Function Of Metaphor Research Articles

Some Contributions from Embodied Cognition to Psychonarratology.

Psychonarratology is a discipline that combines classic frameworks in narratology and psycholinguistics. The goal of this review article is to highlight the contributions that recent evidence from causality processing studies, conceptual metaphor theory and embodied cognition can make to Psychonarratology, in order to promote a more comprehensive study of narrative. We argue that, in order to increase its descriptive and explanatory power, Psychonarratology would benefit from a more strongly interdisciplinary approach. This approach would integrate grounded theoretical cognition and recent methods from different disciplines. With this aim, we review study evidence that highlights the fundamental link between cognition and causal connections in narratives, as well as proposals from conceptualization theories. These approaches indicate that metaphorical mappings and discourse connections play a crucial role in the establishment of narrative sequences. Moreover, we elaborate on the contributions that recent advances in research on embodied cognition, causality processing and Conceptual Metaphor Theory can make to the theoretical and methodological framework of Psychonarratology, such as promoting the design of more ecologically valid tasks, and the study of narrative production and comprehension by non-neurotypical participants.

Educational Metaphor in the Polish press: a perspective on presenting the political situation in Poland at the beginning of the Russia–Ukraine war

The following paper investigates the topic of educational metaphors about the Russia–Ukraine War in Polish press articles. Educational metaphor relates to the use of concepts connected with schooling or teaching in order to describe other concepts. The research material is composed of texts published after 24 February 2022 in the following newspapers: Do Rzeczy, Gazeta Polska, Polityka, and Krytyka Polityczna. This article aims to present one of the metaphorical mappings together with its critical analysis with the use of the conceptual metaphor theory (Лакофф, Джонсон 2004) and critical metaphor analysis (Charteris-Black 2004). According to the research, the trichotomy which includes the Polish Government, the opposition parties, and the Polish society may be distinguished in the Polish press. Amidst these oppositions, the metaphorical mapping is discerned, according to which the war is understood as the teacher, the politicians and society as the students, and the help offered to Ukraine is interpreted as the examination. Assessment of the actions undertaken by the Government, the opposition parties and the society has been the subject of the ideological and political profile of a particular magazine.

Metaphorical meaning dynamics: Identifying patterns in the metaphorical evolution of English words using mathematical modeling techniques

Abstract Conceptual metaphor theory has been criticized due to its emphasis on concepts instead of words and its top-down direction of analysis. In response to these criticisms, this paper employs a new strategy, utilizing established mathematical modeling methods to allow a systematic, quantitative analysis of the entire dataset produced by the Mapping Metaphor project at the University of Glasgow. This dataset consists of 9609 words performing 18916 metaphorical mappings between 414 domains. The data is represented as a network consisting of 414 nodes, the domains, connected by shared words. Words are represented by groups of directed mappings between all domains in which they occur. This is made possible by the use of a directed hypergraph representation, a tool commonly used in discrete mathematics and various areas of computer science but not previously applied to the metaphorical meanings of words. Examining the dataset as a whole, rather than focusing on individual words or metaphors, allows global patterns of behavior to emerge from the data without pre-filtering or selection by the authors. Outcomes of the analysis relating to the distributions of source and target domains within the network, the growth mechanisms at work in the spread of metaphorical meanings and how these relate to existing concepts in CMT are discussed.

Space as a mental toolbox in the representation of meaning.

The experience of meaning has been found to be mapped onto spatial proximity whereby coherent-in contrast to incoherent-elements in a set are mentally represented as closer together in physical space. In a series of four experiments, we show that spatial representation of coherence is malleable and can employ other meaningful concrete dimensions of space that are made salient. When given task instructions cueing verticality, participants represented coherence in the upper vertical location when making judgements about the logical validity of realistic (Experiments 1 and 4) and unrealistic syllogistic scenarios (Experiment 3). When the task instruction made the spatial proximity between the stimuli materials and the participant salient (subjective proximity), participants represented coherence as spatially close to themselves (Experiment 2). We also found that being accurate in judging the validity of syllogisms was associated with representing coherence in the upper visual field or close to oneself. Overall, our findings show that identifying semantic links between an abstract concept and a given spatial dimension involves using that dimension to create spatial metaphoric mappings of the concept.

Comparative dimensions of COVID-19 visual health literacy: social media news imagery in Germany and China

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted governments worldwide to utilise social media news platforms for disseminating critical public health information and safety protocols. Visual aids, including photographs, videos, charts, and infographics, played a key role in conveying health-related messages. However, there are variations in visual communication practices across countries, influenced by local health communication habits and cultural contexts. This study examines these variations in the visual health discourse that emerged in China and Germany during the pandemic, focusing on metaphorical mapping as a central analytical tool. We introduce the concept of “visual dataset fingerprints,” outlining the distinct composition of public health visuals on eight social news media platforms in Germany and China. Our descriptive analysis encompasses over 3700 digital visual media posts related to COVID-19, shared by leading national news media accounts in German, English, and Mandarin on microblogs in 2022. As a preliminary outcome of our study, we observe differences in image use based on the analysis of 1678 media posts by four Chinese outlets and 1329 media posts by four German outlets. These differences may reflect variations in how public opinion, perceptions, and attitudes toward COVID-19 policies are shaped across languages and cultures. Through its comparative visual analysis, our pilot study offers the potential for a new research approach to global healthcare communication in social news media and digital visual cultures.

What can the taxonomy of predicative possession in Malwai Punjabi tell us?

Abstract The study aims to examine the syntactic and semantic behaviors of predicative possession (i.e., have-possessive constructions) in Malwai Punjabi, an underdocumented dialect within the Indo-Aryan language family. Data were collected from longitudinal online interviews with native speakers as consultants, with audio recordings for transcribed target sentences. The results revealed that all the alienable possession, either permanent/temporary or abstract/concrete, could be marked by the postposition koḷ ‘near/with’, whereas inalienable possession, such as whole-part relation and kinship, could not be encoded using koḷ. The prototypicality model and schema-based metaphors explained why koḷ was widely used to express alienable possession in Malwai Punjabi. The analysis of companion and proximity schemata also justified the extended semantics of predicative possession, suggesting a metaphorical mapping of accompaniment and location onto possession. From a typological angle, the case study can not only provide further evidence for the existence of split possession but also contribute to a cognitive understanding of predicative possession in relation to other languages.

Construction of Metaphorical Maps of Cyberspace Resources Based on Point‐Cluster Feature Generalization

ABSTRACTIn the digital age, the expansion of cyberspace has resulted in increasing complexity, making clear cyberspace visualization crucial for effective analysis and decision‐making. Current cyberspace visualizations are overly complex and fail to accurately reflect node importance. To address the challenge of complex cyberspace visualization, this study introduces the integrated centrality metric (ICM) for constructing a metaphorical map that accurately reflects node importance. The ICM, a novel node centrality measure, demonstrates superior accuracy in identifying key nodes compared to degree centrality (DC), k‐shell centrality (KC), and PageRank values. Through community partitioning and point‐cluster feature generalization, we extract a network's hierarchical structure to intuitively represent its community and backbone topology, and we construct a metaphorical map that offers a clear visualization of cyberspace. Experiments were conducted on four original networks and their extracted backbone networks to identify core nodes. The Jaccard coefficient was calculated considering the results of the three aforementioned centrality measures, ICM, and the SIR model. The results indicate that ICM achieved the best performance in both the original networks and all extracted backbone networks. This demonstrates that ICM can more precisely evaluate node importance, thereby facilitating the construction of metaphorical maps. Moreover, the proposed metaphorical map is more convenient than traditional topological maps for quickly comprehending the complex characteristics of networks.

Metaphor and therapeutic potential in cancer discourse

Sickness does not involve just the human body but also has a psychological dimension, and a number of studies have identified the positive psychological potential of self-help books in relation to illness. This paper examines metaphorical mappings employed in describing cancer patients in self-help books, undertaking a comparison of an American and a Nigerian work and identifying new categorisations and highlighting their therapeutic potential. It seeks to answer the following questions: what new metaphorical categories can be identified in Nigerian and American self-help books?; what therapeutic potential do they have?; and what similarities/differences can be identified in these self-help books? The sample size is 102 self-help stories, of which 24 instances were considered relevant for close analysis. This study adopts the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) approach and employs the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) and methodologies concerned with the comparison and categorisation of metaphoric membership. The findings focus on four metaphorical categories: military, journey, personification and sports. The difference between the Nigerian and American self-help books lies in the contextualised manner of metaphorical presentation. In particular, the findings highlight sports metaphors in the American books as possessing more therapeutic tendencies due to the presence of humour, trivialisation, self-deprecation and satire. This category reflects that humour can ease stress and anxiety/panic and aid relaxation.

Evolution of the Moral Lexicon.

Morality is central to social well-being and cognition, and moral lexicon is a key device for human communication of moral concepts and experiences. How was the moral lexicon formed? We explore this open question and hypothesize that words evolved to take on abstract moral meanings from concrete and grounded experiences. We test this hypothesis by analyzing semantic change and formation of over 800 words from the English Moral Foundations Dictionary and the Historical Thesaurus of English over the past hundreds of years. Across historical text corpora and dictionaries, we discover concrete-to-abstract shifts as words acquire moral meaning, in contrast with the broad observation that words become more concrete over time. Furthermore, we find that compound moral words tend to be derived from a concrete-to-abstract shift from their constituents, and this derivational property is more prominent in moral words compared to alternative compound words when word frequency is controlled for. We suggest that evolution of the moral lexicon depends on systematic metaphorical mappings from concrete domains to the moral domain. Our results provide large-scale evidence for the role of metaphor in shaping the historical development of the English moral lexicon.

PHONETIC UNDERPINNINGS OF SOUND SYMBOLISM ACROSS MULTIPLE DOMAINS OF MEANING.

Sound symbolism occurs when the sound of a word alone can convey its meaning, e.g. 'balloon' and 'spike' sound rounded and pointed, respectively. Sound-symbolic correspondences are widespread in natural languages, but it is unclear how they are instantiated across different domains of meaning. Here, participants rated auditory pseudowords on opposing scales of seven different sound-symbolic domains: shape (rounded-pointed), texture (hard-soft), weight (light-heavy), size (small-big), brightness (bright-dark), arousal (calming-exciting), and valence (good-bad). Ratings showed cross-domain relationships, some mirroring those between corresponding physical domains, e.g. size and weight ratings were associated, reflecting a physical size-weight relationship, while others involved metaphorical mappings, e.g., bright/dark mapped onto good/bad, respectively. The phonetic features of the pseudowords formed unique sets with characteristic feature weightings for each domain and tended to follow the cross-domain ratings relationships. These results suggest that sound-symbolic correspondences rely on domain-specific patterns of phonetic features, with cross-domain correspondences reflecting physical or metaphorical relationships.

Designing complex network visualisations using the wayfinding map metaphor

Despite their widespread use, network visualisations can be rather challenging to design and use. This is due to the fact that such visualisations are generally used to represent highly complex underlying data sets. As such, the resulting charts often include a very large number of visual elements and many non-linear relations between them that must be displayed. More effective design-oriented approaches are therefore needed to better support designers in creating network visualisations for complex data sets that are more understandable and usable for their users. The use of visual metaphors seems to offer such an approach to designing visualisations of complex data. In this article, we propose the use of wayfinding map metaphor in network diagrams to support both the designers and users of this type of data visualisation. We also provide a mapping of the three common map wayfinding tasks – orientation, exploration, and navigation – to three categories of network diagram user interactions. To demonstrate the potential of our proposed approach, we provide an example case study using a prototype network diagram visualisation tool – Colocalisation Network Explorer – which we have developed to support the exploration of relationships between various diseases and the portion of the human genome involved in their onset.

Kto jest szczupakiem w czeskim stawie? Metafora pojęciowa polityka to staw w czeskim dyskursie politycznym

In this article, the author analyzes the conceptual metaphors politics is a pond, a politician is a carp and a politician is a pike in Czech political discourse. The investigation is based on the theory of conceptual metaphor and follows the principles of ethnolinguistics and cognitive linguistics. The author shows how the specific features of these conceptual metaphors relate to the Czech linguistic worldview and proposes metaphorical mapping that conveys salient features of the target domain (politics and politicians). The conceptual metaphor politics is a pond helps the speaker to depict a problematic domestic political situation that needs to be changed. The metaphors a politician is a carp and a politician is a pike are usually used to create the “friend-foe” opposition in political discourse. The conceptual metaphor a politician is a carp discloses the passivity and laziness of politicians and their inability or unwillingness to change the current situation. On the other hand, the conceptual metaphor a politician is a pike can be used to indicate both the positive qualities of a politician (activity, energy, initiative) and the negative ones (greed, selfishness, cruelty). The use of culturally specific conceptual metaphors allows a politician to establish close contact with the audience to increase the number of loyal voters.

Novel Metaphors in Indonesian Political Discourse on Covid-19 Pandemic Handling

Metaphor is a part of human cognition that plays an important role in human knowledge and experience. This study aims at examining novel metaphors based on the metaphorical language used by Indonesia’s state leader, President Joko Widodo, in his speeches on COVID-19 and their functions for pandemic handling and post-pandemic preparednessin Indonesia. Data were speeches produced during the first and second waves of the pandemic and taken from official website of Cabinet Secretariat of the Republic of Indonesia. The metaphors identified in the speeches were analysed using Critical Metaphor Analysis proposed by Charteris-Black (2004, 2011, 2021). The identified novel metaphors were categorized under the following seven source domains: breakfast, computer, crater, test, teacher, momentum, wheel, and fire. The identified metaphors could be classified into three types of novel metaphor: linguistic structural metaphors, metaphors with new target domains, and new mapping metaphors. Results of analysis revealed that the metaphors of examination/test, teacher, and fire were high in frequency. As for the function, those novel metaphors could be interpreted as Jokowi's way to reflect changing realities and motivate actions. Overall, the use of metaphors implied Jokowi's priority responses toward pandemic, i.e. to persuade the importance of solidarity and collectivity, strong sense of perseverance and resilience, as well as mutual cooperation. This study is expected to give insight that government leadersemploy metaphors as appropriate to situational context as the metaphors they can be effective in shaping public opinion and winning public support for health measures and policymaking in time of crises.

Metaphorical Mapping and Cultural Significance in Chinese Death-Related Idiomatic Expressions

Metaphorical Mapping and Cultural Significance in Chinese Death-Related Idiomatic Expressions

Когнитивная фитонимическая метафора как средство описания внешности человека в русской и китайской лингвокультурах

The article deals with the cognitive phytonymic metaphor, which forms the plant code in Russian and Chinese linguocultures. A cognitive metaphor, i.e. conceptual metaphor (G. Lakoff, M. Johnson), establishes stable correspondences between the source and the target domains, which are fixed in a linguoculture. This paper investigates the cognitive phytonymic metaphor as a way of interpreting and cognizing reality and, at the same time, as one of the most effective means of creating and representing a linguistic worldview. Considering phytonyms and the plant concepts they are naming as the source domain and the person as the target domain, the cognitive phytonymic metaphor activates a metaphorical mapping that reflects the plant code of culture as part of the coordinate system of linguocultures. The significance of analysing the cognitive mechanisms of the phytonymic metaphor lies in revealing the commonality and individuality of the national linguistic consciousness and values of the two peoples, embodied in the fragments of their linguistic worldviews. The study aimed to identify the characteristic features of the perception of the plant world by members of the Russian and Chinese national linguocultural communities. To achieve this aim, the following tasks were solved: firstly, phytonyms in the two linguocultures were studied as a means of describing a person’s external characteristics; secondly, based on phytomorphisms, a comparative analysis was performed of the cognitive mechanisms of the phytonymic metaphor in Russian and Chinese linguistic worldviews; thirdly, factors contributing to the emergence of differences between cognitive phytonymic metaphors in the two linguocultures were identified. The research concludes that, in most cases, when comparing phytonymic metaphors in the two linguocultures one will find discrepancies, including asymmetry and nonequivalence. Such factors as geographical environment, religion, history, national culture, way of thinking and hierarchy of peoples’ values can have a great influence on the formation of differences between cognitive phytonymic metaphors in the two linguocultures.

Frames and semantic roles in metaphorical mappings

Abstract Conceptual Metaphor Theory describes metaphorical mappings as correspondences between domains. Nevertheless, the interrelations of the mapped elements still need to be characterised. This study analyses metaphorical mappings from one situational frame in the cooking domain in American English and Peninsular Spanish. The aims are to elucidate to what extent each language primes particular semantic roles in the boiling frame for metaphorisation and explore the possible cultural implications of these cross-linguistic differences. The qualitative analysis reveals the contrastive relevance of semantic roles in frame mappings. In addition, the frequencies of boil and hervir metaphorical senses determine the degree of entrenchment and salience of metaphors cross-linguistically. The results suggest that the English boiling frame has a considerably broader scope as a source than the Spanish hervir frame. Additionally, the paper contrasts the relative saliency of the semantic roles mapped in those metaphors shared by both languages. Finally, cultural implications are discussed.

Representation of a Scientific Supervisor in Internet-Memes

Introduction. The purpose article is to consider the representation of the image of a scientific supervisor based on Internet memes containing a multimodal metaphor. The relevance of the topic is due to the growing interest of the interdisciplinary scientific community in the study of the Internet meme as a social, linguistic, psychological phenomenon of interpersonal communication. The scientific novelty of the work is determined by the fact that until now there have been no attempts to study the representation of the academic community from the perspective of the theory of conceptual metaphor using the material of Internet memes. Methodology and sources. The methodological basis of the study was the works of linguists and cognitive scientists J. Lakoff, M. Johnson, R. Dawkins, V. Aldrich, Ch. Forsville, B. Dancygier and L. Vandelanotte. The concept of visual metaphor and multimodality is defined, the role of multimodal metaphor in Internet discourse is described, the features of the functioning of multimodal metaphor are revealed. The material for the study was Internet memes representing various aspects of interaction in the academic environment. To systematize the units, a continuous sampling method was used, along with pragmalinguistic, contextual and semantic analysis. Results and discussion. The Internet memes containing a multimodal metaphor that represents the image of a scientific supervisor and illustrates the relationship between graduate students and their mentors were found and analyzed in the paper. To select the material, a search containing the keywords “scientific supervisor”, “Phd student”, “advisor” was performed. The sources of the memes were the podcasts “The Struggling Scientists”, “The Meming Phd”, “High impact PhD memes”. By selecting keywords, 85 Internet memes were identified in which metaphorical transfers of the above images were found. Based on the data obtained, 4 metaphorical models that most clearly illustrate the relationships between the supervisor and the student were proposed. Conclusion. The study showed that multimodal metaphor is an integral part of modern Internet communication and is an effective way of influencing the addressee. Internet memes representing the image of a scientific supervisor were analyzed and systematized; 4 metaphorical mappings (“Scientific supervisor is a loving/caring parent”, “Scientific supervisor is a Jedi”, “Scientific supervisor is a monster/maniac”, “Scientific supervisor is a bad boss”) are highlighted and described. It was revealed that the considered Internet memes are characterized by the replacement of the verbal component with a non-verbal (graphic) one in the target domain or in the source domain. The studied metaphorical models reflect the most pressing problems of the academic community. The expressiveness of the metaphor used is achieved through the use of movie characters in the source domain or target domain. The metaphorical potential of Internet memes as semantic-semiotic units of Internet discourse is undoubtedly a promising area for further study.

‘Just Like Pandemic Prevention’: The Semiotic Flow That Interweaves Multimodality, Metaphor, and Narrativity

ABSTRACT This study investigates how COVID-19 advice is creatively delivered in a one-minute video produced by the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control in February 2022. It examines metaphors in verbal, visual, and multimodal modes, and illustrates how such metaphors interact with multimodal narrativity. Drawing on the insights of studies on multimodal metaphors, this paper seeks to identify which are the most pervasive metaphors or what dominant metaphor, if any, is used in the video. It finds that the metaphorical mappings between coping with the covid pandemic and handling olympic weightlifting are represented across modes and that the creative delivery of COVID-19 advice is woven from a warp of metaphors in various modes and a weft of narrativity across modes. Such metaphorical creativity is underpinned by the semiotic flow that features four interconnected configurations: moving between metaphorization, literalization, and re-metaphorization; somehow blurring the source-target boundary; expanding the range of functions that the multimodal representation can serve; and initiating a metaphorical thought from one or more contextual factors.

A Corpus-Assisted Analysis of Conceptual Metaphors in K-Beauty Metaphoric Advertising

Over the past few decades, the Conceptual Metaphor theory has attracted scholarly and practitioner attention in the construction of metaphoric advertising, which is driven by the claim that abstract concepts intended to be delivered are better communicated through a conceptual metaphor (Reddy 1979). Metaphoric advertising is a communicative mechanism that sends out intended messages while also provoking positive emotions and triggering attention from the recipient. In order to augment prior findings, this article aims to provide the metaphorical account of a conceptual mechanism delineated in K-Beauty metaphoric advertising by classifying their sub-types into structural, orientational, and ontological metaphors. To that end, this study compiled the K-Beauty metaphoric advertising corpora, which held over four thousand tokens of slogans and taglines extracted from beauty product advertisements generated in translated English, thus aiming to discuss primary instances of metaphorical mappings and conceptualizations, as well as their persuasive functions. Overall, the results evidenced that structural metaphors outperformed the other two sub-types, typifying systematic qualities and rich source domains. Of all the conceptual metaphor sub-categories, it was observable that the ENTITY and SUBSTANCE metaphors, which are a sub-type of ontological metaphors, were the most robust, signifying that ontological metaphors may adopt an imaging mechanism to transfer metaphorical mappings from a source domain to a target domain. The findings argue that particular metaphor choices in metaphoric advertising are closely linked to a cognitive mechanism triggered by cultural awareness pertaining to persuasion and promotion. Based on the current findings, implications and future research directions will also be discussed.

Spice up the moment: The influence of spicy taste on people's metaphorical perspectives on time.

Embodied cognition contends that sensorimotor experiences undergird cognitive processes. Three embodied cross-domain metaphorical mappings constitute quintessential illustrations: spatial navigation and orientation underpin the conceptualization of time and emotion and gustatory sensation underlies the formulation of emotion. Threading together these strands of insights, the present research consisted of three studies explored the potential influence of spicy taste on people's metaphorical perspectives on time. The results revealed a positive correlation between spicy taste and the ego-moving metaphor for time such that individuals who enjoyed spicy taste (Study 1) and who consumed spicy (vs. salty) snack (Study 2) exhibited a predilection for the ego-moving perspective when cognizing a temporally ambiguous event. Because both spicy taste and the ego-moving metaphor are associated with anger and approach motivation, the latter two were postulated to be related to the novel taste-time relationship. Corroborative evidence for the hypothesis was found, which indicated that spicy (vs. salty) intake elicited significantly stronger anger toward and significantly greater approach-motivated perception of a rescheduled temporal event (Study 3). Taken together, the current findings demonstrate that spicy taste may play a role in people's perspectives on the movement of events in time and highlight the involved embodied interrelation between language, emotion, and cognition.