Metaphor Identification Procedure Research Articles

Early palliative care perceptions by patients with cancer and primary caregivers: metaphorical language

ObjectiveThis article reports on the results of an analysis of metaphorical language used by patients diagnosed with advanced cancer and their caregivers receiving early palliative care (EPC).MethodsData were collected through...

Aspect-based sentiment analysis with metaphorical information

Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis (ABSA) has been the focus of increasing study in recent years. Previous research has demonstrated that incorporating syntactic information, such as dependency trees, can enhance ABSA performance. Despite the widespread use of metaphors in daily life to express emotions more vividly, few studies have integrated this literary device into ABSA. In this paper, we propose a novel ABSA model that utilizes Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) to encode both the sentence and aspect word as a single unit, thereby overcoming these limitations. Our experimental results demonstrate that our model achieves competitive performance in ABSA.

‘Luxurious’ metaphors in luxury hotel websites in Singapore and Hong Kong: A mixed-methods study

Previous research has yielded a substantial body of empirical evidence regarding the use of metaphors in various types of discourse. However, limited research exists on the relationship between metaphor and more segmented economic industries, such as the luxury hospitality sector. The attention of this article is directed towards inspecting how metaphorical expressions are deployed by luxury hotels to construct their luxury identity and attract potential guests.A corpus of 62 lxury hotel websites from Singapore and Hong Kong is used as the contextual background for the investigation of metaphor usage in this study. Using MIPVU (Metaphor Identification Procedure VU University Amsterdam), a total of 6990 metaphorical keywords, including a diverse range of 28 source domains were observed. Among others, the five most productive source domains in the corpus are living organism, physical object, space, artifact, and motion. A mixed-methods approach that combines both quantitative data analytics and qualitative discourse analysis reveals and interprets significant associations between source domains, hotel facilities, and regions, suggesting that the choice of metaphorical expressions is not arbitrary but is influenced by specific factors related to the hotel's offerings and cultures. This study emphasises that the analysis of lexical-conceptual patterns in promotional texts can generate deeper insights into positioning strategies.

Cross-Cultural Conceptualizations of Love: Cognitive Linguistic Analysis of Metaphors in Poems of Kabir and Rumi

This study explores the conceptual metaphors of love in the selected thirty Hindi poems by 15th-century Indian mystic poet Kabir and thirty poems by 13th-century Persian Sufi mystic poet Rumi. This research involved the thematic analysis with an emphasis on Identifying Conceptual Metaphors of Love in the poems of the two renowned poets. The findings reveal that poems by Kabir employed thirteen conceptual metaphors, while that of Rumi utilized eleven, revealing commonalities in eight metaphors such as LOVE IS MERGER, LOVE IS MATERIAL, and LOVE IS DRINK/DRUG. Employing Conceptual Metaphor Theory by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Metaphor Identification Procedure developed by the Pragglejaz Group (2007), the research provides a cross-cultural analysis of divine love conceptualization. The findings support cognitive linguistic theses on conceptual metaphors, contributing to a nuanced understanding of love across two distinct cultures.

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

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

"No man is an island": How Chinese netizens use deliberate metaphors to provide "depression sufferers" with social support.

Online social support provides a way to positively influence depression sufferers. In the present study, we aim to analyze how social support in Chinese online depression communities is communicated through the lens of deliberate metaphor theory (DMT) to deepen the understanding of the under-researched complicated, emotionally laden, and culture-related concepts of this experience. We collected data (n = 3546 comments) from the Warm Supporting section of the Depression Super Topic, a major Chinese online depression community on Weibo. The data were analyzed using a metaphorical analysis with the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit and a thematic analysis. Our findings identify two themes: deliberate metaphors (DMs) of depression and DMs of social environment for depression sufferers. The former conceptualizes future expectations without depression (as rosy images; victorious battles; the beaten black dog); disorder (as subtle objects; subjective initiative events); depression sufferers (as valuable objects; important roles); and present life with depression (as optional events; spiritual practices; fragile objects). The latter conceptualizes social connection (as solid objects; nonessentials); individuals in the social environment (as energetic objects; vicious roles); and prejudice (as colored objects). The findings suggest that DMs as important online social support resources, helping to express empathy and normalize depression with more common-sense, and non-judgmental concepts. Additionally, in DMs, Chinese netizens navigate the intricate intersection of medical and moral perspectives on depression and its recovery, leveraging both aspects to offer comprehensive social support. "Confucian-based" elements are embedded in culture-related social support expressions in DMs. In practice, our findings contribute to tailored and appropriate health interventions for depression.

Pola Pemertahanan dan Penyesuaian Metafora pada Penerjemahan Novel Troubled Blood ke dalam Bahasa Indonesia

The concepts of retention and adjustment emerge as strategies to overcome the challenges associated with cultural transfer in metaphor translation. Metaphor retention is necessary because it ensures the retention of the imagery and meaning conveyed in the original text. Metaphor adjustment aims to translate culturally appropriate metaphors to the target text and avoid misunderstandings. This study seeks to explain the patterns of metaphor retention and adjustment in English novels translated into Indonesian, focusing on analyzing the form and meaning of metaphors. This research relies on the theory of translation retention proposed by Venuti (2008) and the theory of translation adjustment proposed by Eco (2013). The methodology used in this study is based on the theoretical framework proposed by Williams and Chesterman (2014), which places significant emphasis on the examination of linguistic elements contained in the source text as the main stage in translation research, followed by a comparative analysis conducted between the source text and the target text. The data used in this study consists of phrases, clauses, and sentences that have metaphorical features. The data were collected using the Metaphor Identification Procedure VU University Amsterdam (MIPVU). The data were categorized based on Halliday's (1985) grammatical metaphor framework, which focuses on noun, verb, and adjective metaphors. The collected metaphor data were then analyzed using the notions of retention and translation adjustment derived from Sajarwa's (2021) research. The study's findings show that noun metaphors dominate metaphor retention and adjustment. Metaphor retention occurs when the form and meaning of the metaphor do not change, while metaphor adjustment occurs when the metaphor's form changes and the metaphor's meaning does not change.

The mega-metaphor DEATH AS A LIVING BEING in 16th-17th century Latin mourning poetry of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Abstract This article analyses anthropomorphic characteristics of death, specifically the mega-metaphor DEATH IS A LIVING BEING, manifested in the 16th-17th Century Latin mourning poetry by Vilnius Academy students. Employing the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) method, the study systematically identifies and analyzes the conceptual metaphors within these works. Focusing on the anthropomorphic attributes of death, the research reveals that death was personified as a CAPTURER, GRIM REAPER, ENEMY, ANCIENT MYTHICAL FIGURE in the poetic tradition of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This analysis provides insights into the conceptualization of mortality during the late Renaissance and Baroque periods, unraveling the complex interplay between life, death, and human emotions. Additionally, the article serves as a methodological exemplar, demonstrating the application of MIP in historical literary texts and cataloging valuable resources for scholars and those interested in the mourning poetry of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Conceptual Metaphor “Media is Fire”

This study aims to explore the metaphorical concept of "MEDIA AS FIRE" in both Vietnamese and English from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics. This research utilizes the Metaphor Identification Procedure of the Pragglejaz Group (2007), in conjunction with descriptive approaches, statistical analysis, and classification strategies, to scrutinize the conceptual metaphor "Media is Fire" and its underlying metaphors. A total of 193 metaphorical expressions from media discourse are examined (113 in Vietnamese and 80 in English), revealing three primary cognitive models: "Media is Heat," " The ability to transmit the energy of Media is the ability to transmit energy of Fire," and "Media is Burning," along with the mapping mechanism from the source domain to the target domain. Furthermore, this research emphasizes the similarities and differences in the conceptualization of fire-related metaphors between the two languages. The findings of this study offer valuable insights for teaching, learning, and translating conceptual metaphors, thereby enhancing cross-cultural communication skills for Vietnamese English learners."

The conceptual nature of the Turkish emotion term ‘Heyecan’

Abstract This study aims at investigating the Turkish emotion concept heyecan (i.e., thrill, excitement, and nervousness), which can be used with different semantic contents depending on the context. The conceptual metaphor theory frames this analysis to reveal the metaphorical and metonymical conceptualizations of heyecan. For this purpose, the lemma heyecan is searched in the Turkish National Corpus, and 700 concordance lines gathered from the corpus are examined through the metaphor identification procedure to identify the source domains and interpret the conceptual coding. The findings reveal a folk model of heyecan in which several metaphors and metonymies characterize different dimensions of it: arousal–existence–disappearance, intensity–passivity, control, cause–effect, and individual–social. Qualitative and quantitative findings embody various linguistic metaphors that can be grouped under several source domain categories including substance in a container, location, and object as the most frequent ones, whereas physiological effect is the most frequent metonymy. The metaphors and metonymies are discussed with their examples in this study. The concordance lines show several emotion terms that heyecan is collocated with, among which the emotion families of ‘fear’ and ‘happiness’ outnumber the rest. This study demonstrates how corpus data are helpful in pinpointing the conceptual content of an emotion term in a coherent way.

Metaphor as a key tool in personal development discourse

Abstract In recent years, personal development has driven increasing interest, and the study of metaphor has expanded to various discourse types. This study aims to explore the metaphors in personal development discourse and determine their schematicity hierarchies, using Carol Dweck’s (2016) book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success as a case study. Metaphor Identification Procedure VU (Steen et al., 2010) is used to identify metaphors in the book and Zoltan Kövecses’s (2020) Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory is used to establish the relationship between the metaphors identified and primary metaphors. The findings show that topics such as mindset, growth mindset, fixed mindset, success, and failure instantiate correlation and resemblance metaphors. In addition, all the correlation-based metaphors identified in the corpus possess full schematic hierarchies. It entails that they all consist of image schema, domain, frame and mental space levels. Moreover, the findings reveal that in different metaphorical expressions, the same image schema-level metaphor is likely to activate different domain, frame and mental space-level metaphors. Finally, some image schema-level metaphors share the same domain-level metaphor in different schematicity hierarchies, whereas others activate different domain-level metaphors in different schematicity hierarchies.

COVID-19 as WATER? The functions of WATER metaphors in the metaphorical representation of COVID-19.

Previous studies have examined WATER metaphors in different discourses, yet there has been limited focus on understanding the functions of these metaphors in constructing discourses. To address this research gap, the present paper utilised the metaphor identification procedure developed by the Pragglejaz Group and the Weak Differentiating Model to investigate WATER metaphors in the Coronavirus Corpus. The study reveals that WATER metaphors can be used flexibly for multiple purposes. These include explaining the many pandemic stages, describing the occurrence and performance of the pandemic, explaining how COVID-19 affects human life, rallying the public to take precautions against contagion, and communicating risk. This research highlights the diverse functions that WATER metaphors served in conveying intricate information and influencing public perceptions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Metaphor analysis meets lexical strings: finetuning the metaphor identification procedure for quantitative semantic analyses.

Recent years have witnessed the development of the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP/VU), a step-by-step protocol designed to identify metaphorically-used words in discourse. However, MIP(VU)'s merits notwithstanding, the procedure poses a problem to scholars intending to use its output as the basis for a semantic field analysis involving a quantitative component. Depending on the research question, metaphor analysts may be interested in chunks of language situated above the procedure's standardized level of analysis (i.e., the lexical unit or lexeme), including phrases and sentences. Yet, attempts to decenter the method's exclusive focus on metaphor-related words have been the target of critique, among others on the grounds of their lack of clear unit-formation guidelines and, hence, their inconsistent unit of analysis and measurement. Drawing on data derived from a Spanish-language US-based newspaper's coverage of the migration program known as DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), this article describes challenges that analysts can run into when attempting to use a dataset containing atomized metaphor-related words as the input for subsequent quantitative semantic analyses. Its main methodological contribution consists in a proposal and illustration of three possible methods to extend the existing MIP(VU)-protocol in such a way as to allow it to capture metaphorical strings, on top of lexemes, in a reliable and systematic manner. The first two methods are procedural, and entail formulating a-priori grouping-directives based on the research question(s). One departs from semasiological criteria (Method 1) and the other takes an onomasiological approach (Method 2). The third method works bottom-up, involving the ad hoc grouping of lexemes and adding a descriptive parameter meant to keep track of grouping-decisions made by the analyst, thereby safeguarding transparency at all times.

Discursive metaphorical representation of COVID-19 Pandemic in Kenya’s newspaper headlines

This study aimed to address the dearth of knowledge regarding the portrayal of the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenyan print media, focusing specifically on newspaper headlines. Employing Van Dijk's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Lakoff & Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), the research examined 39 headlines from The Standard and The Daily Nation newspapers, applying inferential statistics via STATA version 15. Van Dijk's categorization of texts into micro and macro levels and Lakoff and Johnson's assertion that our ordinary conceptual system relies heavily on metaphors underpin the methodology. The analysis combined CDA with Pragglejazz Group's Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) to uncover that the majority of metaphors in these headlines constructed COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya in a grim light, associating it with war, death, and bondage. While these metaphors serve as cautionary messages, they fall short in capturing the proactive measures employed to combat the pandemic. This study's significance lies in its fusion of insights from CDA and CMT, shedding light on how media language exposes cognition and ideology while also revealing the media's influence on public perception of the pandemic.

Metaphor Identification Procedure and Its Application in Kurdish Political Speeches

Metaphor Identification Procedure and Its Application in Kurdish Political Speeches

The fight metaphor in translation: From patriotism to pragmatism

Abstract The fight metaphors discussed in this article are linguistic expressions of physical conflict, a revolutionary legacy that still lingers in contemporary Chinese political discourse. This article takes a critical cognitive-linguistic approach to fight metaphors in translation, analysing a dataset comprising the Chinese governmental and Communist Party of China’s congressional reports and their official English-language translations from 2004 to 2020. The discussion highlights conceptual metaphor’s representational role and its ideological potential in discourse, and operationalises the English-based metaphor identification procedure (Steen et al. 2010) for Mandarin texts. Drawing on corpus-based evidence, the article argues that fight metaphors in the source texts (STs) legitimise and consolidate Beijing’s dominance of domestic power by generating positive representations and reproducing patriotic ideology. The translations of those metaphors transform Beijing’s image, assertive in the STs, into a non-aggressive one for the international readership. The target texts (TTs) also reproduce favourable representations from the STs to justify China’s unique political system and to satisfy a pragmatic need – that of constructing positive images for the Chinese authority and China internationally.

MSDIP: A Method for Coding Source Domains in Metaphor Analysis

ABSTRACT This article describes the Metaphorical Source Domain Identification Procedure (MSDIP), which can be used to code source domains in metaphor identification. In the first part of the article, we describe the complexity of source-domain coding in corpus analysis. We argue that, in many cases, discourse is underspecified and multiple source-domain candidates may be relevant for a specific metaphorical expression. For instance, if a word like “fight” or “target” is used metaphorically, it could refer to either the source domain of war or sports. To make these issues explicit for analysts, we developed MSDIP, which builds on and extends the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU). In the second part of the article, we explain the coding steps of MSDIP and subsequently report on a reliability analysis, demonstrating the reproducibility of the procedure. We end with a number of detailed sample analyses, demonstrating the role of co-text and context in selecting the likeliest source-domain candidate through MSDIP. These analyses show that MSDIP is both reliable and flexible in dealing with the complexities of real-life discourse during source-domain coding.

(De-)Monstering COVID-19: a diachronic study of COVID-19 virus multimodal metaphors in Philippine editorial cartoons, 2019–2022

Abstract In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has been studied extensively through the lens of conceptual metaphor theory. However, only one study has focused on the metaphorization of the COVID-19 pandemic in a strictly Philippine milieu. None so far has published on pandemic- related multimodal metaphors in Philippine media, let alone shed light on these through a diachronic perspective. Using conceptual metaphor theory and visual metaphor identification procedure, this study analysed 203 pandemic-related editorial cartoons published by a Philippine national publication from December 2019 to February 2022. It investigated the diachronic conceptualizations of the conceptual domain COVID-19 VIRUS in the Philippines as captured by the neutralizing or ‘de-monstering’ of the virus from the COVID-19 IS A MONSTER to the COVID-19 IS A LIVING ENTITY multimodal metaphor. It argued that the trends of metaphorization correlate with the shifting sociocultural and political attitudes towards the COVID-19 pandemic as a global and local healthcare crisis. Essentially, this study not only explored the dynamics between media and cognition, but it also analysed how the multimodal metaphorizations of COVID-19 reflect Filipino socio-political realities and cultural underpinnings during turbulent times.

China’s metaphorically “othered” image inThe New York Times(1949-2020)

This study investigates, within the framework of Critical Metaphor Analysis, how The New York Times ( NYT) has been metaphorically formulating China as an “other” from 1949 to 2020. Metaphors were identified with reference to Pragglejaz Group’s (2007) Metaphor Identification Procedure. WAR and GAME were detected as dominant concepts, and LIQUID, DISEASE, ANIMAL, MACHINE, and OBSTACLE secondary imagery. It is found that the newspaper’s journalistic values in foreign news reporting and judging criteria toward political leadership have remained radically unchanged. Having been influenced by changes in China-U.S. relations and America’s domestic socio-political ideals, the NYT has been othering China from the civilized world, which tends to be particularly prominent when China’s performance is short of the values and norms preached by the US, and became inconspicuous during China-U.S. alliance. Running counter to its commitment to “truth,” the newspaper employed discursive strategies to balance between America’s moral self-identity and its China policy, and vindicate behaviors identical to those it has been criticizing China for.

Metaphors in Kaba tuanku lareh simawang story

This paper discusses the use of metaphor in Kaba Tuanku Lareh Simawang. Using the Metaphor Identification Procedure at Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) method, this study analyzes the metaphorical expressions found in the text, which was written by Syamsuddin St. Radjo Endah and published by Balai Bahasa Provinsi Sumatra Barat in 2021. This research aims to examine how metaphor is used in the text to reflect human proximity to nature. The findings show that metaphor is employed in the form of phrases and clauses in Kaba Tuanku Lareh Simawang, taking the form of analogies related to human faces, fate, events, and animals. All the metaphors reflect the concepts that are alive and continuously developing in Minangkabau society. Metaphors serve as a reflection of human proximity to nature, following the adage "alam takambang menjadi guru”. The results of this study offer insights into the culture and way of thinking of the Minangkabau people. Metaphors are significant elements of language that represent people's thoughts and cultures. Each culture has its way of using metaphors related to values and experiences considered important in their lives. Thus, understanding the concepts and metaphors in language can provide profound insights into people's thoughts and cultures. In conclusion, this study highlights that the use of metaphor in Kaba Tuanku Lareh Simawang reflects human proximity to nature. Metaphors are powerful tools in language that represent people's thoughts and cultures. Analyzing metaphors in traditional literature can provide a deep understanding of the culture and way of thinking of a society.