View Metaphor Research Articles

A Study on the Translation of Metaphors in Third Volume of Translation of Legend of the Condor Heroes from the Embodied Cognitive Linguistics

Traditionally, metaphor was only regarded as a rhetorical device and neglected human cognition. Unlike traditional metaphor studies, contemporary metaphor studies not only view metaphor as a linguistic phenomenon, but also a cognitive phenomenon, and a basic way for humans to understand the world. This study starts from the perspective of Embodied Cognitive Linguistics and analyzes the Chinese and English translations of The Legend of the Condor Heroes from the three core principles. It provides a new perspective for metaphor research in martial art.

Understanding Metaphors and their Translation from the Linguistic and Cognitive linguistics perspectives.

The paper explores the different approaches to metaphor understanding and metaphor translation within the fields linguistics and cognitive linguistics. Semantics scholars view metaphors as the application of an alien name by transfer either from genus to species, or from species to species, or by analogy(Aristotle), while pragmatics scholars view metaphor as being dependent on context. Scholars of the cognitive linguistics school (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987) portray metaphor as a system used to comprehend one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain via sets of correspondences between these two domains. This paper focuses on the main approaches to metaphors understanding, and approaches to metaphor transfer and translation, as metaphor translation represents a burden for translators no matter the language. This is due to the fact that translation involves multiple processes that include both linguistic and non-linguistic elements. Based on linguistics and cognitive linguistics theories, a number approaches and procedures such as prescriptive approach, the descriptive approach and the cognitive approach have been developed by scholars for the translation of metaphorical expressions.

Economic metaphors in business English

Our theoretical framework is based on Lakoff and Johnson`s theory of conceptual metaphors which doesn`t view metaphors as means of adorning language. Metaphors are not related to the aesthetic function of language, They are rather connected to our conceptual system. We embrace Lakoff`s idea that metaphors do not occur primarily in language, but in thought, that metaphors belong to conceptual and social-cultural phenomena, rather than to the linguistic phenomenon. From Lakoff`s classification of metaphors we believe that structural metaphors and orientational metaphors pertain to the business English genre. We also aim to analyse the means by which these conceptual categories are obtained: verbs, idioms, pre- and post-modifiers, as well as the cases in which morphological changes entail metaphorical meaning.

Social Media in Pedagogical Context

This study discusses the meanings underlying a Finnish and a Greek language teacher's pedagogical integration of social media. As the research spans across the physical and the virtual pedagogical meeting, our review of the literature is also based on a two-level approach. The first level links metaphor with the pedagogical thinking, being the set of values and purposes underlying teachers' decisions. The second examines the meanings of the digital deriving from arguments that seek to explain the relationship between pedagogy and technology. In this study the authors view metaphors as research vehicles and apply content analysis to draw upon the Finnish and the Greek language teacher's speech and make their meanings visible. To this end, the authors analyze and discuss findings of data resulting from two semi-structured interviews. The patterns arising from the discussion of digitally enhanced learning experiences indicate that metaphors can be shared, reflecting overlaps in notional categories (e.g., sociality and action). More powerful metaphors relate to context-dependent situations. These powerful metaphors emerge when issues characterizing the local school culture are tackled in the teachers' talk.

The Metaphor in the Public (Political) Discourse in the Macedonian Language at the Time of Elections

Cognitive linguistic researches basically place metaphors as tool and as a cognitive ability to join the motivation and the real message they convey on one hand, and the textual analysis which serves to view metaphor as a result of the cultural and communication experience in expressing attitudes motivated by previously acquired knowledge. The use of the conceptual and conventional metaphor expressions in the public (political) discourse through examples in the Macedonian language portrays the conceptual integration as an inevitable approach in the interpretation of the metaphor in a minimal context. The examples of metaphors are increasingly present at time of elections. What is characteristic of the Macedonian political discourse is that during the last six years there is continuity in the dynamics. The appearance of the metaphors is integrated within the rhetoric strategy, which appears to be effective. There is a selection and a qualitative analysis of the metaphors in the Macedonian language which are used in the public (political) discourse.

User interface design for military AR applications

Designing a user interface for military situation awareness presents challenges for managing information in a useful and usable manner. We present an integrated set of functions for the presentation of and interaction with information for a mobile augmented reality application for military applications. Our research has concentrated on four areas. We filter information based on relevance to the user (in turn based on location), evaluate methods for presenting information that represents entities occluded from the user’s view, enable interaction through a top-down map view metaphor akin to current techniques used in the military, and facilitate collaboration with other mobile users and/or a command center. In addition, we refined the user interface architecture to conform to requirements from subject matter experts. We discuss the lessons learned in our work and directions for future research.

Metaphor and the Reshaping of Our Cognitive Fabric

AbstractMary Gerhart and Allan Russell view our world of meanings as a fabric of concepts and relations. Metaphor bends this fabric, superimposing one concept on another. While Gerhart and Russell are right to view metaphor as a cognitive rather than a purely linguistic phenomenon, their model misses the danger inherent in a cognitive restructuring that leaves some features of a concept highlighted and others backgrounded. When the bending of the conceptual fabric becomes permanent, the essential metaphorical insight is lost, leaving a skewed understanding of reality. We have a tendency to retain the metaphorically altered cognitive topography while forgetting its nonliteral genesis. Thus, the metaphoric process is one from which proceeds not only insight but also, necessarily, misconception.

Metaphor, Idiom, and Figuration

Metaphor, specifically, and figurative language, generally, have been of interest to philosophers and literary theorists since Aristotle's Poetics. Yet we still lack clear criteria for what it means for an expression to be figurative, and how this is to be distinguished from literal usage. We argue here that this question has remained unanswered, in part, because it has been misconceived. One important source of misunderstanding has been the almost universal tendency to view metaphors and other tropes as comprising two discrete meanings, one that is literal, and one that is figurative. Rather, we propose that metaphorical and literal phrases are both understood by drawing on denotative and connotative associations of their terms in an interactive fashion, and that assessments of adequacy for an interpretation--whether literal or figurative--refer to the same basic criteria. Metaphors are phrases with a high degree of tolerance for such interpretation, literals much less so, and idioms even less. Interpreting idioms depends more on the retrieval of a specific and conventional meaning. In this sense, idioms are hardly "figurative" at all.