Metaphorical Level Research Articles

Inside and Outside the Film Genre: Old Age on the Way

This paper analyses Croatian film Night boats (2012), directed by Igor Mirković, from the anthropology of film and anthropology of age point of view. The film story is analyzed as the so-called diegetic universe, i.e. as an ethnography of the film, and is connected to the real experiences of the elderly. The plot of the film follows the meeting and emotional bonding of Helena and Jakov in one of Zagreb's nursing homes. Shortly after their brief acquaintance, these "seventy-year-old teenagers" begin a romance, run away from home and embark on a road adventure. In terms of genre, this film can be viewed as a road movie since, in addition to the fact that the main characters spend more than half of the plot on the road, the film thematically and visually follows the conventions of the aforementioned genre. Their road adventure is initiated on a metaphorical level, as an escape from illness and death, as well as an escape from loneliness and the circumstances that life in old age brings. The main characters flee from the lack of choice they are faced with which is why their journey can be interpreted as a search for lost, almost stripped identities. The journey of Helena and Jacob, two elderly individuals faced with the problems of loneliness and physical decline, represents a transformative experience for the main characters and signifies a form of quiet rebellion, a refusal to accept cultural conventions according to which active life ends with a socially constructed notion of old age. In this sense, this film story served to critically address various issues and problems concerning society’s stereotypical attitudes towards the elderly.

Lonely Lives – A Living Theatrical Metaphor

This article overviews Hauptmann’s naturalist dramaturgy with an emphasis on the play Lonely Lives and references to a recent staging by the National Theater of Iași. Thus, we aim to reveal the loneliness of the characters (ordinary temperaments with common destinies, unlike those in other plays) on a vivid metaphorical level, given by faith and the lack of it, respectively.

A Chymist Among Beasts: Reading Paracelsus Literally (with a translation of De lunaticis, chapter two)

ABSTRACT Paracelsus is an extraordinarily difficult author to interpret, in part because of the seemingly elusive boundary between literal and metaphorical levels of meaning in his work. The present paper argues for a literal reading of Paracelsus, based on comments that he makes in his late Philosophia de divinis operibus & factis & de secretis naturae. The article also includes a translated chapter from one of the treatises in that work, De lunaticis.

The Pragmatic Motivation of Atypical English Way into/to Construction

The English way construction exhibits distinct constructional meaning and semantic features; however, the prepositional slot in this construction has not received sufficient attention, and there remains a lack of comparative research regarding different prepositions in this field. This study set out to examine the semantic classification, mapping features, cognitive factors in the subcategory English way into/to construction, and to improve the algorithm of ΔPratio. The research adopted a bottom-up corpus-driven approach based on the BNC and used HAC (Hierarchical Cluster Analysis) to explore the semantic categories of the verb collexemes and compare the lexical richness in these two constructions. The results revealed that at the level of linguistic structure, coercion and metaphor, as well as family resemblance, served as legitimization methods for verb entry into the construction, while the principles of economy and expressivity disclosed the intentions and motivations behind the semantic extensions of constructions at the pragmatic level. Additionally, this research found that the latter two principles were competitive in the interpretation process of way into/to construction, providing insights into understanding the psychological and social factors in language communication.

Fast Zombies and Social Rights: The Case of Umberto Lenzi’s <i>Nightmare City</i> (1980)

In the tense atmosphere that preceded the May 1981 Italian referendums on abortion, Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City is released. Included in several ‘Best Zombie Movies’ lists, Nightmare City is important for at least two reasons; first, because it inaugurates a significant and eventually successful variation on the zombie image: the fast zombie; second, as a commentary on the most salient social debate of the late 1970s and early 1980s – the one on the self-determination of Italian women. The aesthetic and the metaphorical levels of Lenzi’s film are strictly connected and the infected people running around drinking the blood of others are the embodiment of a reactionary response to the ongoing social transformation. Nightmare City joins the Italian political dispute of the late 1970s by openly opposing the women’s freedom of choice and by channeling and amplifying the most conservative side of that quasi-eschatological battle.

Theory of world politics: assessing the potential for transfer

In international studies, there are many borrowings from other disciplines at the level of metaphors, concepts, etc. In this regard, the question is raised about a possible reverse transfer, i.e. from the sphere of world politics to other scientific spheres, including not only socio-humanitarian, but also the natural sciences. The article analyzes a successful example of such a transfer given by R. Axelrod in the early 2000s, as well as subsequent attempts to theoretically validate the conditions for export from the field of international studies to other areas. Two approaches have been identified. Within the framework of the first approach, it is proposed to create an interdisciplinary theory, since international relations are able to integrate various humanitarian and social disciplines. The second approach allows for a “pluralistic” and “blurred” subject field of the theory of international relations, in which various theoretical and methodological lines can coexist and enter into discussion with each other (societal multiplicity), rather than remain isolated. It provides opportunities for its “export” to other scientific fields. A critical analysis of these approaches allows us to conclude that in both the first and second cases, the political focus of international research is lost. The article substantiates the subject area of world politics as the exertion of political influence in the international arena by state and non-state actors. Based on this, the authors of the article put forward a third direction. The essence of it is that the search for the possibility of exporting from international research to other scientific fields does not lie in the creation of an interdisciplinary theory, and not in the formation of a “blurred” subject field that ensures “societal multiplicity”, but in the similarity of the situations under consideration. The authors show that the degree of similarity of situations depends on a number of factors, including the behavior of actors/objects being in conditions that are relatively the same. Examples are given by comparing situations and theoretical concepts of international relations and world politics with situations and concepts in other scientific fields - meteorology, medicine, ethology. At the same time, the place of the “political” in other spheres is occupied by the dominant object/factor.

The Hagiographical Landscape of Twelfth-Century England

ABSTRACT This article explores hagiographic landscapes as depicted in miracle narratives from twelfth-century England. These stories, which focus on miraculous healing sought by pilgrims at saints’ shrines, often situate their protagonists in locations that, although based on real places, are reimagined for didactic purposes. The article argues that the journeys undertaken by pilgrims in the stories were meant to be read on a metaphorical level and that these re-imagined landscapes functioned to depict the protagonists’ inner journey from sin to salvation.

Levels of metaphor in gesture

Levels of metaphor in gesture

Philosophy and Neurosciences: Perspectives for Interaction

The study analyzes modern reductivist and antireductivist approaches to understanding the interaction between philosophy and neuroscience. It analyzes the content and grounds for using the concepts of neuroscience and neurosciences, philosophy of neuroscience, and neurophilosophy. The milestones in the development of neuroreductivism, from Patricia Churchland’s arguments in support of intertheoretic reduction through Francis Crick’s eliminativism to John Bickle’s ruthless reductionism, are described. The ontological, methodological, and epistemic grounds for the reduction to neurosciences of other ways of representing mind and body are analyzed. Drawing on the post-Wittgensteinian paradigm of the philosophy of neuroscience of Max Bennett, Peter Hacker, and Andrew Reynolds, the semantic problems that arise in the neurosciences when epistemic reduction is attempted are described and derive from the inability to eliminate the basic metaphorical level of meaning-making and transmission rooted in everyday language and its figures, among which metaphors are fundamental. The descriptivist approach to the language of neurosciences is contrasted with neurorevisionism, an attempt to “correct” established ways of conceptualizing consciousness and corporeality, akin to earlier revisionisms, particularly physicalism, and forced to deal with similar problems. Reduction - the operation of the “return,” itself understood metaphorically - and antireduction, which resists scientific revisionism and “returns” understanding to the level of everyday language and philosophy to descriptive work, is presented as a circular hermeneutical movement necessary for scientific and philosophical understanding, but not leading to disciplinary hegemony or the “victory” of either side. The study concludes with a sketch of the publications included in the rubric.

Testpraktikák enumerációja és az önértés dilemmái

The story of Andrea Tompa’s novel takes place in Transylvania in the first decades of the 20th century. In the first half of the novel both protagonists are medical students, in the second half they are practicing doctors. œrough using them as first-person narrators, the writer had the opportunity to use many of the discourses of medicine. Thœis article analyses how they are implemented into the language of the novel and the way they can sometimes function on a metaphorical level. Furthermore, I examine how these discourses represent the change in the way modern humans relate to their own bodies and the bodies of the others.

A Journey to the Self: The Quest for Identity in Clarice Lispector’s Fiction

One of the best representatives of Latin American literature, Clarice Lispector has always fascinated her readers. Her novels bring into question some major aesthetic and ideological issues, sometimes under the mask of elaborated textual games implying innovative narrative strategies and a new way of understanding fiction. The Hour of the Star (A hora da estrela, 1977) addresses the problem of identity and storytelling, as well as the complex relationships established among author, narrator, character and reader. The violence which the novel’s protagonist has to face and endure is also an expression of the force of literature. Therefore, the heroine’s death stands for the symbolic birth of fiction, her personal life being permanently mirrored by the metaphorical level of this extraordinary text. The novel progressively turns into an intricate and symbolic journey to the self, Lispector analysing the quest for personal (and artistic) identity and its hidden meanings. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2023 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]

Poetry, destruction, reconstruction: Trilce XXXVI, César Vallejo’s first ars politica?

Via a rereading of the poem «XXXVI» by César Vallejo, this article explores the connections between this earlier poem, and Vallejo’s later poetry. The most prominent theme in this relation is the presence in each of the poems under discussion, of the process of redistribution. Indeed, this process is not only mentioned or implicated by the poems on a semiotic and metaphoric level; redistribution is imbricated in the language and axiology of the poems, at the fundamental level of their linguistic and grammatical formation. This article examines how this process, nascent and more metaphysical in «XXXVI», becomes an integral element of the poetic socialism of Vallejo’s final poems, those which present, most explicitly and powerfully, his radical vision.

Reading transformations: from David Garnett’s Lady into Fox (1922) to Sarah Hall’s “Mrs Fox” (2013)

ABSTRACT This article compares the short story “Mrs Fox” by Sarah Hall (3013) with David Garnett’s novel Lady into Fox (1922). Albeit different in some regards, these stories both center a human-animal transformation, and thus take part in a world-wide tradition that has existed since ancient times. How, then, is this motif rendered meaningful in modern times? This question is addressed in a discussion of the possibilities for different interpretations of these magical-realist stories. On the metaphorical level, the stories seem to be about gendered relations and woman’s situation in patriarchal society. This is the most common way to understand them in previous research. It also makes sense, however, to read them on the metonymical level, at which they tell the story about the relationship between the human and the non-human world, human and non-man animals. Finally, it appears to be productive to embrace the enigma at their core, the transformation, as a real event according to a different ontology. Indeed, it seems to be the liminality at its core that gives the human-animal transformation its ability to remain meaningful in times and places that are widely different, and in fictional genres far apart.

Indeterminate Innovation

One of my pet peeves when watching televised sports is when the commentators declare that one or another player or team “has momentum” or that “the momentum has shifted.” Typically, this statement is made shortly after a team or player does something that puts them in a better position to win the game, and the implication seems to be that this change in momentum will carry someone to victory. But there are at least two problems with this all-too-typical sportscaster pronouncement. One is that “momentum” is a mathematically well-defined notion in physics, where it means the mass of an object multiplied by its velocity; linear momentum is also a vector quantity, and has both a magnitude and a direction. It is this complexity that allows momentum and changes in momentum—in conjunction with an account of the various forces at work on the object—to explain the object’s trajectory. A well-kicked football has momentum in the physics sense, but it is quite unclear how the “momentum” of a player or a team might be calculated, to say nothing of the various forces at work on the player or team’s movement through the playing of a game. Hence both the determination of a player or team’s “momentum,” and the use of that “momentum” in explaining or predicting the outcome of a game, necessarily remain at the level of metaphor.

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE DESCRIPTIVE MODEL OF PRIVATIVE PHRASEOLOGICAL PAIRS

The main goal of this research is to investigate the functional characteristics of privative phraseological pairs, a special type of phraseological combinations, as well as their structural and semantic similarities and differences, in the compared German and Azerbaijani languages. In this article, it is also intended to study the processing possibilities of privative phraseological pairs in the language and their characteristics of forming negation-affirmation variability in the sphere of differentiation as a structural type with a metaphorical level. In the article, a new definition was given to phraseological pairs that reflects their structural- semantic features. Taking into account sound harmony, phraseological pairs are divided into groups in both German and Azerbaijani languages from a formal structural point of view. Similar and different aspects and functional-stylistic features of phraseological pairs in the compared languages are analyzed.

Visual Metaphor in Early Second Language Education

The paper adapts the theory of knowledge enablement in knowledge-sharing companies to the needs of the second-language classroom to explicate the association between pedagogical interaction and the effectiveness of the teaching process. The goal of the inquiry is to alert language teachers to the hidden opportunities visualization and layout suggest in designing a stress-free educational environment conducive to amplifying language knowledge and skills in a context stimulating knowledge enablement. Visualization is explored at two levels: 1) the level of text layout and illustrations; and 2) the level of visual images and visual metaphors. The method of structural and functional modelling is used to present the layout of exercises and language content and the visual metaphor identification method is employed in the analysis of visual images. A conclusion is asserted of the instrumental role of visuals in English coursebooks for young learners as a medium of visual literacy and as a factor in streamlining the development of productive second language skills. This claim is substantiated by a case study that 1) demonstrates the contextualizing function of images and visual metaphors in English language coursebooks for young learners; and 2) explores the means, instruments and ways of visualizing the instructional content of two TEYL coursebooks published in 2014 and 2015.

A Study of Language Metaphor and Emotional Expression from the Perspective of Second Language Acquisition

Metaphors are a critical aspect of acquiring English. It is grounded in the conceptual system of English L1 users, so there might be a discrepancy between the comprehension and utilization of learners of English as L2, especially if the metaphors entail one aspect of pragmatics, emotion. This paper concentrates on the comprehension and utilization of emotion metaphors in L2 English learners, composing mainly of high school students. The participants must fill out a questionnaire containing seven questions examining the aspects mentioned above of emotion metaphors and metaphors. After analyzing the answers, comprehension can be categorized into two categoriesbasic and deep. By dividing the level of comprehension, a correlation can be drawn between the comprehension level and production of emotion metaphors, using MIP, an established method to identify whether there is a metaphorical expression or not in a discourse. This paper tests the less focused side of the metaphor study, trying to draw a primary conclusion on the relationship between comprehension and utilization of metaphors in hopes of allowing learners of English as L2 to understand more about the mechanism of metaphors and how they are applied to describe emotions.

Inside a Métis Community: Space, Collective Trauma, and the Impact of Colonialism

With Katherena Vermette’s novel The Break (2016) as a case study, this paper analyses a narrative that portrays an attempt of an Indigenous Canadian community to reclaim its voice, identity, and space. The plot is centred around the reconnection with land and culture, while tackling the complicated topic of epistemic violence inside Métis Canadian communities. The novel’s title already frames the narrative and the importance of space in this story and in Indigenous cultures: indeed, the ‘break’ is the name of the land where the sexual assault takes place. This word is used to symbolize and anticipate the ‘brokenness’ that will define the narration: sexual violence creates a crack inside an individual, but also in society. On a more metaphorical level, the ‘break’ symbolizes a fracture that Indigenous communities have experienced in their personal and cultural histories and that has led to intergenerational cycles of violence. It is a metaphor of how Indigenous spaces and cultures have been shattered and violated, both physically and symbolically, by white colonialism. Throughout the story the characters are confronting the epistemic violence consequential to colonialism that has created a division within and between them, while they try to reunite with their own identities and one another through acts of ‘resurgence.’ Despite The Break is highly characterized by trauma and ‘brokenness’, this paper highlights how its powerful narrative deals with the possibility of healing from intergenerational trauma and of breaking cycles of violence that have been imposed on Indigenous communities.

THE THERAPEUTIC POTENTIAL OF GUIDED IMAGERY AND MUSIC FOR PARENTS WITHIN A PEDIATRIC PALLIATIVE CARE SETTING

Parents caring for a child with a chronic life-limiting illness experience a wide range of therapeutic needs. This manuscript investigates the potential of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) as a multidimensional therapeutic approach for parents with children in pediatric palliative care. Drawing upon Goldberg's (2004) holographic field theory model, Clark's (2014) synthesis model of GIM, and Bonde's (2000) three levels of metaphor, this paper explores the multifaceted and multilayered nature of GIM grounded in the author’s clinical practice and includes a composite case description of parents within a pediatric palliative care program. GIM’s capacity to hold and facilitate expression of complex emotions on multiple levels of consciousness before and during bereavement can connect parents with their inner wisdom during this challenging time.

Птичьи метафоры в повести М. Месея "Высокая школа"

The article examines how the presentation of birds in the text of Miklós Mészöly’s short novel “High School” changes and how the original meaning of the title is deployed in it. The author of the article also briefly points out to the specific literature on the Hungarian writer’s books. “High School” contains different species of birds, which form a natural hierarchy with predatory falcons on its top. The author addresses this issue from a different angle analysing the images of birds both by their own bird characteristics and by their similarity with the human world. She emphasizes that this short novel is not a realistic or ornithological description of natural birds, but the rethinking of traditional cultural connotations. Mészöly’s innovative metaphorization builds a completely unique hierarchy. Much of the article presents the new interpretation of such images as different types of falcons, which play an important role in Hungarian mythology, culture and life, as well as other birds, primarily, herons, pigeons, crows, etc. This question cannot be referred only to the national or cultural aspect, as Mészöly examines universal human problems both ethically and philosophically. However, the focus of the author’s observations in the article is the metaphorical level of Mészöly’s text. As a result of the poetic analysis, the author reveals that the text of the short novel, contrary to the original task of writing a report on the “high school” of falcons, has become completely metaphorical, representing a “high school of writing” rather than “survival”. The conclusion is that Mészöly, through the narrative image of the writer, emphasizes not only the problem of “murder and slavery”, but says that with the help of one’s own poetic language all sorts of ideological languages (including those of authorities and falconers) leading to a cut-off both in life and discourse can be overcome. The author notes that so the “high school” gets a completely new meaning: the experience of acquiring this word by the subject of the text. She also notes that the searching for this word becomes a real act in the short novel, which expresses the history of selfunderstanding through language. The discursive perspective of the analysis reveals that the metaphorization of bird images contributes to this process of getting existential experience by criticizing “the others’ word”. Bird metaphors create a new poetic word, by which Mészöly’s short novel deservedly became a masterpiece of 20th century Hungarian literature. The author of the article in the analysis demonstrates this contribution and innovation of the writer.