Once we perceive a situation as a danger, threat, or shock, the information about a fearful stimulus is immediately sent to the amygdala, which, being a component of the limbic system, is responsible for fear and anxiety processing, and plays an important role in emotion and behaviour. As the research suggests, the message about a potentially frightening situation can reach the amygdala long before we are even consciously aware of it. Then, the amygdala is to trigger a fight-or-flight reaction, marked (...) by our increased heart rate and respiration to prepare for action (cf. LeDoux 2007). The aim of the research is, first, to account for the most prototypical cognitive scenario of fear through the prism of Cognitive Linguistics (cf. Kövecses 1986, 2015) and supply it with this neuroscientific and psychological knowledge of fear. We learn that in addition to the most common human reactions to fear, i.e. the one of a fighter or the one of a runaway, a modern man reacts to fear by denying it as well as by displacing fear from their subconscious mind. Second, by investigating the novel metaphor FEAR IS AN ILLNESS OF THE BRAIN, we aim to propose a novel constructive cognitive scenario of fear, which helps us deal with this unwanted emotion in contemporary situations that generate fear, e.g. in the era of (post)Covid-19 pandemic (WHO 2021, July 15). (shrink)

Personification, one of major types of metaphors often employed to express an attitude, is also an argumentative tool, especially in media texts on politically contested events. The present investigation aims at disclosing the attitudinal stance in personifying Ukraine, Russia, the Western countries and Lithuania in a corpus of texts collected from Lithuanian media in 2015–2018. The study relies on the three-step Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA, Charteris-Black 2004), involving three levels: linguistic, cognitive and rhetorical. More specifically, they include (1) identifying personification (...) cases, (2) interpreting personification through cognitive metaphorical scenarios (Musolff 2016), and (3) explaining ideological implications encoded in the scenarios. The findings indicate that in the scenario of COMMUNICATION, Ukraine is mostly presented positively: active defender and in need of support, with occasional scepticism whether it is capable to change. The West, Lithuania including, is presented as a supporter, whereas Russia is viewed as a negatively evaluated antagonist. (shrink)

BackgroundAssessing and understanding the language that women use to express physical, emotional, and social concerns of breast cancer experiences can often be overlooked, even though there is evidence that effective communication between cancer patients and health care providers improves quality of life. This study aims to assess the use of metaphors in conceptualizing breast cancer experience lived by Saudi Arabian women.Materials and MethodsThis is an interpretative phenomenological qualitative study, a purposeful sample of 18 breast cancer patients at an oncology outpatient’s (...) clinic in Saudi Arabia were invited to engage in face-to-face interviews. Data was analyzed using Metaphor Identification Procedure.ResultsFour themes were constructed: dark hidden force, battling imminent death, dreaming and awakening calls, and inner and outer transformation.ConclusionIdentifying metaphors may be beneficial toward improving communication between health care providers and breast cancer patients, who often experience difficulties expressing their needs. (shrink)

Exocentric compounding is a creative morphological process that contributes to the English lexicon. However, because it lacks a syntactic or semantic head, it was deemed an exceptional case in most word-formation literature and hence neglected. Previous work has only been limited to syntax-based grammar and the notion of headedness and thus failed to address the other linguistic rules that constrain exocentric compounds. The current paper aims to identify the frequency of exocentric compounds and thus to determine their viability. The research (...) will also look into how conceptual metaphor and/or conceptual metonymy motivate exocentric compound formation. The results demonstrate that exocentric compounds are viable lexical units, generating content words (e.g., adjectives and adverbs) through productive word-formation processes, and extending word senses. The results also suggest that conceptual metonymy is more active than conceptual metaphor in the formation of exocentric compounds. The present findings have several implications for research on exocentric compounds, conceptual metonymy and conceptual metaphor. (shrink)

Conceptual metaphors have received much attention in research on discourse about infectious diseases in recent years. Most studies found that conceptual metaphors of war dominate media discourse about disease. Similarly, a great deal of research has been undertaken on the new coronavirus, i.e., COVID-19, especially in the English news discourse as opposed to other languages. The present study, in contrast, analyses the conceptual metaphors used in COVID-19 discourse in French-language newspapers. The study explored the linguistic metaphors used in COVID-19 discourse (...) in these newspapers and conceptual metaphors that underlie and motivate them, using a conceptual metaphor theory framework (CMT). Therefore, two North African French-language newspapers, namely Libération, published in Morocco, and La Presse de Tunisie, published in Tunisia, formed the corpus of the current study. The results showed that the most frequent framing of COVID-19 was in terms of WAR, followed by DISASTER and KILLER, respectively. (shrink)

El sistema educativo es responsable por la transmisión y expresión de la mayor parte de los patrones socioculturales que integran nuestra sociedad, entre los cuales se encuentra el género. Este es un tema de reciente abordaje en el contexto educativo, por lo cual son necesarios los estudios respecto a las percepciones docentes al respecto. Por otro lado, la metáfora es una herramienta utilizada en la vida cotidiana de las personas, para facilitar la producción y comprensión de conceptos abstractos, por lo (...) cual es útil para el estudio de creencias, opiniones y conceptualizaciones por parte de distintos grupos humanos. Este artículo, basado en una investigación cualitativa realizada en contexto de posgrado, tiene como objetivo describir las metáforas de animales producidas por estudiantes de pedagogía de quinto año respecto a sus estudiantes de género femenino y/o masculino. Por medio de entrevistas semiestructuradas a diez estudiantes, se identificó un total de 9 metáforas en el campo semántico de los animales, donde se diferenció el comportamiento de estudiantes en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje en base a su género. Como resultados principales, se destaca que las metáforas asociadas al género masculino refieren a la inquietud, el desorden y lo físico; mientras que las metáforas asociadas al género femenino destacaban lo verbal y la tranquilidad. Por otro lado, algunas de las metáforas producidas relevaban la influencia de la edad en el comportamiento de los y las estudiantes. Futuras investigaciones podrán ampliar la muestra, y facilitar la elección de estrategias para disminuir las inequidades de género por parte de los y las profesionales de educación. (shrink)

Históricamente ha sido la filosofía, y específicamente la axiología y la ética, la principal disciplina en la cual se ha llevado a cabo la reflexión en torno a los conceptos de virtud y valor. Sin embargo, en las últimas décadas, los avances en disciplinas afines a la filosofía, como la psicología, la antropología y la sociología parece indicar que, para lograr una comprensión cabal de los valores y de la virtud como fenómenos naturales, es necesario complementar los métodos característicos de (...) la reflexión filosófica con métodos empíricos de investigación, para así iluminar la reflexión normativa sobre el “deber ser” con los hallazgos sobre la naturaleza humana, sobre el “es”. (shrink)

When athletes make significant plays in sporting competitions, such as scoring a goal in soccer, a touchdown in American football, they often immediately express their joy by performing some bodily action for others to see and understand. Many sports celebrations are staged pantomimes that express metaphorical meanings as a part of athletes’ pretending to perform certain source-path-goal sequences of action from other competitive events. This article examines the possible metaphoricity in different sports celebrations and whether casual observers may understand these (...) actions as conveying metaphorical messages. Studies 1 and 3 present analyses of some of the important, possibly metaphorical, characteristics of a corpus of sports celebrations, both those that are performed by individual athletes (Study 1) and those where several athletes jointly enact some celebratory action (Study 3). Studies 2 (individual athletes) and 4 (group performances) investigated whether casual spectators interpret some celebrations as conveying metaphorical messages beyond simply expressing an athlete’s positive emotions. These studies demonstrate that many sports celebrations express metaphorical meanings where athletes provide bodily commentary on the significance of what they have just accomplished. (shrink)

The paper focuses on metaphorical representation of military activities of the US-led international coalition and of ISIL which are construed on the basis of systematic metaphors drawn from the com...

Numerous studies have examined the manner in which minority groups, including refugees, are depicted in the media discourse of the host countries or the dominant majority groups. The results of such studies indicate that media systematically discriminate these minority groups and deem them as a security, economic and hygiene threat to the majority groups. Through the use of Lakoff and Jonson’s conceptual metaphor theory, this study compares and contrasts the representation of Syrian refugees in the online media discourse of not (...) only host countries but also non-host countries, which, in this study, refers to nations that do not host Syrian refugees. The results show that statistical differences between the metaphors used by host and non-host countries only occur when using the metaphors that describe the entry of refugees and the burden they are inflicting on the host countries. This is clearly indicated by the p-values of the log-likelihood test. (shrink)

The article develops and justifies, on the basis of the epistemological argumentation theory, two central pieces of the theory of evaluative argumentation interpretation: 1. criteria for recognizing argument types and 2. rules for adding reasons to create ideal arguments. Ad 1: The criteria for identifying argument types are a selection of essential elements from the definitions of the respective argument types. Ad 2: After presenting the general principles for adding reasons (benevolence, authenticity, immanence, optimization), heuristics are proposed for finding missing (...) reasons, for deductive arguments, e.g., semantic tableaux are suggested. (shrink)

In this paper I study the development of arithmetical cognition with the focus on metaphorical thinking. In an approach developing on Lakoff and Núñez, I propose one particular conceptual metaphor, the Process → Object Metaphor, as a key element in understanding the development of mathematical thinking.

The concept of life plays a crucial role in the debate on synthetic biology. The first part of this chapter outlines the controversial debate on the status of the concept of life in current science and philosophy. Against this background, synthetic biology and the discourse on its scientific and societal consequences is revealed as an exception. Here, the concept of life is not only used as buzzword but also discussed theoretically and links the ethical aspects with the epistemological prerequisites and (...) the ontological consequences of synthetic biology. The second part examines this point of intersection and analyses some of the issues which are discussed in terms of the concept of life. The third part turns to the history of the concept of life. It offers an examination of scientific and philosophical discourses on life at the turn of the 20th century and suggests a surprising result: In the light of this history, synthetic biology leads to well-known debates, arguments, notions and questions. But it is concluded that the concept of life is too ambiguous and controversial to be useful for capturing the actual practice of synthetic biology. In the fourth part I argue that with regard to the ethical evaluation of synthetic biology, the ambiguity of the concept of life is not as problematic as sometimes held because other challenges are more important. The question whether the activity of synthetic biological systems should be conceived as life or not is primarily theoretical. (shrink)

Analogical reasoning is often employed in problem-solving and metaphor interpretation. This paper submits that, as a default, analogical reasoning addressing these different tasks employs different mapping strategies: In problem-solving, it employs analogy-maximising strategies (like structure mapping, Gentner & Markman 1997); in metaphor interpretation, analogy-minimising strategies (like ATT-Meta, Barnden 2015). The two strategies interact in analogical reasoning with conceptual metaphors. This interaction leads to predictable fallacies. The paper supports these hypotheses through case-studies on ‘mind’-metaphors from ordinary discourse, and abstract problem-solving in (...) the philosophy of mind, respectively: It shows that (1) default metaphorical interpretations for vision- and space-cognition metaphors can be derived with a variant of the analogy-minimising ATT-Meta approach, (2) philosophically influential introspective conceptions of the mind can be derived with conceptual metaphors only through an analogy-maximising strategy, and (3) the interaction of these strategies leads to hitherto unrecognised fallacies in analogical reasoning with metaphors. This yields a debunking explanation of introspective conceptions. (shrink)

There has been a longstanding interest in discovering or uncovering resemblances among what are ostensibly diverse religious schemas by employing a range of methodological approaches and tools. However, it is generally considered a problematic undertaking. Jonathan Z. Smith has produced a large body of work aimed at explicating this and has tacitly based his model of comparison on metaphor, which is traditionally understood to connote similarity between two or more things, as based on a linguistic or pragmatic assessment. However, another (...) possible approach is cognitive. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have championed the view of “conceptual metaphor,” which regards metaphor as being pervasive not only in language, but also in thought and action. Indeed, according to them, it basically structures our conceptual operations and hence views of the world through partially mapping knowledge across ontological domains, generally from the concrete to the abstract. I shall argue that a similar mechanism can fruitfully be applied to comparing religious schemas, as based on the postulated relationship between the domains of human and divine, physical and abstract, and as realized through expressions of journeying and reflection. (shrink)

This paper examines from a cognitive perspective the rhetorical and epistemic advantages that can be gained from the use of (extended) metaphors in political discourse. We defend the assumption that extended metaphors can be argumentatively exploited, and provide two arguments in support of the claim. First, considering that each instantiation of the metaphorical mapping in the text may function as a confirmation of the overall relevance of the main core mapping, we argue that extended metaphors carry self-validating claims that increase (...) the chances of their content being accepted. Second, we show how the recognition of an extended metaphor’s sophistication and relevance (on behalf of the addressee) can benefit the speaker’s perceived competence (ethos). We then assess whether these two arguments measure against the dual epistemic monitoring postulated in the notion of epistemic vigilance (i.e., assessment of the source of a message and assessment of the message) and conclude that extended metaphors may fulfil the requirements of epistemic vigilance and lead to the stabilisation of a belief. We illustrate our account with an analysis of the extended metaphor of the USA as an empire found in a political pamphlet written by the Swiss politician Oskar Freysinger. (shrink)

In his well-known 1994 work Descartes’ Error, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio describes his work with patients suffering from damage to the prefrontal cortex, a center of emotion processing in the brain. The accidents or strokes that had caused this damage had spared these patients’ “higher” cognitive faculties: their short- and long-term memories, abstract reasoning skills, mathematical aptitude, and performance on standard IQ tests were completely unimpaired. They were also perfectly healthy physically, with no apparent motor or sensory disabilities. Nonetheless, these (...) patients had been brought to Damasio’s attention as a physician because, despite their apparent lack of physical or cognitive impairment, they .. (shrink)

The structure of everyday communication reflects metaphorical thinking. People speak about the presence or absence of problems in terms of weather. Problems appear in every¬day life and so does the weather topic. Bad weather often evokes sadness, therefore it can be to said to constitute a problem; similarly, good weather is often equated with cheerful mood. Thus, in view of the above analysis, weather can be seen as an im¬portant experiential basis for conceptual metaphors.

The text aims at discussing the verbo-visual means of expression employed in three climate change-related campaigns in the context of their effectiveness. The chosen climate change awareness raising campaigns by two non-governmental organisations, EcoEduca and World Wide Fund for Nature Inc. (WWF), deal with the results of Arctic permafrost thaw resulting in the loss of sea ice dependent animals’ habitat. A cognitive linguistics oriented analysis refers to the theory of metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Forceville 1996, Kövecses 2002, 2014), conceptual (...) blending (Fauconnier and Turner 2003), and construal (Langacker 1987, 2008). The visual layer will also be described with reference to a grammar approach to visual communication (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996, 2001, Machin 2010). (shrink)

Despite the wide range of studies on how students’ past knowledge influences their understanding of scientific terminology, few studies were conducted to compare non-scientific language with scientific language, or rather everyday language with scientific language, from a cognitive linguistic perspective. The present paper aims to determine the cognitive mechanisms, i.e., image schemas, conceptual metaphor, and conceptual metonymy, which underpin the conceptualisation of the Arabic term سرعة (speed), using a conceptual metaphor theory framework. Thus, the research question guiding this study is: (...) What cognitive mechanisms underlie the concept of سرعة (speed) in Arabic? The findings of this study will shed light on how Arab speakers conceptualise this term, demonstrating their background knowledge of the term compared to its scientific meaning. The article adds to the growing body of cognitive linguistics research on the conceptual processes behind physics terms. The data was collected from the Arabic Web Corpus (arTenTen) using the Sketch Engine. The findings demonstrated that VERTICATLITY and SCALE schemas are the most dominant image schemas that anchor the conceptual meaning in Arab speakers’ perceptions of the term under investigation and the discourse in which it is employed, as well as offer the concrete basis for conceptual metaphors. The conceptual metaphor CHANGE IS MOTION (LOCATION) was also shown to be active in motivating the conception of SPEED in Arabic. (shrink)

This book offers substantial insight into students’ conceptualization of scientific terminology. The current book explores the commonalities and distinctions between Arabic and French physics terms, and the impact of the language disparities on students’ understanding of physics terms. This book adopts a novel approach to the problem of scientific terminology by exploring physics terms’ polysemy, prototypical meanings, and conceptual metaphor and metonymy, which motivates their extension of meaning. The book also investigates how the linguistic discrepancies and other variables affect the (...) learning of physics by Arab students (Moroccan students, in this book). Concepts in Physics: A Comparative Cognitive Analysis of Arabic and French Terminologies, whether you are a student of science, a science teacher or lecturer, a translator, or a linguist, is what you need. The book will help you comprehend the linguistic and cultural differences between western and non-western physics terminologies (in this book, French and Arabic physics terminologies) and the factors influencing the learning of physics concepts, and thus address the multiple challenges in learning scientific terms and concepts. (shrink)

A key consequence of globalisation is the integrative approach to reality whereby emphasis is placed on interdependence. Religion being an expression of human culture is equally affected by this cultural revolution. The main objective of this paper is to examine how religious affiliation, among Christians, influences attitudes towards the application of psychological sciences to the assuagement of human suffering. The sociological theory of structural functionalism was deployed to explain attitudinal appraisal. Ethnographic methodology, through quantitative analysis of administered questionnaire, was also (...) used. The study reveals that religious tenets largely shape attitudinal appraisal and redefine the borders of globalisation’s metanarratives. (shrink)

This article intends to build bridges between two recent trends within Critical Discourse Studies as exemplified by cognitive linguistics and multimodality. Thus, the postulates of spatial cognition will be followed to do an analysis of the musical re-contextualization of Barack Obama's New Hampshire 2008 speech. In Will.i.am's music video ‘Yes, we can’, uploaded on YouTube under the username WeCan08, we can listen to a song whose lyrics are made of different extracts from Obama's speech. This type of communicative strategy results (...) in a multiple re-contextualization of the political speech. The effectiveness of the musical video can be explained by identifying it as a blended mental space incorporating elements of the text-world, the music-world and visual-world. (shrink)

To describe how metaphors work from an argumentative point of view is the first step of this paper. After describing the metaphorical argumentative mechanism, the second step is to apply this mechanism by analyzing some paradigmatic international metaphors that are used in public speeches. This analysis will enable us to see some common grounds between different cultures and countries, especially regarding economical issues and argumentation theory.

Sally Gadow's work is a sophisticated version of a familiar line of thought in nursing. She creates a chain of distinctions which is intended to differentiate cultural narratives, and particularly the ‘science narrative’, from imaginative narratives, especially poetry. Cultural narratives regulate and restrict; imaginative narratives are creative, liberating and potentially transcendent. These ideological effects are (supposedly) achieved through different structures of language. Scientific language, for example, is abstract and literal, while poetry is sensuous and metaphorical. In this paper, I argue (...) that Gadow's way of discriminating between science and poetry fails. In the first place, the ideological valence she assigns to each of them is unwarranted. Science and poetry can both be harnessed to the project of emancipation, just as both can be incorporated in a strategy of oppression. In the second place, the claim that poetry and science are distinguished by their respective linguistic features – specifically, that one is metaphorical and the other literal – cannot be sustained. I illustrate this argument, as Gadow illustrates hers, by reference to the concept of embodiment, and consider whether Gadow is correct in thinking that poetry, not science, makes it possible for individuals (especially women) to ‘reclaim the body’. I also suggest that Gadow's brand of postmodernism echoes Romanticism, whose defining characteristic was an insistent contrast between poetry and science. This is ‘flip side’ postmodernism, which merely opposes modernist values, preferring subjectivity to objectivity, feeling to rationality, and multiple realities to truth. It is less radical, and far less interesting, than ‘remix’ postmodernism, whose objective is not to reverse the polarities, but to reconfigure the entire circuit. (shrink)

As contact languages, pidgins and creoles arise in mixed linguistic environments. Drawing much of their vocabularies from one, frequently European, language and – to a lesser extent – from a number of indigenous languages, they have lexicons that are reduced in comparison with those of their lexifiers. To compensate for the poor lexification, pidgin and creoles create novel polysemy-based extensions of lexical items or develop periphrastic constructions equivalent of the missing lexical roots. Assuming a cognitive linguistic perspective, which emphasizes the (...) role of conceptualization in the construction of meaning and the figurative character of concepts, the paper deals with the lexicons of Nigerian Pidgin English and Tok Pisin, two contact languages representative for the Atlantic and the Pacific – the two major areas of linguistic contact. The analysis focuses on the first of the above-mentioned compensation strategies. It is argued that (i) the expressions borrowed from English and various indigenous languages acquire senses that are absent in English; (ii) the new senses are frequently based on metonymy, which serves as a major polysemy-based strategy of lexicon extension; (iii) most of the novel lexical extensions fall within the metonymic patterns that are well-established in English. (shrink)

In this article, we set out, first, a general overview of metaphor and metaphorical thought research within cognitive psychology and developmental psychology. We claim that, although research efforts broadened perspectives that considered metaphors to be ornaments of poetic language, certain predominance of a linguistic point of view within investigations led to relatively little attention paid to (i) non-verbal and non-written metaphorical instantiations, and (ii) the pre-linguistic and cultural origins of metaphorical thought. Next, we attempt to delve into, and model, the (...) ontogenetic origins of metaphor, taking into consideration social and cultural elements. To that end, we consider the Vygotskian perspective and contemporary research from the pragmatics of the object. We propose that metaphorical thought is an emerging result of a complex web of dynamic relationships between pre-linguistic and socioculturally regulated semiotic systems. The analysis undertaken shows the need for a research programme with a developmental orientation that considers metaphor to be a product of the intertwining between the individual and social dimensions of cognitive development. We suggest this programme should find its roots in the analysis of the semiotic skills that precede the acquisition of metaphorical language. (shrink)

This article reports on Clean Language Interviewing (CLI), a rigorous, recently developed 'content-empty' (non-leading) approach to second-person interviewing in the science of consciousness. Also presented is a new systematic third-person method of validation that evaluates the questions and other verbal interventions by the interviewer to produce an adherence-to-method or 'cleanness' rating. A review of 19 interviews from five research studies provides a benchmark for interviewers seeking to minimize leading questions. The inter-rater reliability analysis demonstrates substantial agreement among raters with an (...) average intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.72 (95% CI). We propose that this method of validation is applicable not only to CLI but to second-person interviews more generally. (shrink)

This article analyzes how the conceptualization LIFE IS A JOURNEY is conveyed within a series of paintings ranging from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century. While the previous research on visual metaphor generally aims to describe how the domains of metaphorical conceptualization interact or discusses the rhetorical effect that visual metaphor is able to induce, this article takes a historical perspective in order to identify the main conceptual aspects shared by the paintings under consideration. It is proposed that the (...) concept of a JOURNEY is associated with a PURPOSIVE ACTIVITY that involves the start of the journey and its termination as two qualitatively different moments that are faced as a collective/shared experience and that are inspired by some human wish. This article also shows how the conceptual potential of metaphor tends to maintain a coherent representation although the paintings represent different historical sensitivities and artistic approaches. (shrink)

One important difference between existing accounts of protolanguage lies in their assumptions on the semantic complexity of protolinguistic utterances. I bring evidence about the nature of linguistic communication to bear on the plausibility of these assumptions, and show that communication is fundamentally inferential and characterised by semantic uncertainty. This not only allows individuals to maintain variation in linguistic representation, but also imposes a selection pressure that meanings be reconstructible from context. I argue that protolanguage utterances had varying degrees of semantic (...) complexity, and developed into complex language gradually, through the same processes of re-analysis and analogy which still underpin continual change in modern languages. (shrink)

Word problems in mathematics seem to constantly pose learning difficulties for all kinds of students. Recent work in math education (for example, [Lakoff, G. & Nuñez, R. E. (2000). Where mathematics comes from: How the embodied mind brings mathematics into being. New York: Basic Books]) suggests that the difficulties stem from an inability on the part of students to decipher the metaphorical properties of the language in which such problems are cast. A 2003 pilot study [Danesi, M. (2003a). Semiotica, 145, (...) 71–83] confirmed this hypothesis in an anecdotal way. This paper reviews the implications of that study and of a follow-up one that is described here as well, in the light of how the metaphorical analysis of word problems allows learners to overcome typical difficulties in word problem-solving by teaching them how to flesh out the underlying concepts and convert them into appropriate representations. (shrink)

Language understanding is one of the most important characteristics for human beings. As a pervasive phenomenon in natural language, metaphor is not only an essential thinking approach, but also an ingredient in human conceptual system. Many of our ways of thinking and experiences are virtually represented metaphorically. With the development of the cognitive research on metaphor, it is urgent to formulate a computational model for metaphor understanding based on the cognitive mechanism, especially with the view to promoting natural language understanding. (...) Many works have been done in pragmatics and cognitive linguistics, especially the discussions on metaphor understanding process in pragmatics and metaphor mapping representation in cognitive linguistics. In this paper, a theoretical framework for metaphor understanding based on the embodied mechanism of concept inquiry is proposed. Based on this framework, ontology is introduced as the knowledge representation method in metaphor understanding, and metaphor mapping is formulated as ontology mapping. In line with the conceptual blending theory, a revised conceptual blending framework is presented by adding a lexical ontology and context as the fifth mental space, and a metaphor mapping algorithm is proposed. (shrink)

Unlike previous studies which generally seem to focus more on Hausa metaphorical expressions, this study investigates a wide range of uses ofίdὸ‘eye’ in its constructional metonymy patterns in the language by exploring corpus data that contain over 300 eye-related expressions. We observe that some constructional metonymies maintain a set of fixed words and syntax in activating conceptual shifts and producing eye metonymies while others have semi-fixed patterns and produce the same metonymies. Lexical items liketsόkάlế,kὰn,ὰ,dὰ, andbὰsίrὰamong others are constant constituents in (...) the constructional metonymies in which they appear. In the metonymic chaining, the basic mapping of eye metonymies occurs via thepart for partrelation under E-metonymies and thesub- for supercategoryrelation under C-metonymies. We also observe that E→E→C coding has the highest chained metonymic structure in the creation of the eye metonymies. Both attributive and predicative colligates motivate metonymic senses in the language. Finally, our analysis reveals that the eye is metonymically conceptualized and semantically extended to various target domains and produces metonymic conceptualizations that make the eye stand for vision, desire, envy, control, attention, perception, person, meeting, brain, intelligence, and so on. (shrink)

The language of emotions is culturally conditioned and a conceptualization of emotions is determined by the value systems adopted in given cultures, as well as by personal experiences in recognizing, valuing, and communicating those emotions. It is believed that sometimes certain emotions have no lexical equivalents in particular languages. Even within one culture and one language, we can observe a gray area in the meaning of terms from this field. This is not surprising, given the subjective perception of the world (...) by each member of a specific community, as well as the multitude of emotions themselves. Although most information about other people’s emotions comes to the recipients through language, talking or writing about them is not simple. Emotions are among the concepts that are not very clearly delineated in our experience and therefore other, more comprehensible concepts, such as spatial orientations or objects, should be used when referring to them. In the novel The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya, emotions are conceptualized and represented for instance by liquids, small animals, natural forces, and substances with some specific taste (sour, bitter, etc.). Our goal was to figure out which emotions and their linguistic instantiations are only typical for the Russian language and which ones would fall in the universal category. The paper will focus on the description and the way emotions are conceptualized from a cognitive linguistic perspective, drawing on CMT (Conceptual Metaphor Theory), conceptual metonymies, and cognitive models. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two legal languages such as the legal English developed by the European Union institutions and the legal Chinese of Mainland China, to study whether the mental representations and the embodied simulation created by the conceptual metaphors for the same Western concept, right, differ in any significant ways. By analysing the data contained in two large corpora, this study has found that, despite the common origin of the concept right in the two legal languages, they conceptualise it (...) in a significantly different fashion. Finally, the findings of this study are read through the theoretical framework proposed for this special issue—hybridity and the Third Space. While it is somewhat straightforward to conceive of Euro English as a hybrid language, owing to the multilingual and supranational setting where it is used, this study has found that the Chinese legal language, too, is a hybrid language exhibiting linguistic features that intersect different belief systems. (shrink)

Embodied approaches to cognition see abstract thought and language as grounded in interactions between mind, body, and world. A particularly important challenge for embodied approaches to cognition is mathematics, perhaps the most abstract domain of human knowledge. Conceptual metaphor theory, a branch of cognitive linguistics, describes how abstract mathematical concepts are grounded in concrete physical representations. In this paper, we consider the implications of this research for the metaphysics and epistemology of mathematics. In the case of metaphysics, we argue that (...) embodied mathematics is neutral in the sense of being compatible with all existing accounts of what mathematical entities really are. However, embodied mathematics may be able to revive an older position known as psychologism and overcome the difficulties it faces. In the case of epistemology, we argue that the evidence collected in the embodied mathematics literature is inconclusive: It does not show that abstract mathematical thinking is constituted by metaphor; it may simply show that abstract thinking is facilitated by metaphor. Our arguments suggest that closer interaction between the philosophy and cognitive science of mathematics could yield a more precise, empirically informed account of what mathematics is and how we come to have knowledge of it. (shrink)

This paper offers a review of the argumentation-theoretical literature on metaphor in argumentative discourse. Two methodologies are combined: the pragma-dialectical theory is used to study the argumentative functions attributed to metaphor, and distinctions made in metaphor theory and the three-dimensional model of metaphor are used to compare the conceptions of metaphor taken as starting point in the reviewed literature. An overview is provided of all types of metaphors distinguished and their possible argumentative functions. The study reveals that not all possible (...) argumentative functions of metaphor have been taken into account, such as the role of conventional direct metaphors in standpoint and starting point. Novel direct metaphor as part of an analogy argument has received most attention, while indirect metaphor can constitute argumentative moves as well, such as the introduction of a standpoint, starting point or connection premise. The overview also shows that certain combinations of variables seem to be impossible of unlikely to occur. These results have a bearing on the analysis of metaphors in argumentative discourse and show the omission in current studies of metaphor. Being aware of these dimensions of metaphor ánd of its potential in argumentation would enrich argumentation studies and metaphor studies alike. (shrink)

In many papers dealing with the stylistic features of legal texts, metaphor is highlighted as a stylistic figure often used in the language of law. On a daily basis we can witness the frequent use of metaphoric collocations like soft laws, hard laws, silent partner, hedge funds, etc. In this paper, the author analyses the use of denotations for colours as constituent parts of metaphoric collocations in the language of law. The analysis is conducted by using a comparative approach to (...) examples extracted by means of computer technology from international bills and conventions available online. In the main part of the paper, examples are classified by using a colour denotation as the main criterion for the classification. After that, the examples are compared with corresponding expressions used in German and Croatian. Taking into account the main principle of the Skopos translation theory that differences between cultures strongly influence the translation process, the hypothesis of this research is that in many cases there will be no lexical equivalence between collocations with colour denotation in three languages. Due to the fact that international bills and conventions build the corpus of the research, and that the English language has become the lingua franca of international communication, it can be expected that some metaphoric terms and collocations would be literally translated from English. Conclusions drawn from the comparative analysis of legal collocations containing denotations for colours can be interesting to lawyers and LSP teachers in the field of law. In this sense, results of the research can contribute to motivational aspects of teaching Legal English and Legal German. (shrink)

concepts cannot be directly perceived through senses. How do people represent abstract concepts in their minds? According to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, people tend to rely on concrete experiences to understand abstract concepts. For instance, cognitive science has shown that time is a metaphorically constituted conception, understood relative to concepts like space. Across many languages, the “past” is associated with the “back” and the “future” is associated with the “front”. However, space-time mappings in people’s spoken metaphors are not always consistent (...) with the implicit mental metaphors they are using to conceptualize time in their minds, suggesting a dissociation between temporal language and temporal thought. Beyond the influences of language, the Temporal Focus Hypothesis proposes that people’s spatial conceptions of time are shaped by their attentional focus on temporal events. In general, people conceptualize the past as being in front to the extent that their culture is past-oriented, and the future as being in front to the extent that their culture is future-oriented. Recent lines of research have provided preliminary evidence that people’s implicit space-time mappings are malleable and likely result from multiple factors related to temporal focus, ranging from those relating to contextual features, such as cultural attitudes toward time, to those more tightly tied to the individual, such as age-related differences. By building upon and extending these findings, the overall aim of this thesis is to ascertain the generalizability of the Temporal Focus Hypothesis and further investigate the range of factors that may influence people’s spatializations of time, focusing specifically on previously unexplored within-cultural differences, political ideology, religion, real life experiences, pregnancy, temporal landmarks, circadian rhythms and chronotype, and personality. Together, these studies demonstrate that people’s implicit space-time mappings may vary according to their temporal focus, which can be explained by the Temporal Focus Hypothesis. The findings of these studies also shed new light on the Temporal Focus Hypothesis by extending the range of factors that may influence people’s conceptions of time, and reveal the malleability and flexibility of time representations. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPolitical actors use metaphor in their speeches in order to frame political issues [Charteris-Black, J.. Politicians and rhetoric: The persuasive power of metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan]. If they succeed in imposing a particular frame, especially when there is no agreement on the definition of certain political issues, this can become the prevailing way for referring to that issue [Semino, E.. Metaphor in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press]. In this research, we argue that this was the case for the metaphor of (...) the JOURNEY in the Catalan political conflict during electoral periods. To that end we use Critical Metaphor Analysis [Charteris-Black, J.. Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan] to analyse televised campaign ads from the last three elections for the Parliament of Catalonia – from 2010, 2012, and 2015 – in order to identify how political actors’ use metaphors to talk about the Catalan political situation during these years and to verify if JOURNEY metaphor resulted into the dominant narrative. The results show that the political situation has been conceptualized in terms of a ‘process en route,’ although the narratives generated by the political actors that shaped that discourse differ. (shrink)

Sally Gadow's work is a sophisticated version of a familiar line of thought in nursing. She creates a chain of distinctions which is intended to differentiate cultural narratives, and particularly the ‘science narrative’, from imaginative narratives, especially poetry. Cultural narratives regulate and restrict; imaginative narratives are creative, liberating and potentially transcendent. These ideological effects are (supposedly) achieved through different structures of language. Scientific language, for example, is abstract and literal, while poetry is sensuous and metaphorical. In this paper, I argue (...) that Gadow's way of discriminating between science and poetry fails. In the first place, the ideological valence she assigns to each of them is unwarranted. Science and poetry can both be harnessed to the project of emancipation, just as both can be incorporated in a strategy of oppression. In the second place, the claim that poetry and science are distinguished by their respective linguistic features – specifically, that one is metaphorical and the other literal – cannot be sustained. I illustrate this argument, as Gadow illustrates hers, by reference to the concept of embodiment, and consider whether Gadow is correct in thinking that poetry, not science, makes it possible for individuals (especially women) to ‘reclaim the body’. I also suggest that Gadow's brand of postmodernism echoes Romanticism, whose defining characteristic was an insistent contrast between poetry and science. This is ‘flip side’ postmodernism, which merely opposes modernist values, preferring subjectivity to objectivity, feeling to rationality, and multiple realities to truth. It is less radical, and far less interesting, than ‘remix’ postmodernism, whose objective is not to reverse the polarities, but to reconfigure the entire circuit. (shrink)

Most health professionals are unaware of the extent to which aspects of language, such as metaphor, influence their practice. Sensitivity to metaphor can deepen our understanding of healthcare and, arguably, improve its quality. This is because metaphors, and the linguisticality of which they are a part, shape medical practice in important ways. Examples are the metaphors used in pain management. By exploring the dialogical tension between such metaphors, we can better understand the ways in which they influence medical practice.

Recent metaphor research has revealed that metaphor comprehension involves both categorization and comparison processes. This finding has triggered the following central question: Which property determines the choice between these two processes for metaphor comprehension? Three competing views have been proposed to answer this question: the conventionality view (Bowdle & Gentner, 2005), aptness view (Glucksberg & Haught, 2006b), and interpretive diversity view (Utsumi, 2007); these views, respectively, argue that vehicle conventionality, metaphor aptness, and interpretive diversity determine the choice between the categorization (...) and comparison processes. This article attempts to answer the question regarding which views are plausible by using cognitive modeling and computer simulation based on a semantic space model. In the simulation experiment, categorization and comparison processes are modeled in a semantic space constructed by latent semantic analysis. These two models receive word vectors for the constituent words of a metaphor and compute a vector for the metaphorical meaning. The resulting vectors can be evaluated according to the degree to which they mimic the human interpretation of the same metaphor; the maximum likelihood estimation determines which of the two models better explains the human interpretation. The result of the model selection is then predicted by three metaphor properties (i.e., vehicle conventionality, aptness, and interpretive diversity) to test the three views. The simulation experiment for Japanese metaphors demonstrates that both interpretive diversity and vehicle conventionality affect the choice between the two processes. On the other hand, it is found that metaphor aptness does not affect this choice. This result can be treated as computational evidence supporting the interpretive diversity and conventionality views. (shrink)

The second decade of the 21st century has seen the emergence and establishment of a series of movements that have led to the rise of Eurosceptic parties in France and Germany and the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union. Considering the current political context and given the lack of studies addressing this object of study, this paper analyses the role of metaphor and metonymy in Eurosceptic discourse in French and Spanish. To this end, once the theoretical fundamentals (...) of this research has been submitted, the compiled textual corpus is presented. This corpus consists of documents, political programmes and manifestos drafted by a number of openly Eurosceptic political parties in France, Switzerland and Spain. From this corpus, the underlying conceptual metaphors have been analyzed, as well as the orientational metaphors and the documented metonymies from the metaphorical expressions used. This study concludes that metaphor is, in political discourse, an effective means of transmitting a certain ideology. Thus, the most used conceptual metaphors have been THE EXIT FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION IS A WAY, THE EXIT FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION IS A FIGHT and POLITICS ARE A FIGHT. It is also concluded that the use of metaphor is capable of changing the citizen’s perception and conception of European Community policies and the European Union. (shrink)

Charles Peirce provided a few, but interesting we believe, remarks about metaphor. Aristotle on the other hand developed a theory of metaphor that, to this day has been, and still is, influential (even though his theory, especially within recent years, also has been heavily criticized, e.g., by Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: Chicago University Press). Factor, Lance R. 1996. Peirce’s definition of metaphor and its consequences. In Vincent Colapietro & Thomas Olshewsky (eds.), Peirce’s doctrine (...) of signs: Theory, applications, and connections, 229–235. Berlin/new York: Mouton De Gruyter, as one of very few scholars, makes a comparison between Peirce and Aristotle. Factor claims that Peirce’s definition of metaphor and its consequences undermine and overturn Aristotle’s theory. We do not believe that Factor is right; and this is due to Factor’s misinterpretation of key elements within Aristotle’s theory. We rather believe that Peirce and Aristotle, in fact, have central ideas in common concerning metaphor; perhaps, in particular, when it comes to the function of metaphor. Hence, both see, for example, metaphor as a cognitive mechanism. The article tries to develop this argument. (shrink)