Metaphorical Utterances Research Articles

Семантика конструкций со значением социальной самоидентификации и самопрезентации в русском языке

Referring to Russian language materials, the authors discuss the linguistic aspects behind the construction of a social portrait of the speaker. The article provides a general overview of the speech forms and genres which prompt the speakers to construct their self-image by identifying their profession, age, and social status. The analysis thus focuses on syntactic structures with the meaning of taxonomic or evaluative characterisation which fit the model ‘Я – N’ (‘I am N’), where N is a noun or a personal pronoun. The relevant linguistic units found in the utterances in question were selected on the basis of data provided by ideographic dictionaries. Special attention is paid to pragmatic limitations in the usage of certain structures such as Я чиновник, Я гений, Я интеллигент, Я поэт (‘I am a public official’, ‘I am a man of genius’, ‘I am an intellectual’, ‘I am a poet’). The function of the predicate in the given model is performed not only by words denoting positive characteristics but also by words referring to negative characteristics used for self-criticism, self-deprecation, self-disclosure, or for other pragmatic purposes. Each of the six models of social self-identification and self-presentation described in this article is connected to the strategies of speech behaviour targeted at creating the speaker’s self-portrait through various speech masks and metaphorical and other figurative images. The article also systematises idiomatic means used to express the speaker’s social identity such as paroemiae or syntactic idiomatic units. Special emphasis is placed on the structures in which self-identification is used to create a speech mask or construct a figurative image. Another interesting linguistic aspect analysed in this article is the usage of metaphoric expressions and utterances with an oppositional presentation of the speaker’s social status, which enable them to create unique characteristics of their identity. The authors maintain that self-presentation (meaning that the speaker addresses his or her utterance to other people) should be distinguished from self-identification, which implies that the speaker would like to communicate personally significant information about themselves, expressing their inner views and attitudes.

Imagery, expression, and metaphor

Metaphorical utterances are construed as falling into two broad categories, in one of which are cases amenable to analysis in terms of semantic content, speaker meaning, and satisfaction conditions, and where image-construction is permissible but not mandatory. I call these image-permitting metaphors, and contrast them with image-demanding metaphors (IDM’s) comprising a second category and whose understanding mandates the construction of a mental image. This construction, I suggest, is spontaneous, is not restricted to visual imagery, and its result is typically somatically marked sensu Damasio. IDM’s are characteristically used in service of self-expression, and thereby in the elicitation of empathy. Even so, IDM’s may reasonably provoke banter over the aptness of the imagery they evoke.

A developmental ecological study of novel metaphoric language use

From the perspective of the ecological direct realist approach to perceiving-acting-knowing, we argue that linguistic metaphor involves understanding one kind of thing by means of a different kind of thing. This understanding is based on invariants in an ambient stimulus array that specify objects and events over time, and, therefore, the metaphoric process is rooted in perception. The present research investigated children's and adults' knowledge of ordinary kinds of objects and events, the development of their ability to detect metaphoric resemblances across these real kinds, and their abilities to respond to discourse contexts that supported metaphor use. We used pairs of photographs depicting objects and events from verbal metaphors earlier produced by other children. Thirty participants at each age group (4, 6, 8, 10, adults) first said what they knew of each depicted object or event. Then half of the participants in each age group chose depictions from the whole set of photographs that were “like” the given standards; the other half chose those that were “of the same kind”. Finally, the experimenter encouraged metaphor use by showing pictures from metaphoric pairs to all the participants and asking questions about the pictures. Participants at all ages described the objects and events predominantly in terms of functions, physical properties, and dynamic properties. Whereas metaphoric matches in the “kind” condition were rare at all ages, they were frequent in the “like” condition, and increased with age. Metaphor use also increased with age and participants did not use metaphors about objects or events that they had said were of the same kind. Thus, children know that metaphors are about different real kind things and, therefore, their utterances are truly metaphoric. Even though these abilities begin at early ages, they continue to develop in facility and frequency at least to adulthood. Future studies will investigate developments in the forms of metaphoric utterances, and in the links between visual and verbal metaphors.

Imagem mental e metáfora

This paper focuses on the nature of mental imagery as a component of human cognition. Imagery has been considered as mere epiphenomena and unable to alter belief. However, recent evidence in neuroscience and psycholinguistics suggest that the mental image can be accessed and interact with higher order processes of cognition in the determination of speaker meaning. If this is true, then mental imagery can play a role during the comprehension procedure for metaphoric utterances. To understand the reasons why mental images have been discarded from linguistic theories of utterance comprehension, past philosophical ideas about the mental image are discussed. Many have questioned the existence of the image, stating that they are, in fact, constituted by propositional components. These perspectives fit within a theory of the mind that conforms to an amodal symbol system in which the relation between perceptual input and mental representation is an arbitrary one. This paper is suggesting that the mind follows a perceptual symbol system, and that the relation is an analogous one. Therefore, through an extension of relevance theory, it is possible to flesh out the meaning of metaphors by incorporating this embodied view of the mind.

Do pragmatic signals affect conventional metaphor understanding? A failed test of deliberate metaphor theory

Different signals, or tuning devices, in language, including certain discourse markers, comparatives, intensifiers and semantic meta-language, sometimes accompany verbal metaphors. Some scholars have claimed that these signals give evidence of “deliberate metaphor” use on the part of speakers and writers. So, understanding these particular uses of metaphor requires people to infer deliberation, which leads them to pay greater notice to these figures and enhances their understanding of the cross-domain mappings motivating metaphorical utterances. Many linguistic analyses argue that deliberate metaphor is a critical part of metaphor use, yet no empirical study has explored whether people really infer greater deliberation and cross-domain mappings when encountering so-called pragmatic signals of metaphor. The present study tested this idea and did not find evidence in support of the deliberate metaphor proposal. This conclusion raises serious doubts about the psychological validity of the idea that some metaphors are produced and understood as being deliberate.

Three Types of Metaphoric Utterances That Can Synthesize Theories of Metaphor

This article argues that there are three types of metaphoric utterances that can be defined by (a) the contextual stability of the utterance’s interpretation and (b) the presence or absence of a conceptual source–target mapping. Evidence for these three types of metaphoric utterances comes from introspective evidence about metaphor-in-language, from a survey-based study of metaphoricity, from a computational model of metaphoricity, and from a meta-study of the examples used in published metaphor research. These three types of metaphoric utterances are used to narrow the scope of existing theories of metaphor and thus to synthesize them, showing that competing theories describe and are concerned with different types of metaphoric utterances.

Reconstructing Metaphorical Meaning

Metaphorical meaning can be analyzed as triggered by an apparent communicative breach, an incongruity that leads to a default of the presumptive interpretation of a vehicle. This breach can be solved through contextual renegotiations of meaning guided by the communicative intention, or rather the presumed purpose of the metaphorical utterance. This paper addresses the problem of analyzing the complex process of reasoning underlying the reconstruction of metaphorical meaning. This process will be described as a type of abductive argument, aimed at explaining how the vehicle can best contribute to the purpose of the utterance. This type of reasoning involves the analysis of the possible predicates that can be and usually are attributed to the vehicle, and the selection of the one (or ones) that can support the implicit conclusion constituting the communicative goal of the metaphorical utterance. Metaphorical meaning, in this perspective, becomes the outcome of a complex process of meaning reconstruction aimed at providing the best explanation of the function of the vehicle within a discourse move.

At the heart of cognition, communication, and language

Cognitive, communicative, and linguistic forces have been theorized to inhere in all metaphor use in real world contexts, with Steen (2011) describing these forces as constitutive and interacting ‘dimensions’ of metaphor. This paper proposes that cognition, communication, and language should be seen not just as crucial dimensions of individual metaphoric utterances, but also of their circumstances and contexts of use. In other words, purposive real world discourse activities impose various demands of a cognitive, communicative, and linguistic nature on speakers, and these shape the characteristics of metaphors used in definitive ways. I characterize the discourse activity of psychotherapy along the three dimensions, and show how the strategic use and management of metaphors in psychotherapy is, and ought to be, determined by interacting cognitive, communicative, and linguistic considerations. From this, I suggest that the effectiveness of therapeutic metaphors can be evaluated in terms of their “discourse career” (Steen, 2011, p. 54) over a series of therapy sessions. I conclude by highlighting the value of psychotherapy to metaphor study, and of metaphor study to psychotherapeutic practice.

Keeping an open attitude towards the RDoC project

In the 1970s, a programme was launched in the United States which had two objectives: a) to improve the reliability of psychiatric diagnoses under ordinary clinical conditions; b) to facilitate the elucidation of the pathophysiology of mental disorders. In order to pursue these different objectives, the same tool was regarded as appropriate: a diagnostic system based on operational criteria defining in an explicit and precise way the various mental disorders.

Metaphor in psychotherapeutic discourse: Implications for utterance interpretation

The difficulty we have in talking about feelings and emotions without making use of metaphorical language is often noted in discussions of metaphor within cognitive linguistics and it has led to interesting claims about how we conceptualise and think about emotions. Yet, these observations have had little impact so far on pragmatic theories of metaphor processing which typically work with more de-contextualised examples of language. This paper examines figurative expressions in two passages from attested psychotherapy exchanges where explicit use is made of metaphor for therapeutic purposes. The elaborated metaphorical utterances found in these transcripts of emotion talk are used to assess the explanatory adequacy of a current pragmatic theory, namely the ad hoc concept account of metaphor proposed within Relevance Theory. In line with Carston (2010), I argue that when interpreting these extended metaphors the literal meaning of the expressions in question is entertained and metarepresented as descriptive of an imaginative conception which represents the utterer's attempt to understand his/her emotional experience. By focusing and reflecting on this metarepresented literal meaning, the client, together with the therapist, is able to draw out implications that can provide insights into his/her own feelings, reactions and behaviour. The use of psychotherapeutic discourse to support this line of argument confirms the need for pragmatic theories of metaphor to be supported by data from a range of discourses

Character Intimacy Influences the Processing of Metaphoric Utterances During Narrative Comprehension

Speakers appear to use metaphor and other types of figurative language as a means to create and reinforce social intimacy between themselves and their addressees. Additionally, when metaphoric utterances appear in narrative contexts, readers readily judge story characters as having a closer relationship (Horton, 2007). The present work tests whether the relationship implied to exist between characters can influence how readers process metaphoric utterances during narrative comprehension. In two experiments, participants read brief stories that described interactions between two characters portrayed as being familiar with one another to varying degrees. Critical utterances contained either a literal or metaphoric expression that commented on an aspect of the previous story context. In both experiments, readers were as fast to read metaphoric utterances as literal utterances in the context of close, familiar relationships, but were slower to read metaphoric utterances in the context of unfamiliar relationships. Experiment 2 established that this pattern was especially strong for less-conventional metaphors. In general, the level of intimacy established between characters appears to shape the ease with which readers integrate meanings expressed via metaphor into their understanding of the narrative situation.

Scambi di sensi e comprensione metaforica

In this paper I deal with the process involved in understanding metaphors. My aim is to show how synaesthetic sentences moderate the conflict between the minimalist point of view and the radical contextualist standpoint. Synaesthetic sentences are constituted by a term that belongs to a perceptual domain which is defined by a term that corresponds to another perceptual domain (for example “caressing voice”, “dark sound”, or “sweet smell”). In particular, I will defend two claims: first, against radical contextualism, it is possible to maintain the distinction between “what is literal” and “what is metaphorical”. Second, against the minimalist view, the literal meaning of a metaphorical utterance is not necessarily computed as a first step by default.

Emergent Metaphor Theory: Frequency, Schematic Strength, and the Processing of Metaphorical Utterances

Emergent Metaphor Theory: Frequency, Schematic Strength, and the Processing of Metaphorical Utterances

How linguistic structure influences and helps to predict metaphoric meaning

AbstractThis paper argues that two properties of the linguistic structure of an utterance influence and partially determine whether the utterance has a metaphoric meaning that results in a stable interpretation: (i) degree of metaphoricity and (ii) degree of metaphoric saturation. A majority of metaphoric utterances in a corpus study (66%) were unsaturated, low metaphoricity utterances that behave as expected by Max Black and the cognitive linguistics paradigm. However, a significant minority (34%) of the metaphoric utterances were saturated or high metaphoricity utterances that behave partially as expected by Donald Davidson and others working in his tradition. This suggests that the direct and indirect interpretation views of metaphor are not incompatible but apply to different sub-groups of metaphoric utterances. The paper then constructs a model of metaphoric meaning that makes falsifiable predictions about the interpretations of metaphoric utterances in order to provide further evidence that unsaturated, low metaphoricity utterances have stable interpretations. This research provides both converging evidence for the cognitive linguistic view of metaphor and also a framework for limiting its scope to most, but not all, metaphoric utterances.

Karl Jaspers and the Genesis of Delusions in Schizophrenia

Karl Jaspers and the Genesis of Delusions in Schizophrenia

An Irenic Idea about Metaphor

AbstractDonald Davidson notoriously rejected ‘metaphorical meaning’ and denied the existence of linguistic mechanisms by which metaphorical significance is conveyed. He contended that the meanings metaphorical sentences have are just their literal meanings, though metaphorical utterances may brute-causally have important cognitive effects. Contrastingly, John Searle offers a Gricean account of metaphor as an elaborated kind of implicature, and defends metaphorical meaning as speaker-meaning. Each of those positions is subject to very telling objections from the other's point of view. This paper proposes a synthesis that combines the respective virtues of Davidson's and Searle's accounts and avoids all the objections to each.

Re-Assessing the Speech Act Schema: Twenty-First Century Reflections

Bach and Harnish’s (1979) Speech Act Schema (SAS) breaks down into a series of inferential steps the process involved in understanding an utterance as a particular kind of speech act. At the heart of the SAS lies the notion of illocutionary intention, a special kind of reflexive intention whose fulfilment consists in its recognition. This article re-assesses Bach and Harnish’s Speech Act Schema in two ways. First, I discuss three types of indirect speech acts—acts exchanged between intimates, alerts, and ritual indirectness—arguing that in all three cases, a perlocutionary effect of re-affirming or testing the degree of sharedness between speaker and addressee is also achieved, making all three types of acts overt collateral acts in Bach and Harnish’s terminology. Second, I consider cases when the speaker’s illocutionary intention exists in only a rudimentary form, such as children’s early directives and metaphorical utterances expressing feelings. In such cases, the hearer is called upon to play a more active role, by constructing (rather than recognizing) an understanding based on the linguistic material provided by the speaker. The need to account for this second set of acts challenges the centrality of the speaker’s illocutionary intention as the ultimate arbitrator of communicative outcomes and forces us to accord at least equal weight to the contribution of the hearer. The end result is a novel emphasis on the intersubjective aspects of linguistic communication, which were given less prominence in more traditional models, such as the SAS.

“La cara de luna de mi madre”: Nuria Amat’s Revolution in Poetic Language in “Casa de verano” (1999)

Nuria Amat’s 1999 short story “Casa de verano” ‘Summer House’ presents the reader with a sensorial collage of unsettling language and violent images that effectively portray domestic abuse and the difficulty of escaping oppressive environments. The Barcelona writer’s text crosses the generic boundaries of narrative and poetry as her discourse flows freely and irrationally by employing a wide variety of charged poetic devices such as metaphor, metonymy, and antithesis. The story focuses on three orphan children who are prohibited from speaking about their subversive bisexual mother, from reading the few remaining books in the summer house, or from playing with most of their toys. They cope with the rigid house rules by seeking refuge in their imagination and escaping to a world of lyrically-encoded language. The children’s linguistic nonsense is comprised mostly of dislocated phrases which contest the dictates of their Franco-like abuelo ‘grandfather’ as they speak metaphorical utterances and “desordenando palabras” ‘muddling up words.’ These speech acts disrupt generic conventions and issue a revolutionary aesthetics similar to what Julia Kristeva refers to as the semiotic chora, (pre)linguistic mobilizations that are in direct contrast to the official regulations of the symbolic order. Their dreams of escaping the summer house are heard through fragmented memories, maternal metaphors, and a feminist politics wherein unstable notions of both gender identity and genre challenge traditional discourses. As such, Amat’s “Casa de verano” constitutes a daring poetic narrative centered on youthful resistance and feminine dissidence.

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.

Terms of engagement: On the differential effects of metaphoric utterances in relational stories of organization

This paper approaches the nexus of metaphor and story from a novel angle, one that underlines the varying dynamics of metaphoric utterances (metaphors in segments of speech) within stories on organization. Drawing on Bakhtin's theoretical contribution, it examines the dialogism in metaphor, illustrating it with material from different stories that discuss the same inter-organizational relationship. The paper sets out simultaneous contradictions inherent in four metaphorical utterances (‘cash cow’, ‘dragging a child kicking and screaming’, ‘big brother/Big Brother’ and ‘family’). It illustrates how the same metaphoric utterance can be used in different stories to generate different effects (the double voice and intonation in metaphor) or to yield different meanings altogether (the polysemy in metaphor). The paper forwards an ongoing interrelationship between story and metaphor: metaphoric utterances serve as a means of surfacing value judgments and illustrating both resonance and dissonance in organizational stories, while stories define the meaning and the significance of a metaphoric utterance.