Cultural Metaphors Research Articles

Problematiek rakende ‘opofferende en reinigende liefde’ in die bruid-en-bruidegom-metafoor (Ef 5:22–33)

The problematic use of ‘sacrificial and purifying love’ in the metaphor of the bride and bridegroom (Eph 5:22–33). The sacrificial love expected of the bridegroom in Ephesians 5:22–33 is a totally foreign idea in the culture of the first-century Mediterranean world in which the first Christians lived. An argument can be made that the working of the Holy Spirit within the believing men infiltrated the cultural boundaries and expectations with new values such as sacrificial love. However, ‘cleansing love’ as expressed in Ephesians 5:25–28 is an unfamiliar idea, even in our contemporary culture. How can the husband’s love cleanse his wife as Christ cleanses the church? To what extent can the metaphor of the bride and bridegroom be applied to the marital relationship between the present-day man and woman? This article examines the problematic ‘cleansing love’ as portrayed in the metaphor of the bride and bridegroom in Ephesians 5:22–33. A critical investigation is done into the symbolic importance of the bride and bridegroom metaphor for contemporary culture. Schüssler Fiorenza’s (2001) application of the approach of suspicion is followed to interpret the cultural roles assigned to female and male believers from a feminist point of view. The critical feminist approach and its meaning and application to the ancient context of the early Christians in Ephesus serve as the hermeneutical model of this article. Although certain aspects of the bride and bridegroom metaphor, representing Christ as bridegroom and the church as bride, can be applied to the relationship between a Christian bride and bridegroom, there are also aspects of Christ’s relationship with the church, such as his ‘cleansing love’, which cannot realistically apply to the Christian marriage. The husband’s love cannot purify and sanctify the wife (Eph 5:27). Everyone is responsible for his or her own salvation and sanctification. The wife does not need the love of her husband to be in a relationship with Christ, her heavenly bridegroom. Christ’s love cleansed the church, which consists of male and female believers. The love that Jesus demonstrated on the cross, should result in equality among all people.Contribution: The sacrificial and cleansing love of the bridegroom as portrayed in the metaphor of the bride and bridegroom in Ephesians 5 is problematic regarding the gender roles in contemporary marriages. A critical interpretation of the relevant metaphor respects the integrity of the text, but also sees the underlying message of gender inequality.

Contestations over Hijrat and postcoloniality

My PhD study explored the experiences of a cohort of Iranian doctoral candidates in New Zealand. This paper presents my response to the unexpected challenge I faced as I collected data and formed my theoretical framework. I found that Western interpretations of non-Western international students largely ignored social-cultural specificities. I navigated this challenge by drawing from the postcolonial concepts of ambivalence, uncertainty and cultural hybridity to make sense of the way Iranian doctoral candidates’ experiences in a Western university were analysed and understood. First, I conceptualised the knowledge journey of the research participants as a Hijrat ‒ an Islamic and Persian cultural metaphor that refers to the experience of departure from one’s homeland. Second, I drew from postcolonial theory to manage the West/non-West binary. This paper offers non-Western doctoral candidates and their Western supervisors an example of how cultural congruence can be understood when completing a PhD study in the West. In a general sense, it is important to acknowledge and critically explore the impacts of past socio-political experiences and practices (e.g., colonisation) and historical knowledge traditions (e.g., Islamic) on present thinking and practices.

A Study on the Different Values Assigned to Bulls and Cows under the Structure of Male and Female Workpoints in Collectivist China: The Practice of Lingqian Village in Shandong Province

Abstract During the collectivization period, the price of the bull was higher than the price of the cow on the fixed asset registration form in Lingqian Village, Linyi City, Shandong Province. The workpoints of male labor were also higher than those for female labor. Therefore, there was a gender difference that applied to both cattle and humans, but the former was not simply the social projection and cultural metaphor of the latter; rather they shared the same natural difference in terms of economic value in that given system. Namely, the values of humans and cattle depended entirely on their contribution to agricultural labor, not on gender discrimination. The reason for this phenomenon is that the ecological environment and living conditions shaped people’s psychology, which then determined the internal classification structure of gender in humans as well as animals. The classification attitude of the values of humans and animals was thus a result of adaptation to the natural environment and living conditions, and, as such, was a collective survival strategy, but it was also the product of a particular economic system. This phenomenon resulted from the fact that the privately owned land of individual families had been collectivized, revealing some characteristics of the cattle-raising mode under the collective economic system. The case of Lingqian Village in Shandong Province contributes to world anthropology by illustrating one particular system of social livelihood, with cattle as the reference point.

Alireza Korangy and Farzad Sharifian, eds. Persian Linguistics in Cultural Contexts

Alireza Korangy and Farzad Sharifian, eds. <i>Persian Linguistics in Cultural Contexts</i>

Surveilled, harmonized, purified

The human body has long occupied a central role in religious praxis across the globe. Recent decades have witnessed a change in academic studies aimed at theorizing the body and its relationship with society and the cosmos. This article adds to this discourse by demonstrating the pervasiveness of the body as a root metaphor in medieval Chinese religious culture. The notion of the body as a microcosmic replica of the social, political, and metaphysical realms, and the need to synchronize it with the natural cycles of the universe, played a key role in the emerging doctrinal and liturgical schemes of Buddhism and Daoism, China’s two main organized religious traditions. Using the apocryphal medieval Buddhist scripture The Sutra of Trapusa and Bhallika as a case study, and reading it against the backdrop of earlier religious, medical, and philosophical texts, this article argues that visions of the body as an object of surveillance by the celestial authorities, and its purification and harmonization through ethical practices and ritual means, were hailed as the most significant religious activities in Buddhist and Daoist communities alike in medieval China, a feature that continues to occupy a central place in contemporary Chinese religious life.

PUNJABI CULTURE IN AKHTAR SHERANI’S POEMS

Urdu poetry is a beautiful picturesque of the cultures of the sub-continent. It consists of norms, symbols, ideas, dresses, eatables, crockery, romantic heroes, dialects and folk stories of the multicultural society of Indo-Pak. Urdu poets portrayed the culture of Bengal, Bihar, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Bombay, Gujrat, Delhi, Kashmir, Afghan, Tribal, Sindh, Balochistan, and Punjab. This Article is about the portrayal of Punjabi culture in Akhtar Sherani's poetry. He sketched the Punjabi culture in his poems beautifully. His poetic verses and style describe the cultural elements of the civilization of Punjab. His loud voice is full of colourful aspects of his soil. He is warmly attached to his culture. His poetry is a beautiful metaphor for Punjab's culture, which inspires the reader regarding nature's aspects. He elaborates on the rural and urban life of Punjab.

A Study on the ‘Western Imagination’ Appearing of Wu Tianming’s Films

Purpose: As a pioneer of Chinese western cinema, Wu Tianming played an important leading role in the development of cinema in the new era. This study focused on the local spirit, personality, aesthetic thinking, realism style, etc. that appeared in his creation through the movie works to which the ‘Western Imagination’ was given, and explored the interest in the spirit of the times and the archer against traditional culture. Methods: The research method of this paper is divided into three aspects: it is a cultural analysis research method, a historical analysis research method, and a comparative analysis research method. Result: Through the textual exploration and interpretation of Wu Tianming’s films, we can see through the spirit of the times, national culture and social psychology embedded in western films, analyze the constant conflict and integration between traditional culture and modern civilization, and reflect on the cultural metaphors between films and society. Conclusion: Wu Tianming broke the sense of reality and humanistic implications conveyed through films, and the bondage between Chinese film images and real life. The spiritual value of Chinese cinema was reconstructed by presenting a certain realistic reference to the development of Chinese Western films.

Form and Foreskin: Medieval Narratives of Circumcision by A.W. Strouse

Reviewed by: Form and Foreskin: Medieval Narratives of Circumcision by A.W. Strouse William Robert a.w. strouse, Form and Foreskin: Medieval Narratives of Circumcision. New York: Fordham University Press, 2021. Pp. 165. isbn: 9780823294756. $25. Circumcision is a slippery operation. Form and Foreskin examines circumcision's different operations: as medical procedure, religious ritual, cultural metaphor, hermeneutic practice, and narratological trope. Foreskin is slippery, too. It, Form and Foreskin tells us, 'connotes the slippage between body and soul, text and meaning' (p. 2). These slippages, figured textually, are Form and Foreskin's subjects. It tracks these subjects through ancient Mediterranean and medieval English texts and contexts. Form and Foreskin examines, in successive chapters, letters by Paul of Tarsus, a passage in one of Augustine of Hippo's commentaries on Genesis, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Wife of Bath's Tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Through its readings, Form and Foreskin considers—in stylistically varied prose—questions of (among other things) exegesis, physicality, identity, gender, desire, marriage, and time. [End Page 111] In the process, Form and Foreskin also identifies 'circumological narrative' as a genre of allegory. Circumlogical narratives revolve around cuts, nicks, and foreskins. It demonstrates how they 'amplify their textual bodies precisely in order to stage an unveiling of their inner, spiritual meanings' (p. 8). 'Nicking Sir Gawain' is the chapter in which Form and Foreskin's Arthurian elements appear. It's also Form and Foreskin's longest and most technical chapter. (I'd recommend rereading Gawain before reading it—and keeping Gawain within reach as you do.) Form and Foreskin reads Gawain as 'the circumlogical narrative par excellence' (p. 9) Following its circumological hermeneutic, Form and Foreskin shows that in Gawain, content mimics form. That means Gawain's human bodies reveal things about its textual body—all masculine bodies, on Form and Foreskin's reading. But they don't stay masculine. Sir Gawain's journey unfolds a feminization of Gawain's textual body, and 'the climax of the poem circumcises this body' (p. 53). Exposing that, Form and Foreskin reveals that across bodies, Gawain accepts the impossibilities of a complete identity and a straight, monolithic masculinity. Circumcision doesn't appear only at Gawain's climax. It also appears throughout Gawain, via a ritual-textual calendar. Sir Gawain decapitates the Green Knight on the Christian feast of Christ's circumcision. A year later, on the same feast, the Green Knight nicks Sir Gawain's neck. This pair of cuts plays out Christian senses of Christ's circumcision: as confirming the Incarnation and portending the Passion. For this textually masculine poem, these scenes of slightly sexualized masculine violence enact a theory of reading as circumcision. The cuts on Gawain's male characters' necks are, for Form and Foreskin, coded as hermeneutic acts, ones that 'metacritically comment upon how the poem invites multiple interpretations of its textual body' (p. 54). Following one of these interpretations, Form and Foreskin demonstrates that Gawain's narrative follows a Pauline movement from literal circumcision (of the flesh) to spiritual circumcision (of the heart). In Gawain, Christ's circumcision translates letter into spirit via a liturgical performance of multiple meanings. And Gawain's doubled cuts generate a narrative structure based on the letter-spirit dual. This movement is important for Gawain, whose fundamental questions are, in Form and Foreskin, hermeneutic ones: questions about ways of reading. It's important for a vernacular romance like Gawain, since this genre is usually preoccupied with male-female erotic seduction. It's also important for a circumlogical narrative like Gawain, which rethinks 'the preputial veil of allegory as feminine' and 'disciplines the body of romance' (p. 81). I've left out a lot, like Form and Foreskin's attention to alliteration and poetics, its biblically informed reading of Gawain with Cleanliness (another text by the Gawain- poet), and its nuanced narratological theory. But I hope I've included enough to illustrate how Form and Foreskin operates complexly, to turn circumcision into an innovative way of interpreting narratives and refiguring narratology. [End Page 112] William Robert Syracuse University Copyright © 2022 Arthuriana

Medicine Is War: The Martial Metaphor in Victorian Literature and Culture by Lorenzo Servitje

Medicine Is War: The Martial Metaphor in Victorian Literature and Culture by Lorenzo Servitje

"Amari-Akaghi"—The Knowledge of the Unknown: Women and Masquerade in Achebe's Things Fall Apart

ABSTRACT: The phrase "amari-akaghi" in my Akpoha, Igbo village, is tied around the metaphor of women and masking culture in Igbo society. This phrase alludes to women's knowledge of the workings of masquerades yet they cannot talk about it openly. I have weaved this paper around the perception of the "knowledge of the unknown" as touted and exemplified by Okonkwo's wives in Achebe's Things Fall Apart . Achebe in his seminal work revealed the position of the egwugwu masquerade tradition vis-à-vis women in Umuofia. Literatures on masquerade and women also suggest that women know much about the inner workings and secrecy associated with masquerade but cannot openly discuss it. However, no known effort has been dedicated to investigating this phenomenon in Achebe's Things Fall Apart against the reality of the concept of "amari-akaghi" in Akpoha, Igbo village. This paper, therefore, subjects Things Fall Apart to textual analyses through deconstruction of the narration. I conclude with valid interrogation of works, including the primary resource of this paper, that women in many Igbo villages of old and those represented in Achebe's Umuofia have always known and thought about the inscrutability of masquerades but have constantly kept to themselves to avoid upsetting the peace of their society and attracting ugly repercussions. This knowledge of the unknown exhibited by women in both societies, as investigated in this essay, had ensured cordial shared gender roles, which guaranteed peaceful coexistence in Igbo society.

“Laskar Pelangi”中文翻译版《天虹战队小学》小说中修辞格的文化隐喻

摘要修辞在文学作品扮演重要角色。修辞的运用不但使作品更有趣而不乏味, 还提高作品的美学价值起作用。《天虹战队小学》原名“Laskar Pelangi”是印度尼西亚国安德烈·伊拉塔写出的一部优越的文学作品，不仅在本地文学界享有很高的威望也受到国外的注目。此小说的普及性甚广，因已被翻译成各种外语，而中文是其中之一。本文以语言学理论和修辞理论为理论基础，通过定性文献分析法来研究《天虹战队小学》小说中所运用的修辞格式以及所蕴含的文化内容，采用该小说文献形式，有关研究的图书，论文等来收集资料。本研究的目的是分析该中文翻译版小说中汉语修辞格的使用，并描述其中所蕴含的文化隐喻。研究发现：该小说使用了24 种修辞格，使用特色之处在于“对比性”辞格占主导，以“明喻”作为作品中最突出的修辞格式，此外，当中的6 种修辞形式：异语、引用、比喻、排比、叠字和比拟修辞格式隐喻了印尼的文化价值。关键词：天虹战队小学；修辞格；文化隐喻 AbstractRhetoric plays an important role in literature. The use of rhetoric not only makes theliterature more interesting and not vapidity, but also enhances its aesthetic value. "TheRainbow Team Primary School" is the Chinese translated novel of "Laskar Pelangi", whichis an excellent literary work written by Andrea Hirata from Indonesia. It not only enjoys highprestige in the local literary world, but also attracts attention from abroad. The popularity ofthis novel is so wide that it has been translated into various foreign languages, and Chinese isone of them. Based on linguistic theory and rhetoric theory, this article uses qualitative literature analysis to study the rhetorical format and cultural contained in the novel "TheRainbow Team Primary School", using the form of the novel literature, books and papersrelated to collect the research information. The purpose of this research is to analyze the useof Chinese rhetoric in the Chinese translated novel and describe the cultural metaphorscontained in it. The research found that: The novel uses 24 types of rhetoric. Thecharacteristic of the use is that the “contrastive” rhetoric is dominant, and the “simile” is themost prominent rhetoric format in the literature. In addition, there are 6 rhetoric forms:foreign language , quotation, metaphor, parallelism, repetition, and metaphorical rhetoricformat metaphors the cultural content of Indonesia.Keywords: The Rainbow Team Primary School; Rhetoric; Cultural Metaphor

The “menstruating” Muslim Brotherhood: taboo metaphor, face attack, and gender in Egyptian culture

ABSTRACT Euphemisms for menstruation and menstruation as a metaphor target have gained much attention in social cognition or communication studies. What is far less explored is the reverse mapping, that is, the use of menstruation as a metaphor source domain (to describe or reason about politics). The present study, using data from the Egyptian press and social media, aims to rectify this. This data will be approached with the literature on impoliteness in mind. As will be seen in this article, metaphorical descriptions of an opposition movement (the Muslim Brotherhood) as a menstruating woman may instill relevant negative emotions such as anger, not only among out-group members but among pro-government fanatics. As sexist insults, menstrual metaphors involve social identity face. Clearly, the menstrual taboo relates to gender (social group membership) and hence to things people often have much face invested in (i.e. to core identity claims). However, it can also instill positive emotional reactions such as laughter. It is then argued that the enjoyment of a taboo metaphor as such relies not on gender, but on ideological beliefs. One can be simultaneously a radical feminist and a pro-government activist. People, men and women, may thus accept or resist metaphors for different reasons.

A study on English animal idioms from the perspectives of cultural metaphor and their translation into Vietnamese

Quite a few studies have prospectively examined English animal idioms and their translation into Vietnamese, but it is hard to find an in-depth study based on the perspective of cultural metaphor. By employing the qualitative approach, this study examines 422 selected English animal idioms, focusing on the similarities and differences found in comparison with their Vietnamese equivalents. The paper then proposes some solutions to translating these special expressions. In addition to recommending flexible application of translation strategies, the paper emphasizes that only when translators manage to decode and grasp how these special idiomatic expressions work linguistically and culturally can their appropriate translation be achieved

Cultural Metaphors in Hungarian Folk Songs as Repositories of Folk Cultural Cognition

Abstract The paper explores the status of NATURE metaphors in Hungarian folk songs with respect to their representation and transmission of folk culture and worldview. Employing a Cultural Linguistic analysis, metaphors are observed from three perspectives: in relation to cultural schemas, generic-level conceptual metaphors, and experiential motivation. NATURE metaphors are to a large extent framed by cultural experience regarding their experiential basis, conceptual structure and relation with other cultural conceptualizations.

The semiotics of family in Kazakh wedding toasts from the perspective of intercultural communication

Abstract This article explores the specifics of the semiosis of family in the Kazakh culture. The approaches of Halliday and Malinovsky were used to analyze the semiotics of wedding toasts, as well as the method of analyzing the “cultural metaphor” in Sharifyan’s linguistics. Language units in the texts of Kazakh wedding toasts demonstrate the specific understanding of marriage and family by the Kazakhs. The language contains “traces” of archaic, sacral, mythological ideas, rituals and traditions of the Kazakhs. In particular, the semiotics of marriage reflect the idea of a young family as a new home. The semiotic parts of the Kazakh yurt (shanyrak, kerege, and bosaga) are also sacred signs of marriage, symbolizing happiness, well-being, wealth, and family safety. This is evidenced by the frequent use of names of the yurt – ak otau and its components in the speech of the wedding party guests. The cosmogonic concepts ak jaryk, nur (‘light’, ‘shine’) are important for understanding the semiotics of family. The difficulties in interpreting wedding toasts arise in the intercultural communication due to Kazakh specific ideas about marriage and family presented in the non-equivalent units of the language.

There’s a Duwende on my shelf: The parapsychological studies of Fr. Jaime C. Bulatao, SJ.

In the Filipino transpersonal worldview, the mind is not contained within the brain, and is often projected onto the world as “spirits”. Studying these cultural metaphors may allow for a deeper understanding of the Filipino psyche. Fr. Jaime C. Bulatao, SJ, one of the founders of the Psychological Association of the Philippines, studied the projections of the Filipino psyche as they manifested in paranormal phenomena. Bulatao provides the metaphor of eggs frying in a pan as a framework to understand this: the egg whites fuse despite the yolks being far apart. It is in the dissolution of boundaries that transpersonal experiences occur. This paper discusses possibilities for future research as well as the potential contributions of transpersonal research to the field of clinical psychology.

Этнография в переводоведении: объект и методология исследо­вания

Based on a review of the literature on ethnography produced by translation scholars over the past twenty years, this contribution explores how translation studies [TS] has appropriat­ed this concept, first as a way to solve translation problems (with Eugene Nida), then as an object (within the cultural turn) and more recently as a research methodology to document and analyze translation and interpreting events in context. The author shows how, in the early seventies, both cultural anthropology and TS saw a change in paradigm that brought the two disciplines closer at the surface level (as the metaphor of culture as a text gained grounds), but that draw them very much apart from an epistemological viewpoint. Indeed, while ethnography was undertaking an interpretive turn, TS chose to define itself as an em­pirical discipline based on systematic and objective observation; this positivistic bias in early TS could partly explain its late adoption of ethnography as a research methodology. This liter­ary review finally reminds us of the many dichotomies out of which TS has grown and struc­tured itself — text vs context; translation vs. interpretation; experiential vs. scientific know­ledge, hermeneutics vs. empiricism, to name but a few — and suggest the need for an inter­pretive move within the discipline.

“A rose by any other name”. Contemporary Hungarian Shakespeare Adaptations on Stage and in Cyberspace

The essay is a survey of recent Hungarian Shakespeare adaptations. In the first part, the essay looks at adaptations that experiment with the Shakespearean text, yet they still market themselves as Shakespeare productions; while they keep most of the Shakespearean plotlines, they freely alter the structure of the Shakespearean texts, dismantle chronologies, shift language registers, and contextualize the plays in a contemporary Hungarian setting. Examples are Örkény Theatre’s 2019 Macbeth and The Shaxpeare Car Wash in Kertész Street. In the second part, the essay moves over to appropriations that are not straightforward rewritings of Shakespeare’s play; they use Shakespeare and the Shakespearean plotlines as cultural metaphors. The plays we discuss (Káva Cultural Workshop’s 2016 Lady Lear and Éva Enyedi’s 2018 Lear’s Death) both adapt King Lear, and strangely, they both appropriate the character of King Lear as a symbol to discuss aging in a contemporary setting. The final example the paper introduces is a Shakespeare burlesque, written by Zsolt Györei and Csaba Schlachtovszky, that premiered at the Gyula Shakespeare Festival in 2021. The essay contests that although the play camouflages itself as a 19th-century melodramatic tragedy, using reflective nostalgia, it becomes a voice of cultural plurality, healthy self-reflexivity and subversion.

Book Review 1: Metaphor in language and culture across world Englishes

Book Review 1: Metaphor in language and culture across world Englishes

Образ Аполлона в философском творчестве Акима Волынского

For the significant part of his creative life A.K. Volynsky turned to the image of Apollo, first, as a cultural metaphor rooted in the famous Nietzsche dyad of Apollonian/Dionysian and characterizing a certain type of culture and way of thinking. The critic sees the guarantee of the birth of a new Russia in over­coming the eternal Russian Dionysism and the affirmation of Apollo. The aca­demic interest in the figure of Apollo was inspired by Volynsky’s activities in the field of theatre and ballet criticism. Volynsky refers to the ballet itself as formalized plastic art to the “kingdom of Apollo”. In the later works of Volyn­sky, Apollo acquires a new function, personifying a historically specific civiliza­tion – Hyperborea, that he considered in the spirit of the Arctic hypothesis fash­ionable in those years, as the cradle of the Aryan civilization. This is where the Hyperboreans, not yet divided into nations, expanded into Europe and be­came the ancestors of many peoples. To establish the directions of their expan­sion, Volynsky draws on Apollo cult spread history, a god whose image has been associated with Hyperborea since ancient times; he traces the stages of trans­formation of his image on Greek land – from the “heavenly commander” to the god of purity, clarity, measure, order. In the cult of Apollo, the critic dis­covers Semitic features and the memory of the original Hyperborean mono­theism. According to Volynsky, it was the Semites who managed to preserve the features of the most ancient ancestors of European peoples – the Hyperbore­ans, as well as monism as a fundamental principle of their thinking. In the spirit of Russian cosmism, the thinker prophesies about the coming era of the “new Apollo” – a man of integral consciousness and universal rationality, who will live forever.