Metaphorical Representation Research Articles

The Paperboy: The Dramaturgy of Development in Loewaldian-Relational Discourse

In this paper, the authors present a reading of Loewald’s developmental and clinical thinking from a relational-developmental perspective, illustrating their ideas through the case of an 11-year-old boy presenting with quasi-psychotic symptoms. The paper explores Loewald’s developmental narrative as entailing an implicit view of the self as a relational matrix comprised of both time and space; an open, ever-expanding relational system within a shared psychic field, wherein time is a central psychic activity. The authors trace Loewaldian development as a movement toward greater organization of two inherently interlinked layers of experience, the primordial oceanic oneness (merger) and differentiated reality (separateness), each related to its own form of fundamental anxiety: engulfment and castration, respectively. Through the clinical material, these layers of experience are also discussed in relation to Loewald’s notion of language. The elements of Loewald’s developmental theory are discussed as preceding and inspiring subsequent relational thinking. Loewald, they contend, situates therapeutic action within the metaphor of theater. Drawing on his emphasis on the analyst’s role as a “director,” and his key concept of linking as well as his formulation of the functions of “transference” (being-with) and “differential” (being-ahead-of), the authors also reconceptualize two crucial theatrical roles performed in the analytic field: “merging actor” and “dramaturg.” These two critical, mutually-informing roles are demonstrated through the clinical material.

Metaphor and Theatre

This paper aims to analyze how metaphor operates in the theatrical realm. Metaphor viewed from a linguistic point of view has a certain impact on theatre and is a consequence of looking at theatre as language. But viewed from a pragmatic point of view, beyond the linguistic aspect, as a model of thinking, metaphor becomes a cognitive tool. Between these two perspectives lies a wide range of ways in which theatrical metaphor intervenes in the scenic creation. At the same time, seen as a metaphor of life, theatre assumes, through a series of successive metaphors, a creative freedom which, however, can become anarchic and end up in what is called dead metaphor. For this reason, metaphor, from the point of view of theatre creators, must be assumed insofar as it is a conceptual tool, which has the ability to penetrate the various levels of reality in order to achieve a meaning concomitant with a sense of the scenic action. This may be the real freedom that the use of metaphor offers in theatre: the ability to achieve a meaning concomitant with a sense of the scenic action in the absence of the chain of cause and effect. Only in this way can metaphor remain an element of vitality in a living theatre.

Un courant d’Est venu à l’Ouest via l’adaptateur scénique Virgil Tănase

The article An Eastern current coming to the West, through Virgil Tănase’s stage adaptations addresses the influences of two literary and theatrical cultures from the East (Romania and Russia) on the work of Virgil Tănase as a stage adapter in France. By scrutinizing the way in which the great Russian authors from the 19th century to the present day through the Soviet era establish themselves as a frame of reference for Tănase’s work as a stage adapter and by addressing the way in which this comes to fruition, within the stage adaptations created in France by the Franco-Romanian writer (often performed abroad too), a dreamlike aesthetic born in Romania in the 1960s, the study will show that Virgil Tănase, also known as a translator, managed to create a scenic poetics in which the words are at the service of the melody just as the scenography is at the service of the theatrical metaphor. By highlighting the ontological scope of the character and especially the actor, the stage adaptations developed by Tănase from canonical works of Eastern and Western literature finally converge towards a common goal, representative of his writer’s gesture: all aim to awaken in spectators their freedom to think and create, to revive each person’s faith in the fulfilment of their vocation, like the Proustian narrator of the novel In Search of Lost Time. Keywords: adaptation for stage, theatrical metaphor, aesthetic onirism, Eastern Block, translation, Virgil Tănase, Dostoïevski, Proust.

Conceptualizing parenthood: American newspaper discourse analysis

This study aims to elucidate the metaphorical representations of the concept PARENT within American media discourse. By analyzing the conceptual metaphors employed in newspaper discourse, we seek to reconstruct the metaphorically derived understanding of parenthood within English-speaking community. These conceptual metaphors, crafted by media presenters, exert a profound influence on the societal comprehension of this concept, both directly and indirectly. The study draws upon the Conceptual Metaphor theory, Conceptual Integration theory, and Discourse analysis. Within the scope of our investigation, the target domain PARENT encompasses four primary source domains: DUTIES, DIFFICULTIES, OWNER, and BURDEN. Our emphasis lies in scrutinizing the cross-domain mappings, which delineate systematic correspondences between the target and source domains. We investigate novel conceptualizations that emerge from conventional metaphoric patterns, employing cognitive mechanisms such as extension, elaboration, questioning, and combination. We also explore the conceptual blends and emergent structures that introduce additional layers of interpretation of being a parent. They are elucidated using Conceptual Integration Networks, specifically double- and multiple-scope models. Our analysis has unveiled the existence of four metaphorical clusters, each providing unique perspectives on how parenthood is conceptualized within the newspaper discourse.

The Relationship between Metaphors of Addiction and Character Development in 19th Century British Novels

The 19th century marked an unprecedented period of prosperity in British literature, giving rise to numerous distinguished authors and works. During this era, the metaphor of addiction, as a unique narrative technique, established a close connection with character development. This metaphor not only deepened the portrayal of characters but also enriched the thematic content of the works, allowing readers to understand more profoundly the inner worlds and complex personalities of the characters. The use of addiction metaphors in 19th century British novels was not accidental; it reflected the societal attention to drug issues and the profound exploration of human nature. Through the symbolic element of addiction, authors could reveal the inner conflicts, struggles, and pursuits of their characters, thereby creating more dimensional and vivid character portrayals. Moreover, the development of character personalities also influenced the representation of addiction metaphors in novels. Different character personalities led to varied attitudes and responses to addiction, further enriching the connotation and expression of the addiction metaphor. Therefore, the relationship between addiction metaphors and character development is intertwined and mutually reinforcing.

Unlikely Friends in Patriarchal Lands: An Ecofeminist Reading of Rajasthani Folktale “Sonal Bai”

"Sonal Bai" is a popular folktale about a girl told by women in Rajasthani-speaking areas of north India to initiate young girls into adulthood. This paper investigates the metaphorical representation of a girl’s coming of age through her relationship with a Sandalwood tree analysing, "Sonal Bai" as an ecofeminist text. The story renders voice to socially prohibited themes of menstruation and women’s sensual desire as embodied in silent friendship between a sandalwood tree and Sonal (girl with golden hair). The paper highlights how the outwardly simple tale of “Sonal Bai” is in fact an encoded lesson for teenage girls, inverted as a relationship between two highly treasured “belongings”/ “commodities”—sandalwood and a unmarried girl—in a patriarchal society economically dependent on agriculture. The sandalwood tree is highly valuable for farmers; different parts of the tree are used to produce furniture, oil, fragrance and food items. It is also a part of religious rituals where its essence is used as tilak on idols in Hindu traditions. Rajasthani Language is spoken prominently in the desert regions of India (Thar Desert) and the existence of such a tree in a desert is as precious and rare as a girl with golden hair. The paper draws reference from recurrent invocation of olfactory senses of the listeners captured by the images of the sandalwood tree in the story. It also explores use of growth metaphors using ‘rhizome’ like imagery of sandalwood branches reaching the sky which become an escape route for a teenage girl hiding from her family. The temporal and spatial indicators are infused together in the story of Sonal Bai leading to an unlikely friendship between two prized possessions that eventually breaks with the arrival of a patriarchal archetype: a handsome young prince. This study discusses the prevalent katha culture in India where women exercise freedom of voice through singing and narrating tales within all-female groups. This site of independent feminine interaction in a highly patriarchal society is investigated using Bakhtin’s “Chronotope” to highlight culturally encoded lessons in folktales meant for young girls in Indian society as a means of informal education.

Типы метафор в экономическом дискурсе (на примере репрезентации деятельности предприятия в русском, английском, немецком и французском языках)

This paper is written within the framework of a cognitive study of the economic discourse metaphor used to objectify various types of activities of an enterprise and its environment. The research aims to identify the semantic and pragmatic features characterizing the linguistic and axiological implementation of metaphorical representation of the internal structure of a modern economic company and its relationships with the external business world. The work analyzes the types of metaphors, highlights the features of lexical units that are actualized during the transfer of meanings, and demonstrates evaluative connotations. The scientific novelty of the research lies in systematizing metaphors of such an important segment of economic discourse as entrepreneurial activity and providing their typology based on Russian, English, German, and French, revealing the common and specific features in the conceptualization of relationships and characteristics of a modern company. As a result, the dominant metaphorical models in the representations of an economic enterprise, their axiological and cultural characteristics are shown, the types of metaphors in the “Economics” subject area corresponding to the functional aspect of metaphors are listed.

Beyond words: L2 writing teachers’ visual conceptualizations of ChatGPT in teaching and learning

Since its inception, ChatGPT has been characterized by L2 writing teachers with various metaphors, such as a tool and a collaborator. Complemented with text-based metaphorical conceptualizations, this research brief contributes ten visual conceptualizations of ChatGPT in L2 writing pedagogy from L2 writing teachers who teach in US higher education. Four themes emerged from our analysis of these visual conceptualizations: ChatGPT as a (1) tool, (2) resource, (3) threat, and an (4) unknown entity. The visualizations help tease out the intricacies involved in the use of metaphorical representations of ChatGPT and provide a multidimensional picture of L2 writing teachers’ perceptions and attitudes towards the use of ChatGPT in L2 writing classrooms. This report concludes with an overview of the potential implications of applying visual metaphorical conceptualizations of ChatGPT to educational settings, such as raising L2 student writers’ awareness and fostering the development of their critical digital literacy.

Метафорические особенности репрезентации концепта ЖЕНЩИНА в мужской картине мира (на примере афористики XIX-XXI вв.)

The research aims to identify the characteristics of the metaphorical representation of the WOMAN concept in the male worldview (as exemplified by Russian aphorisms of the 19th-21st centuries). The paper examines conceptual metaphors used to represent the WOMAN concept in the male worldview. Conceptual metaphors for representing the WOMAN concept are models that the authors have differentiated according to various target domain: “a woman as a trap”, “a woman as a detail of the landscape”, “a woman as a work of art”, “a woman as a goddess” and so on. The identified source domains include the sphere of artifacts and inanimate nature, the sphere of social relationships and roles, the sphere of professional activities, the local-spatial sphere, the sphere of nature. The study is novel in that it is the first to determine the metaphorical characteristics of the WOMAN concept representation in the male cognitive consciousness using aphorisms as research material. As a result, the research found that the male linguistic worldview, which is understood in the paper as a set of male perceptions presented as unified universal social norms and life models, has an androcentric character. The researchers identified metaphors that use the spheres of social relationships, artifacts and inanimate nature, and the sphere of religion as source domains. It was proved that concepts of power (TYRANT, QUEEN, TSARINA) or subordination (SLAVE); concepts from the sphere of inanimate objects; sacred concepts (ANGEL, GODDESS, PRIESTESS) correlate with the WOMAN concept.

Behavioral indicators of heterogeneous subjective experience in animals across the phylogenetic spectrum: Implications for comparative animal phenomenology

This behavioral study was undertaken to provide empirical evidence in favor of or opposed to the notion that animals across a wide breadth of the animal kingdom have subjective (personal) experience that varies with their lifestyles, ecological constraints, or phylogeny. Twelve species representing two invertebrate phyla and six vertebrate classes were observed unobtrusively in 15-min episodes, during which three modes of behavior (volitional, interactive, and egocentric) were quantified according to the frequency, variety, and dynamism of each mode. Volitional behavior was the most prevalent and dynamic mode for nearly all species, largely without regard to phylogenetic position. Interactive behavior likewise varied inconsistently across the entire evolutionary spectrum. Egocentric behavior was concentrated among the avian and mammalian species, but evidence of it were observed in the invertebrate species as well. Diagrams of the matrix constructed from the three qualitative modes and three quantitative attributes for each mode provide a metaphorical representation of the unique experiential profile of each species. To the extent that these behavioral measures correlate with the nature of the animal's subjective experience, they support the growing view that phenomenology is heterogeneous, multimodal, and non-linear in extent across the animal kingdom.

Mood congruency in COVID-19 podcast discourse: an interpersonal meaning analysis

With the advent of podcasts, individuals are increasingly engaging with a diverse range of topics, from entertainment and education to news and personal narratives. In the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic, podcasts have emerged as an influential platform for disseminating information. This current study attempts to depict the realization of Mood congruency in COVID-19 podcast discourse. Departing from qualitative approach, content analysis was employed as research design. The source of the data was obtained from Dedy Corbuzier’s YouTube Channel with Uus (comedian) as the guest in 2021 when COVID-19 case was known and recognized in Indonesia for the first time. The data were in the form of clauses obtained from the utterances from them. The utterances were electronically transcribed using sonix.ai before being rechecked manually to improve the data's reliability. From the analysis, it was found that the variation of Mood is appeared in the form of congruent and incongruent (grammatical metaphorical representation). The congruent representation shows how utterance should be in the form as it is. On the other hand, the grammatical metaphorical representation of Mood brings out the variation such as statement realized in interrogative, and command in declarative Mood. The incongruency can perform an indication of speakers’ creativity and politeness in interaction.

THE METAPHORICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE CATEGORY EMOTIVENESS IN ENGLISH AND KARAKALPAK LANGUAGES

Emotiveness is an essential aspect of language that plays a significant role in how we express and communicate our feelings and emotions. It adds depth and richness to our interactions, allowing us to connect with others on a more profound level. Exploring the ways in which emotiveness is represented in different languages provides valuable insights into the cultural and societal norms of a particular community. In this article, I will examine the metaphorical representation of emotiveness in English and Karakalpak languages, highlighting the similarities and differences between the two linguistic systems and how they shape the expression of emotions. By delving into the metaphorical nuances of these languages, we aim to gain a deeper understanding of how emotions are conveyed and interpreted across different cultures.

War on feminism: an analysis of metaphorical representations on Weibo

ABSTRACT Social media has become a critical medium for disseminating key feminist ideas; however, negative representations of feminism have been observed on Chinese platforms. Metaphor analysis offers valuable insights into public perceptions and attitudes towards social issues, highlighting the role of metaphors in influencing reasoning and decision-making. This study delves into metaphors related to feminism on Weibo, a Chinese microblogging platform akin to Twitter. By analyzing 206,089 Weibo posts about feminism using established metaphor identification methods, six metaphorical categories were identified: War, business, illness, animal, religion, and other metaphors, with war metaphors being the most prevalent. Many of these metaphors carry negative implications, typically portraying feminism as irrational, exploitative, and disruptive to societal norms and values, leading to calls for its suppression. This study contributes to existing literature by highlighting the metaphorical framing of feminism on social media and offering novel insights into its evaluation within the Chinese context.

Multimodal metaphors in a Sino-British co-produced documentary

Metaphor is an important tool for people to use in their perception of the world, but its representational forms vary across genres. Using Nvivo 12 plus as a tool, this study employs a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the multimodal metaphorical representations, modal characteristics and cognitive rationales in the Sino-British co-produced documentary Through the Seasons: China. It has been discovered that: (1) Multimodal metaphorical representations in documentaries are found to be divided into two primary categories and five sub-categories. Implicit source-verbal and pictorial target is the primary way of representation for documentaries. (2) Various modes, including verbal mode, pictorial mode, verbal and pictorial mode, and implicit mode are employed in documentaries. However, the most commonly used modes are verbal and pictorial mode as well as implicit mode. The relationship between verbal and pictorial modes in the documentary is primarily characterised by juxtaposition and interpretation. (3) The documentary’s genre attributes and purpose, as well as the target audience’s physical and cultural experiences, are important cognitive justifications for the multimodal approach to metaphorical representation. This study further enriches the study of multimodal metaphorical representations and contributes to the theoretical refinement of multimodal metaphors. Additionally, it offers a theoretical reference for the development of dynamic multimodal discourses, such as documentaries, and aids in the improvement of audiences’ multimodal literacy.

Undergraduate students’ experience of emergency online learning and its challenges

One consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic was emergency online learning leading to extensive research worldwide to identify its challenges from the perspective of students. However, there is still room for a more in-depth analytical framework to understand how the students felt about and perceived it. Drawing upon Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor theory, this paper explores the ‘metaphorical representation’ of a group of undergraduate students’ experiences at a Malaysian university via a semi-structured interview. There were 57 participants. The obtained data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively using Braun & Clarke’s thematic analysis as well as MAXQDA Software. The findings reveal five main challenges due to the five changes brought about by emergency online learning in terms of ‘learning environment, class assignments, interaction, information delivery, and lecturer/student role’. Finally, this paper ends with suggestions to address the identified challenges as well as making recommendations for future research. Keywords: Adult learning; COVID-19; metaphor analysis; online learning; remote teaching.

예비교사와 현직교사가 인식하는 ‘현장’에 대한 메타포 연구

Purpose: This study aimed to explore the perceptions of pre-service and in-service teachers regarding
 the term ‘field’ using metaphorical methodology and to identify whether differences in metaphorical
 representations exist between pre-service and in-service teachers.
 Methods: A survey was administered to twenty-one pre-service teachers and twenty-three in-service
 teachers, prompting them to express metaphorical representations of the term ‘field’. Alongside this,
 the reasons behind their chosen expressions were also collected and qualitatively analyzed.
 Results: Metaphors for the term ‘field’ were categorized into four broad themes and eight sub-themes.
 A notable difference was observed in how pre-service teachers perceived ‘field,’ primarily focusing
 on themselves, whereas in-service teachers tended to center their perceptions on students, parents,
 and others.
 Conclusion: The findings suggest that the term ‘fiel’ used in teacher training programs emphasizing
 school-site connections may yield different definitions and meanings depending on the user. Such
 variation may contribute to ineffective communication and potential confusion regarding the concept
 of ‘field.’ Therefore, it is recommended that clear definitions and meanings for the term ‘field’
 throughout teacher training programs. Additionally, providing opportunities for pre-service teachers
 to directly experience a specific ‘field’ was suggested to enhance their understanding.

Embracing beauty through leftward movements: An ERP study on metaphorical association between hand actions and aesthetic judgments

In this study, we examined the metaphorical association between aesthetic judgments of faces and horizontal hand movements as well as their cognitive neural mechanisms using a joint categorical response task. In the “aesthetic-action” metaphorical representation situation, participants were asked to classify beautiful/ugly faces by moving the mouse to the left or the right. The results showed that the joint categorization condition “judge beautiful-move mouse left, judge ugly-move mouse right” had a shorter reaction time than the “judge beautiful-move mouse right, judge ugly-move mouse left” condition, which was accompanied by larger amplitudes of the early component N170, EPN, and the late component P300. Combining the behavioral and event-related potentials (ERPs) results, the present study demonstrated a metaphorical association between horizontal hand actions and aesthetic judgments. It suggested that horizontal hand actions can affect the speed of aesthetic judgments by influencing processing fluency, emotional arousal level, categorization motivation, and attentional resources. These findings provide new perspectives to better understand the cognitive process of aesthetic judgments and provide a basis for applying embodied cognition and metaphor theory to the field of aesthetic psychology.

Revisiting a de-Humanized Shanghai: Speculative Realism in Zhou Ming’s Contemporary Object-Oriented Materialist Documentary Photography

This paper explores the cultural operations of Zhou Ming’s photography (b.1960), which was aimed at exploring the deeper changes that have gripped the unstoppable urban renewal of Shanghai. His photo-essay Shanghai: An Alternative View (2000–2005), showcases the absurd and incongruous organic and inorganic spaces devoted to new points of view about the ruins that lay behind an assortment of high inner-city density residential areas situated in the Zhabei, Huangpu, and Houkou districts. Zhou Ming’s drive to de-humanize his apparent humanist photography through everyday objects and other signage found during his walking practices, also reveals multiple surrealist metaphoric representations between the materiality of the city and a slanted exaggeration of reality. His documentary camera sets out an ontological shift vis-à-vis the incidence of the everyday ‘found objects’, in which the privilege of humans over objects disappears. The aim of this article is to demonstrate how the photographer’s speculative aesthetics raises the need to redefine Chinese contemporary photography with theories linked to object-oriented ontologies and in general, to new materialism. This can be interpreted as a historical-cultural consolidation of media continuum that also embraces pre-photographic practices that can liberate objects and subjects from ‘sensitive’ content in a post-socialist reality.

L’anglicisation du champ publicitaire : Une étude exploratoire des résistances à un mode communicationnel qui fait mode

In France, the anglicization of advertisements is increasingly marked. This phenomenon is examined here. This is done from a perspective that comes under the heading of the Critical Management Studies - whose epistemological and pragmatic aims of denaturalizing practices are retained. It is shown that what is commonly held as obvious is not, and what is considered inevitable is also not. Our research provides four contributions: i) it points to the existence of a largely unnoticed resistance on the part of marketing practitioners - a problem of socio-cultural acceptance of the anglicization of commercial communication; ii) it analyses the grammars of criticism, the moral conventions diversely mobilized in the contestation; iii) it elucidates the moral emotions that animate this contestation at the deepest level; iv) it completes these analyses by examining the moral imagination (metaphorical representations) that organize it

Semiotic Interpretation of Literary Metaphors in Henry James’ Psychological Fiction under the Semantic Association Network Modeling

Abstract Henry James enriched the representation of realism with the aesthetic practice of psychological realism theory, and his literary metaphors revealed the colorfulness of the human consciousness field. In this paper, under the background of semiotics, based on two algorithms, Semantic Association Network, Associative Component Analysis, and Dependent Syntax, we constructed a tensor representation model of literary text, extracted the symbolic information of sentences in the scholarly text, and combined the information of textual words through the association coefficients for the tensor representation of sentence metaphors. Quantitatively calculating the metaphoric semantics in the extracted literary sentences is followed by labeling and recognition of the literary sentences based on the metaphoric information. Take Henry James’, the Aristocats as an example and interpret the symbolic information in it using the model constructed in this paper. The symbolic scene of the “garden” in the novel represents the meaning of innocence and simplicity, which has the highest conceptual similarity enhancement of 3.415. Most of the emotions behind the readers’ evaluations of Henry James’s novels have positive metaphors, and the favorable rating range is mainly concentrated in the range of 0-100. In Henry James’s novels, the emotional metaphor of “repression” is more characteristic than other metaphors, with a maximum of 1.896. This paper investigates the interpretation of metaphors in Henry James’s novels, which can assist in the comprehension of the books.