Figurative Discourse Research Articles

Reifying subaltern voices: a visual communication and figurative discourse of headloading practices in Nigeria

This study provides an understanding of how headloading practice signifies subaltern voices in Nigeria and Africa, among others. The study has sought to interpret the practice of headloading drawing from its images and representations from selected sources, which include Facebook and catalogues of artwork. This interpretive study constructs meaning through a discursive insight around the social practice of headloading. It expands interpretation and ideological structures to include social, economic, and political applications of the headloading subject within the framework of visual discourse and metaphor. This study directs a rethinking of headloading while underpinning the notion of ‘subalternity.’ While not necessarily asking for abolishing the social practice of headloading, the study communicates an understanding that the social phenomenon is a constant symbol of class and power status that many Africans have experienced. Headloading further ‘metaphorises’ the interaction between developed and developing societies (the Global North and South), and underscores related imports of colonisation.

The Interplay of Syntactic and Lexical Salience and its Effect on Default Figurative Responses

Abstract The aim of the paper is to determine how salient and non-salient figurative discourse nouns affect readers’ default response processing and oculo-graphic (eye-movement) reactions. Whereas the theories of the Graded Salience and the Defaultness Hypotheses, developed by R. Giora (Giora, 1999, 2003; Giora, Givoni, & Fein, 2015), have stimulated further research in the area of interpretive salience (Giora et al., 2015; Giora, Jaffe, Becker & Fein, 2018), the resonating influence of syntactic salience on default interpretations has been largely neglected. In this study we provide corpus-based evidence followed by eye-tracking experiment verification, supportive of the synchronized influence of syntactic and lexical salience. The results show that default figurative responses in lexically salient positions may require more cognitive effort (longer fixations) if they are syntactically less salient. Literal responses to figurative nouns may also result from either weak lexical or syntactic salience of nouns. Therefore, apart from exemplifying resonance with lexical salience (in terms of lexical frequency, familiarity, conventionality, and prototypicality), the default figurative interpretations are also syntactically dependent.

Функция образного языка в романном диалоге Ч. Диккенса с читателем

The article examines the function of figurative language in Dickens’s novels in the light of its specific dialogism. Dickens’s dialogism mentioned by M. Bakhtin manifests itself through the so-called double voicing and socio-ideological heteroglossia. It also continues in the form of a dialogue between the author and the reader. The second type of the dialogue includes the first one. The essay explores the hitherto understudied influence of Dickens’s communicative urge for the continuous contact with his reader in his fiction, including its discursive aspects. My research is an attempt to converge these two approaches as I trace the interdependence and the process of transition between the dialogue that develops in the frame of the voice orientation and the dialogue between the author and reader that leads Dickens to extensive dialogism. The analysis shows that the figurative discourse implements two functions: it intensifies heteroglossia and at the same time clarifies the author’s intention and also organizes the space of the author’s and reader’s communication, appealing to the reader to emotionally engage in the process. Figurative and emotional force of Dickens’s language is a means to strengthen the dialogical discourse and to multiply its forms.

Investigating satirical discourse processing and comprehension: the role of cognitive, demographic, and pragmatic features

abstractSatire is a subtle type of figurative discourse and is still relatively under-studied from the perspective of figurative language researchers. The purpose of this study is to investigate cognitive, demographic, and pragmatic factors previously suggested to influence satire processing and comprehension but which have yet to be studied using behavioral methods. Specifically, this study examines Need for Cognition (NFC; the desire to engage in cognitively difficult tasks), general knowledge, demographic measures such as language background, and affective perceptions of humor, sincerity, and positivity. Sixty-one participants (32 non-native English speakers) read satirical and non-satirical news reports taken from The Onion and Science Daily, respectively, both published in the United States. Perceptions of sincerity, humor, and positivity, reading times, and written interpretations of the intended meaning for each text were recorded. Results from statistical analyses suggested NFC significantly influenced satirical text reading times. Moreover, language background and perceptions of sincerity significantly influenced satire comprehension. These results highlight an interplay between individual differences during satire processing and comprehension, and work to validate some, but not all, theoretical predictions for satire processing and comprehension.

Algunas hipótesis sobre el programa decorativo de las paredes en arenisca del Templo de Millones de Años de Tutmosis III

The archaeological excavations undertaken since 2008 in the Henket-ankh, the Temple of Millions of Years of Thutmose III located on the West Bank of Thebes, have resulted in the discovery of a large number of relief fragments, both in sandstone and limestone. While a part of the sanctuary would have been made of limestone, sandstone was used for most decorated walls of the temple. The material is very fragmented, and very little of the original structures of the temple remains. However, its study has allowed us to elaborate hypotheses about some of the scenes that would have been represented, as well as to suggest possible reconstructions. They included, among others, the massacre and list of enemies or battle, a calendar of festivities, processions, the Ished tree or the king outfitted with the Heb Sed robe. These iconographic elements responded to an intentional program in which each type of representation, ritual or other, had its place in specific areas of the temple. These would be combined with scenes of offerings to the gods, in particular to Amun, guarantor at the same time than recipient of the king’s deeds. This paper aims to present an integral vision of what has been determined in terms of these scenes. Given the state of the material, the limitations that we face when it comes to deciphering this figurative discourse are manifest; however, the reliefs discovered in the Henket-ankh evidence the complexity of the decorative and symbolic program, as well as the quality of relief and polychrome, which once existed in the Temple of Millions of Years of Thutmose III

Gramática modista "versus" gramática sanctiana: dos concepciones de análisis lingüístico contrapuestas

La teoría gramatical modista siempre se ha considerado un precedente claro de la teoría gramatical sanctiana. Es evidente que ambas teorías comparten un mismo objetivo de universalidad lingüística. Sin embargo, ese mismo objetivo teórico se intenta alcanzar en ambas doctrinas mediante patrones metodológicos muy diferentes. Y es que la gramática bajomedieval modista y la de Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas (Franciscus Sanctius Brocensis) están separadas, como analizamos en nuestro estudio, por una contrapuesta concepción de análisis lingüístico respecto al discurso figurado que determina la exclusión por sistema del mismo en el modismo frente a su estudio racional y sistemático en la gramática de Sanctius. Y tal contrapuesta concepción de análisis lingüístico no se ha destacado ni enfatizado lo suficiente a pesar de que es clave tanto para interpretar correctamente estos dos decisivos y trascendentales sistemas gramaticales como para precisar las aportaciones esenciales de cada uno a la lingüística de Occidente.

Rethinking ideology: Greimas’s semiotics, neomarxism, and cultural anthropology

Abstract Ideology is commonly seen today from two points of view, which, although opposed, support each other. For some, ideology no longer has a place in postmodern society; for others it is still an opium, a pathology that must be cured. A different stand-point is defended here, based on the conception of ideology in Greimas’s semiotics. Underlying any human action directed towards values, ideology, over and above its role as a representation of evil (as embodied in totalitarianism), is an inevitable and transversal phenomenon which cannot be confined to the political sphere. This idea is presented first via Geertz’s cultural anthropology. The anthropologist proposes a non-evaluative and non-combative approach to ideology. As if anticipating the neo-Marxist (Althusser’s) conception, discarding the view of ideology as an inverted image of reality, he sees it as a construct of imagination and of figurative discourse. For him, ideology is a symbolic system whose analysis requires a theory of meaning (linguistics, rhetoric, semiotics). Greimasian semiotics offers precisely what Geertz contemplated: a non-evaluative, purely descriptive conception of ideology and of the methodological tools for its analysis. The article stresses the differences between the structural approach and the dominant socio-political theories, and finally compares the principles of ideological analysis of discourse as assumed respectively by (neo)Marxist criticism and by semiotics.

On Some Properties of Science Fiction Dystopian Narrative

Dystopia is a narrative form of fiction in general and of science fiction in particular. Using elements of science fiction discourse like time travel, space flight, advanced technologies, virtual reality, genetic engineering, etc. – dystopian narrative depicts future fictive societies presenting in peculiar prose style a future in which humanity has fallen into destruction, ruin and decline, in which human life and nature are wildly abused, exploited and destroyed, in which a totalitarian, highly centralized, and, therefore, oppressive social organization sacrifices individual expression, freedom of choice and idiosyncrasy of the society and its members. It is such critical and creative reflections of science fiction dystopian narrative that are focused on in the present case study with the aim of bringing out certain properties in terms of narrative types and devices, figurative discourse and cognitive notions through which science fiction dystopia expresses and conveys its overarching message, i.e. the warning to stop before it is too late to the reader.

WHITE, FRIEDLÄNDER, “… AND THE REST IS HISTORY”: A PAX HISTORIANA

ABSTRACTClose analysis of the ostensive disagreement between Saul Friedländer and Hayden White on the necessarily literary character of Holocaust historiography shows instead of conflict two compatible and even mutually supportive emphases in that project: the assumption in modernist and disruptive narratives as elsewhere of a “corpus of facts,” together with the role of figurative discourse in conveying relevant features of events that linear chronological or causal narratives alone do not convey.

L’âme et le corps dans la suasoire de Dracontius : Rom. IX, un hommage à Homère

In his suasoria to Achilles about Hector’s body (Rom. IX), Dracontius plays with rhetorical features, poetic models (especially epic) and philosophical traditions. Thus he wants to pay homage to the great poet Homer. Studying the soul and the body in the poem emphasises this fusion but the treatment and the signification are meant differently : they reveal a rewriting of Homer’s poem which deals with Christian issues, and they suggest a figurative discourse about Vandal Carthage. Finally, Rom. IX appears as the metaphor of Dracontius’poetics in the Romulea : collecting the last vestiges of Homer and of Graeco-Roman culture.

10.5937/comman1431039v = Metaphor, personification and hyperbole in pharmaceutical products advertisements

This paper aims to present some aspects of the discourse identified in advertising contents promoting pharmaceuticals and medical products. The paper contains basic theoretical framework for the analysis of figurative discourse with the aim of explaining its manipulative properties. The sample includes twenty-one advertisements and commercials, taken from various media resources, newspapers, Internet bulletins and published in the time period from April 2012 to August 2013, where several examples of metaphorical expressions as well as the expressions of personifications and hyperbole were found. What needs to be emphasized is that the analysis has included all metaphorical, personified or hyperbolic elements of the advertisements and commercials promoting pharmaceuticals and medical products; that is, what is analyzed, apart from the analysis of the expression, is the characters as well as other visual and acoustic means of expression conveying implicit and subliminal messages. The examples shown illustrate and confirm the assumption that rhetorical means of persuasion found in commercials influence the consciousness of the media contents' consumers and potential purchasers who, as a result of their exposure to modern life stresses and strains and due to the lack of time, succumb to the marketing ploy offering them a promise that buying a certain medical product means buying a solution to their problems, too.

On the Textual Economy of Brand Equity: Accounting Semiotically for the Difference between Axiology and Linguistic Value

This paper addresses the issue of how brand equity emerges in the context of exchange acts among signifiers and signifieds in a textual economy. By drawing on the discipline of structuralist semiotics, I distinguish between two kinds of value, viz. axiology, as customarily employed in consumer research, and linguistic value, as acts of semiotic exchange, instituted in brand communication texts. Insofar as consumer-based brand equity essentially consists of differential brand associations arising from a coherent brand knowledge structure, the mode whereby this structure emerges in the context of a textual economy may be accounted for by recourse to the notion of ‘linguistic value’, as inaugurated by Saussure and later adopted by Greimas. By focusing on the generation of brand equity as linguistic value from a textual economic point of view, one is capable of analyzing not only how a brand appropriates existing cultural values (appropriated brand values), but, moreover, how values are invented by a brand in acts of semiotic invention (invented brand values). A conceptual approach that is geared towards an exploration of how brand values’ invention is interlinked with acts of figurative brand discourse generation (or advertising texts),as multi-directional exchanges between signifiers/signifieds (in Saussure’s terms) or elements of the planes of expression and content (in Hjelmslev’s terms) in the context of a dynamic interplay between a brand’s idiolect and a product category’s sociolect, and related deviations from local and general degrees zero, contributes to our understanding of how sources of brand equity are linked to outcomes (or brand knowledge structures).

Hearing the Shepherd's Voice: The παροιμία of the Good Shepherd Discourse and Augustine's Figural Reading

Abstract This essay argues for the congruence between Augustine's figural interpretation of the Good Shepherd discourse (John 10:1–18) and the discourse's literary and rhetorical character. John refers to Jesus' figurative speech in the shepherd discourse as παροιμία (10:6). This term designates a mode of figurative discourse in the Fourth Gospel, which is presently obscure and requires a more-than-literal interpretation. By using παροιμία as a compositional technique, John aligns his audience with the individuals in the Gospel narrative, all of whom work to understand Jesus' figurative language. The παροιμία is a literary strategy by which John draws his audience into the Gospel's narrative world and invites them to adopt his theological understanding of all things in light of the Word. In his figural reading, Augustine positions his congregation to mirror the individuals and relationships in the discourse. His figural reading involves a complex interrelationship between doctrinal profession, moral disposition, and ecclesial participation, all of which serve the reader's spiritual transformation by Christ. Resonant with the Gospel's prologue, the economy of the Word connects these realities and provides the theological architecture for the spiritual associations between the biblical prophets, Jesus, the church, and the interpretation of Scripture. Augustine thus develops the literary and rhetorical cues of the Gospel's plain sense into a figural interpretation, which is congruent with the invitation of the Gospel itself.

Hearing the Shepherd's Voice: The παροιμία of the Good Shepherd Discourse and Augustine's Figural Reading

Abstract This essay argues for the congruence between Augustine's figural interpretation of the Good Shepherd discourse (John 10:1–18) and the discourse's literary and rhetorical character. John refers to Jesus' figurative speech in the shepherd discourse as παροιμία (10:6). This term designates a mode of figurative discourse in the Fourth Gospel, which is presently obscure and requires a more-than-literal interpretation. By using παροιμία as a compositional technique, John aligns his audience with the individuals in the Gospel narrative, all of whom work to understand Jesus' figurative language. The παροιμία is a literary strategy by which John draws his audience into the Gospel's narrative world and invites them to adopt his theological understanding of all things in light of the Word. In his figural reading, Augustine positions his congregation to mirror the individuals and relationships in the discourse. His figural reading involves a complex interrelationship between doctrinal profession, moral disposition, and ecclesial participation, all of which serve the reader's spiritual transformation by Christ. Resonant with the Gospel's prologue, the economy of the Word connects these realities and provides the theological architecture for the spiritual associations between the biblical prophets, Jesus, the church, and the interpretation of Scripture. Augustine thus develops the literary and rhetorical cues of the Gospel's plain sense into a figural interpretation, which is congruent with the invitation of the Gospel itself.

Repressenting the Manimal: A Semiotic/Psychoanalytic Approach to the Strategic Importance of Anthropomorphism in Branding

S. Brown proclaimed in 1995 that there is no representation without taxation. In an attempt to extend the same thread of reasoning this paper puts forward the argument that there is no representation without repression. By drawing on the exemplary brand identity building stratagem of the anthropomorph and by recourse to the dreamwork formative process illustrated by Freud in his magnum opus The Interpretation of Dreams, an account is yielded of the equivalent process involved in the formation of the brandwork. Moreover, by unlocking the potential of the faculty of imagination as constitutive of the web of metaphors and metonymies wherein the brandwork as figurative discourse is cloaked, a genealogical route is pursued with view to demonstrating that what are usually described as universally recognizable brand symbols stem from singular representations or imaginary constellations that reveal a brand’s truth inasmuch as they conceal it. By extending the interpretive findings pertaining to the imaginary status of the anthropomorphic figure, suggestions are made as to why a brand should not be viewed only in terms of manifest personality traits, but also in terms of a latent unconscious.

Scripture as Semiotic System: Theological Interpretation and the Multiple Senses of Scripture

Abstract This paper argues for the appropriation of interpretation of the Scriptures according to the spritual sense as a helpful and acceptable way of engaging in constructive theology. Grounded to a degree in the work and thought of Thomas Aquinas, and drawing significantly on Paul Ricoeur's suggestions regarding figurative language and speculative discourse, the primary thesis of the paper is that when interpreting according to the spiritual sense, the content of Scripture itself functions as a semiotic system allowing the interpreter to press beyond the semantic capabilities of literal language in an attempt to speak meaningfully about God.

Reflections on the Pragmatics of the Illustrated Perspective Treatise

This essay reconsiders visual demonstrations contained in a selection of illustrated perspective treatises. Based on a fundamental distinction made in the field of pragmatics, the author argues that the images designed to demonstrate/teach/instantiate the perspectival system are plagued by a contradiction between the conceptual “content” of perspective and the figurative means deployed to display such content. In all cases, this aporia, which defines the teaching of perspective by means of images, arises when the figurative discourse of perspective attempts to integrate a representation of its user within the system itself. In closing, the author suggests that the perspective treatise’s “pragmatic unconscious” allows one to shed new light on the pictorial innovations of German romanticism, particularly in the work of Caspar David Friedrich, which is tied to fundamental (and hitherto unforeseen) ways to the “failures” of the classical age.

Reception and interference: reading Jean Molinet's rebus-poems

Northern French culture in the late Middle Ages is marked not only by a proliferation of visual images, but also by the knowledge which these images convey, very often in the form of figurative discourse. Traditional coded or symbolic visual forms include heraldry, where tinctures and charges often accumulate particular connotations, and typological stained-glass windows, which establish relationships between episodes from the Old and New Testaments. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, further traditions develop which endow images with second-order meanings: the frequent use of allegorical tableaux at court and municipal festivities, the profusion of illustrated didactic literature in which allegory is a dominant mode of expression.1 The question of how viewers make sense of such images — clearly a crucial issue for the study not only of visual culture, but also of the transmission of knowledge, in the period — is particularly complex when the images are accompanied by texts. This study seeks to illuminate the epistemic and interpretive challenges posed by the combination of text and symbolic image, by analysing a small but fascinating corpus: the rebus-poems of the major Burgundian poet and chronicler Jean Molinet (1435–1507).2

The Conceptualisation of the European Union in Polish Public Discourse, 2002–2003

Based on recent theoretical insights into the conceptual role of metaphors, this paper investigates figurative discourse in the current conceptualisation of the European Union (EU) in Polish. The metaphorical expressions found in the data present a cline of conventionality, and many of them display processes analysed by Lakoff and Turner (1989), as the established mappings are extended, elaborated and questioned. Moreover, some mappings enjoy local intertextuality, as, once they enter the public domain, they are adopted by other participants in the discourse. Most of these recurrent metaphors seem to be directly embedded in more fundamental and embodied conceptual structures, among which PATH, UP–DOWN orientation, LINK and PART–WHOLE seem to be the most dominant. In general, it may be concluded that although many source domains allow both positive and negative interpretations of the target, there are some schemata which, once adopted, have a strong tendency to promote positive axiology. For instance, a journey, once undertaken, creates strong expectations of reaching the goal, despite the challenges awaiting the traveller.

Defining popular iconic metaphor.

Popular Iconic Metaphor is added to the cognitive linguistic lexicon of figurative language. Popular Iconic Metaphors employ real or fictional celebrities of popular culture as source domains in figurative discourse. Some borders of Popular Iconic Metaphor are identified, and Elvis Presley is offered as a prototype example of a popular iconic source domain, due to his ubiquity in American popular culture, which affords his figurative usage in ways consistent with decision heuristics in everyday life. Further study of Popular Iconic Metaphors may serve to illuminate how figurative expressions emerge in their localized contexts, structure conduct and experience, and affect mediation of cultural and personal meanings.