Metaphor Processing Research Articles

Neural correlates of multimodal metaphor comprehension: Evidence from event-related potentials and time-frequency decompositions

The present study examined the event-related potential (ERP) and time-frequency components correlates with the comprehension process of multimodal metaphors that were represented by the combination of “a vehicle picture+a written word of an animal”. Electroencephalogram data were recorded when participants decided whether the metaphor using an animal word for the vehicle rendered by a picture was appropriate or not. There were two conditions: appropriateness (e.g., sport utility vehicles+tiger) vs. inappropriateness (e.g., sport utility vehicles+cat). The ERP results showed that inappropriate metaphor elicited larger N300 (280–360ms) and N400 (380–460ms) amplitude than appropriate one, which were different from previous exclusively verbal metaphor studies that rarely observed the N300 effect. A P600 (550–750ms) was also observed and larger in appropriate metaphor condition. Besides, the time-frequency principal component analysis revealed that two independent theta activities indexed the separable processes (retrieval of semantic features and semantic integration) underlying the N300 and N400. Delta band was also induced within a later time window and best characterized the integration process underlying P600. These results indicate the specific cognitive mechanism of multimodal metaphor comprehension that is different from verbal metaphor processing, mirrored by several separable processes indexed by ERP components and time-frequency components. The present study extends the metaphor research by uncovering the functional roles of delta and theta as well as their unique contributions to the ERP components during multimodal metaphor comprehension.

Technologies of Reading and Writing: Transformation and Subjectivation in Digital Times

Technologies of Reading and Writing: Transformation and Subjectivation in Digital Times

Texts as Metaphoric Machines and the Challenge of the Digital

AbstractIn this essay Anna Kouppanou expands the notion of metaphor from its received meaning to refer to an embodied and material process of connectedness that transforms the domains that it brings together. Because of metaphor's reliance on materiality and exteriority Kouppanou turns to literary texts, which she calls “metaphoric machines.” In doing so she sheds light on the specific way texts, as reading/writing technologies, work through metaphorical processes of association. Through the study of print and electronic literary texts Kouppanou shows that every medium brings contents and domains, such as space and time, together and indeed in specific ways, allowing different forms of association, selective organization, and filtering of information. She also underlines that the mappings between these domains often take place unexpectedly and not always between their respective parts. Finally, she discusses the need for literacies that make the reader/writer/user aware of the metaphorical‐associative power of texts.

한국어 술어 은유처리에 대한 ERP 연구

한국어 술어 은유처리에 대한 ERP 연구

La forza cognitiva della metafora: convergenze e divergenze nel dibattito novecentesco

The interaction view and the theory of conceptual metaphor have offered a decisive contribution to the development of an interdisciplinary field of study that is now unanimous in attributing to the metaphor a cognitive force. The paper, however, shows that there are considerable differences between these approaches: from Richards to Black, from Black to Lakoff & Johnson, the focus of the investigation shifts, and change both the paradigms of reference as the ways of understanding the relationships between thought and language, between heuristic and creative value of metaphorical processes.

Metaphor in South African tsotsitaal

Halliday’s concept of ‘anti-language’ has been applied to a number of African Urban Youth Languages (AUYLs) in recent literature. Halliday described the concept of antilanguage as a language generated by an ‘anti-society’ which is set up as a conscious alternative to established societal norms. Anti-language, then, is a conscious alternative to the language of the wider society and it distinguishes itself primarily through relexicalization (the principle of same grammar, different vocabulary) and metaphor. Halliday states that in an anti-language, metaphor goes ‘all the way up and down the system’ – that an anti-society is a metaphorical variant of society, an anti-language is a metaphor for an everyday language, and the language itself employs metaphorical variants to distinguish it, including phonological metaphors, grammatical metaphors (morphological, lexical, and syntactic) and semantic metaphors. This article presents natural speech data from a multi-sited research project in South Africa, in order to analyze the use of metaphor in tsotsitaal – the South African AUYL used amongst peers in South Africa’s townships. The analysis considers how metaphor is used at three different levels – the level of lexical items; phrases; and social structure. Processes of innovation and creativity will be described, and the article will evaluate the use of the term anti-language to describe tsotsitaal (and, by implication, other AUYLs). The ?ndings suggest that the term is a useful one to understand the metaphorical processes in AUYLs, but that it needs to be cautiously applied.

The role of metaphor and metonymy in framing terrorism

In this paper I analyze the role of metaphor and metonymy in framing conflict events. In particular, when framing a terrorist attack in media discourse these two linguistic elements are crucial for the interpretation of the event. The data from two Russian newspapers, the “Novaja Gazeta” and the “Rossijskaja Gazeta”, show how metaphorical and metonymical processes are used to promote a particular interpretation and modify the structure of the event itself.

Comment: The Interaction Between Metaphor and Emotion Processing in the Brain

It has been argued that metaphor and emotion processing are tightly linked together. Here we explore whether neuroscientific evidence supports this claim.

Perspectiva, metáfora y hermenéutica

A productive way of approaching the problem arising from the relations between subject, language and reality, is relying on a perspectivist theory, like the one by Ortega, of a great ontological, phenomenological and hermeneutic solidity. The human environment is conditioned by desires, perspectives and words, requiring the subject to maintain new links with reality, the others and himself. In this context the metaphoric process is imposed as the most authentic way of being, interpreting and speaking. But we must not forget the other side of the metaphor, because while it is an effective device for interpretation, it also possesses the power to hide, depending on the perspective used. Thus, the subject appears as an unfinished work of metaphoric process, the interpretations and the symbols, which, while being handled, handle the very subject, producing an integrated system with language and reality.

The Nuances of Metaphor Theory for Constructivist Psychotherapy

Constructivist psychotherapy and contemporary metaphor theory, as part of the neighboring fields of psychology and linguistics, share fundamental assumptions rooted in constructivist philosophy. There has been much cross-disciplinary discussion of how our inclination toward metaphors translates into an important meaning-making resource in therapy and other domains of professional practice, such as education. Nevertheless, more reciprocal effort is needed to (a) show practitioners the relevance of nuanced aspects of metaphor theory and linguistic analysis that may evade their attention, and (b) sensitize linguists toward practice-driven factors in their analyses. This article attempts the first of these tasks by identifying and exemplifying four such aspects: (a) source domains at different experiential levels, (b) variable source-target relationships in discourse, (c) metaphorical processes at higher levels of analysis, and (d) discursive and communicative grounding of metaphor. I suggest how they might provide pertinent insights and future directions for interpreting, analyzing, and working with metaphors in psychotherapy.

Structural Complexity and Saliency in Interpretation of Familiar Metaphors

Metaphors are argued as being a sub-species of analogy. Processing of metaphor interpretation, on the other hand, is postulated as being based on structure mapping. A principle underlying this proposition that raises question is systematicity which regulates that “alignments that form deeply interconnected structures, in which higher order relations constrain lower order relations, are preferred”. The current research investigates the empirical basis of this proposition which implicates that interpretations of familiar metaphors that have a higher level of complexity and consistent with the base domains receive priority treatment and are thus predicted by the Graded Salience Hypothesis to result in faster speed of processing. Interpretations of metaphors were gathered through a survey and two interpretations for each metaphor were selected and prepared as experiment lexical targets; one representing targets with more complex relational structure and the other representing targets having less complex structure. A lexical decision task experiment was conducted to test reaction time by three groups of subjects to these targets after each corresponding metaphor was presented on a computer screen. Results showed that mean reaction time for targets with more complex underlying relational structure was fastest with 450.83ms (SD = 60.588) compared to less complex targets and unrelated targets. A one-way between subjects ANOVA showed significance in differences of mean times among the three categories. A post hoc Holm analysis showed that mean RT for the more complex targets was significantly different from the less complex targets at p<.05. We conclude that maximally consistent structures are the basis of metaphor processing. It is also a factor motivating saliency of certain interpretations among alternative interpretations of familiar metaphors.

Repensando a motivação metonímica da metáfora: uma análise pela perspectiva da Integração Conceitual

estudos contemporâneos postulam a possibilidade de interação entre os processos metafóricos e metonímicos na produção de sentido. Autores como Goossens (2003), Barcelona (2003) e Radden (2003) redimensionaram seus esforços em busca de modelos que pudessem comprovar a ocorrência dessa interação. No entanto, as pesquisas desenvolvidas por esses autores, consideram apenas a possibilidade da existência do processo metonímico, atuante na motivação do processo metafórico, ou no domínio-fonte, ou no domínio-alvo da metáfora motivada. Diante disso, este artigo, como parte de uma pesquisa mais ampla de doutorado, tem a finalidade de demonstrar que toda metáfora é motivada por um conjunto complexo de metonímias, sendo esse conjunto presente tanto em seu domínio-fonte quanto em seu domínio-alvo. Demonstrando assim a importância do processo metonímico na criação do processo metafórico.

Metáfora e metonímia como mecanismo de variação lexical em Apurinã (Aruák)

O presente trabalho visa apresentar os resultados de um estudo que busca descrever e analisar os processos metafóricos e metonímicos que subjazem a variação lexical em Apurinã, uma língua da família linguística Aruák. Os dados utilizados neste trabalho foram coletado in locus entre os anos de 2013 e 2015, junto a várias comunidades Apurinã, além de dados de pesquisa anteriores (FACUNDES 2000, BARRETO 2007 e BRANDÃO 2007). O estudo se articula no quadro teórico-metodológico da Teoria da Metáfora Conceptual (LAKOFF e JOHNSON, 1980) e da Sociolinguística Variacionista (LABOV, 2008 [1972]). Os casos de variação lexical tratados aqui envolvem principalmente a nomenclatura de fauna e flora que constituem o fenômeno do “duplo vocabulário” (uso extensivo de duas ou mais formas para designar um mesmo referente em um domínio específico do léxico da língua) presente na língua. Os resultados indicam que o fenômeno de “duplo vocabulário” existente na língua permite fazer inferências sobre a organização conceitual que os falantes têm de certos elementos de fauna e flora. O fato de o “duplo vocabulário” apresentar uma coerência semântica construída a partir das relações metafóricas e metonímicas que motivam nomear dois referentes com a mesma forma sugere haver uma rede semântica interligando referentes distintos no léxico Apurinã.

Are single and extended metaphors processed differently? A test of two Relevance-Theoretic accounts

Carston (2010) proposes that metaphors can be processed via two different routes. In line with the standard Relevance-Theoretic account of loose use, single metaphors are interpreted by a local pragmatic process of meaning adjustment, resulting in the construction of an ad hoc concept. In extended metaphorical passages, by contrast, the reader switches to a second processing mode because the various semantic associates in the passage are mutually reinforcing, which makes the literal meaning highly activated relative to possible meaning adjustments. In the second processing mode the literal meaning of the whole passage is metarepresented and entertained as an ‘imaginary world’ and the intended figurative implications are derived later in processing. The results of three experiments comparing the interpretation of the same target expressions across literal, single-metaphorical and extended-metaphorical contexts, using self-paced reading (Experiment 1), eye-tracking during natural reading (Experiment 2) and cued recall (Experiment 3), offered initial support to Carston's distinction between the processing of single and extended metaphors. We end with a comparison between extended metaphors and allegories, and make a call for further theoretical and experimental work to increase our understanding of the similarities and differences between the interpretation and processing of different figurative uses, single and extended.

Editorial: The Metaphorical Brain.

EDITORIAL published: 05 January 2016 doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00699 Editorial: The Metaphorical Brain Seana Coulson 1 * and Vicky T. Lai 2 Cognitive Science Department, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA, 2 Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, autism, embodiment, executive function, figurative language comprehension, hemispheric specialization, right hemisphere damage, schizophrenia The Editorial on the Research Topic The Metaphorical Brain Edited and reviewed by: Hauke R. Heekeren, Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany *Correspondence: Seana Coulson scoulson@ucsd.edu Received: 03 September 2015 Accepted: 11 December 2015 Published: 05 January 2016 Citation: Coulson S and Lai VT (2016) Editorial: The Metaphorical Brain. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 9:699. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00699 Long considered a peripheral topic in linguistics, metaphor is increasingly viewed as a central feature of higher cognition and abstract thought. Investigation of the neural substrate of metaphor has, similarly, become more sophisticated, involving increasingly specific suggestions about the processes involved in its comprehension. This Frontiers Research Topic brings together contributions from a diverse array of cognitive neuroscience to offer a snapshot of current research on the neural substrate of figurative language, and present a number of avenues for future research. The result is an interdisciplinary perspective on the differences between literal and figurative language and how the underlying neurobiological processes can be investigated. Indeed, most investigations into the neural substrate of metaphor ultimately concern the relationship between literal and metaphorical meanings. In their excellent review paper, Vulchanova and colleagues outline the arguments for and against the continuity thesis that literal and metaphorical language comprehension recruits essentially the same processing mechanisms. Using autism as a lens through which to consider the issue, they review data that indicate dissociations in the comprehension of literal and figurative language within individuals with ASD. Ultimately, they suggest figurative language deficits in ASD stem from the difficulty these individuals have integrating contextual information to build the situation model. One source of support for the idea that literal and metaphorical comprehension processes recruit distinct neural substrates is the increasingly contentious claim that the right cerebral hemisphere (RH) plays a crucial role in the comprehension of metaphor, but not literal language. Ianni and colleagues note that much of the data supporting this claim comes from the study of brain-injured patients that have employed sub-optimal tasks for assessing metaphor comprehension. They present a novel test with fine-grained sensitivity to participants’ ability to understand both literal and metaphorical language. They present data from three patients to demonstrate (i) comparable impairment on literal and metaphorical language, (ii) greater impairment for metaphorical than literal language, and (iii) selective impairment on metaphorical language. Addressing the issue of hemispheric specialization in healthy adults, Lai and colleagues examine functional neuroimaging data as participants read literal and metaphorical sentences with varying degrees of familiarity. They found that decreasing familiarity (i.e., increasing novelty) of both literal and metaphorical language led to greater activation bilaterally, with more extensive recruitment of LH brain regions overall. However, the relative contribution of the RH was greater for novel metaphors, as a result of reduced LH activation for novel literal language. Faust and colleagues utilize network theory in their discussion of hemispheric specialization for metaphor comprehension. In particular, they suggest that the LH exhibits semantic rigidity, manifested by networks in which each node is connected to a small number of other nodes. Rigid networks are well suited for the rapid retrieval of conventional meanings, but ill-suited for creating meanings needed for novel metaphors. The RH exhibits semantic chaos, manifested by highly Frontiers in Human Neuroscience | www.frontiersin.org January 2016 | Volume 9 | Article 699

Forgetting the literal: The role of inhibition in metaphor comprehension.

In order for a person to comprehend metaphoric expressions, do metaphor-irrelevant aspects of literal information need to be inhibited? Previous research using sentence-verification paradigms has found that literal associates take longer to process after reading metaphorical sentences; however, it is problematic to infer inhibition from this research. Moreover, previous work has not distinguished between familiar and novel metaphor processing. To test more directly for when inhibition may be required during metaphor processing, we performed 3 experiments using a metaphor-induced lexical forgetting paradigm. Participants initially learned word pairs where the cues were potential metaphoric vehicles and the targets were literal associates (e.g., SHARK–swim). Then, participants read half the vehicles as part of metaphorical sentences, which they interpreted (The lawyer for the defense is a shark). Subsequent forgetting of the literal associates was greater when vehicles had appeared in metaphorical sentences (Experiment 1) and was observed for both familiar and novel metaphors when participants were instructed to interpret the metaphors (Experiment 2) but was observed for only novel metaphors when participants were instructed to simply read the metaphors (Experiment 3). These results suggest that forgetting occurs as a result of inhibitory mechanisms that are engaged to alter activation of irrelevant literal information during metaphor processing, and that these mechanisms are most relevant for the processing demands associated with novel metaphors.

Individual differences in the processing of written sarcasm and metaphor: Evidence from eye movements.

The present study examined individual differences in the processing of different forms of figurative language. Sixty participants read sarcastic, metaphorical, and literal sentences embedded in story contexts while their eye movements were recorded, and responded to a text memory and an inference question after each story. Individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC), need for cognition (NFC), and cognitive-affective processing were measured. The results showed that the processing of metaphors was characterized by slow-down during first-pass reading of the utterances, whereas sarcasm produced mainly delayed effects in the eye movement records. Sarcastic utterances were also harder to comprehend than literal or metaphorical utterances as indicated by poorer performance in responses to inference questions. Individual differences in general cognitive factors (WMC and NFC) were related to the processing of metaphors, whereas individual differences in both general cognitive factors (WMC) as well as processing of emotional information were related to the processing of sarcasm. The results indicate that different forms of figurative language pose different cognitive demands to the reader, and show that reader characteristics play a prominent role in figurative language comprehension.

Differential effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on Broca�s area and its right hemisphere homologue during metaphor processing

Differential effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on Broca�s area and its right hemisphere homologue during metaphor processing

Non Invasive Brain Stimulation to Improve Metaphoric Speech Processing in Schizophrenia: A Pilot Study

Background: An underestimated feature of schizophrenia is the impaired processing of the metaphoric speech, mainly due to a reduced activation of the right hemisphere. Objective/hypothesis: We investigated whether anodal tDCS over the right posterior superior temporal sulcus may improve the processing of metaphoric speech of schizophrenia patients (SCZ). Methods: Ten SCZ subjects were randomly allocated to receive a single session of active tDCS or sham stimulation. Metaphoric speech processing was investigated through a discrimination task between literal or metaphoric expressions. Results: tDCS improved significantly the reaction time but not the accuracy of the answers at the discrimination task compared to sham stimulation. Conclusion: These preliminary results should be verified in larger studies with more sessions of tDCS.

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.