Function Of Metaphor Research Articles

A METAPHORICAL THEORY OF MEANING

Languages combine form and meaning in order to express an infinite number of ideas. Modern linguistics has developed sophisticated methods to probe the formal structure of languages from phonetics to syntax, but the study of meaning remains relatively unexplored. The lack of sophisticated methods to document the semantic structure of languages remains a significant problem for work with endangered languages. Research in semantics is limited by semantic theories that can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. These theories assume that languages use a universal set of semantic elements to construct meaning. The classical theories cannot account for semantic change and an explanation of metaphor is completely beyond the scope of such theories. In this paper I propose a theory of semantics that puts metaphor at the center of semantics. Rather than create an artificial dichotomy between figurative and non-figurative language, the metaphorical approach to semantics assumes that all languages are figurative. This approach assumes that a basic sentence as “The cat is on the mat” combines figurative language with pragmatic information to communicate a basic proposition. This approach differs from that of Lakoff (1993) in that its focus is on metaphoric mapping within cognitive domains rather than between domains. The trick in metaphorical semantics is to learn how to detect the metaphors used in basic linguistic expressions and to construct a theory of semantics based on metaphor.

Molecular Surface Maps.

We present Molecular Surface Maps, a novel, view-independent, and concise representation for molecular surfaces. It transfers the well-known world map metaphor to molecular visualization. Our application maps the complex molecular surface to a simple 2D representation through a spherical intermediate, the Molecular Surface Globe. The Molecular Surface Map concisely shows arbitrary attributes of the original molecular surface, such as biochemical properties or geometrical features. This results in an intuitive overview, which allows researchers to assess all molecular surface attributes at a glance. Our representation can be used as a visual summarization of a molecule's interface with its environment. In particular, Molecular Surface Maps simplify the analysis and comparison of different data sets or points in time. Furthermore, the map representation can be used in a Space-time Cube to analyze time-dependent data from molecular simulations without the need for animation. We show the feasibility of Molecular Surface Maps for different typical analysis tasks of biomolecular data.

Metaphorical Expressions of Temperature Sensory Words in the Theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine

This article presents a study of metaphorical expressions of temperature sensory words in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). It demonstrates that TCM practitioners used the temperature sensory words such as “Heat” or “Cold” to illustrate the human body system including physiological functions, pathogenesis, therapeutic principles and herbs. Metaphorical mapping was applied for exploring and analyzing the expressions of “cold” and “heat” included in the language of TCM. Body experiences to nature and macro phenomena of nature are the foundation and logical materials. The results show that through sensory interaction in human body and nature, Chinese ancients spontaneously generate a novel reference-system of exploring the human body, as well as treatment of disease, which was made on the basis of referring to the theory of Yin-Yang. This theory forms a cognitive or cultural model underlying the metaphorical conceptualization and primitive thought in Chinese. This study shows that metaphors of temperature sensory words in TCM are primarily based on common bodily experience. It also provides empirical evidence, from a language of TCM, to support the claim that metaphor is essential in human understanding, meaning, and reasoning, even creating.

Las preposiciones en y a en sintagmas con nombre de objeto. Una descripción desde el enfoque cognitivo: el caso de 'volante' y 'timón'

El presente artículo aborda la aparente alternancia de las preposiciones en y a seguidas de los lexemas volante y timón en escenas espaciales que localizan una figura con respecto a una base u objeto de referencia. Postulamos que, si bien estos sintagmas preposicionales comparten una amplia gama de contextos, no evocan necesariamente la misma escena. Nuestro estudio propone una caracterización de su comportamiento semántico-pragmático desde una perspectiva cognitiva: sostenemos que (i) la construcción del sentido es un proceso holístico y (ii) las palabras son modos de acceso a marcos de interacción socialmente compartidos. Nuestra aproximación teórica se basa substancialmente en los conceptos de rol télico, marcos de interacción, zonas activas, conexiones metonímicas y metafóricas. Un estudio cualitativo de 671 enunciados arroja luz sobre las particularidades de cada expresión: los sintagmas preposicionales en el volante / timón pueden localizar tanto figuras animadas como inanimadas mientras que los SP al volante / timón requieren figuras animadas que mantengan una interacción pertinente con el objeto de referencia. Además, puede observarse que frecuentemente los sintagmas con el lexema timón dan lugar a proyecciones metafóricas.

Visualizing and Analyzing Video Content With Interactive Scalable Maps

Visualizing and communicating insights through maps offers an intuitive and familiar way to explore large-scale dynamic relational data. In this paper, we present VideoMap, which is a novel approach for presenting and interacting with relational video content by taking advantage of the map metaphor. VideoMap employs a metaphor to visualize video content by elements of a map with the aim of enabling exploration of video content as if reading a map. Video content is visualized in a hierarchal structure from a very large scale to a small scale of finely detailed representation. VideoMap recognizes a small set of sketch gestures for semantic zooming in and out, annotating the map, and automatically completing path navigation. To achieve this, VideoMap synthesizes map-derived visuals and binds them to the underlying data by operating the map with sketch interaction to facilitate interactive exploration. Extensive user studies were conducted to evaluate VideoMap, and the results demonstrated the effectiveness of VideoMap for facilitating the exploration and understanding of large video content.

The Common Element Effect of Abstract-to-Abstract Mapping in Language Processing.

Since the 1990s, there has been much discussion about how concepts are learned and processed. Many researchers believe that the experienced bodily states (i.e., embodied experiences) should be an important factor that affects concepts’ learning and use, and metaphorical mappings between abstract concepts, such as TIME and POWER, and concrete concepts, such as SPATIAL ORIENTATION, STRUCTURED EXPERIENCEs, etc., suggest the abstract-concrete concepts’ connections. In most of the recent literature, we can find common elements (e.g., concrete concepts) shared by different abstract-concrete metaphorical expressions. Therefore, we assumed that mappings might also be found between two abstract concepts that share common elements, though they have no symbolic connections. In the present study, two lexical decision tasks were arranged and the priming effect between TIME and ABSTRACT ACTIONs was used as an index to test our hypothesis. Results showed a robust priming effect when a target verb and its prime belonged to the same duration type (TIME consistent condition). These findings suggest that mapping between concepts was affected by common elements. We propose a dynamic model in which mappings between concepts are influenced by common elements, including symbolic or embodied information. What kind of elements (linguistic or embodied) can be used would depend on how difficult it is for a concept to be learned or accessed.

Map- or list-based recommender agents? Does the map metaphor fulfill its promise?

We present a spatialization of digital library content based on item similarity and an experiment which compares the performance of this spatialization relative to a simple list-based display. Items in the library are elementary school, middle school, and high school science and engineering learning resources. Spatialization and visualization are accomplished through two-dimensional interactive Sammon mapping of pairwise item similarities computed from the joint occurrence of word bigrams. The 65 science teachers participating in the experiment were asked to search the library for curricular items they would consider using as part of one or more teaching assignments. The results indicate that whereas the spatializations adequately capture the salient features of the library’s content and teachers actively use them, item retrieval rates, task-completion time, and perceived utility do not significantly differ from the semantically poorer but easier to comprehend and navigate list-based representations. These results put into question the usefulness of the rapidly increasing supply of information spatializations.

Mimetic schemas and shared perception through imitatives

This article examines the interplay between certain depictions of sound and certain mimetic schemas (intersubjectively shared, body-based image schemas that concern basic processes and activities). The research contributes to the study of ideophones and also demonstrates that it is beneficial to study these types of words in written everyday interaction, as well as in spoken everyday interaction. Two Finnish sound words (ideophones, imitatives),naps‘snap, pop’ andhumps(the sound of relatively soft falling) are examined and their different meanings are analysed. Some research questions of this analysis are: What causes the sound described by eithernapsorhumps? What kind of movement is described and to what mimetic schema is the sound linked? And also: What concrete, spatial processes might motivate the words’ more abstract uses? The examination indicates thatnapsandhumpsare used as concrete depictions of sounds and movements, but also more abstractly, as depictions of cognitive and emotional processes without any spatial movement or audible sound. The motivations for these more abstract uses are studied: It is argued that the basic uses ofnapsandhumpsare tied to certain bodily processes as their sounds or impressions, and that the more abstract uses ofnapsandhumpsreflect metaphorical mappings that map the mimetic schemas of these basic, bodily experiences to more abstract experiences. Grounds for this kind of use is the unique construal of imitatives: they present an imagistic, iconic depiction of a sensation and thus evoke imagery that is shared on a direct bodily level. Thus they aid in identifying with others and their experiences on a level that is directly accessible.

Metaphorical mapping between raw-cooked food and strangeness-familiarity in Chinese culture.

Previous research has demonstrated metaphorical mappings between physical coldness-warmth and social distance-closeness. Since the concepts of interpersonal warmth are frequently expressed in terms of food-related words in Chinese, the present study sought to explore whether the concept of raw-cooked food could be unconsciously and automatically mapped onto strangeness-familiarity. After rating the nutritive value of raw or cooked foods, participants were presented with morphing movies in which their acquaintances gradually transformed into strangers or strangers gradually morphed into acquaintances, and were asked to stop the movies when the combined images became predominantly target faces. The results demonstrated that unconscious and automatic metaphorical mappings between raw-cooked food and strangeness-familiarity exist. This study provides a foundation for testing whether Chinese people can think about interpersonal familiarity using mental representations of raw-cooked food and supports cognitive metaphor theory from a crosslinguistic perspective.

Finding Big Gay Church: An Academic Congregation Exploring LGBTQ Intersections with Religion, Art, and Education

Using the metaphor of mapping as an overarching metaphor, this article presents an amalgamated version of the first five years of Big Gay Church, an annual session at the National Art Education Association’s convention since 2009. Big Gay Church is a collaborative small group of queer art educators and allies coming together to explore the intersections of religion, education, the arts, culture, and LGBTQ identities. By using tools and constructs from dramatic inquiry and other performance pedagogies, as well as inviting attendees to fully participate as members of the congregation, we transform this conference session into an opportunity for scholarship, action, connection, and fellowship. Such arts-based academic interventions can provoke a re-imagining of ways forward, together, in education and research.

Teaching figurative language to EFL learners: an evaluation of metaphoric mapping instruction

ABSTRACTThe present study examines the effects of cognitive-based metaphoric mapping instruction (MMI) on English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ retention and awareness of figurative language at different levels of English proficiency. Ninety-one Taiwanese EFL learners participated in the study, and were separated into a control group that received no instruction in MMI and two experimental groups consisting of high-intermediate and low-intermediate learners, respectively, who did receive instruction in MMI. The results of the pretests and posttests show that MMI significantly increased EFL learners’ retention and awareness of figurative language; moreover, high-intermediate learners made greater progress in noticing expressions with more abstract mapping relations. Additionally, MMI assisted learners at a lower proficiency level to acquire more advanced language ability, beyond their current level. These findings support positive claims for a cognitive perspective on second language acquisition as well as the benefits of explicit instruction in the EFL classroom.

QoS Based Approach for Web Service Recommendation

Web services are important integrated software components for the support of interoperable machine to machine communication over internet. Web services have been widely used for building services oriented applications in industry in recent years. On internet publically available web services are widely increased in recent years. For the web services users it is very hard to select a proper web services among a large amount of services available on internet. Improper selection of web services may cause many problems (e.g., ill- suited performance) to the resulting applications. In this paper we proposed Collaborative Filtering (CF), we propose an innovative CF algorithm for Q-o-S-based web service recommendation. we provide a personalized map for browsing the recommendation results. The map explicitly shows the QoS relationships of the recommended web services as well as the basic structure of the QoS space by using map metaphor such as dots, areas, and spatial arrangement.

An Alternative to Mapping a Word onto a Concept in Language Acquisition: Pragmatic Frames.

The classic mapping metaphor posits that children learn a word by mapping it onto a concept of an object or event. However, we believe that a mapping metaphor cannot account for word learning, because even though children focus attention on objects, they do not necessarily remember the connection between the word and the referent unless it is framed pragmatically, that is, within a task. Our theoretical paper proposes an alternative mechanism for word learning. Our main premise is that word learning occurs as children accomplish a goal in cooperation with a partner. We follow Bruner’s (1983) idea and further specify pragmatic frames as the learning units that drive language acquisition and cognitive development. These units consist of a sequence of actions and verbal behaviors that are co-constructed with a partner to achieve a joint goal. We elaborate on this alternative, offer some initial parametrizations of the concept, and embed it in current language learning approaches.

تعادل زیباییشناختی در ترجمۀ رباعیات خیام با استفاده از نظریات زیباییشناسی دریافت و استعارۀ شناختی

تعادل زیباییشناختی در ترجمۀ رباعیات خیام با استفاده از نظریات زیباییشناسی دریافت و استعارۀ شناختی

Activating metaphors: Exploring the embodied nature of metaphorical mapping in political discourse

Courses: Persuasion, Rhetoric, Communication Theory, Metaphor Theory, Multimodal Communication.Objectives: This activity allows students to explore the embodied nature of metaphor and its interpretative significance by using gesture and physical movement. Students also understand how, in metaphor, abstract entities are conceptualized in terms of something more concrete.

Tematske i agentivne konstrukcije „straha” izvedene iz opojmljivanja unutarmjesnoga prostornog odnosa kodiranog prijedlogom „u”

This article presents an emergent model of the conceptualization of strah (Fear) in Croatian with focus on the constructions derived from the container image schema coded by preposition u (in). the semantic and syntactic analysis of the collocations of lexeme strah demonstrates conceptual hierarchy of the activation of metonymic and metaphoric processes via syntactic organization and perspectivization. It is argued that the meaning of the lexeme strah is conceptualized by metonymic profiling sensory-motor correlates of affective states and by superimposing metaphorical mappings of objects, spatial relations, object/entities with thematic and agentive roles that are organized in an emergent system of respective ontological, spatial, thematic and agentive patterns of linguistic constructions.

Reframing water governance praxis: Does reflection on metaphors have a role?

Action for adaptation is needed in the face of anthropogenic climate change. The record of adaptation in the field of freshwater governance is poor to date, as it is apparently constrained by operational frameworks. Analyses based on the Contemporary Theory of Metaphor can reveal underlying, often institutionally reified, operational frameworks. We present a desktop metaphor mapping study of one UK and one Australian water management planning document. This mapping demonstrates the potential of metaphor analysis, with further methodological and praxis development, to support the new ways of thinking and acting that are needed to challenge deeply held social and cultural norms of linear, rather than systemic, causality. We suggest that metaphor has the potential to help practitioners expose and examine reified operational frameworks and practices, and to change those that hinder adaptive and systemic praxis.

Modeling Abstractness and Metaphoricity

This paper presents and evaluates a model of how the abstractness of source and target concepts influences metaphoricity, the property of how metaphoric a linguistic metaphoric expression is. The purpose of this is to investigate the long-standing claim that metaphoric mappings are from less abstract concepts to more abstract concepts. First, abstractness is modeled using Searle’s social ontology and this model of abstractness evaluated using a participant-based measure of abstractness. Second, this model of abstractness is used to determine the direction and distance in abstractness of metaphoric mappings. Direction of abstractness in these mappings is whether the source or target concept is the more abstract. Distance is the difference in abstractness between source and target concepts. Both factors influence metaphoricity, as measured using introspection and a participant-based study of metaphoricity. The results give empirical support for a long-standing claim about abstractness in mappings, but also provide important new details about the nature of metaphoric mappings.

A Multimodal Corpus-based Study on Co-speech Metaphorical Gestures in Political Speeches

With the assistance of multimedia annotation software ELAN, this study employs corpus-based approach to explore the inner mechanisms and characteristics of multimodal meaning construction in the co-speech metaphorical gestures in political speeches. Research findings show that in multimodal meaning making process, three patterns like within metaphor, Metonymy-prominent and A-ING IS B-ING can be identified. Metonymy is crucial in multimodal meaning construction for they can either be used to form a similarity relation between the source domain and target domain in the first interactive pattern, or to achieve its referential function in the second pattern, or to be used to motivate metaphorical mapping process level upon level in the third interactive pattern. lexical categories as verbs, verbal phrases and nouns are most frequently occurring words that accompany metaphorical gestures, which reveal the importance of metaphorical gestures in highlighting the language focus.

A Corpus-based Stylistic Analysis of Body-Soul and Heaviness-Lightness Metaphors in Kundera's Novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being

This paper represents an attempt to conduct a corpus-based stylistic analysis of two conceptual metaphors in The Unbearable Lightness of Being , which is a novel written by Milan Kundera. Soul-body and lightness-heaviness metaphors are foregrounded as being central themes all through the novel. The way such metaphors are used in the novel indicates an insightful employment of metaphor as a cognitive tool which empowers language users with a capacity of conceptualizing different experiences. The researcher adopts conceptual metaphor theory to produce a sort of conceptual analysis incorporating Leech's semantic componential analysis within the overall analytic procedure. Different techniques are figured out in relation to the creative ways of manipulating the cognitive level of language, such as conceptual switching , conceptual extension , and conceptual fusion . These creative techniques are carefully used in the novel under investigation with different ranges of metaphorical creativity. Conceptual switching might be simple but very active in deviating from the conventional conceptual system. Conceptual extension marks certain minute elaborations conventional metaphors undergo extending the limits of cognitive conceptualization. As for conceptual fusion, it proves to be interestingly powerful in producing certain aggregations of metaphorical mappings. Keywords: Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Metaphorical Creativity, Metaphorical Mappings, Corpus Stylistics