Metaphor For Life Research Articles

Nikolai Leskov’s Eccentric Wanderers and the Tradition of Religious Wandering in Russia

The motif of travel has always been popular, and the metaphor of life as a path remains extremely powerful. Both seem to be especially important within Christian culture because of the image of Christ the Wanderer, who “has no place to lay his head”, an image that influenced the growing popularity of pilgrimages and religiously motivated wandering. The latter became particularly widespread in Russian culture and resulted in numerous representations of wandering people in Russian art and literature. In my article, I focus on literary representations of wanderers in the oeuvre of Nikolai Leskov, whose works are abundant with these types of characters. I argue that the writer portrays his wanderers as ambivalent eccentrics who combine elements characteristic of diverse types of travelers, both religious and secular. To prove my hypothesis, I combine traditional literary analysis of Leskov’s texts with the examination of cultural and religious practices of Russian wandering. As I demonstrate, the complexity and multifacetedness of the writer’s wanderers correspond with Russian reality, where the boundary between pilgrims and vagrants was also blurred.

The Transformation of the Character Sengkuni from Wicarita to Kakawin Bharatayuddha in the Perspective of Literary Anthropogeneology

This article attempts to provide an answer to the question of the transformation of the character Sengkuni. The study aimed to explain the transformation process of Sengkuni. The perspective used is literary anthropogenesis. The results of the discussion show that the character Sengkuni in Kakawin Bharatayuddha has undergone an aesthetically transformed process. The process of change is intertextual. Therefore, from the perspective of literary anthropogenesis, there are two important things to note about the character Sengkuni in Bharatayuddha. First, there is a concept of the influence of the Javanese philosophy of life that gives colour to Sengkuni from the works of Old (kuna) Javanese literature, new Javanese literature, and recent Javanese literature. The concept of influence in wayang literary studies is the development of Javanese personality values that are still valid and related to moral ethics. Secondly, there is a change in the form of the transformation of the character Sengkuni from wiracarita (an epic) to Javanese literary texts. The transformation of Sengkuni is still characterized by the noble Javanese personality, so there may be still a kind of judgment on the character Sengkuni as a metaphor for a wicked life. In the eyes of the Javanese, the character Sengkuni is often seen as evil.

The Living Word and Its Death Threats

The expression ‘the living word’ has wide application, often in preference to an alternative use of language that is likely to threaten it. An enquiry is proposed into the potential utility of the expression for theorizing newer threats such as the use of Large Language Models. The main influence on the enquiry is the theory of dialogism, developed from work by Bakhtin and his colleagues, but other perspectives are included. The paper examines the relationships between the expression and four of its threats: technologization, monologues, static and normative approaches to meaning-making, and monolingualism. The living word appears to survive all such threats, though human thinking, communication, and meaning-making are all transformed in the process, while the perceived threat is assimilated or resisted but does not disappear. There are several contradictions in usage of the term and some resistance to the metaphor of life and death in the context of language. Faith in the living word is likely to depend on careful modulation of its meanings for a specific context through dialogue. The paper concludes that ‘the living word’ might act as a placeholder for our responses to new threats, bearing in mind that we have been continually participating in productive dialogues even when surrounded by static, monologic, and monolingual linguistic practices.

Metaphor and Theatre

This paper aims to analyze how metaphor operates in the theatrical realm. Metaphor viewed from a linguistic point of view has a certain impact on theatre and is a consequence of looking at theatre as language. But viewed from a pragmatic point of view, beyond the linguistic aspect, as a model of thinking, metaphor becomes a cognitive tool. Between these two perspectives lies a wide range of ways in which theatrical metaphor intervenes in the scenic creation. At the same time, seen as a metaphor of life, theatre assumes, through a series of successive metaphors, a creative freedom which, however, can become anarchic and end up in what is called dead metaphor. For this reason, metaphor, from the point of view of theatre creators, must be assumed insofar as it is a conceptual tool, which has the ability to penetrate the various levels of reality in order to achieve a meaning concomitant with a sense of the scenic action. This may be the real freedom that the use of metaphor offers in theatre: the ability to achieve a meaning concomitant with a sense of the scenic action in the absence of the chain of cause and effect. Only in this way can metaphor remain an element of vitality in a living theatre.

MYTHOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION IN MODERN INDONESIAN NOVELS

In the factuality, there are many fictional works that raise myth elements and use as reference in writing. Literary works inevitably exist in communities that have cultures and this is well acknowledged by writers who eventually receive them actively-productively. The present study is aimed at identifying these matters in modern Indonesian literature including myth sources, author’s attitudes that are hypogrammed, and myth functions. The study is conducted on five novels produced in the 2000s. Various myth stories contain life values that can be used as inspirations and culturel references in the writing of modern Indonesian novels and, simultaneously, as allegories and metaphors of life in the present time. The novels are partly set as they are in the myth stories, while partly are transformed into the life background of the present time. Even though the novels are set in the time background of the myth stories, the personalities and life philosophy of the characters reflect the life situations of the present time. The writers’ attitudes towards myths are partly continuing and augmenting the myth conventions although through the transformations of plots and characters (myth of concern), and, on the contrary, partly freeing, deviating, and rebelling (myth of freedom). In the case of rebellion to the myth conventions (Roro Jonggrang), it seems that it is due to the influences of the feminist ideas that emphasize the importance of life equalities between men and women. Women need not be always defeated or dominated by men.

The Rainbow of Life: A collective narrative practice with young LGBTQIA+ people with a health condition

This article describes the use of narrative practices for LGBTQIA+ young people with a health condition. It presents a collective narrative practice: the Rainbow of Life. This adapts the Tree of Life metaphor to invite rich story development opportunities when working with LGBTQIA+ people. It involves exploring their commitments, special moments and those who stand alongside them in solidarity, and creatively mapping these on to a rainbow image. The authors outline Rainbow of Life events they have organised, including collective practices in which young people shared their wisdom for responding to oppressive storm clouds that darken the sky and dim their rainbow’s shine, as well as witnessing and honouring each other’s rainbows.

Re-telling stories: A mixed method to evaluate the impact of Tree of Life metaphor on experiences of young refugees

The research assessed the effectiveness of the Tree of Life narrative approach in supporting vulnerable refugee children in schools. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods, finding positive and significant improvements in areas such as self-confidence, future goals, school enjoyment, motivation, and parental understanding. No significant change was observed in participants’ pride in their cultural heritage. Qualitative analysis revealed seven categories, affirming the Tree of Life’s positive impact on participants’ lives, including increased confidence, positive behavioural changes, and improved social relationships.

Text analysis of billboards and infographic graphics advertising COVID-19 on promoting preventive behaviors and taking vaccination against the coronavirus pandemic and investigating the opinions of the Iranian adult population

BackgroundAdvertising is one of the most important solutions that health centers and medical services around the world use to try to encourage public opinion to create a positive attitude towards preventive measures and vaccination. This study has been done with the aim of text analysis of billboards and infographics related to promoting preventive behaviors and vaccination against the coronavirus pandemic and providing solutions and models for preventive information and advertising in the field of health.MethodsThe study method in this research is a combination of qualitative and content analysis. Data collection was done in a targeted manner. The sample size includes 33 advertising billboards and infographics. Data collection has been done through searching the sites and websites of health networks and medical education centers in Iran, taking pictures of infographics and billboards in public places, and also receiving archive files of pictures from the public relations of health networks and medical services. The data was collected from February 19, 2020 to December 30, 2022 (the time frame of the pandemic and public vaccination program in Iran). The data was analyzed based on the three-dimensional discourse analysis theory of Fairclough. Then, an online survey about promoting preventive behaviors and vaccination against the coronavirus pandemic in the format of billboards and infographics was designed in SurveyMonkey and its link was provided to the audience through virtual networks and other platforms. The age group of people was selected from 18 to 70 years. Considering that the number of participants should be representative of the entire community under investigation, therefore, based on Cochran’s formula, the sample size was equal to 350 people. Finally, users’ opinions were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The assessment of validity involved experts in infection control and linguistics. The reliability of the measurement, determined through the Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficient, yielded a coefficient of 0.968.ResultsThe results show that among the four linguistic components of words, syntax, coherence and text structure; “live metaphors”, “pronoun “we”, “collocation and reference”, and “attitude markers” have the most impact on the audience. The frequency percentage of the data shows that these language elements have tremendous power in attracting the audience to perform preventive behaviors. The results show that the language reflects the culture, opinions and needs of people in the society. Also, the results show that encouraging people to perform preventive behaviors should be through the integration of medical information with motivational linguistic factors in order to attract the audience more.ConclusionsIt can be concluded that the use of the appropriate pattern of medical advertising discourse and correct communication strategies, will help public participation in the field of epidemic control. The language of effective health education and health communication during an epidemic must be related to the ways of thinking and speaking of ordinary people. Also, words with metaphorical and ironic meanings have a high potential to influence the health performance of people in society and increase public awareness of health communication. Therefore, using them to create a new value system with the aim of controlling and overcoming the consequences of the epidemic is very effective.

Political Metaphors in English Version of “Report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China”

With China’s growing influence, many countries are eager to know about China, and China also wants foreign countries to have a correct understanding of itself, so translations of political discourse are important. And because metaphor can reflect the thinking of the authors and translators, it is widely used in the translation process to transmit the ideology. Since now, many researches have been done to study the types of metaphors and the translation strategies of metaphors in the translations of the CPC literature, but few of them focus on how metaphors in the translation version convey the ideology. Therefore, this paper, aiming to study how political metaphors in the translation help transmit the ideology and governance thought of China to the world, applies Critical Metaphor Analysis as the analytical framework to investigate the political metaphors in English version of “Report to the 20th CPC National Congress”. The results show that journey metaphors, building metaphors, plant metaphors, life metaphors, and war metaphors are especially prominent. Compared with literal translation, the English version of the Report utilizes the imagery and concepts familiar to the readers to lead them to understand the Chinese theories and thinking that they are unfamiliar with. And the political metaphors explain and publicize the governance philosophy in a way that foreign readers can understand, highlight the Party’s attitude, and correctly display the image of China. This study deepens the study of the role of metaphors in the transmission of governments’ principles and policies.

The Creativity out of Insecurity and Uncertainty through the Perspective of Realism in Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage

In this paper I intend to discuss realism in Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage .Although it is purely a work of Crane’s imagination, it is universally recognized as a greater work of art. The novel revolves mainly round the fear-inspired actions and deeply agitated mind of Henry Fleming, the protagonist of the novel. The novel deals with the theme of war and violence that leads to recognize the naturalistic view of the impact of the external forces on human destiny in which it leads to the concept of realism in life through war as a metaphor of life with its ambivalences, morality and alienation.

When life is no longer a journey: the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the metaphorical conceptualization of life among Hungarian adults – a representative survey

Abstract There is ample research on how metaphors of life vary both cross-culturally and within culture, with age emerging as possibly the most significant variable with regard to the latter dimension. However, no representative research has yet been carried on whether variation can also occur across time. Our paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature by exploring whether a major crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can induce variation in how life is metaphorically conceptualized throughout society. By drawing on the results of a nationwide, representative survey on the metaphorical preferences for life among Hungarian adults carried out during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we hypothesized that the pandemic would induce a revolutionary change (in the sense of the change being swift, as opposed to gradual) in how Hungarian adults metaphorically conceptualize life, as compared to the metaphorical preferences of the pre-COVID-19 era. We expected this variation to manifest itself in the emergence of novel metaphorical source domains and a realignment in metaphorical preferences. Our results, however, indicate that novel conceptualizations emerged only as one-off metaphors; Hungarians mostly rely on a stock collection of life metaphors even in times of crises, with changes happening mostly in the form of shifts in metaphorical preferences. Our study also found that the choice of preference of the source domains showed less alterations among older adults – implying that the older we get, the more resistant to change our metaphorical conceptualizations become, even under extreme conditions such as COVID-19.

"This ado in Earthing up a Carcase": Robert Blair's The Grave (1743) as Eighteenth-Century Churchyard Georgic

Abstract: Robert Blair's The Grave (1743) is typically read as a "graveyard poem," in which depictions of death and decay are intended to compel readers before directing their thoughts to the afterlife. This article, by contrast, reads The Grave as a churchyard variation on the contemporary georgic mode to show how the poet's labor to instruct readers on the attainment of heaven grows out of soil, dirt, dust, and ashes—the base elements that compose an earth in flux and that provide, as metaphors for life, work, and death in the poem, a georgic counterweight to the soul's heavenward flight.

A Critical Study of Judy Malloy’s ‘its name was Penelope’ as a Hyperfictional Reworking of Homer’s Odyssey

The hyperfiction “its name was Penelope” is an assemblage of memories of an artist Anne Mitchell. She is a photographer and the hyperfiction under study provides several glimpses from her life as a medley or an assortment of textual pictures that completely engrosses the mindful readers and actively involves them in contemplating her life right from her childhood. She plays with a boat named Penelope and it becomes a metaphor for her life and her struggle for establishing herself as an accomplished artist. Anne’s setting this tiny boat sailing is a metaphor for life in which an artist’s explorations are akin to those of an explorer. A tripartite montage of Anne Mitchell’s life is offered in random screens of text. The entire hyperfiction is divided into three sections that are loosely based on Homer’s Odyssey. Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, is an artist who weaves on a loom and this weaving is central to her life just like Anne Mitchell who is also an artist and considers art central to her life. This paper attempts to trace the similarities between the hyperfiction “its name was Penelope” and Homer’s Odyssey. A traditional text will be juxtaposed with an avant-garde text to foreground the similarities and the differences.

Narrative versus Episodic Self

Humans tend to seek their identity as entities existing over a period of time by making narratives. The paper argues that seeking diachronic self-identity through narratives or stories results in the self-experience being one of separation or alienation from the real world. This happens because language is primarily a form of secondary representation, and the means by which we attempt to find identity often appear in the form of narratives. The dominance of the metaphor of life as a journey shows this. The remedy is to reduce the hold of narrativity by making self-experience fundamentally episodic.

The Comparison of Metaphors Translation Strategies in Subtitling of the King’s Speech Film

This research aims to compare the use of translation strategies used between humans and YouTube’s automated machine translator. This study employed the descriptive qualitative method. The writers collected data using a note-taking strategy. Based on the research findings, there are sixteen data that use metaphors. Six data use “anthropomorphic metaphor”; five data use “dead metaphor”; four data use “concrete to abstract metaphors”; and one datum uses “live metaphor”. This research shows that only three out of seven metaphor translation strategies are employed by human translators and YouTube. They use translation strategies “reproducing the same image in the TL”, “replacing the image in the SL with a standard TL image”, and “deletion”. The human translator uses “reproducing the same image in the TL” ten times, “replacing the image in the SL with a standard TL image” five times, and “deletion” once. YouTube uses “reproducing the same image in the TL” thirteen times and “replacing the image in the SL with a standard TL image” three times.
 Keywords: translation, metaphor, translation strategy, subtitle.

Individualism and Nonconformity in Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”

The research entitled Individualism and Nonconformity in Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” is cultural study about literature. Written in 1915 in England, "The Road Not Taken" is one of Robert Frost's—and the world's most well-known poems. The poem implicitly delved individualism and nonconformity. The poem can be interpreted as a critique of people’s propensity to second-guess their decisions and think that they would have turned out better. It poses doubts regarding the influence of personal decisions on a person’s life journey and casts doubt on the idea that one path is fundamentally superior than another. Therefore, it became the topic to discuss. It was revealed using poetic devices, that is, metaphor and symbols. Metaphor and symbol are included in sense devices, therefore the theory of figure of speech was used. In order to verbalize individualism and nonconformity in the poem, theory of identity from Stryker (1980) was useful. It was descriptive research and there were two literary approaches used in the research, structural and formalistic approach. It was found that the speaker in the poem, faced with a choice between two roads, takes the road "less travelled," a decision which he or she supposes "made all the difference." The poem beautifully explores the idea of individualism and nonconformity by presenting the choice of a diverging road as a metaphor for life's decisions. The poem encourages readers to embrace their unique identities and make choices that align with their values, even if it means going against societal norms. It celebrates the importance of personal agency and the transformative power of unconventional choices.

A map of living: Moving through the variations of life with the guidance of metaphors

Metaphors are commonly used in psychotherapy, especially in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Moreover, people use metaphors spontaneously in their everyday lives when trying to understand and make sense of complex issues. Relational Frame Theory (RFT) allows an analysis of metaphors as relating relations, where establishing coordination between a more concrete or familiar semantic domain with a more challenging target domain has pragmatic effects. A total of 806 Spanish-speaking participants were asked to provide a metaphor about life and to explain how they understood this metaphor. Their responses were analysed using reflexive Thematic Analysis (TA). The RFT and contributions from the cognitive linguistics approach to metaphors were used to interpret the patterns identified in the discourse on life metaphors. Participants' metaphors were organised into four themes: (1) recognition of variation in life, (2) attempts to make sense of variation in life, (3) problems with variation in life, and (4) evaluation of life as essentially positive or negative. Metaphors to recognise the multiplicity of events within life use “container”-related source-networks. Meaning in life is denoted through using networks connected with “movement toward a destination”, “human/natural development”, “fiction”, and “game and sports”, whereas metaphors involving disruptions in such patterns of change denote meaninglessness. Metaphors may also use particular qualities of entities and objects to signal positive and negative aspects of life. A variety of experiences connected with the source-networks of metaphors may be involved in the transfer of stimulus functions to the target-network “life”. Qualitative analysis of life metaphors from the RFT perspective offers valuable insights on how metaphors function in everyday life and how they can be used in clinical work.

Ethno-Cultural Metaphor of Daily Life as a Reflection of the National
 Language Picture of the World in the English Language

The article examines the ethno-cultural metaphor as a phenomenon of cultural studies, reflecting the process of perception of the surrounding reality by a certain ethnos. The real world is perceived by the ethnos through the prism of thinking,
 comprehended and realized in speech through language. The functional ability of the language to transmit the values of the national culture allows getting an idea of the specific and general mechanisms and ways of implementing the concepts of everyday
 life by a specific ethnic group. The relationship between language and culture determines the relevance of studying the mechanisms and methods of transmitting the national language picture of the world. The article proposes to explore ethno-cultural
 metaphors that are often encountered in everyday life. The research material was the American edition of the magazine «Cosmopolitan», the journalistic style of presentation of the magazine is close to the style of communication between people in everyday life. It was revealed that in everyday life, people endow the most common words with metaphorical meaning that convey color designation, a person's relationship with food, with natural phenomena, with everything that surrounds a person
 everywhere from day to day. The study made an attempt to structure the selected material according to everyday communication and highlight some concepts related
 to colour designation (colours), natural phenomena night – day, morning – evening, food (here eating periods like breakfast – lunch – dinner – supper can be distinguished as well as concepts food tastes), and other concepts that convey the relationship of a person with his environment.
 As a result of the analysis of the ethno-cultural metaphor of everyday life, we received confirmation that ethno-cultural metaphors are a significant element of the national language picture of the world, as they convey the value orientations of the
 ethnos and reflect the mental comprehension of the surrounding reality.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is feasible for people with acquired brain injury: A process evaluation of the BrainACT treatment

Objective To evaluate the feasibility of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for people with acquired brain injury. Design A process evaluation of the BrainACT treatment was conducted alongside a randomised controlled trial. Setting Psychology departments of hospitals and rehabilitation centres. Subjects Tweny-seven participants with acquired brain injury and 11 therapists. Intervention BrainACT is an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy adapted for the needs and possible cognitive deficits of people with acquired brain injury, provided in eight one-hour face-to-face or video-conference sessions. Measurements The attendance and compliance rates, engagement, satisfaction, and perceived barriers and facilitators for delivery in clinical practice were investigated using semi-structured interviews with participants and therapists and therapy logs. Results 212 of the 216 sessions in total were attended and 534 of the 715 protocol elements across participants and sessions were delivered. Participants were motivated and engaged. Participants and therapists were satisfied with the intervention and participants reported to have implemented skills in their daily routines acquired during therapy. Key strengths are the structure provided with the bus of life metaphor, the experiential nature of the intervention, and the materials and homework. Participants and therapists often preferred face-to-face sessions, however, when needed video-conferencing is a good alternative. Conclusion BrainACT is a feasible intervention for people with anxiety and depressive symptoms following acquired brain injury. However, when the content of the intervention is too extensive, we recommend adding two extra sessions.

The Conceptual Metaphor and the Need to Identify It in the Albanian Literary Corpus

In Albanian pre-university and university literature, a cacophony of viewpoints can be observed regarding the concept of literary figuration in general and the metaphor in particular (especially in the pre-university system, where we encounter some of the strangest definitions). In this paper, we have focused on the concept of metaphor in Albanian tradition studies first, approaching these concepts contrastively. Then we have dealt with the concept of conceptual metaphor, an approach from a psycholinguistic point of view (more precisely neurolinguistic recently), which has taken place even in the most representative manuals of stylistics and which, in our opinion, offers several advantages in the identification of conceptual metaphor in literary text (and not only). The concept of conceptual metaphor and the reflection of the most recent treatments of it will be the main aim of this unit. We intend to do this since there is a lack of treatments related to conceptual metaphors in Albanian literature. Such a fact has created a gap in the prescription of the mental and cohesive identification of primary and conceptual metaphors in everyday life, as well as in literature. We consider the fact that it is a theory that has its origin and the largest number of treatments connected with the metaphor of everyday life, that is, of ordinary discourse, since it is seen as an important part of the conceptual and structural formatting of man. The article will provide examples of the Albanian corpus, specifically of ordinary speech, idioms, and the literary corpus. 
 
 Received: 16 July 2023 / Accepted: 7 October 2023 / Published: 5 November 2023