Consequently, they use language in diverse forms and contexts to express their perceptions of the horrors and pains associated with the inevitability of death. Songs, proverbs and ritual practices are some of the verbal and social semiotic forms through which the Igbo express their knowledge of and attitude toward death and dying. However, names and naming are the most vivid cultural cognitive patterns by which the Igbo show their understanding of the nature of death and dying and their psychological effects on the living. Constrained by space and scope, this study identified and classified six major death-oriented names among the Igbo, as follows: names that depict the overwhelming power of death; names that make an appeal to death; names that depict death as wicked/evil/terror; names that depict death as no respecter of wealth/social class; names that challenge/mock the assumed power of death; and names that depict death as an insensitive entity. Thus, the above frames constitute the major paradigms by which the Igbo express their knowledge of and attitudes toward death and dying.

World Englishes and Cultural Linguistics: Theory and research

AbstractThis article explores the evolution of Cultural Linguistics, its fusion with Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Sociolinguistics, and its application to the study of world Englishes, emphasising the cultural dimension of language and cognition. It investigates key theoretical concepts in Cultural Linguistics such as cultural categories, schemas, conceptualisations, keywords, models and scenarios as essential analytical tools for examining the interplay between thought, language and culture. Using examples from English varieties in sub‐Saharan Africa, Great Britain, Ireland, India and Hong Kong, this article demonstrates how these conceptual phenomena interact at increasing levels of conceptual complexity. The discussion also distinguishes conceptual metaphor (and metonymy) from the somewhat problematic concept of ‘cultural metaphor’, previously used in some cultural‐linguistic approaches to world Englishes. Finally, the article delves into Conceptual Blending Theory as a possible extension of Cultural Linguistics that synthesises diverse cultural knowledge to interpret culture‐specific expressions in contemporary multilingual settings.

A Study on Chinese Culture in High School English Textbooks of BNUP from the Perspective of Conceptual Blending Theory for Multimodal Metaphors

At the end of the 20th century, scholars represented by Forceville dived into the construction and representation of metaphors using various modalities, leading the shift of metaphor studies towards multimodality, which consequently put the study of multimodal metaphors in the spotlight. English textbooks, as a combination of visual and linguistic modes of expression, contain a large number of metaphors. From the perspective of conceptual blending theory, the paper explores the construction and meaning of multimodal metaphors of Chinese culture in three compulsory high school English textbooks of Beijing Normal University Press. It is found that these three compulsory high school English textbooks of Beijing Normal University Press (BNUP) contain many multimodal metaphors of Chinese culture, and these multimodal metaphors can activate student’s cultural background knowledge and convey the communicative intention of the pictures, thus arousing students’ interest in Chinese culture and fostering cultural confidence.

Food metaphors and humour in Nigerian online interaction

AbstractThis article explores the complementary role of Cultural Linguistics in making up for the inadequacies of linguistics‐oriented theories of humour in unpacking culturally embedded meanings in humorous discourse. On the basis of purposively sampled internet memes, it analyses different types of cultural presuppositions in some food metaphors that netizens in Nigerian online interaction appropriate to negotiate gender and class identities, which reflect inherent beliefs, shared values and communicative practices in the Nigerian world. It applies Sharifian’s categorisation of the analytical tools of Cultural Linguistics―cultural schemas, cultural categories and cultural metaphors. The article concludes that mental spaces and conceptual blending are instrumental in forging a holistic conceptual approach, which can account for not only the linguistic but also cultural and discursive meanings of humour as an essentially social and interactional phenomenon.

‘Refuse Dump, Hurry Up!’: A Cognitive Onomastic and Cultural Metaphor Perspective of Nzema Death-Prevention Names

African personal names have communicative contents that reflect the experiences and expectations of the name-giver as well as the bearer. Death-prevention names, for instance, provide some assurance and security that are vital for a child’s survival, given the implicit assumption that certain spiritual forces are at work. The bestowal of despicable and ‘ugly’ names on children whose preceding siblings died shortly after birth is also a common practice among the Nzema, aiming at preventing succeeding children from death. This study examines cultural conceptions and metaphorical correlations in Nzema death-prevention names. Using 42 death-prevention names obtained through interviews, the study discusses the implications of the names and their metaphoric connections with the objects used to identify this category of people. The study reveals that features of entities such as ɛkpɔtɛ ‘vulture’, nrɛzenra ‘housefly’, kɛndɛne ‘basket’, and fovolɛ ‘refuse dump’ are attributed to these children to make them seem ‘unpleasant’ to the ancestral spirits who are believed to have been snatching them after birth. Other ‘long-lasting’ entities like nyevile ‘sea’, bolɛ ‘rock’, and kpɔma ‘walking stick’ are used metaphorically to refer to a child with the belief that they would survive right from birth and live long on the earth.

A small garage on the sidelines of a corporation: Should innovative projects be isolated?


 
 
 The article aims to attempt to answer the question of whether innovative projects should be isolated in an organisation. A critical analysis of the literature on the subject reveals a divergence of views on the proper placement of social or technological innovation projects. The research hypothesis formulated holds that the more conducive the innovative project team is to interact with the rest of the organisation and the norms and values within the team are oriented toward learning, the stronger the learning of the project team. The culture metaphor of an organisation was used to verify the research hypothesis. It has been assumed that project team learning means that project team members transform the norms and values previously adhered to in the organisational culture. On the basis of the survey results, it was impossible to accept the research hypothesis. Despite the increase in the intensity of the factors that foster interactions between teams implementing innovative projects and the rest of the organisation, team learning did not increase as originally expected.
 
 

Vietnamese lived religion, Confucianism and women: goddess spirituality in Nguyễn Dữ’s the young woman from Nam Xuong

Vietnam as a nation is deeply rooted in the wet-rice agricultural civilization, which is characterized by the Yin (female) principle and the religion worshiping Mother Goddess. However, Chinese Confucianism significantly influenced Vietnam throughout the feudal dynasties (10–19th centuries). Confucian kingship propagates symbols of virtuous women to establish the moral order of a male-dominated society. In contrast, by practicing lived religion and spreading folk narratives, Vietnamese people turn virtuous women into Mother Goddess with a liberal, creative and patronage identity. This study, thus, examines the position of women in Confucian Nguyễn Dữ’s The Young Woman from Nam Xuong, a canonical story reconstructed from legend. It is important to address the main concern about metaphors of a duality culture and a conflict discourse of Confucian politics and Vietnamese lived religion through the issue of Goddess spirituality. This article uses an interdisciplinary approach to demonstrate that resistance to Chinese Dominance and anti-Sinicization were significant issues of Vietnamese medieval literature and culture.

Translation Research on Conceptual Metaphor in the 2023 Chinese Government Work Report

In traditional rhetoric, metaphor is simply a rhetorical device used to make the mentioned things more understandable. It was not until 1980 that two cognitive linguists, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) argued in Metaphors We Live By that the essence of metaphor is the cognitive mechanism by which abstract things are explained through concrete things, shifting the study of metaphor from the linguistic level to the cognitive level. Later on, Lakoff (1996) analyzed political metaphor from a cognitive perspective for the first time in Moral Politics, which drives the upsurge of research on conceptual metaphor in political discourse. Political discourse usually uses metaphor to conceptualize the political ideas and issues it aims to disseminate, and the use of conceptual metaphor is closely related to national culture, so the translation of conceptual metaphor has become the key to the overseas publicity of political discourse. On March 5, 2023, Premier Li Keqiang delivered Chinese Government Work Report at the opening meeting of the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress. After reading the official translation on www.china.org.cn, the authors find that the Report contains a wealth of conceptual metaphors, and whether the translation of these metaphors is appropriate or not will affect the accuracy of people’s understanding of the Report. Based on Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory and Group’s (2007) metaphor identification procedure, this paper takes the 2023 Chinese Government Work Report and its English translation version on www.china.org.cn as the research corpus. Through manual screening, classification and statistics of conceptual metaphors, this paper explores ten types of conceptual metaphor models, namely human metaphor, journey metaphor, war metaphor, cultural metaphor, architecture metaphor, water metaphor, animal and plant metaphor, machine metaphor, line metaphor as well as object metaphor. Based on Xiao’s (2005) cognitive strategy of metaphor translation, this paper also analyzes the translation of ten types of conceptual metaphors. This paper attempts to explore the following three research questions: (1) What are the types of metaphorical patterns in the Report? (2) How are the conceptual metaphors used in the Report and what cultural connotations and images are conveyed by them? (3) How to effectively translate conceptual metaphors in the Report to achieve a better understanding of the target audience? Microsoft Office (Word and Excel) is used as a statistical tool and a mapping tool to count specific conceptual metaphor categories and record typical metaphor keywords, and visualize the data of the proportion of various types. This paper tries to summarize and analyze the cultural connotations and images conveyed by the conceptual metaphors, so as to provide help for the English translation of Chinese political discourse and promote the international dissemination of Chinese political ideas. Through the analysis of conceptual metaphors, we can judge that although the political concepts in the Report is abstract, conceptual metaphors can express them more concretely and more easily understood by the audience through the mapping from the source domain to the target domain.

Cultural Metaphor in Oboo Worship: A Religious Anthropological Study Based on Mongolian Nationality

This paper explores the cultural and spiritual significance of Mongolian Oboo sacrifices from an anthropological perspective. Oboo, traditional cairns or shrines assembled from stones and wooden materials, often located on hilltops or mountain peaks, serve as media of spiritual communication and ceremonial offerings. The practices reinforce communal bonds and tradition continuance and carry several symbolic meanings related to both natural and spiritual realms. The study explores the form and content of Oboo sacrifices, demonstrating how they embody Mongolians' religious ideologies and symbolize the interconnection between humans and the natural world. Furthermore, the paper studies how the rituals form collective memory and a sense of group identity for Mongolians. Through this investigation, the research illuminates the enduring resilience and sophistication of Mongolian traditional customs, underscoring their cultural significance.

Reinscribing Malinche in Contemporary Visual Art

Malinche was an indigenous slave woman who helped Cortés communicate with and understand native chiefs during the conquest of Mexico. This paper analyzes the way the Denver Art Museum represented cultural metaphors of Malinche in visual culture in its 2022 show titled “Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche.” The exhibition distinguishes five key metaphors in the reception of Malinche from the sixteenth century through today. The paper highlights the theme of Malinche as the mother of the nation and its diverse appearances in visual culture among the images displayed. The paper surveys the ways in which images of motherhood interact in museum space.

Representation of women in English and Persian proverbs

Abstract The present study aims to investigate the portrayal of women in English and Persian proverbs using the multidisciplinary field of Cultural Linguistics as an alternative to critical discourse analysis. Utilizing a corpus analysis approach for Cultural Linguistics (Jensen 2017), 124 English and 186 Persian proverbs representing the theme of ‘woman’ were compared and contrasted cross-culturally. Results of grounded-theory driven analysis revealed: (a) while various cultural schemata and cultural metaphors reflecting both dark and bright sides of women in proverbs were unveiled, only one cultural category in Persian proverbs with no similar instance in English proverbs was revealed; and (b) in some English and Persian proverbs, interpreting cultural schemas predicates upon eliciting and understanding the cultural metaphors hidden in the proverbs. The results are discussed with reference to the potentiality of Cultural Linguistics as an analytical framework for paremiology that can provide an in-depth interpretation of proverbs as a culturally-loaded discourse.

On-site Learning in Museums: Re-conceptualizations and Re-directions for Museum Education in the Post-pandemic Digital Age

As the digital age introduces an increasing amount of media technologies to traditional museum settings, a wealth of literature has found that these technologies are exerting prominent effects on museum visitor experiences. Such technical shifts in essence imply a growing part of communication activities, metaphors of media culture, and implications for technology-empowered learning based on museum institutions. New emphasis is being placed on state-of-the-art definitions of museum-technology, museum-learner, and museum-society relationships, appealing for re-conceptualizations of Museum, Museum Communication, and Museum Education, and therefore inviting communication and media culture scholars to join this discourse. Reviewing upon on-site learning issues discussed in previous museum research, this paper addresses the theoretical needs for present on-site educational practices in museums with re-conceptualizations of several important and operationalizable terms and proposes an interdisciplinary, learner-centred agenda for future museum education research and practices that are facing challenges and potential opportunities from e-learning and digital culture.

URBAN SPACE AND CULTURAL ARCHETYPES

This paper analyses cultural and aesthetic phenomena and theirinherent meanings within the Japanese city. In the introduction, Ifirst briefly define the key concepts used in the analysis: culturalarchetype, collective memory, and cultural identity. I will approach
 the theme from a comparative point of view by examining Japaneseurban features and archetypal principles in contrast to the Europeancity.Early Japanese urbanisation centred around imperial palaces, withthe first cities founded by successive emperors from the 7th centuryonwards in the Nara region, near present-day Kyoto. The orthogonalplan for the imperial capital was copied from the contemporaneousChinese dynasties. Spatial organisation was hierarchical, imperialquarters were located at the northern end of the central south–northaxis of the city, and the most prestigious plots were around theEmperor’s palace. Kyoto, the historical Heian-Kyô, was founded asthe imperial capital in 794.Tokyo, the historical Edo, became a “castle city” in 1457 when amilitary castle was built, and subsequently the capital when theshôgun moved government from Kyoto to Edo in 1603. The shôgun’scastle, the centre of power, intertwined with the hierarchical urbanorder spiralling around it. Edo gradually became a modern capital,Tokyo, while Kyoto remained the traditional centre of high cultureand the seat of the powerless Emperor until 1868.The Japanese city is a cultural metaphor. Psychological uncertainty,due to the country’s location in a precarious earthquake and volcaniczone, and an awareness of the perishability of life based on Buddhistphilosophy, have all deeply influenced both Japanese culture andthe Japanese mind. Emptiness, the Taoist ideal linked to Buddhistthinking, is also reflected in the urban space. For instance, a Japanesecity has no designated urban centre whereas in the European citythis is a culturally and economically accentuated place.In this paper, I also analyse the Japanese spatial concepts ma andoku, along with their archetypal manifestations in urban tissue andstreet scape. While ma means experiencing space in time, oku refers tothe hidden dimension of the urban experience, or the psychologicalstate of processing a path whereby the urban core remains hiddenand only partially discovered.Regardless of Japan’s recent historical and economic development,the cultural characteristics of urban spaces have not changed a greatdeal. Tokyo is still a mosaic city of small village-type communitieswith an inherent feeling of togetherness. Hidenoby Jinnai has calledthis phenomenon an “ethnic continuity” whereby the new and theold are mixed in an ethnic order.

Mesopotamia’s Bronze Age as a Cosmopolitan Age

Abstract The key term of this volume is bronze: in its basic meaning it is an alloy of two metals, copper and tin, even if there are other combinations, such as arsenical bronze. In Mesopotamia, the area I will discuss here, every form of bronze shared a common characteristic, however. To make bronze it was necessary to bring together two metals with origins in separate and distant places. The sources changed over time, but in Mesopotamia itself bronze was never the product of elements found in the same location. The outcome was something special, a compound stronger and deemed to be more appealing than its separate components. My discussion here will not be about metallurgy or material culture, however, but about literate culture, which in the Mesopotamian Bronze Age, I argue, showed a similar amalgamation of elements from sources that were geographically distinct. We can see bronze as a metaphor for literate culture in Mesopotamia.

The use of cultural conceptualisations as a translation strategy for culture-specific jokes and humorous discourse: A remedy for a malady?

Translating humour across languages and cultures is a complex task that requires more than just linguistic competency. It requires understanding the cultural background and social context of both the source and target languages. This study examines the applicability of cultural conceptualisations in translating Persian jokes into English. The study adopts Cultural Linguistics as an investigative framework (Sharifian, 2017) to analyse five Persian jokes and offer a strategy for translators to follow when translating jokes containing cultural conceptualisations. The study argues that cultural conceptualisations, such as cultural schemas, cultural categories, and cultural metaphors, play a crucial role in translating humour. By identifying and using cultural conceptualisations in the translation process, translators can ensure that the humour of the original joke is retained in the target language. This framework involves three stages: identifying the source language cultural conceptualisation, finding the equivalent cultural conceptualisation in the target language, and translating the joke to ensure laughability in the target language. The study also shows that humour is closely tied to cultural knowledge and assumptions and that what may be considered funny in one culture may not necessarily be funny in another. Therefore, cultural conceptualisations can serve as a bridge between different cultures and can help translators translate humour across cultural and linguistic boundaries effectively. The findings of this study offer important implications for translators and cultural communicators who aim to efficiently communicate humour and other forms of cultural content across languages and cultures.

Black Holes in Science and the Arts

Black holes exert an inexorable grip on the imagination. They were predicted by the theory of general relativity, but even the author of the theory, Albert Einstein, thought they were purely mathematical constructs. When massive stars die, they leave behind objects from which nothing can escape. More surprisingly, there are black holes at the centre of every galaxy, ranging up to behemoths ten billion times the mass of the Sun. These enigmatic objects have suffused science fiction, and they have been represented in the visual arts, music, television, and movies. From Larry Niven to Gregory Benford, from Kazimir Malevich to Anish Kapoor, from Soundgarden to Muse, from Star Trek to The Simpsons, from The Black Hole to Interstellar, black holes are cultural metaphors for death, loss, and sometimes, salvation. Even as black holes are embraced by the arts, facts about them can seem as strange as fiction.