Conceptual Metaphor

Metaphorical mapping consistency via dynamic logic programming

by Amilcar Cardoso

Metaphor clusters in discourse

by Juup Stelma

Co-authored with Professor Lynne J. Cameron (now Open University).

Cameron, L.J. & Stelma, J.H. (2004). Metaphor clusters in discourse. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(2): 107-136.

The phenomenon of clustering, where speakers or writers suddenly produce multiple metaphors, is widespread and... more The phenomenon of clustering, where speakers or writers suddenly produce multiple metaphors, is widespread and intriguing. This paper presents an innovative visualisation methodology for identifying and exploring metaphor clusters, comparing it to existing methods that use cumulative frequency graphs and Poisson curve fitting, and addressing issues that arise from these. Identification of clusters from the visualisation is shown to be reliable and practical, while also offering in-depth exploration across a range of discourse parameters.

Conversations aimed at conciliation between a perpetrator of violence and a victim (total 160 minutes) are analysed for clusters and their discourse functions. All techniques show clusters at two distinct time scales, of around one minute and of several seconds. Clusters in conciliation talk account for about 42 per cent of the total metaphors, and cover about 30 per cent of the discourse. Discourse work carried out in clusters includes explanation of a speaker’s perspective to the Other, appropriation of metaphors originally used by the Other, and exploration of alternative, negative, scenarios that had been possible choices for the speaker but had been rejected.

The finding that metaphor clusters are sites of intensive work relating to the central discourse purpose supports cluster exploration as a heuristic tool for discourse analysis.

Anaphoric reference to entities and places in literal and metaphorical contexts

by Lachlan Mackenzie

Published in Journal of English Studies 5-6. 193-208.

This article reports on corpus research into the occurrence of [from + anaphor]. Developing distinctions derived from... more This article reports on corpus research into the occurrence of [from + anaphor]. Developing distinctions derived from the typology of entities and qualities in Functional Grammar as well as the notion of metaphoricality found in the work of Lakoff, we find that in the syntactic context chosen for analysis the anaphor there is applied when the language-user conceives of the antecedent as a metaphorical place, whereas the occurrence of anaphoric it indicates a non-metaphorical conceptualization. The suggestion is advanced that choice of anaphor could be used as a test for metaphoricality where the source domain is location or movement in space.

Mitigation and Intensification of Persuasive Discourse in a Koine Greek Letter: Coherent Macrostructure in the Letter of James

by Benjamin Pehrson

Presented to the Faculty of
the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master of Arts
with major in Applied Linguistics
June 2010
Supervising Professor: Shin Ja J. Hwang

A longstanding debate continues regarding coherent structure in the Koine Greek New Testament Letter of James. I... more A longstanding debate continues regarding coherent structure in the Koine Greek New Testament Letter of James. I argue that multiple linguistic perspectives confirm the central theme of trust in divine grace and mercy as foundational to Christian behavior. Applying Lakoff and Johnson’s cognitive semantics theory to James, a faith-journey conceptual metaphor structures the life of faith according to the source-path-goal image schema with a born-of-grace conceptual metaphor reflecting the source. Using Longacre and Hwang’s discourse theory, I describe James in terms of discourse type, notional schemata, macrosegmentation, skewing, paragraph relations, verb/clause salience, and embedding. A prototype approach reveals James as a persuasive text with embedded hortatory and expository units. Movements of mitigation and intensification most clearly reveal the coherent structure within the text’s profile and peaks. The controlling theme is ultimately derived from the above investigations in terms of van Dijk’s theory of macrostructure.

Conceptual Metaphor in Computer Virology Discourse

by Kate Isaeva

The 18th European Symposium on Language for Special Purposes: Proceedings / ed. Larisa Alekseeva; Perm State National Research University. - Perm, Russia, 2011. - 432 p.

Jezično opojmljivanje iskustva svetog. Doprinosi kognitivne lingvistike kognitivnim znanostima o religiji. ( Language conceptualization of the experience of sacred. Contribution of the cognitive linguistics to the cognitive science of religion. )

by Benedikt Perak

Zbornik radova: Suvremena znanost i vjera. Contemporary science and faith

Među suvremenim znanostima o religiji ističu se kognitivnoznanstveni pristupi koji istražuju iskustva
svetoga kao... more Među suvremenim znanostima o religiji ističu se kognitivnoznanstveni pristupi koji istražuju iskustva
svetoga kao osobita stanja svijesti, s osobitim fenomenološkim
sadržajem i neurološkim korelatima. U ovome članku navode se temeljne postavke kognitivnoga proučavanja tih ontološki subjektivnih stanja te se objašnjava mehanizam kategoriziranja, opojmljivanja i prenošenja u kulturi s pomoću simboličkoga jezičnog sustava. Pojmovni i komunikacijski aspekti iskustava
svetoga proučavaju se u kognitivnolingvističkoj teoriji pojmovne metafore po kojoj se značenje subjektivnih apstraktnih entiteta uspostavlja preslikavanjem značajkâ objektivnijih i konkretnijih domena. Ukazuje se na ulogu perspektivizacije u izgradnji značenja, kategorizacije i agentivnoga opojmljavanja skupnoga
iskustva svetoga. Na temelju složenosti preslikavanja značenja predstavlja se ontološka, prostornoodnosna, personifikacijska i kulturološka struktura metaforičkoga opojmljavanja skupnoga iskustva svetoga, kao i njihove pragmatične inferencije koje imaju važnu ulogu za uspješnost njihova prijenosa u kulturi.


The cognitive sciences of religion offer some of the most stimulating insights in the contemporary scientific study of religion. Their overarching epistemic objective is to study the experience of the sacred as any other naturally occurring state of consciousness endowed with inherent intentional and phenomenological content and their neural correlates. This article offers an explanatory model of categorizing and conceptualizing the subjective of religious experiences in semantically relevant symbolic language structures that are available for cultural transmission. The study of linguistic
and communicational aspects are based on the basic tenets of embodiment and experientalism with emphasis on the theory of conceptual metaphor and the role of the construal and perspectivization in conceptualization of the entity and agency of
the culturally postulated collective experience of the sacred. The proposed model highlights four levels of conceptualization achieved though ontological, spatial, anthropomorphic
and cultural metaphorical mappings. Each conceptual level is discussed with reference to its pragmatic inferences and motivational potential success that is crucial for transmission of the representations in the culture.

“Bhio’ tu dìreach ga ithe, bha e cho math = You would just eat it, it was so good” Music, Metaphor and Food for Thought on Scottish Gaelic Aesthetics

by Tiber Falzett

forthcoming in "Endangered Metaphors (Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts)." Eds. Anna Idström, Elisabeth Piirainen, in coopertation with Tiber Falzett. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 2012.

This paper intends to examine metaphors and other tropes in Scottish Gaelic that are capable of shedding light on... more This paper intends to examine metaphors and other tropes in Scottish Gaelic that are capable of shedding light on local aesthetic attitudes concerning various forms of verbal art and music among Gaelic speakers at the communal level. Special attention will be given to lexemes that are associated with the gustatory and employed by speakers to denote quality and acceptability in a performance or during more general forms of discourse, including blas (taste), brìgh (essence), and ith (eat). The symbolic use of these words reveals a blurring in the distinctions of genre boundaries as well as relationships between language and other forms of performance culture, including music, and provides a unique view on the semantic realm of ‘taste’ in a way that is arguably distinct from its application in dominant Western aesthetic circles. It will also be shown how such concepts of ‘taste’ and ‘essence’ are central to the transmission of various forms of intangible culture within Gaelic-speaking communities, revealing the role of such idioms in the maintenance of communal tradition. By exploring the semiotic range of these terms among Scottish Gaelic speakers both synchronically through ethnographic fieldwork and diachronically through corpora of printed texts in the language, it is hoped that deeper insights will be given into the inner mechanics of a Scottish Gaelic aesthetic ethos.

Metaphor [Taverniers 2002]

by Miriam Taverniers

Taverniers, Miriam. 2002. Metaphor. In: Verschueren, Jef; Jan-Ola Östman; Jan Blommaert & Chris Bulcaen (eds.) Handbook of Pragmatics 2002. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

This paper focuses on the conception of metaphor in linguistics (the primary theoretical niche of the Handbook of... more This paper focuses on the conception of metaphor in linguistics (the primary theoretical niche of the Handbook of Pragmatics), and, to a lesser extent, philosophical theories of metaphor (philosophy being the first field in which metaphor came to be looked at).
In the linguistic study of metaphor as a whole, two general aspects are important: (i) types of metaphors, i.e. the recognition and classification of different categories of metaphors as linguistic expressions; and (ii) theories of metaphor, i.e. the definition and explanation of metaphor as a linguistic process. This paper focuses on the first aspect, since extensive treatments of the different ways in which metaphors can be classified are relatively rare in the literature on metaphor, while distinctions and relations between theoretical frameworks have often been highlighted (cf. below), albeit not often in a comprehensive manner.
This paper is organized as follows. In section 2, the variation between major types of linguistic approaches to metaphor will cursorily be looked at. Section 3, which forms the greater part of this paper, discusses a number of different classifications of metaphor. After this discussion, these typologies of metaphor are placed in a larger framework explaining the variation between them (§ 4). The paper ends with a summary of a number of further issues which have come to be highlighted in relation to specific types of metaphors, or in relation to particular perspectives on the classification of metaphor types (§ 5).

(2005) Construing the world: conceptual metaphors and event construals in news stories. Metaphorik.de 09/2005.

by Monika Bednarek

(2005) Construing the world: conceptual metaphors and event construals in news stories. Metaphorik.de 09/2005.

by Monika Bednarek

Structure mapping theory as a formalism for instructional game design and assessment

by Debbie Denise Reese

The Conceptual and Its Subsequents

by Andrew Glynn

draft only

Correlation of the conceptual with the origin of metaphysics, revealed religion, and science. Correlation of the conceptual with the origin of metaphysics, revealed religion, and science.

"The Icon as a Problem in Cognition and Social Construction: Complexity and Consensual Domains in Technical Rhetoric."

by Martin E. Rosenberg

M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Martin E. Rosenberg. _IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication_ Volume 38 Number 4; December 1995, 216-227. ISSN: 0361-1434

Abstract:
This paper suggests that current theories about how even the
simplest elements of graphical... more Abstract:
This paper suggests that current theories about how even the
simplest elements of graphical design function in professional
communication do not adequately convey the complexity of the element's actual role in communication. By showing how producers of computer interfaces rely on the possibility of multiple interpretive trajectories in the use of any sign and how users of such signs respond in ways that are far from being totally predictable, we argue that it is best to think of the communication act not as a simple exchange of information between the two minds (producer and user) but rather as a field of possibilities that requires flexibility and an experimental attitude from both the producer and the user. Examining theoretical developments in the history of physics and cognitive science, we contend that the dominant paradigms of understanding communication - the old cognitive (or computational) model and the social constructionist model as currently employed in the fields of composition and technical communication - fall short of accounting for even fairly straightforward exchanges of information. In place of the communication triangle that both of the old models rely upon, we offer a new model that uses the concept of "consensual domains" as the basis for a general theory of rhetoric. As a starting point for our investigation, we present the history of a still evolving sign - the trash can icon in the user interface of the Macintosh operating system - from the perspective of a single (also still evolving) human user.

"The Game of the Courtly Hunt: Chasing and Breaking Deer in Late Medieval English Literature." JEGP. Forthcoming.

by Ryan Judkins

Argues that hunting was a game to the aristocracy, that that game presented a nostalgic vision of society as a feudal... more Argues that hunting was a game to the aristocracy, that that game presented a nostalgic vision of society as a feudal hierarchy, and that the meaning of the game changed moving into the fifteenth century due to pressure from the gentry imitating the nobility.

Metaphor and the Euro

by Marco Venuti

Co-authored with F. Vaghi

Published in A Partington, J. Morley and L. Haarman (eds) 2003 Corpora and Discorse, Bern: Peter Lang, 369-381

La stampa britannica e la moneta unica. Le metafore dell’economia da una prospettiva di linguistica dei corpora

by Marco Venuti

Monograph 2004 Napoli: CUEN

British Media and the Euro: A Corpus-based Approach

by Marco Venuti

Co-authored with F. Vaghi

Published in L. Ruiz Miyares, C E Álvarez Moreno y M R Álvarez Silva (eds.) 2003 ACTAS I. VII Simposio International de Comunicacion Social, Santiago de Cuba, 20-23 de Enero 2003, Santiago de Cuba: Centro de Lingüística Aplicada, 571-574

"Dynamic and Thermodynamic Tropes of the Subject in Freud and Deleuze and Guattari

by Martin E. Rosenberg

published in _Postmodern Culture, Vol # 4, 1, 1993.
This is a text-only version published on the original "Jefferson Village" site for
_Postmodern Culture_.
http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.993/rosenber.993
The journal _Postmodern Culture_ is now available on the Project Muse site of Johns Hopkins University Press.

ABSTRACT:
The descriptions of human consciousness in
Freud and in Deleuze and Guattari are problematic... more ABSTRACT:
The descriptions of human consciousness in
Freud and in Deleuze and Guattari are problematic precisely in their inverse, mirrored opposition, and we may discover the "ground" for that opposition by examining the role played by tropes from the discipline of physics in these theorists' representations of subjectivity. We will need to notice the historical differences in the ideological use of these tropes. Yet, even contemporary theories of tropes have had recourse to the discipline of physics in order to model how tropes work. Drawing on Ilya Prigogine's confrontation with the rhetoricity governing a "clash of doctrines" between time-reversible (dynamic) and time-irreversible (thermodynamic) assumptions underlying investigations in the physical sciences, we will examine first the role of oppositional tropes from physics in theories of tropes. Second, we will observe the role that these tropes play in representing the subject: in Freud's "The Dreamwork," in Laplanche and Pontalis' account of Freud's subject-systems, and in Stallybrass and White's account of the unconscious as the site of the carnivalesque.

We will then show how Deleuze and Guattari's representations of the subject in terms of the nomad and the rhizome, simply invert Freud's valorizing of the dynamic laws controlling thermodynamic processes, arguing instead for the celebration of the contingent and the indeterminate. In a telling passage on chess and Go as game theories of war in which chess becomes the discourse of %physis%, while Go becomes the discourse of %nomos%, Deleuze and Guattari seek to hide their own claims for a time-irreversible model of cultural resistance "grounded" in natural laws of a different sort than those justifying the rules of domination governing subjectivity and society since the Industrial Revolution. --MER

Crime is in the eye of the beholder: Petr Petrovich Luzhin as a distorting “puddle-mirror” in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

by Anastasia Kostetskaya

Kostetskaya, A.G. "Crime Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Petr Petrovich Luzhin As a Distorting "puddle-Mirror" in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment." Names. 58.4 (2010): 231-241. Print.

This study demonstrates how conceptualizations ingrained in our linguistic consciousness help us realize the full... more This study demonstrates how conceptualizations ingrained in our linguistic consciousness help us realize the full semantics that an author communicates to his reader through a “speaking name”; this kind of name, together with the character’s behavioral profile create a multidimensional psychological portrait.
The examples are taken from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, specifically the “puddle-name” Luzhin. The speaking name of Petr Petrovich Luzhin evokes a number of cognitive conceptualizations that are rooted in human experience, as well as in the history, mythology and culture of the Russian people and that are in dialogical relationships with the other characters in the novel through their speaking names. The analysis, based on cognitive stylistics and more specifically, cognitive metaphor theory in the Lakoff tradition, underscores the significance of the cultural water metaphor when applied to the human domain.  It also confirms that the “speaking name” is a major device in Dostoevsky’s poetics.

Key words: Dostoevsky, speaking name, conceptual metaphor, cultural construal, water and stone metaphor

Creative Thought: An Investigation of Conceptual Structures and Processes

by Jyotsna Vaid