Metaphorical Level Research Articles

The patient’s use of metaphor within a palliative care setting: Theory, function and efficacy. A narrative literature review

Background: The modes of communication which patients use are seen as important within the sphere of palliative care and have been the focus of much research. Aim: This literature review aims to identify and analyse one particular mode of patient expression, namely that of the figure of speech (trope) ‘metaphor’, and ask questions regarding metaphor’s therapeutic usefulness when engaging with the life-limited patient. Data Sources: The investigation revolves around a literature review of academic papers which focus on the metaphorical ways in which patients speak of their condition. Results: This paper provides the theoretical foundations for the patient’s metaphoric utterances. It also delineates the variety and diversity of metaphors used by patients and categorises them into broad groupings which encompass metaphors of war, journeying, personhood, the natural world and existential concepts. Conclusions: The papers reviewed suggest that metaphoric communication allows sensitive subjects to be dealt with and provides benefits for patients. The results suggest that engaging with patients at the metaphoric level enables them to create new ways of viewing their situation and opens up the possibilities of new coping strategies. Finally, some developmental trajectories emanating from the reviewed papers are suggested, which will allow the efficacy of metaphor to be explored further within a palliative care setting.

Subjective and objective point of view as metaphor in Mitko Panov's With Raised Hands

What are we watching here? What is the nature of our discomfort? The point of view established in the opening of With Raised Hands – through the lens of a German camera recording the round-up of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto – uncomfortably implicates us in this act of violence. The subsequent shifts in point of view are also supported by temporal shifts, both of which function at deeper, metaphorical levels to support the developing story.

Gestaltegewing van geloof – Aspekte van outentieke geloofskommunikasie

Faith embodied – Aspects of the authentic communication of the faith In this article a theological theory for the communication of the faith is addressed from the basic metaphor of the Church as the body of Christ, within the fields of church publications, visual communication, the worship service and church music. It is argued that words (spoken, published or sung), music, art, gestures, visual images, silences and open spaces, are all communicative actions performing on a symbolic or metaphorical level to express and communicate the faith. Through these communicative actions the corporate identity of the community of faith is shaped and the body of Christ is built up. It is argued that in the church the act of communicating should adhere to certain theological principles to be true to its essence and aim: to communicate the faith faithfully and trustworthy.

Kafkas bewegte Körper. Die Tagebücher und Briefe als Laboratorien von Bewegung

Reviewed by: Kafkas bewegte Körper. Die Tagebücher und Briefe als Laboratorien von Bewegung Lara Pehar Kafkas bewegte Körper. Die Tagebücher und Briefe als Laboratorien von Bewegung. Von Elisabeth Lack. München: Fink, 2009. 254 Seiten. €29,90. Kafka’s letters have been read as stories of communication and failed communication, and in their transmission they have been imagined as traveling bodies, moving freely with the advance of the postal system, as if to compensate for Kafka’s unwillingness to send a less literary part of himself. Elisabeth Lack’s notion of letters as laboratories of movement intersects this pivotal question in Kafka scholarship—what is in a letter?— exploring a new connection between writing and bodies, and the corporeal capacity to communicate meaning qua metaphor. Studying Kafka’s sketches and descriptions of bodies in motion in his diaries and letters, Lack argues for “literary possibilities and processes of motion capturing” (14). Walter Benjamin’s characterization of Kafka’s literature as one of paradoxes permeates Lack’s analysis. She locates the nexus between the body and its potential to express meaning in language on the levels of symbol, gesture, and metaphor. On the symbolic level, bodies function as symptom carriers of inner developments, but that to which they refer remains unidentifiable. Likewise, a decipherable reference system is impeded on the level of gesture, as ambivalent bodily movements obscure communication. A position that positively denies the possibility of identifiable significance seems to imply that Kafka’s bodies resist metaphorical readings. But Lack argues that on the level of metaphor, the primary interest of her work, bodies in Kafka must be understood as “rhetorical operations in the context of a search for the expressive body” (28). Kafka’s metaphors serve as bridges between the body and all that it can represent. Lack’s book is most interesting where it explores the extent to which Kafka’s body metaphors engage the discourses of modernity. In contrast to Sarasin and Tanner (Physiologie und industrielle Gesellschaft, Frankfurt / Main 1998), who deem bodies to be culturally contingent products, Lack maintains that for Kafka, as agents of presentation, they are not. While sketches and descriptions of traveling, deformed bodies reflect the ruling discourses of their time, this mode of representation cannot be extrapolated from them. An interesting conclusion arises from Lack’s analysis: Kafka’s keen interest in the body may well be a source of the distinct metaphorical feel of his language in fiction. His broad metaphorical vocabulary, then, moves against the grain of the language crisis at the turn of the century. The literary presentability of Kafka’s bodies counters the short-comings of language in communicating bodily experience. Lack convincingly establishes the need to examine Kafka’s interest in the potential of the body as an expressive medium, using as her examples his letters and diaries [End Page 313] where, unlike in the stories and novels, body metaphors and the motif of the expressive body carry no additional dimensions of meaning. Lack’s arguments are supported by textual analyses of some of the most famous passages in Kafka’s letters and diaries. This makes her book a pleasant read, as the reader will be familiar with the context in which Kafka made the cited claims and thus better be able to understand Lack’s theoretical concerns. Her methodological backdrop is Benjamin; and she extensively cites some of the most respected names in recent Kafka scholarship, such as Kittler, Neumann, and Pasley. Lack discovers that the diaries and letters document the successes and failures of the body metaphors and motion sketches, and suggests this as a further avenue of exploration. Lack’s book innovatively explores the patterns of Kafka’s thought. It is a valuable resource to students and scholars, and an original contribution to a rich body of Kafka scholarship pertaining to corporeality and to the relationship between his letters and fiction. Stressing the expressive dimension of the body, Lack shows how the imposition of rhetorical devices—metaphor and comparison—releases the body’s potential to make manifest otherwise obstructed meanings. Her work confirms that in Kafka, the body—like the act of writing—maintains the closest tie to language. Lara...

Using Art as a Medium to Enhance Social Responsibility and Citizenship

Abstract The aim of this research is to consider the impact of a Service-Learning module aiming at enhancing social responsibility and citizenship by using art as a medium for learning and reflection. It involves an explicit and designed programme that includes Socratic discussions and self-reflection projects through art. Action research was used as a methodology, ensuring that the whole class and the researcher were involved in the research process. The results of the project demonstrated that art is an effective medium to address sensitive issues because it functions on a symbolic and metaphorical level. Art that uses metaphors involves participants both consciously and sub-consciously and encourages possibilities for a diversity of interpretations.

Metaphor and metonymy: Making their connections more slippery

Abstract This paper continues the debate about how to distinguish metaphor from metonymy, and whether this can be done. It examines some of the differences that have been alleged to exist, and augments the already existing doubt about them. The main differences addressed are the similarity/contiguity distinction and the issue of whether source-target links are part of the message in metonymy or metaphor. In particular, the paper argues that metaphorical links can always be used metonymically and regarded as contiguities, and conversely that two particular, central types of metonymic contiguity essentially involve similarity. The paper also touches briefly on how metaphor and metonymy interact with domains, frames, etc. and on the role of imaginary identification/categorization of target as/under source items. With the possible exception of this last issue, the paper suggests that no combination of the alleged differences addressed can serve cleanly to categorize source/target associations into metaphorical ones and metonymic ones. It also suggests that it can be more profitable to analyse utterances at the level of the dimensions involved in the differences than at the higher level of metaphor and metonymy as such.

Seminar Report: Literary, Cultural, & Disability Studies: A Tripartite Approach to Postcolonialism

Held at Lancaster University's Centre for Research (CeDR) in June 2009, this seminar was first of a summer series designed to foster in-depth exploration of topics within Cultural and promote dialogue with other areas of research.1 A Tripartite Approach to Postcolonialism began with a keynote presentation by Dr. Clare Barker (University of Birmingham) and Prof. Stuart Murray (University of Leeds), guest editors of forthcoming special issue of JLCDS on postcolonialism. Their presentation, Literatures and Materiality of offered a survey of relationship between postcolonial scholarship and Studies, while also making a series of critical interventions. In particular, speakers stressed need for a close engagement with local conditions of production of text, arguing that transcultural applicability of key theories and concepts from Cultural cannot be assumed. For example, they suggested that David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder's seminal concept of narrative prosthesis- developed in Narrative Prosthesis: and Dependencies of Discourse (2000)-invites analysis focusing on metaphorical meaning of individual character, neglecting idea of community central to many postcolonial narratives. speakers also argued that issues of care and cure may function very differently in postcolonial texts. Offering brief readings of works from a range of postcolonial contexts (including texts by Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, Sahar Khalifeh, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Patricia Grace), Literatures and Materiality of Disability made a compelling case for contribution can make to postcolonial scholarship, and vice-versa. As with best work in Cultural Studies, this presentation actively sought to advance our understanding of not one but two fields. Drawing on but not requiring familiarity with previous work by both speakers-particularly notion of autistic presence and argument that a shift in reading strategies is required when engaging with postcolonial texts2-their presentation successfully balanced conceptual sophistication with accessibility for those less familiar with postcolonial studies. Sparking most discussion during post-presentation question session was issue of metaphor. Among points raised were whether there is a difference between metaphor and metaphorization, and need to ask what a character communicates about disability before level of metaphor. In fact, while postcolonial texts may make issue of metaphor a particularly pressing one, metaphor has been keenly discussed at various recent events, suggesting that, in UK Cultural at least, it is a hot topic. This was illustrated in next presentation, Shifting Perspective, Heightening Awareness: Weaving Dialogues Between Postcolonial Theory and Studies by Ana B. Pereira, a postgraduate student at Lancaster University. Her paper drew out parallels between postcolonial theories and Studies, before offering an in-depth reading of a classic text in postcolonial theory, Frantz Fanon's The Fact of Blackness (included in 1952 collection Black Skin, White Masks). Noting extent to which imagery of impaired body is used in Fanon's essay-in terms reminiscent of, though without reference to, Mitchell and Snyder's writing on disability as the master trope of human disqualification (3)- she stressed importance of bearing in mind the existence of interlocking systems of oppression. In same panel, Beatriz Miranda-Galarza of University of Leeds presented a paper examining relationship of disability to postcolonial issues from a Latin American perspective. Drawing upon both fieldwork and personal experience, 'Between a will to write and a body to be written': Disability, history and things that West forgot to say was an invitation to rethink western historical and theoretical account of disability that, she argued, has disabled contribution of those from other milieus. …

Toward an Epistemology of the Hand

Western philosophy has been greatly influenced by visual metaphors. Knowing something has commonly, yet implicitly, been conceptualized as seeing something clearly, learning has been framed as being visually exposed to something, and the mind has been understood as a ‘mirror of nature’. A whole ‘epistemology of the eye’ has been at work, which has had significant practical implications, not least in educational contexts. One way to characterize John Dewey’s pragmatism is to see it as an attempt to replace the epistemology of the eye with an epistemology of the hand. This article develops the epistemology of the hand on three levels: A level of embodiment and metaphors, of craftsmanship and social practices, and of schooling and education.

The Resources of Ambiguity

Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene illustrates the power of ambiguity in scientific discourse. The rhetorical and epistemic resources that ambiguity provide are most apparent at the level of metaphor but are also central to the exigency for Dawkins’s argument and to the narrative form that the argument takes. Using ratios derived from Burke’s dramatistic pentad, I analyze how ambiguous language helped Dawkins to link different theoretical conceptions of the gene and consequently posit connections between genes and organisms that had not yet been empirically established. I thus demonstrate at a conceptual and textual level how ambiguity contributes to the construction of novel scientific arguments. For Dawkins, ambiguity provided a discursive space in which he could speculate on connections and developments for which he did not yet have evidence, data, or terminology. Despite his insistence that his use of figurative motive language was simply a ‘‘convenient shorthand’’ for more technical language, The Selfish Gene demonstrates the powerful epistemological and rhetorical role that ambiguous metaphors play in biological discourse.

The Photograph Album of an Unknown American Missionary in Natal, c.1930: The Good News – and the Bad1

ABSTRACT Drawing on Christraud Geary's analysis of missionary photography in Africa, this article argues that the Houghton Library photograph album of an unknown American missionary in Natal of around 1930 was constructed for public rather than private viewing, and that the story it tells conforms largely to the pattern of the standard ‘missionary narrative’. Although obviously depicting specific individuals in certain places at precise times, the album works nonetheless on a metaphorical level in defining, in turn, the difficult access to the mission field, the extent of the ‘problem’ to be addressed, and the rewards of the missionary labours. However, while the missionary narrative is told pictorially in these broad symbolic terms, in its differences from the standard narrative and in details such as its evident concern with children, the album does reflect actual developments in mission practice in Natal around 1930.

Commentary: Is Place Experience Culturally Specific? A Commentary on Yoly Zentella's Article

A dialogical commentary on Yuly Zentella' s (2009) article dealing with the cultural experiences of the loss of ties with their land among the Hispanos of Northern New Mexico is attempted firstly by referring to the psychological literature on transitions which utilizes Bowbly's theory of attachment and loss in actual incidents of relocations and displacement, and secondly by critically questioning the validity of combining concepts emerging from a grounded theory approach with general notions borrowed from attachment and place attachment theories. Although there are similarities between Zentella's study and studies of psycho-social transition that reveal stage-like processes following loss and grieving reactions of individuals, the former study is characterized by the impact's longer time-frame, which extends over generations of the population, while the latter literature deal with the loss of immediate environment by individuals, who undergo critical changes in a relatively shorter period. The cultural specificity of the multi-dimensional model proposed by Zentella is questioned on the ground that the added dimensions did not originate from the specific population under study, but are borrowed from more general theoretical abstractions. While the abductive mode of reasoning is appreciated, a possible mis-match between local concepts emerging from the grounded theory approach and the notion of attachment is discussed. As an alternative direction to value cultural specificity and phenomenological traditions, some exploration on the concept of `imprisonment' found by Zentella is attempted by adopting a symbol formation approach which takes language at a metaphorical level, and thus several examples of place metaphors, such as attached, rooted and imprisoned, are considered, with the hope of accumulating culturally specific studies of place experiences.

Conceptual metaphor theory

Despite its popularity in and outside cognitive linguistics, cognitive metaphor theory (CMT) has received a wide range of criticisms in the past two decades. Several metaphor researchers have criticized the methodology with which metaphor is studied (emphasizing concepts instead of words), the direction of analysis (emphasizing a top-down instead of a bottom-up approach), the category level of metaphor (claiming its superordinate status instead of basic level), the embodiment of metaphor (emphasizing the universal, mechanical, and monolithic aspects instead of nonuniversal, nonmechanical, and nonmonolithic aspects of embodiment), and its relationship to culture (emphasizing the role of universal bodily experience instead of the interaction of body and context). In the paper, I respond to this criticism largely based on my own research and propose a view on these issues that can successfully meet these challenges and that can be regarded as an alternative to the “standard theory.”

A Pilgrimage to the Heart

AbstractThe wager of this Introduction is that imagination serves as a special agent of inter-religious hospitality. It suggests that a spiritual imaginary operating at the level of metaphor, narrative, symbol and epiphany can traverse the closed borders of dogma and ideology and open genuine conversations between wisdom traditions. The editor charts a 'pilgrimage of the heart' from an international meeting in Bangalore in June 2008 through a series of visits to inter-religious ashrams in western India to a final encounter in the Buddhist-Hindu caves of Ajanta and Ellora. Following in the footsteps of such pioneers of Christian-Hindu dialogue as Abhishiktananda, Francis Acharya and Sara Grant, the itinerary mapped in this Introduction seeks to illustrate key features of the five wisdom traditions discussed in this volume. The paradox of immanent transcendence lies at the heart of this journey.

Medizinische Theologie: Christus medicus und theologia medicinalis bei Martin Luther und im Luthertum der Barockzeit (review)

Reviewed by: Medizinische Theologie: Christus medicus und theologia medicinalis bei Martin Luther und im Luthertum der Barockzeit Kathleen Crowther-Heyck Johann Anselm Steiger . Medizinische Theologie: Christus medicus und theologia medicinalis bei Martin Luther und im Luthertum der Barockzeit. Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, vol. 121. Leiden: Brill, 2005. viii + 369 pp. $160.00, €119.00 (90-04-4156-1). Johann Anselm Steiger examines the close and hitherto unexplored connections between theology and medicine in the writings of Martin Luther and his followers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These connections were both literal and metaphorical. On the literal level, the presence of myriad medicinal herbs [End Page 452] and other substances was a clear sign of divine providence and benevolence. On the metaphorical level, Luther described the Word of God as medicine for the soul, described Christ as both a physician and an apothecary, and compared the pastoral functions of bishops and priests to the work of running a hospital. Steiger points out that Luther regarded both theology and medicine as "practical sciences" (p. 12): the former aimed to heal the soul, and the latter the body. This was more than an analogy, for bodily and spiritual health were intimately linked. According to Luther, in times of sickness a Christian should turn both to God and to a physician. It was wrong to refuse medical treatment, for this was a rejection of God's creation and divine plan, but it was essential to pray for forgiveness of sins and to be reconciled with God. Prayer without medicine was ineffective, but so was medicine without prayer. Whether a medicine worked or not was dependent as much on the patient's spiritual state as on his or her constitution or on the progress of the disease. While Steiger persuasively demonstrates the importance of "medical theology" to Luther and to subsequent generations of Lutheran theologians, I was left wondering both why Luther found these themes so appealing and how uniquely Lutheran they actually were. As Steiger notes, the literal and metaphorical connections between medicine and theology can be traced back to the church fathers. They can also be found in early modern writers who were not Lutheran, a point that Steiger ignores. For example, he discusses the Paradise Garden (1587) of the Lutheran theologian Conrad Rosbach, a book in which descriptions of the medicinal virtues of plants were paired with descriptions of their spiritual meanings. Steiger presents this book as epitomizing a specifically Lutheran view of the relationship between physical and spiritual "medicine," but it was almost certainly modeled on an earlier work, Similitudinum ac parabolarum quae in Bibliis ex herbis atque arboribus desumuntur dilucida explicatio (1566), by the Dutch Catholic physician Levinus Lemnius. This suggests that medical-theological ideas were more widespread and less confessionally distinct than Steiger acknowledges. It should be noted that Steiger's interest is primarily in the history of theology, not in the history of medicine. Accordingly, he does not examine the writings of any Lutheran physicians to assess the degree to which their theories, practices, or self-images were influenced by Luther's ideas. Although he suggests that the high value placed by Lutherans on the work of physicians and apothecaries had an influence on their social status, he does not pursue this topic. Overall, though, this is a very useful book for scholars interested in the complex and shifting relationship between religion and medicine in the early modern period. The volume includes several seventeenth-century images of Christ as an apothecary, and critical editions of three Lutheran texts: Wilhelm Sarcerius's Der Hellische Trawer Geist (1568), Simon Musäus's Nützlicher Bericht . . . wider den Melancholischen Teuffel (1569), and Valerius Herberger's Leichenpredigt auf Flaminius Gasto (1618). Kathleen Crowther-Heyck University of Oklahoma Footnotes 1. Charles David O'Malley, Michael Servetus. A Translation of His Geographical, Medical, and Astrological Writings with Introductions and Notes (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1953), pp. 168-88. 2. Michael Servetus, Obras completas, ed. Ángel Alcalà, vol. 3, Escritos científicos (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2005), pp. 255-77 (Spanish), 485-500 (Latin). Copyright © 2007 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Catégorisation du langage descriptif et du langage figuré dans l'expérience des parfums complexes

Studies of olfactive vocabulary show that it refers to different fields and uses attributes and also similes and metaphors. This research aims at studying the use of figurative language in olfactive descriptions through the use of semantic approximation (metaphors and analogy). The olfactive verbalizations were collected in presence of nine perfumes. Verbalizations were recorded and transcribed. A semantic analysis was conducted and enables to elaborate an olfactive properties typology. This typology falls into four main categories: perceptive level, figurative level (metaphoric or analogical level), emotional level and hedonistic level. Semantic approximations (analogical or metaphorical level) are mainly used in perfumes description and indirect approximations (analogies) are more frequent than direct approximations (metaphors). These results bring up the question of the cognitive representation of olfactive informations.

Designing with Kansei at a Metaphorical Level

Designing with Kansei at a Metaphorical Level

Metaphor and convention

This article argues that lexical metaphors should be seen as graded: they differ in their conventionalized ability to activate concepts from the source domain. Such differences in metaphorical strength are analyzed, along with other (graded) dimensions of conventionality. Co-occurrence patterns for conventionalized metaphors from the WEIGHT domain in Swedish are investigated in some detail, making use of extensive corpus data. The results indicate large differences in metaphorical strength. This provides implications for the relation between conceptual and lexical levels of metaphor, which are found to be more dialectic than usually assumed, especially within Conceptual Metaphor Theory.

Small Worlds: Constructions of Childhood in Contemporary Postcolonial Autobiography in French

This article explores the resurgence of narratives of childhood in contemporary postcolonial writing in French. The first section will trace the rise and fall of the récit d'enfance, before going on to examine the commodification and packaging of the genre by metropolitan publishers, a tendency which could be seen to be complicit with an exoticizing view of the colony. While the upsurge in narratives of childhood is widespread throughout the francophone world, it is in fact remarkably concentrated in the French Caribbean. The second section of the article will attempt, then, to account for this preference. It will argue that for Caribbean writers, the confluence of geography and history means that the island functions, on a metaphorical level, as both a powerful child-land and an I-land. The spatial contours of the island, and its topography, strongly influence the ways in which childhood is imagined. We will look in particular at two autobiographies of childhood, Daniel Maximin's Tu, c'est l'enfance and Emile Ollivier's Mille Eaux. These works demonstrate a particularly acute island consciousness, exemplifying the tensions and contradictions inherent in the apprehension of island space, and the imbrication of space and a (highly individualized) sense of identity.

Ineradicable Stain

Ineradicable Stain

Le Droit du Plus Fort: Lawas Metaphor and Morality in Milton's Samson Agonistes

This study explores the emergence of legal language as the salient language for social relations in early modernity, through its prominence in the last, most personal and most passionate work of John Milton, the dramatic poem Samson Agonistes (1671). In this extraordinary work, law functions as a secularized order of obligations on different levels of metaphor. In each of the poem's major parts some legal construction is introduced metaphorically in such a way as to render coherence, meaning and unity to its central argument. The source of normative obligation is transformed from divine command (or grace) to a secularized paradigm of legality. Through their distinctive and developing voices, the characters reveal their relations as framed by mutual expectations grounded in reciprocal rights and duties, conveniently arranged in the several forms of legal relations. Likewise, claims of transgressions are arranged and presented in recognizable social-normative forms, i.e. along legal lines of English family law, property law, and the law of trusts and bonds. With Hobbes, political theory became grounded in a normative framework independent of religion, and the legal metaphor of “social contract” became the prevalent metaphor in political theory. This study - dealing not so much in law and literature as in the history of legal language - traces how Milton, the generation's foremost humanist, cast law both as an internal grammar for social relations and as an interpretative principle of action. Albeit a religious author, Milton's last work's extensive use of legal language anticipates one of modernity's most recognizable structures, namely the emergence of law as the salient normative field.