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Table of Contents The Stockholm 2012Metaphor Festival September 6–8
Table of Contents
Abstracts: Plenary Speakers
Patrick Hanks The Roles and Structure of Comparisons, Similes, and
Metaphors in Natural Language (An Analogical System) 5
Bo Pettersson Towards an Integrated Account of Metaphor and Narrative
in Literature 6
Abstracts: Presentations
Larisa Alekseeva The Role of Metaphor in Science 9
Larisa Alekseeva &
Natalia Shutemova
The Model of Concept-Building Metaphor
10
Christina Alm-Arvius &
Annelie Ädel
Figurative and Non-figurative Aspects of Polysemy in the
Word Language 11
Daan Andriessen The Use of Metaphors in Organizational Change
Interventions 12
Natalia Bagdavadze T he Stylistic Value of Landscape in James Joyce’s
Dubliners 13
Anneli Baran On the Role of Phraseology in Online Media 14
Ewa Bogdanowska-
Jakubowska Metaphors of OLD AGE in Polish
16
Parthena
Charalampidou
Verbo-pictorial Metaphor and Website Localisation: A
cultural approach to the transfer of persuasive
multisemiotic texts to the Greek locale 17
Marzena Chojnowska A Musical Journey – Figurative language in folk singing
instruction 18
Nino Daraselia Water Imagery in Charles Dickens’ Works 19
Izabela Dixon The Metaphoricity of Folk Sayings: Luck, peril and evil in
idioms, proverbs and the language of superstitions 21
Catrinel Haught On the Relation between Metaphors and Similes:
Differences in interpretation and cognitive processing 23
Ekaterina Isaeva &
Svetlana L. Mishlanova
Computer Viruses: Conceptualization and Metaphorical
Modeling 24
Table of Contents The Stockholm 2011Metaphor Festival September 8–10
2
Stina Jelbring Metaphor in Classical Japanese Poetry and Poetics 25
Anna Kissin Shechter Sir Philip Sidney’s Rhetoric of Becoming 26
Marcelyn Oostendorp Jacob Zuma and 50 cent: Blending the local and the global
in South African cartoons 28
Kathryn O'Shields Understanding is a Dream: Linguistics, Language
Philosophy, and Metaphor 29
Hilla Peled-Shapira The Use of Imagery from the Animal Kingdom as a Device
for Coping with Despotic Rule and for Breaking
Conventions 30
Tatiana Prisyazhnyuk The Study of Conceptual Metaphors and Cognitive Images
as Means of Representing the Norm-Value Segment of the
Media-Picture of the World 31
Boris Roginskiy Suffocation as a Metaphor in Russian Literature of the
1920s 32
Harri Sarpavaara &
Anja Koski-Jännes
The Conceptual Metaphor CHANGE IS A JOURNEY in
Motivational Counseling Sessions with Substance Abusers 33
Natalya Shutemova The Figurative Language of Poetry in Translation 34
Elena Siminiciuc Defining Irony from a Pragmatic Perspective: Echo,
pretense or paradox? 35
Mohammad Amin
Sorahi
A Contrastive Study of the Conceptualization of Love and
Fear in Persian and English 36
Gerard Steen Metaphorical Framing and Discourse Comprehension:
Deliberateness, consciousness, and other issues 37
Natalya I. Stolova Conceptual Metaphors: Between Universal and Language-
Specific 38
Joanna Szczepańska-
Włoch
Complex and Value-Laden or Tangible and Self-Evident?
Metaphor in political discourse 40
Luciana Sabina Tcaciuc
Giving the Helicopter Money a Haircut: Translating
metaphors in economic documents of the European Central
Bank 41
Paraskevi Thomou The Interface of Language Structure and Cognition in
Metaphor Research: Evidence from Modern Greek
43
Stavroula Varella Etymology, Figures of Speech and Lexical Creativity 44
Cate Watson Satire, Sarcasm and Irony for the Social Sciences: An
illustrated talk 45
Jeroen Wittink Metaphor and Real-Life, Organisational Behaviour 46
Table of Contents The Stockholm 2011Metaphor Festival September 8–10
3
Abstracts: Workshop on Figurative Language in Nineteenth-Century
Prose (in honor of the Dickens Bicentennial)
Leona Toker Workshop Introduction 48
Session 1
Amir Yahav Between a Bull and a Figure: Nationalism, Figurative
Language, and An Essay on Irish Bulls 49
Elana Gomel A City of Two Tales: Metaphor, Diegesis, and World-
Construction in Barnaby Rudge 50
Jason Finch Places as Things? Metonymy and the London Localities of
Dombey and Son 51
Session 2
Marion Wajngot Agnes as the Sacrificial Lamb in Dickens’s David Copperfield
and Thackeray’s The Adventures of Philip 52
Leona Toker Hypallage and the Literalization of Metaphors in a Dickens
Text 53
Garrett Stewart “So Far Figurative”: The Troping of Word and Syntax in Our
Mutual Friend 54
Abstracts: Workshop on Linguistic and Conceptual Metaphors
And Their Relations
Gerard Steen Workshop Introduction 55
Session 1
Anne Päivärinta Impaired Embodiment as Theme and Theory: Dylan Thomas’s
War Elegies 56
Elena Negrea ‘The sinking euro’: An analysis of navigation metaphors in
the media coverage of the Eurocrisis 57
Nedas Jurgaitis Conceptual Metaphors in Lithuanian Public Discourse 58
Session 2
Skirmantė Šarkauskienė
& Saulė Juzelėnienė
Verbo-pictorial (Multimodal) Conceptual Metaphors in the
Discourse of Lithuanian Advertisements 59
Norunn Askeland Metaphors of Truth in an Unbelievable Trial. Journalist Kjetil
Østli as a case study on the use of direct and deliberate
metaphors in a personal essay about the trial of the terrorist
Anders Behring Breivik in Oslo District Court, spring 2012 60
Mariangela Albano Fixed Metaphors in Christa Wolf’s Novel Kassandra
and in its Italian and French Translations 61
Table of Contents The Stockholm 2011Metaphor Festival September 8–10
4
Abstracts: Posters
Maria Anufrieva
“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”: A semantic
analysis of selected metaphors in The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock by T.S. Eliot 63
Amir Biglari The Semiotics of Metaphor 65
Susie Caruso A Linguistic and Conceptual Metaphor Analysis of Peace
Speeches 66
Ioannis Galantomos,
Dimitra Katsarou &
Georgia Andreou
The Understanding of Metaphors in Down Syndrome (DS):
A case study
67
Svetlana Mishlanova &
Nadezhda Zubareva
Metaphorical Picture in Traumatology
68
Campus Maps
Frescati Campus The main University campus, including the South House 70
The “South House” Södra huset: Where the Festival is being held 71
Plenaries The Stockholm 2012Metaphor Festival September 6–8
5
The Roles and Structure of Comparisons, Similes, and Metaphors in Natural
Language (An Analogical System)
Patrick Hanks
University of the West of England & University of Wolverhampton (UK)
This presentation is based on close empirical analysis of figurative language in the British
National Corpus and certain other texts, using the techniques of Corpus Pattern Analysis (CPA;
Hanks 2004; Hanks & Pustejovsky 2005; Hanks, in press). We focus on the communicative
function of figurative language, rather than on its conceptual function alone.
We start with metaphor. A vast literature on metaphor has been published in recent years,
much of it focusing on conceptual metaphors within the field of cognitive linguistics. My focus
instead, following Deignan, Stefanowitsch, and others, is on linguistic metaphors. What is the
justification for distinguishing metaphor from literal language? What is the relationship between
metaphor and linguistic/literary creativity? What is the relationship between metaphor, simile,
and other kinds of figurative language? The distinction between conceptual metaphor and
linguistic metaphor is examined, before we move on to similes.
With regard to similes, Donald Davidson famously argued that “All similes are trivially
true: everything is like everything else.” Is there anything in this, or is it simply a momentary
lapse on the part of a great philosopher? I shall argue that, in the first place, Davidson’s assertion
overlooks the essential difference between comparisons and similes; in the second place it
overlooks the factor of gradability: some things are more alike than others. This fact turns out to
be of considerable importance in understanding the nature of meaning in language. We shall
examine the relationships between similes and sets, and comparisons and sets, contrasting on the
one hand the linguistic structure of similes and comparisons and on the other that of metaphors
and literal declarative statements.
References:
Hanks, Patrick. In press.
—. 2004.
Hanks & Pustejovsky 2005.
——— ♦ ———
Plenaries The Stockholm 2012Metaphor Festival September 6–8
6
Towards an Integrated Account of Metaphor and Narrative in Literature
Bo Pettersson
University of Helsinki (Finland)
In cognitive studies as well as cognitive literary studies there are two central views of human
cognition: according to one explanation, we think in figurative – especially metaphorical – ways
(Lakoff & Johnson, Gibbs, etc.), while the other stance holds that thought is basically narrative
(Bruner, Damasio, etc.). I suggest that such a division is not tenable and thus that it is about time
to study the multifaceted modes of human cognition. That is, despite popular accounts to the
contrary, there simply is not a way of thinking, but remarkably complex ways of thought. This is
especially evident in literature, which David Lodge memorably has termed “a record of human
consciousness, the richest and most comprehensive we have”. In this paper I try to show how
figurative language, especially metaphor and symbol, is intertwined with narrative and provide a
host of examples from lyrical poetry to novels to corroborate my argument. I go on to offer an
“account” rather than a theory per se of how figurative language and narrative blend in complex
ways in literature.
Primary sources Baker, Nicholson. 1989 (1988). The Mezzanine. Cambridge: Granta.
Blake, William. 2009. The Complete Illuminated Books. London: Thames & Hudson.
—. 1977. The Complete Poems. Ostriker, Alicia (ed.). London: Penguin.
—. 1956 rpt. “The Sick Rose”, in Hayward, John (ed.), The Penguin Book of English Verse. Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 241.
Homer. 2006 (1996). The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. London: Penguin.
—. 1991 (1990). The Iliad. Trans. Robert Fagles. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Miller, Madeline. 2012 (2011). The Song of Achilles. London: Bloomsbury.
Mills, Magnus. 1999 (1998). The Restraint of Beasts. London: Flamingo.
Pound, Ezra. 1988 (1916). “In a Station of the Metro”, in Ellman, Richard & Robert O’Clair (eds), The Norton
Anthology of Modern Poetry, 2nd
ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 381.
Secondary sources Alm-Arvius, Christina. 2003. Figures of Speech. Lund, Sweden: Studentlitteratur.
Aristotle. 2001. Poetics [De poetica]. Trans. Ingram Bywater. In McKeon, Richard (ed.), The Basic Works of
Aristotle. New York: The Modern Library, 1453–1487.
—. 1991. The Art of Rhetoric [Rhetorica]. Trans. H. C. Lawson-Tancred. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Booth, Wayne. 1978. “Metaphor as Rhetoric: The Problem of Evaluation”, in Critical Inquiry 5: 1, 49–72.
Bruner, Jerome. 1986. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bruner, Jerome. 2003 (2002). Making Stories. Law, Literature, Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cassirer, Ernst. 1974 (1944). An Essay on Man. An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. New Haven:
Yale University Press.
Plenaries The Stockholm 2012Metaphor Festival September 6–8
7
Chatman, Seymour. 1990. Coming to Terms. The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Damasio, Antonio. 2000 (1999). The Feeling of What Happens. Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness.
London: William Heinemann.
Delany, Samuel R. 1971. “About Five Thousand One Hundred and Seventy Five Words”, in Clareson, Thomas (ed.),
SF: The Other Side of Realism. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 130–146.
Fletcher, Angus. 1964. Allegory. The Theory of a Symbolic Mode. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Gerrig, Richard J. 1993. Experiencing Narrative Worlds. On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven:
Yale University Press.
Halliwell, Stephen. 2002. The Aesthetics of Mimesis. Ancient Texts and Modern Problems. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Herman, David. 2009. Basic Elements of Narrative. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Jakobson, Roman. 1987 (1960). “Linguistics and Poetics”, in Jakobson, Roman, Language in Literature, Krystyna
Pomorska (ed.). Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 62–94.
Johansen, Jørgen Dines. 2002. Literary Discourse. A Semiotic-Pragmatic Approach to Literature. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
Kirby, John T. 1997. “Aristotle on Metaphor”, in American Journal of Philology, 118: 517–554.
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2010. Metaphor. A Practical Introduction, 2nd
ed. London: Oxford University Press.
Langer, Susanne K. 1988. Mind. An Essay on Human Feeling, abridged ed. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Levin, Samuel R. 1977. The Semantics of Metaphor. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lodge, David. 2002. Consciousness and the Novel. Connected Essays. London: Secker & Warburg.
Pettersson, Bo. In press–a. “Poetry under Erasure: Hypothetical Action in Blake, Dickinson and Eliot”, in Sell,
Roger, et al. (eds), Studies in Literary Communication. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
—. In press–b. “What Happens When Nothing Happens: Interpreting Narrative Technique in the Plotless Novels of
Nicholson Baker”, in Lehtimäki, Markku, Laura Karttunen & Maria Mäkelä (eds), Narrative, Interrupted:
The Plotless, the Disturbing and the Trivial in Literature. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
—. 2012. “Beyond Anti-Mimetic Models: A Critique of Unnatural Narratology”, in Isomaa, Saija, Sari Kivistö, Pirjo
Lyytikäinen, Sanna Nyqvist, Merja Polvinen & Riikka Rossi (eds), Rethinking Mimesis. Concepts and
Practices of Literary Representation. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 73–91.
—. 2011b. “An Invitation to Imagine: On the Significance of Imagination in Cognition, Literature and Literary
Studies”, in Haugom Olsen, Stein & Anders Pettersson (eds), Why Literary Studies? Raisons d’Être of a
Discipline. Oslo: Novus, 133–155.
—. 2011a. “Literary Criticism Writes Back to Metaphor Theory: Exploring the Relation between Extended Metaphor
and Narrative in Literature”, in Monika Fludernik (ed.), Beyond Cognitive Metaphor Theory: Perspectives on
Literary Metaphor. London: Routledge, 94–112.
—. 2010. “On the Interrelation of Genre and Mimesis, Especially in Science Fiction and Realist Fiction”, in
Lyytikäinen, Pirjo, Tintti Klapuri & Minna Maijala (eds), Genre and Interpretation. Helsinki: Department of
Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies and The Finnish Graduate School of Literary Studies, 90–
108.
—. 2005. “Afterword. Cognitive Literary Studies: Where to Go from Here”, in Veivo, Harri, Bo Pettersson & Merja
Polvinen (eds), Cognition and Literary Interpretation in Practice. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 307–322.
—. 2001. “On LIFE IS A JOURNEY as a Link between Analogy and Narrative”, in Gill, Martin et al. (eds), Language,
Learning, Literature. Studies Presented to Håkan Ringbom. English Department Publications 4. Åbo/Turku,
Finland: Åbo Akademi University, 199–214.
Ricoeur, Paul. 2003 (1977). The Rule of Metaphor. The Creation of Meaning in Language. Trans. Robert Czerny
with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello. London: Routledge. (Rev. ed. of the French original from
1975)
Plenaries The Stockholm 2012Metaphor Festival September 6–8
8
—. 1984 (1983). Time and Narrative. Volume 1. Trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
—. 1978. “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling”, in Critical Inquiry 5: 1, 143–159.
Schaeffer, Jean-Marie. 2010 (1999). Why Fiction? Trans. Dorrit Cohn. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Turner, Mark. 1996. The Literary Mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
Vaihinger, Hans. 2009 (1925). The Philosophy of ‘As if’. A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of
Mankind. Trans. C. K. Ogden. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.
Werth, Paul. 1999. Text Worlds. Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. Harlow, Essex: Longman.
——— ~ ———
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
9
The Role of Metaphor in Science
Larisa Alekseeva
Perm State National Research University (Russia)
There are several reasons for the investigation of scientific metaphor. The first is that science is a
dynamically unstable equilibrium system [Vladimir Vernadsky]. This results in the fact that
scientific hypotheses, which form the contents of science, obtain a metaphorical character. The
second reason is connected with the following: The main function of a scientific text is to
produce new knowledge, verbalized by means of cognitive metaphors. For this reason, it is
necessary to study the ways of knowledge transfer with the help of metaphors. Modern views of
metaphor, developed primarily on the grounds of anthropocentrism, provide us with the
opportunity for a more intensive study of metaphor, which presupposes links with human
consciousness and cognition.
This presentation shows the results of the investigation of scientific metaphor, aiming to
study the role of concept-building metaphors in the language of science. Its main task is to
demonstrate how metaphors convey cognitive information and a new understanding of
theoretically relevant analogies between old and new knowledge. In this sense, a concept-
building metaphor may be viewed as a special mnemonic device and as a means which helps us
grasp the essence of the object under research.
It appears that concept-building metaphors satisfy at least three criteria: dialogical,
intellectual and hypothetical characteristics of scientific knowledge. We regard dialogism as a
specific typological feature of concept-building metaphors, one which helps, on the one hand, to
acquire new scientific knowledge quickly (it shortens the way to a new idea), while on the other
hand turning the addressee into a partner in the act of scientific communication. The second and
the third criteria are linked with the following: A concept-building metaphor is realized as a
means of providing intellectual tension. In our view, scientific communication is not a simple act
of knowledge transfer, since the main function of the scientific metaphor is not only to provide
fixation and storage of new knowledge, but also knowledge generation. Moreover, a concept-
building metaphor has a hypothetical aspect, enabling us to regard metaphor as a perfect vehicle
for the reporting of new knowledge.
The results of the study will shed light on metaphor usage in scientific communication
involving intellectual abilities.
——— ♦ ———
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
10
The Model of Concept-Building Metaphor
Larisa Alekseeva & Natalia Shutemova
Perm State National Research University (Russia)
[email protected]; [email protected]
Modelling the process of metaphorization, which is hidden from direct observation due to its
deep and intellectual character (Earl R. MacCormac 1976), is a highly productive research
method. The traditional view of metaphor regarded it as a surface process of semantic
interchange and as the tip of a submerged model (Black 1980). For this reason, the model of
metaphor contained two elements and looked like this: x is y, where x is the primary object and y
is a secondary object used as a means of cognition. There is also a three-element model: s→ p→
r (Searle 1985), where s is a subject, p is a predicate and r is a referent. The speaker constructs
the utterance: s is p, having in mind that s is r. This means that the speaker actually does more
than simply prescribing to s the qualities of r.
In our view, concept-building metaphor is characterised by deductive, cognitive and
probabistic features. In this sense, the model of metaphor is determined by the answers to the
questions of how metaphor works in the language of science and what its mechanism is.
Answering the first question, we should stress that traditional conceptions of metaphor
considered it as a simile, i.e. as a trope of resemblance. That resulted in the assumption that
referential relation between the referents of metaphor was entirely constituted by the equality or
predicate substitution. We share the view that the concept-building metaphor transfers scientific
knowledge and generates new knowledge. What is more, metaphor here results from
juxtaposition of the old and new knowledge. The answer to the second question gives us the
possibility of considering metaphor while taking into consideration the peculiarity of referent
links. We construct a four-element model which reflects the process of generation of a new pair
of similar relations. In this model, we observe the following principles: multicomponent, two-
level, similarity.
This research contributes to current discussion of scientific metaphor by taking a new
perspective in attempting to model a very important component of the scientific process in order
to investigate its nature.
——— ♦ ———
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
11
Figurative and Non-figurative Aspects of Polysemy in the Word Language
Christina Alm-Arvius¹ & Annelie Ädel²
¹Stockholm University, ²Dalarna University (Sweden)
[email protected]; [email protected]
Proficient speakers of a language ordinarily agree on what can be considered a word – in
linguistic terminology, a lexeme – in spite of it being used to express distinguishable meanings;
that is, in spite of it being polysemously varied in naturally-occurring communication. More
specifically, polysemy occurs when uses of a lexeme or a constructional pattern can express
meanings which are different, yet related. The present study examines the polysemous variation
of the English lexeme language, in particular the different uses of this noun along the gradable
figurative–non-figurative dimension. The analysis is based on an empirical material of just over
1,000 tokens from the British National Corpus, representing 5% of the total instances of
language(s) in the corpus.
Applying the analytical framework of Alm-Arvius (2011a; b), the study aims to define
figurative vs. non-figurative uses in a clear, explicit, and empirically well-founded way, which
also allows valid descriptions of the various sub-categories relating to the general figurative–non-
figurative distinction within the polysemous spectrum of language identified in the corpus
material. In fact, the analyses of the language tokens show that there is a continuum from
prototypical literal senses over various domain-specific uses of a synecdochic-like kind to more
outright figurative extensions that can be described as metaphorical. A noticeable aspect of the
polysemous spectrum of language is thus the many domain-specific uses which cannot quite be
said to realise the general literal and prototypical uncountable (as in human verbal language) and
countable (as in different Romance languages) senses of the noun – even if they cannot be
described as figurative, either. Their occurrence in the polysemy profile of language probably
reflects the complexity of the denotative range of this noun, which is no doubt a consequence of
the multi-faceted importance of language capacities and communication for humans and human
societies in general.
This analysis and explanations of the nature of distinguishable types of meaning shifts in
the use of language should also contribute to our understanding of the general potential for
polysemy variation, not only in English but also in other languages. Moreover, the polysemy
spectrum revealed in the study will be compared to the presentation of language senses in a
number of dictionaries, resulting in a constructive discussion concerning how the semantic
potential of language can most adequately be represented lexicographically.
Keywords: domain-specific uses, metaphor, polysemy, polysemy spectrum, synecdoche
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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References:
Ädel, Annelie. (To appear). “‘Not one word of it made any sense’: Hyperbolic synecdoche in the British National
Corpus”, in Alm-Arvius, Christina, Nils-Lennart Johannesson & David Minugh, Selected Papers from The
2010 Stockholm Metaphor Festival. Stockholm University, Department of English.
Alm-Arvius, Christina. 2011a. “Polysemy: conventional and incidental cases,” in Bączkowska, Anna & Małgorzata
Święcicka (eds), Linguistics Applied 4. Bydgoszcz, Poland: University of Kazimierz Wielki Press, 11–36.
http://www.linguisticsapplied.pl/
—. 2011b. “Poeticity and Iconicity in the Discourse Functions of Figures of Speech”, in Alm-Arvius, Christina, Nils-
Lennart Johannesson & David Minugh (eds), Selected Papers from The 2008 and 2009 Stockholm Metaphor
Festivals. Stockholm University, Department of English, 95–137.
www.english.su.se/research/metaphorfestival
—. 2003. Figures of Speech. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
—. 1993. (Photocopy version 1991.) The English Verb See: A study in multiple meaning. Gothenburg Studies in
English 64. Göteborg, Sweden: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.
Goddard, Cliff. 2010. The Lexical Semantics of Language (with special reference to words). Language Sciences
33:1, 40–57. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000110000197
Hanks, Patrick. 2000. “Do Word Meanings Exist?,” in Computers and the Humanities 34. Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 205–215.
——— ♦ ———
The Use of Metaphors in Organizational Change Interventions
Daan Andriessen
Inholland University of Applied Science (The Netherlands)
This paper is about the use of metaphor in organization science and organizational change. It
describes the case of a workshop in which metaphors are used as part of an organizational change
program. The paper describes the interventions used in the workshop and the impact these had on
the participants. In organizational science a debate has been going on for a number of years about
the role of metaphor in organizations and organizational theory (Cornelissen 2004, 2005; Morgan
1997; Oswick & Grant 1996).
Three strands can be identified in research on metaphors in organisations. The first strand
analyses the use of metaphors in organisational texts and speech. A second strand looks at the
role of metaphor in organisational theory (Cornelissen & Kafouros 2008). A third strand of
research is looking for ways to use metaphors in interventions in organizations (Andriessen 2008;
Moser 2004). Here, the idea is that the aim of organizational research is to improve
organizational reality. Metaphors may be a useful new tool in this endeavor. Introducing specific
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
13
metaphors into an organizational discourse may help improve the quality of the conversation and
thereby the quality of the intervention.
The paper describes the case of a strategic planning workshop at a water company in The
Netherlands. Metaphors were used in two ways. First, the researcher analyzed existing documents
as to their metaphorical content. Findings were discussed with the participants during the
workshop. Second, participants were asked to come up with new metaphors for their organization
by making pictures depicting the desired strategic direction. These were discussed with the
participants.
References
Andriessen, Dan. 2008. “Stuff or Love; How metaphors direct our efforts to manage knowledge in organisations”, in
Knowledge Management Research and Practice, 6(1): 5–12.
Cornelissen, J. 2004. 2005. Beyond compare: Metaphor in organization theory. Academy of Management Review,
30(4): pp. 751–764.–726.
—. What Are We Playing at? Theatre, Organization, and the Use of Metaphor. Organization Studies, 25(5): pp. 705
Cornelissen, J. & M. Kafouros, 2008. “Metaphors and Theory Building in Organization Theory: What determines the
impact of a metaphor on theory?”, in British Journal of Management, 19: 365–379.
Morgan, G. 1997. Images of Organization. Sage: London.
Moser, K. 2004. “The Role of Metaphors in Acquiring and Transmitting Knowledge”, in Fischer, M., N. Boreham &
B Nyhan (eds), European Perspectives on Learning at Work: The acquisition of work process knowledge.
Office for Official Publications of the European Communities: Luxembourg, 148–163.
Oswick, C. & D. Grant. 1996. “The Organization of Metaphors and the Metaphors of Organization: Where are we
and where do we go from here?”, in Grant, D. & C. Oswick (eds), Metaphor and Organizations. Sage:
London.
——— ♦ ———
The Stylistic Value of Landscape in James Joyce’s Dubliners.
Natalia Bagdavadze
Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Georgia)
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the stylistic value of Landscape in James Joyce’s
Dubliners. Drawing upon a critical analysis of the literary, historic, religious and cultural
dimensions of Joyce’s contemporary Ireland, the paper provides a new perspective on the
landscape in Dubliners.
The landscapes in Dubliners are not confined to the simple role of a background. Realistic
urban depictions comprise jostling streets, elaborate architectural elements, broad vistas, a wide
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
14
palette of colours, and acoustic effects. However, these external details have a deeper symbolic
meaning. A great deal more is left to the imagination of the reader through deliberate gaps and
allusive phrases. For instance, the portraits of buildings and monuments, which are supposed to
evoke pride, unexpectedly emerge as “menacing” symbols of colonial oppression, or embody
oblique figures of frustration submerged into the heaviness of the landscape.
This paper also argues that the landscape contributes to forming an epiphany, the stylistic
device and symbolic literary technique that Joyce exploits to construct the collection. It is also
shown how the existential moments central to the characters’ lives coincide with the perception
of the landscapes, the way they are – disappointing (Araby), silent (The Dead), empty and wintry
(The Painful Case). These moments of characters’ profound insights – that reality cannot ever
match expectations – come in dark and dreary places, where protagonists lose hope of escaping
or changing anything. The landscape provides definition, leads to and at times is absorbed in
multiple epiphanies, exposing Dublin as a city of submissiveness and apathy.
Finally, this research claims that Joyce’s landscape turns into a symbolic ground for reality
that reveals the eternal existential question – what is the point of striving and living at all?
Key words: James Joyce’s “Dubliners”, landscape, stylistic value, epiphany
References:
Fairhall, J. 1993. James Joyce and the Question of History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kenner, H. 1979. Joyce's Voices, University of California Press.
Joyce, J. 1996. Dubliners, Penguin Books.
O'Neill, W. Myth and Identity in Joyce's Fiction: Disentangling the image - James Joyce, Twentieth Century
Literature, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0403/is_n3_v40/ai_16736315/pg_7/?tag=content;col1,
20.03.2012, 6.50 pm
Spurr, D. 2000. “Colonial Spaces in Joyce’s Dublin”, in James Joyce Quarterly 37: 1/2, Dublin and the Dubliners,
Fall, 1999 – Winter, 2000.
Stockwell, P. 2002. Cognitive Poetics: An introduction. London: Routledge.
——— ♦ ———
On the Role of Phraseology in Online Media
Anneli Baran
Estonian Literary Museum (Estonia)
This presentation will concentrate on the connections between phraseology and politicial rhetoric
in Estonian online media. It is obvious that the Internet offers numerous opportunities for
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
15
researching into figurative language – the fast and convenient environment of the digital media
has created the means to react quickly to daily events. The desire to be first is the main reason
why journalists more than ever use expressive language, including metaphors. As a consequence,
expressive sayings that formerly were restricted to oral language have now found their way into
the daily news, which had previously used dry wording. The creative use of expressions, even if
they are perceived as inappropriately used, leads to rather unexpected results. Which factors
motivate a journalist’s use of figurative expressions? In the Estonian media we can easily find
examples from the editorial sections of the online press and news portals that are chock-full of
stunningly expressive sayings, giving rise to heated polemics and even court cases, resulting in
their opponents whining about the unreliability of journalism in our day.
One reason for such a general tendency lies in the influential role of the so-called new
media, especially social media. Politicians often use the social web as an opportunity to express
their independent opinions, and it is not unusual for them to use figurative expressions in their
speech. And journalism “simply” refers to their utterances, laying them out before their readers in
another context. How might such activities of political figures and journalists impact upon their
readers? Can we infer that there exist correlations between media language and the attitudes of
the people as an electorate? It is obvious that the so-called new type of contextualisation taking
place in virtual reality should be given increased attention. The most intriguing question is related
to the culturally specific character of such kinds of social interaction and language use.
Keywords: phraseology, Internet, social media, journalism, politicians
References:
Crystal, David. 2006. Language and the Internet. Cambridge: CUP.
Dynel, Marta. 2012. “Contemporary Political Humour”, in Brzozowska, Dorota & Wladyslaw Chlopicki
(eds), Polish Humour. Humour and Culture 2, Krakow: tertium, 437–449.
Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. 2002. “A New Look at Literal Meaning in Understanding What is Said and
Implicated”, in Journal of Pragmatics, 34:4, 457–486.
Kress, Gunther. 2003. Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge.
Shifman, Limor. 2007. “Humor in the Age of Digital Reproduction”, in International Journal of
Communication 1, 187–209.
Shifman, Limor & Mike Thelwall. 2009. “Assessing Global Diffusion with Web Memetics: The spread and
evolution of a popular joke”, in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and
Technology 60:12, 2567–2576.
——— ♦ ———
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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Metaphors of OLD AGE in Polish
Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska
University of Silesia (Poland)
Traditionally, Poles value interdependence, reciprocal obligations, family, friendship, intimacy,
emotionality, hospitality, modesty and respect for the elderly, and have a strong need for
inclusion and approval, especially from significant others.
However, following on the political, economic and social transformations which took place
in Poland after 1989, there can be observed a gradual axiological shift in Polish culture. This was
mainly caused by Poland’s opening to the West, especially to American culture. Poles have
borrowed mainstream Western values and assimilated elements of Western lifestyle. For
example, success, especially financial success, has become one of the most important aims of
life; individualism, independence, freedom of choice and greater mobility have become the main
lifestyle categories for the young Polish generation, while the most important traditional Polish
values, such as honour, patriotism and respect for the elderly, have lost their primary position in
the hierarchy (Bogdanowska-Jakubowska, 2010). Due to these changes, the elderly have lost their
superior position within the family.
The aim of the study is:
to investigate how the Polish language renders these changes, in particular the axiological
shift concerning the elderly and respect for them.
to analyse metaphors of OLD AGE existing in Polish culture and language, and see
whether the changes have influenced them, as well.
to seek to identify the old (which is deeply rooted in Polish tradition) and the new (which
is borrowed or results from the changes in Polish social relations) in Polish OLD AGE
metaphors.
The concept of OLD AGE and OLD AGE metaphors will be presented and analysed within
the theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987, 1993).
The data for the analysis will come from the PWN Corpus of Polish (http://korpus.pwn.pl) and
observation.
References
Bogdanowska-Jakubowska, Ewa. 2010. FACE. An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Katowice: Wydawnictwo
Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.
Lakoff, George. 1993. The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor”, in Ortony, Andrew (ed.), Metaphor and Thought.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 202–251.
—. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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Verbo-pictorial Metaphor and Website Localisation: A cultural approach to
the transfer of persuasive multisemiotic texts to the Greek locale
Parthena Charalampidou
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
This paper aims at observing and analysing the way verbo-pictorial metaphor and its persuasive
function are transferred to English, French and Greek locales in the framework of international
corporate website localisation. More specifically, the study attempts to identify the adaptation
techniques that are adopted by localisers with reference to verbo-pictorial metaphors when
addressing a Greek audience, in comparison to those selected in the English and French context.
The theoretical framework on which the analysis is based consists of the conceptual approach to
metaphors, as developed by Lakoff & Johnson (1980), as well as of Relevance Theory (Sperber
& Wilson 1986), which allows for the comparative examination of different interpretations of
meaning, depending on the receivers’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
Moreover, in an attempt to examine the synergy of various semiotic systems (language,
image, colour) in metaphorical meaning-making, various relevant examples will be analysed
using the grammar of image and colour (Lakoff & Johnson 1996, 2002) as our basic analytical
tool. Through this analysis, Greek users’ cultural characteristics, as well as the ideological
framework in which website localisation takes place, may be expected to be revealed.
Additionally, by examining the frequency of occurrence for the various adaptation
techniques adopted, we will attempt to reveal the general adaptation strategy by which localisers’
adaptation decisions are defined. To this end the translational theory of Skopos will be adopted.
Keywords: corporate website localisation, verbo-pictorial metaphor transfer, multisemiotic text
analysis, adaptation strategy of loyalty, adaptation techniques, cultural parameters
References:
Chesterman, A. 2000. “A Causal Model for Translation Studies”, in Olohan, M. (ed.), Intercultural Faultlines:
Research models in translation studies. Manchester: St Jerome.
Deslisle, J., H. Lee-Jahnke & M.C. Cormier. 2008. Ορολογία της Μετάφρασης. Μετάφραση από τα Αγγλικά Γ.
Φλώρος. Αθήνα: Μεσόγειος.
Forceville, C. 2009. Cybercourse on Pictorial and Multimodal Metaphor Website.
http://www.semioticon.com/people/forceville.htm (10.02.2010).
Gambier, Y. & E. Suomela-Salmi. 2007. “Sites web universitaires: un genre à explorer?” [University Web Sites: A
Genre Worth Exploring?], in: Vargas, E., V. Rey & A. Ciacomi (eds), Pratiques sociales et didactiques des
langues. Etudes offertes à Claude Vargas. Publications de l’Université de Provence, 245–264.
Γραμμενίδης, Σ. 2009. Μεταφράζοντας τον κόσμο του Άλλου: Θεωρητικοί προβληματισμοί-Λειτουργικές προοπτικές.
Αθήνα: Εκδόσεις Δίαυλος.
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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Gutt, E. A. 2000. “Issues of Translation Research in the Inferential Paradigm of Communication”, in Olohan, M.
(ed.), Intercultural Faultlines: Research models in translation studies. Manchester: St Jerome.
Hofstede, G. 1991. Cultures and Organisations: Software of the mind. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Janoschka, A. 2004. Web Advertising: New forms of communication on the Internet. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kövecses, Z. 2005. Metaphor in Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kress, G. & T. van Leeuwen. 2002. “Colour as a Semiotic Mode: Notes for a grammar of colour”, in Visual
Communication, 1:3, 343–368.
—. 1996. Reading Images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge.
Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson. 2003 (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Myers, G. 1999. Ad Worlds: Brands, media, audiences. London: Hodder Arnold.
Newmark, P. 1980. “The Translation of Metaphor”, in Babel, XXVI:2, 93–100.
Nord, C. 1991. Text Analysis in Translation. Theory, Methodology and Didactic Applications for Translation-
Oriented Text Analysis. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Reiss, K. 2000 (1971). Translation Criticism–The Potentials & Limitations, transl. E. Rhodes. Manchester: St.
Jerome.
Schäffner, C. 2004. “Metaphor and Translation: Some implications of a cognitive approach”, in Journal of
Pragmatics 36, 1253–1269.
Sperber, D. & D. Wilson. 1995 (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition (1st and 2
nd eds). Oxford:
Blackwell.
Toury, G. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Van den Broeck, R. 1981. “The Limits of Translatability Exemplified by Metaphor Translation”, in Poetics Today 2,
73–87.
——— ♦ ———
A Musical Journey – Figurative language in folk singing instruction
Marzena Chojnowska
University of Gdańsk, Poland
Traditional folk songs, in spite of being gradually forgotten over the years, are now being
rediscovered. Artists all over the world are reaching out to their musical roots and reinventing the
traditional melodies, making them modern and current.
One outcome of this situation is the availability of workshops devoted to traditional folk
music. During such workshops, the artists communicate in a complex metaphoric system which,
when aided by technical terms, helps them to more precisely discuss both the texture of the music
and the sounds. Music is the means of expression closest to emotions, and—much as in the case
of emotions—figurative language is necessary to discuss it. Regardless of whether one works
with the voice or instruments, musical instruction has to address many factors concerning musical
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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production. By resorting to metaphors, we are able to address most issues while referring to a
single conceptualization.
The subject of this paper is the language used during workshops of śpiewbiały (“white
singing”), a traditional vocal technique. The material was gathered during four sessions of
WarsztatyŚpiewuBiałego (Workshops of white singing) in Sopot, Poland. The four sessions were
conducted by four different instructors, two of whom worked on Polish traditional songs, while
the remaining two dealt with songs from the Balkans.The figurative linguistic expressions
gathered from the meetings have been analyzed and grouped according to target domains, the
four most prominent ones being SOUND, MELODY, NOTE, BREATH. Among the many source
domains available, it was ascertained that JOURNEY and OBJECT were the most popular choices.
For example, you can get lost in the melody (gubićsię w melodii), it has a point of departure
(punktwyjścia), or it can be cut (pociąć). Due to the complexity of the material collected, the
methodology utilized during the investigation into the language includes not only Conceptual
Metaphor and Metonymy Theories, but also Blending Theory and Axiology.
——— ♦ ———
Water Imagery in Charles Dickens’ Works
Nino Daraselia
Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Georgia)
This paper examines samples of water imagery in Charles Dickens’ works, analyzing them from
the standpoints of stylistics (Leech 2007, Natadze 1989, Toolan 1988, 2008) and cognitive
linguistics (Kövecses 2008, Lakoff 1993, Lakoff & Johnson 1980, Stockwell 2005).
It has been observed that in many of his novels Dickens employs various types of water
images for the following purposes:
1. A water image (well/fountain/river/rivulet/sea, channel/canal/marshes, etc.) is an essential
(quite often central) element, the relevant stroke in a Dickensian landscape, determining the
overall mood of a particular scene, heightening suspense or forming the ground for the figures
of a novel.
2. Different representations of water acquire a symbolic value, metaphorical load, and serve
as the basis for the plot structure of a specific novel. In some instances the ground and the
figure merge, producing a new figure; this is the case in “A Tale of Two Cities,” where
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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individuals referred to as unknowable still waters form groups of discontent people identified
with whispering fountains and gradually transform into crowds of revolting people identified
as a whirlpool of boiling waters/a destructive sea/ocean or a deluge.
3. Dickens invokes archetypal conceptual metaphors of water; the recurrent conceptual
metaphors are LIFE IS A RIVER and TIME IS A FLOWING RIVER. Sometimes the two metaphors
are invoked simultaneously, as in David Copperfield (Chapter XVIII) and Dombey and Son
(Chapter XVI).
4. Objects are characterized via the terms of the water domain.
The image of the River Thames, one of the sources of Dickens’ inspiration, is of particular
interest: the Thames is depicted in many of Dickens’ novels; many of his characters live, work
and die by “the great river”. It can be said that the image of the Thames, its relevance for
Dickens’ characters, and, presumably, for Dickens himself, triggers the usage of the above-
mentioned archetypal conceptual metaphors LIFE IS A RIVER and TIME IS A FLOWING RIVER.
Keywords: water imagery, conceptual metaphor, Dickens’ works
References:
Dickens, Charles. Complete Works. www.dickens.literature.com
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2008. “Universality and Variation in the Use of Metaphor”, in Johannesson, Nils-Lennart & David
C. Minugh (eds), Selected Papers from the 2006 and 2007 Stockholm Metaphor Festivals. Stockholm:
Stockholm University.
Lakoff, George. 1993. “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor”, in Ortony, Andrew (ed.), Metaphor and Thought.
Cambridge: CUP.
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Leech, Geoffrey. 2007. “Style in Fiction Revisited: The beginning of Great Expectations,” in Style, 41:2, 117-132.
Natadze, Maya. 1989. Problems of Stylistic Theory (in Russian). Tbilisi: Tbilisi University Press.
Robison, Roselee. 1972. “Time, Death and the River in Dickens’ Novels”, in English Studies 53:5, 436-454.
Stockwell, Peter. 2005. Cognitive Poetics: An introduction. London: Routledge.
Toker, Leona. 2006/2007. “Decadence and Renewal in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend”, in Connotations, 16:1-3, 48-
59.
Toolan, Michael. 2008. “Narrative Progression in the Short Story: First steps in a corpus stylistics approach,” in
Narrative, 16:2 (May 2008). Ohio State University Press.
—. 1988. Narrative. A Critical Linguistic Introduction. London: Routledge.
——— ♦ ———
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
21
The Metaphoricity of Folk Sayings: Luck, peril and evil in idioms,
proverbs and the language of superstitions
Izabela Dixon
Koszalin University of Technology (Poland)
Language lends insight into the human mind and its dense conceptual network. It also aids the
mind in creating new intricate connections through human experience and perception of the
world. Knowledge also plays a significant part in this process, as it facilitates understanding of
experiences which are later categorised and stored.
When formal learning was restricted to a small, elite minority, those who had access to
knowledge wielded power over those who were unlettered. The ignorance of people deprived of
understanding of the more complex aspects of life rendered them defenceless against those who
preyed on their fears. Consequently, superstition thrived. From the dark ages, language has
inherited idioms and folk wisdoms which are particularly strongly founded in religion, taboos,
evil and fear.
Linguistically, superstition is an abstract noun bound to such abstract concepts as luck,
fortune, peril, death, evil and the supernatural. Remnants of spells, charms, curses and blessings
have survived in language up to the present time. For example, there exist a relatively large
number of expressions relating to luck, among which to break one's leg, to cross one's fingers or
to have a lucky charm feature prominently. Generally, folk sayings which result from
superstitions can be placed in several categories involving objects, gestures, body parts, feelings
or intuition, and words or chants. Many figurative expressions are axiologically charged as
positive (RIGHT, STRAIGHT, CLEAN, HONEST, HEALTHY) or negative (LEFT, CORRUPT,
DIRTY, DISHONEST, ILL). The promise of 'heavenly blessings' and the threat of 'hell fire', are
bound to the domains of HEAVEN and HELL, which correspond to a RIGHT-LEFT orientation
(Krzeszowski, 1997), a bipolar valuation being common in folk tradition.
The purpose of this study is to bring into view a range of verbal expressions, sayings, and
proverbs which reflect people's perception of evil, deceit, mortality, risk, wrongdoing and luck.
The paper will explore the conceptual structure of those expressions and, where appropriate, their
symbolic nature. It will be argued that the proverbs, idioms, and figures of speech under
consideration have their origin in the superstitious outlook of ordinary people, which goes back to
pagan or early Christian times. The language of those expressions is highly metaphorical, since
abstract ideas encourage abstract conceptualisations. The methodology for the study will be
founded in ICM, CMT and BT, and embedded in cultural linguistics.
Keywords: superstition, metaphors, idioms, proverbs, luck, peril
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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References:
Barcelona, Antonio (ed.). 2003. Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crosswords. Berlin: Mouton de Grutyer.
Becker, Udo (ed.). 1994. The Element Encyclopedia of Symbols. Shaftesbury: Element Books Limited.
Benson, Morton, Evelyn Benson & Robert Ilson. 1990. The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English: A guide to
word combinations. Warszawa: PWN-Polish Scientific Publishers.
Berger, Allan. 2011. “The Evil Eye – An Ancient Superstition”, in Journal Of Religion and Health. DOI:
10.1007/s10943-011-9493-5, Springer.
Chetwynd, Tom. 1982. The Dictionary of Symbols. London: Granada Publishing Limited.
Ferguson, Rosalind. 1983. The Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Good News Bible with Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical Books. 1986 (1979). Swindon: Collins, The Bible Societies.
Glucksberg, Sam. 2001. Understanding Figurative Language: From metaphor to idioms.
Oxford: Oxford University Press US.
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2007 (2000). Metaphor and Emotion. Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
—. 2006. Language, Mind, and Culture: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Krzeszowski, Tomasz. 1997. Angels and Devils in Hell: Elements of axiology in semantics. Warszawa: "Energeia".
Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago:
Chicago University Press.
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western
thought. New York: Basic Books.
—. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
McCarthy, Michael & Felicity O’Dell. 2002. English Idioms in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nitschke, Sarah. 2010. Idioms of Fear: An Onomasiological Approach. Norderstedt: GRIN Verlag.
Potter, Carole. 1990. Touch Wood. London: Guild Publishing.
Radford, Edwin, Mona Augusta Radford. 2006 (1948). Encyclopaedia of Superstitions: A history of superstition.
London: Rider and Company.
Roud, Steve. 2003. The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland. London: Penguin Books.
Seidl, Jennifer & W. McMordie. English Idioms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thomas, Keith. 1997 (1971). Religion and the Decline of Magic. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Tsohatzidis, Savas. 1993. “Scenes and Frames for Orders and Threats”, in René Dirven & Roland W. Langacker
(eds.), Cognitive Linguistics Research 3, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 731-739.
Watcyn-Jones, Peter. 2000. Target Vocabulary 3. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
—. 1990 (2006). Test Your Idioms. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
Wright, Jon. 2002. Idioms Organiser: Organised by metaphor, topic and key word. Boston,
MA: Thompson Corporation.
——— ♦ ———
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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On the Relation between Metaphors and Similes:
Differences in interpretation and cognitive processing
Catrinel Haught
Rider University (USA)
Everyday language is permeated with metaphors, which are invaluable communication tools and
which have been described as bridges between two terms that belong to different conceptual
domains. The previous sentence alone contains several metaphors, each of which conveys a
message that we are able to understand without difficulty. But how do we process and derive
meaning from such figurative statements as “Metaphors are bridges” or “Some lawyers are
sharks?”
Five experiments addressed this question of how metaphors and similes are understood,
from a cognitive psychology perspective. Existing models propose different mechanisms for
metaphor comprehension. According to some of these models, metaphors such as Some lawyers
are sharks are understood as implicit similes, via a comparison process. According to other
models, metaphors are processed as categorization statements, with the vehicle term shark
referring to both a literal level, the marine creature with fins, and an abstract level, the class of
vicious, predatory creatures, of which the literal shark is a prototype. According to a third model,
the career of metaphor account, metaphors undergo a shift in processing from comparison to
categorization as they become conventionalized.
A critical assumption of the comparison and career of metaphor accounts is that similes and
metaphors convey the same meaning and are interchangeable. The studies reported here provide
evidence that speaks against this assumption. They show that some novel tropes, such as Some
lawyers are well-paid sharks, may be privileged in metaphor over simile form, and others, such
as Some lawyers are (like) old sharks, may express different interpretations in simile and in
metaphor form.
Princeton University undergraduate college students who were native speakers of English
participated in the experiments reported here. These empirical data show that some novel tropes
are preferred and understood faster in metaphor over simile form, and others may express
different interpretations in simile and in metaphor form. For example, the simile The lawyer was
are like an old shark was understood to mean that the lawyer was weak, tired, and less aggressive
because of his/her advanced age. However, the corresponding metaphor The lawyer was an old
shark was understood to mean that the lawyer was very shrewd, experienced, and competent.
These findings speak against the assumption that metaphors and similes are interchangeable, thus
providing support for the categorization model. A unifying account of the cognitive processes
underlying metaphor comprehension is proposed.
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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Computer Virus: Conceptualization and Metaphorical Modeling
Ekaterina Isaeva & Svetlana L. Mishlanova
Perm State National Research University (Russia)
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
This work is conducted as part of the cognitive-discursive paradigm of modern linguistics. The
article deals with the concept “computer virus.” Over the past few years the interest in computer
virology discourse analysis and conceptualization of special knowledge in the corresponding area
has increased, due to the spread of computer viruses and the rapid development of information
computer technologies. In this context, special attention should be paid to metaphorization as
being a powerful tool of special knowledge acquisition.
One of the most effective methods of studying the metaphorization process is constructing
metaphorical models that represent conceptual source domains and contain elements connected
by different relations (function, cause, example, etc.).
The aim of the present study is to build the metaphorical model of the concept “computer
virus”. To achieve this purpose, we have analyzed texts on computer virology (monographs,
scientific articles, computer expert reports, etc.) and studied several corpora which enabled us to
construct a concordance with the key lexical unit “virus”. The texts in the concordance were
chronologically divided into three periods, covering the main stages of computer virology
evolution. The periods were determined by the phases of computer technology development, i.e.
the creation of the electronic computer, the spread of PC and portable data media, and the
appearance of the World Wide Web.
The next step of the investigation was to find relations between the development of
computer virology and medical science. The study proved that the three stages of computer
virology evolution correlate to periods of medical reality, such as advances in genetics,
infectology and epidemiology.
The final step of the study was to construct a taxonomic metaphorical model of the concept
“computer virus” which includes the taxons “linguistics”, “manufacturing”, “habitation”, “war”,
“AIDS”, “biological weapons” and “criminality”.
As a result of the undertaken conceptual analysis and metaphorical modeling, possible
inferences about the existing tendency in the process of computer virus conceptualization were
made that contribute to creating a constructive platform for special knowledge acquisition and the
development of sophisticated methods for solving technical problems.
——— ♦ ———
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
25
Metaphor in Classical Japanese Poetry and Poetics
Stina Jelbring
Stockholm University (Sweden)
In classical Japanese poetry (waka) and poetics there is a common terminology using terms based
on position or form. One example is the makurakotoba (“pillow-word”), a form of epithet whose
name probably refers to the fact that a word was “put on top of” the word that it modified. This
device (and others) also includes a potential to create metaphor. On the other hand, functional
concepts, such as yu (metaphor, figure), hiyu (simile, metaphor) and names for poetical styles,
like soeuta (indirect style), nazuraeuta (comparative style) and tatoeuta (metaphorical style),
appear in for instance classical poetics. We may, following the expert on waka poetry, Suzuki
Hiroko, see matters as depending on the choice of terminology based on position/form or that
based on function — we may see advantages or disadvantages with either approach. By using
terms based on form or position, subtle functional variations may be discerned which might be
overlooked by the more general term yu, but by employing the term yu, we may see metaphorical
expressions in a conceptual and perceptive dimension.
In this paper we shall take a closer look at:
• the way metaphor is described in some poetics
• how metaphor is created in waka devices
As our point of departure we shall take Andrew Goatly’s definition of metaphor as
something that “…occurs when a unit of discourse is used to refer to an object, process, quality,
relationship or world to which it does not conventionally refer, or colligates with a unit(s) with
which it does not conventionally colligate; and when this unconventional act of reference or
colligation is understood on the basis of similarity or analogy involving at least two of the
following: the unit’s conventional referent; the unit’s actual unconventional referent; the actual
referent(s) of the unit’s actual colligate(s); the conventional referent of the unit’s conventional
colligate(s).”
Keywords: waka, metaphor, hiyu, yu, waka devices, poetics, Japanese classical poetry, Japanese
court poetry
References:
Conte, Gian Biagio. 1986. The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and poetic memory in Virgil and other Latin poets.
Translated from the Italian, edited and with a foreword by Charles Segal. Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press.
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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Craig McCullough, Helen. 1985. Brocade by Night: Kokin Wakashû and the court style in Japanese classical poetry.
Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Goatly, Andrew. 1997. The Language of Metaphors. London: Routledge.
Hashimoto Fumio. 2002. 橋本不美男, Fujihira Haruo 藤平春男, Ariyoshi Tamotsu 有吉保, (eds), Karonshû 歌論
集 (Collection of Poetics). Nihon Koten Bungaku Zenshû 87. Tokyo: Shôgakkan.
Hiraga, Masako. 2005. Metaphor and Iconicity. A Cognitive Approach to Analysing Texts. NewYork: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Katagiri Yôichi. 1998.片桐洋一, ed. Kokin Wakashû Zen Hyôshaku 古今和歌集全評釈 (The Kokin Wakashû,
Complete Annotation). Vol. I–3. Tokyo: Kôdansha.
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980.Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, George & Mark Turner. 1989. More than Cool Reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Murasaki Shikibu. 1998.紫式部. Genji Monogatari 源氏物語 (The Tale of Genji, 11th
century). Yanai Shigeshi 柳井
滋, Murofushi Shinsuke 室伏信助, Ôasa Yûji 大朝雄二, et al. (eds). Shin Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei 19.
1993. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
—. 1994. Genji Monogatari 源氏物語 (The Tale of Genji, 11th
century). Abe Akio 阿部秋生, Akiyama Ken 秋山虔,
Imai Gen’e 今井源衛 et al, eds. Shinpen Nihon Koten Bungaku Zenshû 20, Vol. 1. Tokyo: Shôgakkan.
Ricoeur, Paul. 1977. The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary studies of the creation of meaning in language.
Translated by Robert Czerny with Kathleen McLaughlin & John Costello. London and Henly: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Suzuki Hiroko 鈴木宏子. 2000a. Kokin Wakashû Hyôgenron 古今和歌集表現論 (Stylistics of the Kokin Wakashû).
Tokyo: Kazama shoin.
—. 2000b. “Kokin Wakashû no Yu – Hyôgen, Hairetsu, Utakotoba” 古今和歌集の喩表現、配列、歌ことば (The
Metaphors of Kokin Wakashû: Expression, Arrangement, Poetic Words), in Nihon Bungaku 49:5.
——— ♦ ———
Sir Philip Sidney’s Rhetoric of Becoming
Anna Kissin Shechter
Tel Aviv University
The poet’s role, as Sidney sees it, is to bridge the gap between knowledge and action; to effect, as
only a poet can, the link between well-knowing and well-doing. To achieve this, he creates
“speaking pictures” which, by means of “words set in delightful proportion,” offer the reader
irresistible echoes of the transcendent Forms of Beauty, Truth and Goodness and thus give him
the knowledge that produces virtuous action. Figures of words or sentences, when informed with
a Fore-conceit, not only represent transcendental Forms, but have the power to evoke them and
as it were bring them into being before the mind’s eye, and thus function as “speaking pictures.”
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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Elocution thus becomes an essential functional link in the poetic process.
“The Chain of Becoming” is the principle of stylistic “dynamics” that informs Sidney’s
work on both micro- and macroscopic levels. Epistemologically, it is grounded in the tradition of
“the Chain of Being” (A.O. Lovejoy), which includes, on the one hand, the Ideas of plenitude and
progress, of a universal order, relation and continuity, and, on the other, the Renaissance concepts
of method – which is incarnated in rhetorical strategies and stylistic structures. The correlation
between verbal forms and the conceptual matrices from which they are generated, between
micro- and macrostructures, involves a dynamic quality that is their common denominator. . It
may be regarded as symbolic or as metaphoric, but in any case the function of the figures of
words should be reassessed and perceived as more than strictly verbal, or ornamental. It will be
shown that the central figures gradatio, antimetabole and epanalepsis, which characterize
Sidney’s style “figure” the corresponding concepts in a sense approaching the symbolic, and in
the manner of uncannily fitting objective correlatives. In clinging to the traditional term “figure,”
rather than “stylistic device,” I am seeking to preserve a rich etymological source of meaningful
associations. Another choice that I make is to concentrate on stylistic figures rather than tropes,
or “figures of speech”, as they are frequently termed nowadays, precisely because, as Sidney’s
rhetoric demonstrates, in an appropriate rhetorical poetics, figures of style or words take upon
themselves the function of figures of thought, or tropes.
Keywords: Tropes and figures, figures of words and figures of thought, Sidney, Renaissance
rhetoric, speaking picture
References:
Robinson, Forrest. 1972. The Shape of Things Known: Sidney's Apology in its philosophical tradition. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Sidney, Sir Philip. 1965. An Apology for Poetry, Geoffrey Shepherd (ed.). Manchester University Press.
—. 1977 (1593). The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, Maurice Evans (ed.). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
——— ♦ ———
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
28
Jacob Zuma and 50 cent: Blending the local and the global
in South African cartoons
Marcelyn Oostendorp
Stellenbosch University (South Africa)
Cartoonists in South Africa (as elsewhere in the world) play an important role in providing
critical commentary on government, general political and social issues, and public figures. The
current South African president, Jacob Zuma, is a controversial figure in the South African
political landscape. Corruption allegations, his suspension as deputy president, a rape trial,
winning a highly contested and emotive succession battle within the ruling party, and a
polygamous lifestyle—all these factors have contributed to make Jacob Zuma a particularly
newsworthy figure.
This paper will focus on cartoons about one particular incident in Jacob Zuma’s life:
fathering a child out of wedlock with Sonono Khoza. For the purposes of this paper, four editorial
cartoons from different South African printed news publications, all from the period of January–
February 2010 (the period when news about the birth of his youngest child first entered the news)
were selected.
This study employs conceptual blending theory (Fauconnier & Turner 1996; Fauconnier &
Turner 2002) as well as critical multimodal discourse analysis (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1996;
Kress 2010) in its analysis of these cartoons. According to Marin-Arrese (2008), conceptual
blending is often used in cartoons to create humour by bringing two or more different mental
spaces together to form a blended space. Bergen (2003) identifies a number of blending
techniques utilised in political cartoons, including: “language from one input and an image from
another, juxtaposition of two images and potentially associated language, merger of language
from the two inputs and merger of images from the two inputs”. All these techniques are also
used in the cartoons selected, although the most frequently used technique for creating a blended
space seems to be the juxtaposition of two images. Further, the paper will show that the two input
spaces often consist of at least one space related to local (South African) meanings, and one input
space related to more global meanings, in order to form a blended space. The effect of this
particular type of conceptual blending is that global discourses of morality are used to criticise
local practices associated with Jacob Zuma. The implications of this finding will be discussed
within the broader framework of critical discourse analysis.
References:
Fauconnier, G. & M. Turner. 2002. The Way We Think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities.
New York: Basic Books.
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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—. 1996. “Blending as a Central Process of Grammar”, in Goldberg, A. (ed.), Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and
Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kress, G. & T. Van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading Images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge.
Kress, G. 2010. Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London: Routledge.
Marin-Arrese, J.I. 2008. “Cognition and Culture in Political Cartoons”, in Intercultural Pragmatics. 5:1, 1–18.
Bergen, B. 2003. “To Awaken a Sleeping Giant: Cognition and culture in September 11 political cartoons”, in
Achard, M. & S. Kemmer (eds), Language, Culture and Mind. Stanford: CSLI.
——— ♦ ———
Understanding is a Dream:
Linguistics, Language Philosophy, and Metaphor
Kathryn O'Shields
City University of New York (USA)
Linguistically, the metaphor is a fascinating device. It is non-literal, yet its meaning is clear. It is
false, yet it often rings perfectly true. It is often a simple statement, but it has the ability to call
many associations to mind. This paper attempts to give an overview of interpretive approaches to
metaphor. I support a two-step, Gricean approach to interpreting metaphors as conversational
implicatures.
At their most fundamental construction, X is a Y, metaphors are patently false. Because
their composition involves the combination of two meanings that are not semantically
compatible, they are considered linguistically anomalous. This is in sharp contrast to similes (of
the form X is like a Y), which are always true.
If a metaphor is not to be taken literally, its meaning must be arrived at indirectly, making
metaphors a pragmatic (rather than a semantic) device, reliant on context (that is, situation and
discourse). Aristotle hypothesized that metaphors are merely truncated similes (thus, “all the
world’s a stage” is understood as “all the world is like a stage”). Black’s approach, in contrast,
says that the meanings of words in a metaphor are affected by the novel interaction between them
(thus, “all the world’s a stage” requires attributing new meanings to these words, based on their
connection to each other, however loose).
The superior theory is one set forth by Grice, which states that metaphors deliberately
violate the Cooperative Principle, causing the listener to recognize and seek a nonliteral meaning.
Only this two-step theory respects the difference between a simile and metaphor, preserves the
literal meaning of the words involved, and accounts for dead metaphors. Most importantly, this
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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theory emphasizes the author’s intention in forming a metaphor—an important aspect of speech
act theory.
The magic of metaphor is that, despite its inherent indirectness, creativity, and “falseness,”
it is often the most effective way to communicate an idea. Indeed, Searle and Davidson conclude
that it is not possible to restate a metaphor in plain words and still get the same concept across.
Metaphors have the ability to fill semantic gaps and therefore demand linguistic evaluation.
References:
Davidson, Donald. 1978. What Metaphors Mean.
Grice, H.P. 1975. Logic and Conversation.
Levinson, Stephen. 1983. Conversational Implicature.
Searle, John. 1979. Metaphor.
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The Use of Imagery from the Animal Kingdom
As a Device for Coping with Despotic Rule and for Breaking Conventions
Hilla Peled-Shapira
Bar-Ilan University (Israel)
Metaphor was and still is a significant tool for intellectuals who wish to attack the regime or their
society’s conventions.
In the middle of the twentieth century non-conformist intellectuals in the Arab world were
persecuted and silenced, whether because they were in political opposition to the regime or
because they called for the liberation of women from the shackles of their patriarchal society. The
writers and poets of this period used metaphors and images taken from the animal kingdom in
order to illustrate their relationship with the regime and with their surroundings.
This paper will examine the unique use of metaphors taken from the animal kingdom in the
works of two prominent twentieth-century authors, the Iraqi Ghaib Tu'ma Farman (1927–1990), a
Communist émigré, and the Lebanese Layla Ba'albaki (b. 1934), who in her writings broke with
conventions concerning the status of women and relations between the sexes, and then go on to
analyze the objectives that each of these two writers strives to achieve through the use of such
metaphors.
——— ♦ ———
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31
The Study of Conceptual Metaphors and Cognitive Images as Means of
Representing the Norm-Value Segment of the Media-Picture of the World
Tatiana Prisyazhnyuk
Saratov State University (Russia)
The results of research conducted in the field of modern media communication indicate that due
to the ubiquitous penetration of media into everyday life, such phenomena as media-saturated
reality, mediated societies and mediated mentality should be introduced and studied (Rogozina
2003; Allan 2004). Mediated mentality is defined as the mental/cognitive result of media
influence on a person’s mind achieved by means of media-specific verbal/non-verbal cognitive
items of reality representation. Consequently, the media-picture of the world is formed in an
individual’s mind. Though discussion of media influence has been central to much recent work
on mass communication and media psychology (Gauntlett 2005; Fremlin 2008), the cognitive
aspect remains among its lesser-studied facets.
It is hard to overestimate the significance of values and norms, both in the structure of
society and in discourse structure. Social norms and values are broadcasted and sometimes
transformed by the media; values are here defined as goals which guide human beings in their
communication and determine norms of their behavior (Babaeva 2004; Kilpert 2002).
The norm-value segment of the media-picture of the world is represented via cultural
concepts, conceptual metaphors and cognitive images. Cultural concepts denote and evaluate
objects of social importance. Cognitive images represent different social groups (e.g. teachers,
the president, etc.) and are used in the process of evaluation. Some cognitive images can be
viewed as conceptual metaphors which shape human perception and communication, especially
in mass media. George Lakoff claims that the public political arena in America reflects a basic
conceptual metaphor of “the family”. Accordingly, people there understand political leaders in
terms of “strict father” and “nuturing parent” roles (Lakoff 2001).
The concept-image study of the norm-value segment of the media-picture of the world
can help transform this branch of linguistics into a socially responsible and productive field; it
can also make contributions to the area of modern society studies, as it allows us to single out
dominant social values existing in media-reality and thus to distinguish the type of a given
society. It helps to see the involvement of social values in language and to observe the
interconnection of such macrostructures as society, media, language and cognition.
References:
Rogozina, I.V. 2003. Media Picture of the World: Cognitive and Semiotic Aspects. PhD dissertation.
Allan, S. 2004. News Culture.
Gauntlett, D. 2005. Moving Experiences - Second Edition: Media Effects and Beyond. London: John Libbey.
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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Fremlin, J. 2008. Understanding Media Psychology.
Babaeva, E.V. 2004. Russian and German Norm-Value Picture of the World. PhD dissertation.
Kilpert, D. 2002. Language and Value: The place of evaluation in linguistic theory. PhD thesis, Rhodes University.
Lakoff, G. 2001. Moral Politics, 2nd
edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
——— ♦ ———
Suffocation as a Metaphor in Russian Literature of the 1920s
Boris Roginskiy
Independent Literary Critic
In this presentation, we trace the metaphor of “suffocation”, “strangulation”, “lack of air/
oxygen”, in early Soviet literature, connected with the idea/intuition of a changing age and a fatal
lack of freedom. It will be seen that this metaphor is strongly manifested in the Soviet poetry and
prose written between 1921 and 1931.
In his Pushkin Speech in February 1921, Alexander Blok first used this metaphor, saying
that Pushkin had been killed by a lack of air. A poet, Blok claimed, dies of suffocation, which is
the lack of inner, creative freedom. In August, 1921, Blok himself died from an unspecified
disease and it was the literary scholar Boris Eikhenbaum who noted that Blok’s words about the
death of a poet were self-prophetic. In early 1921 Blok’s literary antagonist, Nilolay Gumilev,
wrote one of his last poems, The Errant Tramway, which near the ending has the line “Difficult
to breathe, and painful to live”; he was executed that same August.
As in poetry, the metaphor of suffocation can also be found in Russian prose of the same
period. In 1922, Evgeny Zamyatin dreams up his dystopia We, depicting torture and execution by
placing the criminal under a glass bell jar and pumping out its air. In his Tale of the
Unextinguished Moon (1926), Boris Pilniak tells his version of the assassination of Minister of
War Mikhail Frunze ordered by Stalin. Frunze was killed by the deliberate usage of incorrect
narcosis in a gas mask during an operation. In that same year of 1926, Andrei Platonov writes his
Epfan Locks, at the end of which the English engineer is first raped and then strangled in the
Kremlin.
The use of similar metaphors continues into the late 1920s and early 1930s. For example,
Yuri Tynyanov’s The Death of the Ambassador Plenipotentiary (1928), known as a symbolic
novel describing the change of epochs, pictures the philosopher Chaadaev as very pale, refusing
to eat, lying in his armchair, as before an operation, and talking of almost nothing but the need for
“fresh air”. The year 1929 marked the so-called “Great Turn”, when Stalin’s dictatorship was
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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finally established. In their picaresque novel The Golden Calf (1931), Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov
show the utter defeat of the protagonist, Ostap Bender, who says, “I want to die… Every person
is pressed down by an air column weighting 214 kilogram… The air column suffocates me”.
I argue that all these and many other uses of this image tend to be an evident metaphor
showing the writers’ intuition or conscious conclusions about the change in the creative, political
and historical atmosphere in Russia.
Keywords: “suffocation” or lack of air, Russian 1920s literature, inner memory of a metaphor,
hidden metaphor, public imagination, dystopia, censorship, social climate, infamy,
anthropological crisis
——— ♦ ———
The Conceptual Metaphor CHANGE IS A JOURNEY
in Motivational Counseling Sessions with Substance Abusers
Harri Sarpavaara & Anja Koski-Jännes
University of Tampere (Finland)
[email protected], [email protected]
This paper examines the use of conceptual metaphors in the context of motivational counseling
sessions in the Finnish probation service. The focus is on metaphorical change-related talk of
substance-abusing clients.
The present study is based on videotaped and transcribed data consisting of 41 counseling
sessions. This database involves the first two sessions of 21 client-counselor pairs. Sessions were
videotaped in nine probation service offices in Finland in 2007–2008.
The data analysis reveals that the use of metaphors is common in connection with change-
related talk. The most common conceptual metaphor was CHANGE IS A JOURNEY, which has
consequently been adopted as the focus of our closer analysis. The way clients construct their
identity as travelers in these counseling sessions seemed to be correlated with their treatment
outcome during the follow-up year. The results of our analysis also displayed that the clients used
the conceptual metaphor CHANGE IS A JOURNEY in positive change-talk expressions
involving the need and wish to change. When talking about their ability to change, however, they
often used negative change-talk expressions displaying a basic disbelief in their ability to reach
their goal.
In general, we conclude that our study provides evidence for the value of the role of
metaphors as vehicles of change in substance abuse treatment.
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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Keywords: conceptual metaphor, change talk, substance abusers, motivational counseling,
probation service
——— ♦ ———
The Figurative Language of Poetry in Translation
Natalya Shutemova
Perm State University (Russia)
This paper considers figurative poetic language in reference to the essential quality of the original
subject into its representation in foreign cultures through translation.
The figurative character of language in poetry is determined by its aesthetic function and is
one of the main factors causing difficulties in translation. Language is used in poetry to objectify
an individual artistic conception. Being an external parameter of the text, the linguistic parameter
is motivated by internal parameters. Firstly, it is motivated by an intellectual and emotional
whole generated during artistic cognition and serves to express a poetic idea. Secondly, it is
motivated by the imagery of a poet’s thought and serves to express a system of images in which
this poetic idea is realized. Linguistic objectification of the poetic idea and imagery is a final step
in the process generating the poetic text and is involved in the category of poeticity which
integrates three typological parameters and represents the essential quality of the poetic text.
Thus, translating figurative meaning requires us to understand its imagery, its ideological and its
emotive roots.
Moreover, the figurative character of the poetic language is motivated by the aesthetic
attitude of the author towards the linguistic objectification of his thought. It implies the creativity
of verbal thought. V.Veydle wrote that a poetic word is based on a “living” attitude towards
reality. It is a creative thought at the stage of its objectification. So, the roots of metaphors in true
poetry are in the poetic world perception, which is essentially metaphorical in itself. Hypallage,
as a kind of syntactic shift, is motivated by a subjective understanding of the spatial and temporal
characteristics of an object. In general, the figurative character of the linguistic parameter covers
both its semiotic and its structural aspects.
——— ♦ ———
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
35
Defining Irony from a Pragmatic Perspective: Echo, pretense or paradox?
Elena Siminiciuc
University of Fribourg, Switzerland
It is commonly acknowledged today that irony cannot appropriately be defined as an inuersione
uerborum (the opposite of what is said). Various studies on irony in cognitive pragmatics or
semantics have attempted to show the limits of this classical definition. Using a database of French
media discourse, we provide evidence that the theory of irony as an echo fails in that the notion itself
is too broad to capture the specificity of an ironic sentence.
First of all, the boundaries between indirect non-ironic speech and ironic speech cannot be
established using the notion of echoing. Moreover, the notions of pretense or pragmatic insincerity
that have been proposed by Clark & Gerrig (1984) and Kumon-Nakamura, Glucksberg & Brown
(1995) in order to express the attitude of the ironic speaker can be better explained using the semantic
framework proposed by the polyphonic theory of argumentation (Carel 2011).
Following the technical concepts of tone and paradox as developed by Carel 2011 and Ducrot
2010, we revisit the argumentative mechanisms of irony. Our analysis demonstrates that irony is a
protean phenomenon and, as such, cannot be defined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions.
References:
Aristotle. 1991. Rhétorique [Rhetoric], Books I, II, Dufour, M. (French transl.). Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
—. 1989. Rhétorique [Rhetoric], Book III, Dufour, M. (French transl.). Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Carel, M. 2011. L’entrelacement argumentatif [The Argumentative Network]. Paris: Champion.
Clark. H.-H. & Gerrig, R.-G. 1984. “On The Pretense Theory of Irony”, in Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General, 113:1, 121–126.
Colston, H.-L. 2007. “On Necessary Conditions for Verbal Irony Comprehension”, in Irony in Language and
Thought, 97–134.
Ducrot, O. 1984. Le dire et le dit [Speaking and the Spoken]. Paris: Minuit.
Ducrot, O. 2010. “Ironie et negation” [Irony and Negation], in L’ironie et un peu plus. Berne: Peter Lang
Sperber, D. & Wilson D.1989. La pertinence. Communication et cognition (transl. Gerschenfeld A.& D. Sperber).
Paris: Minuit. [French edition of Relevance: Communication and cognition.]
Wilson, D & Sperber, D. 2007. “On Verbal Irony”, in Irony in Language and Thought, 35–55.
——— ♦ ———
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
36
A Contrastive Study of the Conceptualization of Love and Fear
in Persian and English
Mohammad Amin Sorahi
Islamic Azad University, Abadeh Branch (Iran)
This study is an investigation of the use of the emotion concepts of love and fear and their related
metaphors in Persian and English, based on cognitive linguistics. By comparing and contrasting
these metaphors in contemporary Iranian Persian and American English, the primary objective of
this study is to explore the metaphorical role of emotion concepts in these two languages and
show how emotion metaphors are linked to the use of a particular language, thought, and culture.
To this end, it primarily adopts the revised model of Kövecses (2005), in which he treats
metaphor as a cognitive-cultural phenomenon. The results of the study indicate some similarities
and differences between love and fear metaphors in Persian and English. The similarities are
primarily attributed to either a kind of universal motivation for the metaphors deployed in these
languages, or to those metaphors which penetrated into Persian through translation. As regards
the differences found in these two languages, however, they reveal much more of a culture-
specific nature. In short, the current study reveals that emotion metaphors encompass an
integrative system involving linguistic, conceptual, neural-bodily and sociocultural aspects of
language use.
References:
Barcelona, A. 2002. “Clarifying and Applying the Notions of Metaphor and Metonymy within Cognitive Linguistics.
An Update”, in Dirven, R. and R. Porings (eds), Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 207–277.
Deignan, A. 2003. “Metaphoric Expressions and Culture: An indirect link”, in Metaphor and Symbol 18: 255–271.
Fouconnier, Gills & Mark Johnson. 2002. The Way We Think. New York: Basic Books.
Gentner, D., B. Bowdle, P. Wolff & C. Boronat. 2001. “Metaphor is like analogy”, in Gentner, D., K. Holyoke & B.
Kokinov (eds), The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 199–
253.
Gibbs, R. 1994. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Gibbs, R. 1999. “Taking metaphor out of our heads and putting it into the cultural world”, in Gibbs, R. & G. Steen
(eds), Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamin, 145–166.
Grady, J. E. 2007. “Metaphor”, in Geeraerts, Dirk & Hubert Guychkens (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive
Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 188–213.
Kövecses, Z. 1989. Emotion Concepts. New York: Springer.
Kövecses, Z. 2000. Metaphor and Emotion: Language, culture, and body in human feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kövecses, Z. 2005. Metaphor in Culture: Universality and variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
37
Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. New York: Basic Books.
—. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Yu, Ning. 2003. “Metaphor, Body, and Culture: The Chinese understanding of gallbladder and courage. Metaphor
and Symbol, 18 (1), 13–31.
——— ♦ ———
Metaphorical Framing and Discourse Comprehension: Deliberateness,
consciousness, and other issues
Gerard Steen
VU University Amsterdam
Metaphor in language may be seen as expressing a mapping across two distinct conceptual
domains that are aligned in predominantly analogical ways, amounting to some form of
comparison. Whether such underlying cross-domain mappings are always processed by
comparison has become a moot point in psycholinguistic research, which raises the question
whether metaphor is always realized as metaphor in individual people’s minds. One alternative
view is that most metaphor is handled by lexical disambiguation, while only those metaphors
deliberately presented as metaphors are processed by comparison (Steen 2008, 2011a).
This also raises questions about the claims made about the framing powers of metaphor
(Lakoff 2002). If metaphors in a message framing the nation as a family or politics as a race or as
war are not realized metaphorically, that is, without readers activating the relevant source domain
providing the conceptual frame, then metaphorical framing may be a product of message analysis
and interpretation by discourse analysts which does not need to have a connection with the
behavior of discourse recipients. If a subset of these framing metaphors are used deliberately as
metaphors, however, and are processed by comparison, they might have observable effects on the
way frames are used in constructing message representations. The theoretical and empirical
question then becomes which metaphors are used deliberately and are realized as metaphors
during discourse comprehension, and how this affects the resulting cognitive representation of the
discourse as a whole. In other words, when do metaphors exert effects on the cognitive frames
used during discourse comprehension?
In this talk we will approach this issue from the perspective of multi-level discourse
representation developed in the psychology of discourse (McNamara & Magliano 2009). We will
show that this perspective can be usefully connected to my five-step method for metaphor
analysis (Steen 2009) and will suggest that this enables our making a distinction between
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
38
deliberately versus non-deliberately used metaphors and their different roles in multilevel text
representation. I will claim that the processing of deliberate metaphor necessarily includes some
functional activation of the source domain, in contrast with non-deliberate metaphor (Steen
2011b), and I will suggest that the representation of deliberate metaphor in situation and context
models for discourse offers an affordance for conscious metaphorical thought (Steen, in press).
These distinctions offer a new perspective on the nature of metaphorical framing, and can be used
to provide a new interpretation of studies like that of Thibodeau & Boroditsky (2011).
References:
Lakoff, G. 2002. Moral Politics: How liberals and conservatives think. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
McNamara, D.S., & J. Magliano. 2009. “Toward a Comprehensive Model of Comprehension”, in Ross, B. (ed.), The
Psychology of Learning and Motivation 51. Burlington: Academic Press, 297–384.
Steen, G. J. In press. “Deliberate Metaphor Affords Conscious Metaphorical Cognition”, in Cognitive Semiotics.
—. 2011a. “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor—Now new and improved!”, Review of Cognitive Linguistics 9,
26–64.
—. 2011b. “From Three Dimensions to Five Steps: The value of deliberate metaphor”, in Metaphorik.de 21, 83–110.
—. 2009. “From Linguistic Form to Conceptual Structure in Five Steps: Analyzing metaphor in poetry”, in Brône, G.
& J. Vandaele (eds), Cognitive Poetics: Goals, gains and gaps. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 197–226.
—. 2008. “The Paradox of Metaphor: Why we need a three-dimensional model of metaphor”, in Metaphor and
Symbol 23:4, 213–241.
Thibodeau, P.H., & L. Boroditsky. 2011. “Metaphors We Think With: The role of metaphor in reasoning”, in PLoS
ONE 6:2, e16782. doi:10.1371/journal.
——— ♦ ———
Conceptual Metaphors: Between Universal and Language-Specific
Natalya I. Stolova
Colgate University (USA)
Much of the semantic research of the last three decades has revolved around the Conceptual
Theory of Metaphor (CTM). This theory was first formulated in the now classic book by George
Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, published in 1980. The central tenet of CTM
is that rather than being limited to ornamented literary language, metaphorical expressions are
pervasive in everyday usage, and that such pervasiveness is due to our cognitive makeup: we
conceptualize some concepts in terms of others.
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
39
For instance, we conceptualize the abstract concept TIME in terms of the more concrete
concept SPACE. This conceptual mapping -- TIME IS SPACE -- finds its manifestation in linguistic
structures like The upcoming event; The event ahead of us, etc. In other words, metaphors are not
just a matter of language. They are psychologically real, i.e., they are a matter of thought.
One of the challenges of CTM has been to establish which conceptual metaphors are
universal and which are language-specific. The main methodological apparatus used to answer
this question has been comparing and contrasting the mappings found in languages that are not
genetically related and have no areal affiliation. For instance, IMPORTANT IS BIG (e.g., Tomorrow
is a big day) is considered to be universal because it is found in English, Malay, Hawaiian,
Russian, Turkish, and Zulu, among others (Grady 2007). In contrast, the mapping TIME IS MONEY,
which is characteristic of the English language (e.g., How do you spend your time these days?), is
considered to be language-specific because it reflects the values of modern Western culture
(Lakoff & Johnson 1980: 8–9).
The scope of our study is twofold. First, we illustrate ways in which the Romance language
family—as a family that has an attested proto-language (Latin), documented intermediate stages
(e.g., Old Spanish, Old French, etc.) and great synchronic spread and diversity—has a special
role to play in addressing the question of universal vs. language-specific. Second, we illustrate
ways in which certain metaphorical patters emerged as combinations of universal and cultural
factors.
Keywords: conceptual metaphor, Latin, Romance languages, historical linguistics
References:
Grady, Joseph. 2007. “Metaphor”, in Geeraerts, Dirk & Hubert Cuyckens (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive
Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 188–213.
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
——— ♦ ———
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
40
Complex and Value-Laden or Tangible and Self-Evident?
Metaphor in political discourse
Joanna Szczepańska-Włoch
Jagiellonian University (Poland)
The domain of politics is irrefutably connected with power. The acquisition, maintenance,
negotiation and loss of power constitute the concern of every political figure. Therefore,
a politician will strive to affect the views and opinions of others and gain advantage over his/her
opponents through rhetorical and persuasive means. To attain his/her goal a politician needs to be
equipped with tools facilitating its achievement. Since language performs a role central to
political action, it is language that helps enable the achievement of such goals (van Dijk 2002,
Wilson 2002, Chilton 2004). Metaphor, “a prototypical figure” privileged among the tropes
(Chrzanowska-Kluczewska 2004: 66), acts as a significant linguistic and conceptual tool for the
achievement of the task (Semino 2008), specifically, the task of persuasion, the task fundamental
“in the construction of social and political reality” (Lakoff & Johnson 1980/2003: 159).
The metaphorical patterns a politician deploys depend extensively on the roles s/he strives
to adopt, the goals s/he endeavours to achieve, and the co-text and context s/he acts in.
Irrefutably, the aim is to polarise contrasts, dramatise the effect, so that the emphasis is placed on
the newsworthiness of the message conveyed. Hence in the present paper our attention will be
drawn to the functions that micro-metaphors – ‘small figures’ – fulfilled in the language of Polish
politicians in the local government elections of November 2010, the goal of which was to win the
audience, project complex and abstract issues in an explicit and intelligible manner, accentuate
the politician’s stance, and illustrate the subject examined.
Careful examination of the data collected to depict the issue under investigation leads to a
number of conclusions: (1) the function metaphors assume in political discourse is to hide
negatives within particular formulations, (2) legitimisation (i.e. the right to be obeyed) achieved
through arguments about voters’ wants, general ideological principles, charismatic leadership
projection and positive self-presentation (Chilton & Schäffner (1997: 212–213)) has proved to be
a primary function in the political discourse, (3) the meaning(s) of words have been transformed
to fit into the goals politicians wish to attain, thus, a relativist view of representation has been
adopted, namely “to have others believe you, do what you want them to do, and generally view
the world in the way most favourable for your goals” (Wilson 2002: 401).
Keywords: micro-metaphor, political discourse, function of metaphor in political discourse,
legitimisation
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
41
References:
Chilton, Paul. 2004. Analysing Political Discourse. London: Routledge.
Chilton, Paul & Christina Schäffner. 1998. “Discourse and Politics”, in van Dijk, T.A. (ed.), Discourse as Social
Interaction. London: SAGE Publications, 206–230.
Chrzanowska-Kluczewska, Elżbieta. 2004. “Microtropes, Macrotropes, Metatropes”, in AAA –Arbeiten aus Anglistik
und Amerikanistik Band 29, 65–80.
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2000. “The Scope of Metaphor”, in Barcelona, A. (ed.), Metaphor and Metonymy at the
Crossroads. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 79–92.
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2010. Metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 2003. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Steen, Gerard. 2002. “Metaphor in Bob Dylan’s ‘Hurricane’: Genre, language, and style”, in Semino, E. & J.
Culpeper (eds), Cognitive Stylistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 183–209.
Steen, Gerard. 1999. “Metaphor and Discourse”, in Cameron, L. & G. Low (eds), Researching and Applying
Metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 81–104.
Wilson, John. 2001. “Political Discourse”, in Schiffrin, D., D. Tannen & H.E. Hamilton (eds), The Handbook of
Discourse Analysis. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 398–415.
——— ♦ ———
Giving the Helicopter Money a Haircut: Translating Metaphors
In Economic Documents of the European Central Bank
Luciana Sabina Tcaciuc
Aston University, Birmingham (UK)
The European Union institutions represent a complex setting and a specific case of institutional
translation. They each have a complex translation service, which is different for each European
Union institution. The European Central Bank is a particular context, as the documents translated
belong to the field of economics.
The aim of this paper is to investigate the translation practices at the European Central
Bank and to analyse their effects on the textual profiles of the translations. To illustrate these
textual profiles, the research will focus on conceptual metaphors. The corpus used comprises
economic documents translated at the European Central Bank from English into Romanian,
French and Spanish. Using corpus analysis (WordSmith software), the most frequent
metaphorical expressions were identified in the source language and the target languages.
Translation strategies are identified and discussed, as well as the main conceptual metaphors.
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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Moreover, the interviews conducted with translators from the European Central Bank showed
whether translators identify metaphors in the texts they translate and what strategy they use for
translating metaphors. In Romanian, the conceptual framework is quite similar to that of English.
It has been noticed that Romanian tends to borrow many English economic metaphors, due to
their novelty and the lack of a well-established economic vocabulary in Romanian. In many other
instances, the translators’ choices seem to be closer to the French and Spanish versions, as
Romanian is also a Romance language and its structure seems to be closer to that of these
languages.
Metaphor is often associated with literature and less with specialised texts. However,
according to Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory (1980), our conceptual system is
fundamentally metaphorical in nature and we can find metaphors in all types of texts. The texts
translated in the European Union institutions, despite being of a specialised nature, contain
numerous metaphors, as metaphors structure our whole understanding of the world and are
pervasive elements of thought and speech.
Keywords: translating metaphor, European Union, European Central Bank, economic documents
References:
Deignan, Alice. 2005. Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Dobrota, Iulia-Corina & Carmen Maftei. 2002. “The Metaphoric Dimension of Economic Text: The translation of
economic metaphors”, in Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Philologica 3:2, 313–320.
Koskinen, Kaisa. 2008. Translating Institutions. An Ethnographic Study of EU Translation. Manchester: St Jerome
Publishing.
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Schäffner, Christina. 2004. “Metaphor and Translation: Some Implications of a Cognitive Approach”, in Journal of
Pragmatics, 36:7, 1253–1269.
Scheller, Hanspeter. 2006. The European Central Bank: History, role and functions, 2nd
, revised ed. European
Central Bank publications: Frankfurt.
Semino, Elena. 2008. Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wagner, Emma, Svend Bech & Jesus M. Martinez. 2002. Translating for the European Union Institutions.
Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
——— ♦ ———
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
43
The Interface of Language Structure and Cognition in Metaphor Research:
Evidence from Modern Greek
Paraskevi Thomou
University of Crete (Greece)
Metaphor is the main mechanism through which we comprehend abstract concepts. Metaphor is
conceptual in nature and it involves the mapping of one concept onto another. In this presentation
we deal with metaphor realization in Modern Greek. Modern Greek language data has shown that
apart from its conceptual structure, metaphor is grounded in language and is limited by the
structure of that language. The structure of the language affects possible realization of metaphor
in several ways:
A: In verbal predicates, the verb’s argument structure, i.e. its basic semantics, maps intact from
non-metaphorical onto metaphorical uses:
(1) δino tin bala se kapjon non-metaphorical
give (1st sing.) the ball (acc.) to sb
(2) δino tharos se kapjon metaphorical
give (1st sing.) courage (acc.) to sb
The argument structure of the verb δino (‘to give’) in non-metaphorical and metaphorical
uses: [agent, theme, goal]
B: In nominal predicates, metaphor is motivated by the semantics of the adjective:
(3) γlikja (adj) turta (noun) non-metaphorical
sweet cake
(4) γlikja (adj) efxi (noun) metaphorical
sweet wish
The metaphorical interpretation of the predicate γlikja efxi is strongly motivated by the
semantics of the adjective γlikja. A context-sensitive option of metaphor is recorded.
C: On the other hand, a context-free option of metaphor emerges from language data:
(5) molismeni (adj) atmosfera (noun) non-metaphorical
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
44
polluted atmosphere
(6) zesti (adj) atmosfera (noun) metaphorical
warm atmosphere
In this case, the mapping of non-metaphorical onto metaphorical is not motivated or
limited by the semantics of the adjective (see previous case). It depends on intrinsic
semantic features of concept ATMOSPHERE.
These three issues indicate the grounding of metaphor in language and the limitations of language
structure on metaphor realization.
Keywords: interface, conceptual metaphor, lexical semantics, motivation of metaphor
References:
Croft, W. & D.A. Cruse. 2004. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jackendoff, R. 1999. “What Is a Concept, That a Person May Grasp It?”, in Margolis, E. & St. Laurence (eds),
Concepts: Core readings. Cambridge: MIT Press, 305–333.
Lakoff, G. 1993. “The contemporary theory of metaphor”, in Ortony, A. (ed), Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Levin, B. & M. Rappaport-Hovav. 2005. Argument realization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lyons, J. 1995. Linguistic Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
——— ♦ ———
Etymology, Figures of Speech and Lexical Creativity
Stavroula Varella
University of Chichester (UK)
This paper focuses on the role of figurative language in the areas of lexical innovation and
terminology formation, the linguistic integration and semantic adaptation of loanwords, and
semantic change.
Essentially, this study requires a varied methodological approach based on etymology and
historical semantics, and taking into consideration current ideas from lexical semantics
(especially polysemy) and metaphor theory.
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
45
Focussing on the English lexis, this paper presents a critical overview of particular cases of
vocabulary enlargement, showing how metaphor has historically functioned in cases of coining,
compounding, and lexical borrowing. Diachronic data on semantic shift can illustrate if and how
certain words are or have been intrinsically polysemic, and how metaphorical associations may
be understood as a factor in semantic change.
In addition, it is suggested that metaphor is very frequently an inherent element of
conceptualisation and word manufacture. The cognitive paradigm is discussed in light of this,
while the case is made that the study of linguistic (rather than literary) creativity may also be able
to contribute to our understanding and subsequent theorising of metaphor.
Keywords: onomasiology, lexicogenesis, etymology, terminology, medical nomenclature
References:
Allan, K. 2009. Metaphor and Metonymy: A diachronic approach. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Blank, A. 2003. “Words and Concepts in Time: towards diachronic cognitive onomasiology”, in Eckardt, R., K. von
Heusinger & C. Schwarze (eds), Words in Time: Diachronic semantics from different points of view. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter, 37–66.
Grzega, J. 2002. “Some Aspects of Modern Diachronic Onomasiology”, in Linguistics 40:5, 1021–1045.
Hanks, P. 2004. “The Syntagmatics of Metaphor and Idiom”, in International Journal of Lexicography 17:3, 245–
274.
Sweetser, E. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Trim, R. 2007. Metaphor Networks: The comparative evolution of figurative language. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
——— ♦ ———
Satire, Sarcasm and Irony for the Social Sciences: An illustrated talk
Cate Watson
University of Stirling (UK)
Humour is a neglected area within the social sciences, at least as a research methodology. While
there are many theories which seek to explain the social aspects and functions of comedy (from
Plato and Aristotle onwards), relatively little work has attempted to make use of humour and its
associated rhetorical tropes as a means for researching the social or for representing research. An
exception is Richard Harvey Brown’s work A Poetic for Sociology. Toward a logic of discovery
for the human sciences (1989), which explores the uses of irony in sociological theory. While this
is an excellent book, it has to be said that it is not very funny, an ironic observation which holds
true for much writing about the comedic.
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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Indeed, this brings to the fore two problems concerning humour for the social scientist.
Firstly, humour is not taken seriously. Even so gifted a social scientist as Erving Goffman has
been dismissed as lightweight, a humorous writer but a second-rate sociologist (Strong, 1983).
Second, much humour, especially of the kind that employs irony, tends to mean something
different from what is said, which immediately throws up a problem for the social scientist who
has, generally speaking, undergone an extensive training precisely directed towards discouraging
that kind of thing. But humour is capable of communicating insights of a deadly serious nature
and so deserves more attention as a research methodology. In this paper we will focus on satire,
sarcasm and irony in the social sciences. While satire (and sarcasm) may be considered narrative
forms, means for and of representation, irony, as a rhetorical trope which exerts its effects
through juxtaposition and the creation of incongruity, constitutes a potential analytical tool in
social research, overturning expectations and operating within a ‘logic of discovery’. Here we
will explore, with examples, these uses within the social sciences.
Keywords: humour, irony, qualitative methodology, satire, social sciences
References
Brown, R. 1989. A Poetic for Sociology. Toward a logic of discovery for the human sciences Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Strong, P. 1983. “The Importance of Being Erving: Erving Goffman, 1922-1982”, in Sociology of Health & Illness
5:3, 345–355.
——— ♦ ———
Metaphor and Real-Life, Organisational Behaviour
Jeroen Wittink
Inholland University of Applied Sciences (The Netherlands)
In this research, we explore the impact metaphors have on actual, real-life behaviour in
organisations. Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) makes far-reaching predictions on the
relation between metaphor, thinking, and behaviour. When we look at the field of organisational
behaviour, this would mean that metaphors have an impact on how workers behave in the
organisations they work. For instance, the metaphors they use to conceptualise their knowledge
would have an impact on their actual knowledge-sharing behaviour. However, there are many
rival explanations for workers to share (or not share) their knowledge, like individual attitudes,
Presentations The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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organisation culture, communication climate, commitment, availability of (ICT) tools and
emotions (e.g. de Vries, van den Hooff, & de Ridder, 2006; van den Hooff & Schouten, 2011).
As noted above, CMT makes far-reaching predictions on metaphor, thinking and behaviour.
If true, this means metaphors have a significant impact on knowledge-sharing behaviour in
organisations. Tthe first step in exploring those predictions is to relate metaphor use to actual
knowledge-sharing in organisations. This has not been done in a systematic way before.
Therefore, the main question of the present research is: Is there a relationship between (a) the
metaphors knowledge workers use to conceptualize their knowledge and (b) the actual behaviour
they show within organisations regarding knowledge sharing? Our hypothesis (H1) is: The
metaphors knowledge workers use to conceptualise their knowledge affect the behaviour they
show regarding knowledge sharing in organisations.
First, we present a conceptual model of knowledge sharing within organizations that
incorporates predictions made by CMT regarding knowledge sharing. Second, we describe how
we will explore these predictions within the real world of organisations. We specifically look at
rival explanations for sharing knowledge and how to deal with them in this research. Then, we
present the results of two case studies we did within different organisations. Our metaphorical
analysis is based on the MIPVU procedure (Steen, Herrmann, Kaal, Krennmayr & Pasma, 2010)
to elicitate metaphors, and a dual dynamic approach to define broader metaphor patterns
(Wittink, 2011). Finally, we discuss the implications and limitations of the results and explore the
broader question of how metaphors impact upon real-life (organizational) behaviour.
Keywords: Organisational behaviour, knowledge sharing, conceptual metaphor theory, sense
making in organisations, individual experiences
References
Steen, G., J. Herrmann, A. Kaal, T. Krennmayr & T. Pasma. 2010. A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification,
from MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Wittink, J. 2011. “Reliable Metaphor Analysis in Organizatonal Research: Towards a dual dynamic approach”, paper
presented at OLKC 2011, April 14th, Hull.
de Vries, R., B. van den Hooff & J. de Ridder. 2006. “Explaining Knowledge Sharing: The role of team
communication styles, job satisfaction, and performance beliefs”, in Communication Research, 33:2, 115-135.
van den Hooff, B., & A. Schouten. 2011. “What One Feels and What One Knows: The influence of emotions on
attitudes and intentions”, paper presented at OLKC 2011, April 14th, Hull.
——— ~ ———
Workshops The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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Workshop: Figurative Language in
Nineteenth-Century Prose
(in honor of the Dickens Bicentennial)
This workshop is included in the University of Stockholm’s 2012 Metaphor Festival
(www.english.su.se/research/metaphorfestival).
Convener: Leona Toker
This workshop deals with two theoretical issues: (1) the relationship between metaphors and
other forms of figurative language, such as paronomasia, metonymy, hypallage, and
personification, and (2) the relationship between figurative language and the events in the
storyworld, that is, the possible function of tropes, in particular of extended metaphor, as an
organizing principle alternative or complementary to the causal-temporal principle of the plot.
Dedicated to the Bicentennial of Charles Dickens, the workshop focuses mainly on Dickens’s
novels, in chronological order. Yet Dickens’s figurative language is analyzed in the context of
that of his precursors and contemporaries, as well as in the context of theoretical and
philosophical explorations. The first paper of the workshop discusses an 1802 essay on figurative
language by Maria Edgeworth and Richard Lovell Edgeworth; its final paper includes a literary
critical response to the comments of twentieth-century philosophers on Dickens’s tropes,
especially on the language of Our Mutual Friend, his last completed novel.
——— ♦ ———
Workshops The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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session 1
1. Between a Bull and a Figure: Nationalism, Figurative Language,
and An Essay on Irish Bulls
Amir Yahav
Haifa University (Israel)
That linguistic developments have been key to the rise of nationalism is a commonplace. But
while many emphasize the importance of the consolidation of dialects into standardized
languages (e.g. Benedict Anderson, Ernest Gellner), this paper focuses on the significance of
figurative language in the demarcation of national communities.
More specifically, I consider Maria and Richard Lovell Edgeworth’s Essay on Irish Bulls
(1802), focusing on their claim that the difference between English English-speakers and Irish
English-speakers can best be gauged by figurative language. Metaphors combine ideas that are
otherwise unrelated to one another; and the Edgeworths suggest that whether any particular
combination is “a laughable confusion of ideas,” that is, a bull, or whether it is a successful
metaphor, that is, a meaningful utterance, depends on whether you are English or Irish. But while
influential eighteenth-century discussions of figurative language and national communities – such
as Johann Gottfried Herder’s or Joseph Priestly’s – focus on historical process, the Edgeworths
examine procedures that govern current figurative communication. Priestly and the Edgeworths
agree that the difference between a bull and a figure is determined in use and cannot be legislated
from above or from outside; but while Priestly conceives of such “linguistic democracy” in terms
of custom, the Edgeworths conceive of it as assumptions underwriting present institutional
practices and their proper functioning. Priestly emphasizes a cumulative heritage that determines
a group’s peculiar experiences, culture, and character, and language that evolves to reflect all
these. The Edgeworths, though not dismissing these historical dimensions, emphasize present
practice — the nation’s relying on figuration and interpretation as an essential component of its
code of internal on-going engagement.
“Metaphor,” writes Donald Davidson (much more recently, of course), “is the dreamwork
of language and, like dreamwork, its interpretation reflects as much on the interpreter as on the
originator. The interpretation of dreams requires collaboration between a dreamer and a waker,
even if they be the same person; and the act of interpretation is itself a work of the imagination.
So too understanding a metaphor is as much a creative endeavor as making a metaphor, and as
little guided by rules.” The Edgeworths would have agreed with Davidson’s definition of
metaphor; they would have liked the analogy between metaphors and representations produced
unconsciously, representations that have no easy relation of correspondence with an existing
Workshops The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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external reality, and that rely on a communicative circuit of non-rule-governed production and
interpretation for their significance. But the Edgeworths would have likely added that metaphors
are the dreamwork of language precisely insofar as we take language to be a collaborative
activity among national communities. Between a bull and a metaphor there is not merely
“creative interpretation,” but the collective will to bring creative interpretation into play, a will
that the Edgeworths believe underwrites the proper functioning of national institutions.
Keywords: figurative language and nationalism, interpretive communities, eighteenth-century
theories of language, Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth
——— ♦ ———
2. A City of Two Tales: Metaphor, Diegesis, and World-Construction
in Barnaby Rudge
Elana Gomel
Tel Aviv University (Israel)
The relation of narrative structure and figurative language has often been seen solely in terms of
style. Metaphor has been relegated to the extradiegetic level of the narrative text, where it
functioned as a feature of the narrator’s discourse, separable from the diegetic level of the
fictional world (the Russian formalists’ fabula or Genette’s story).
Dickens’ spatial poetics, however, offers a compelling case study of the way in which the
construction of the text’s fictional world is inflected by its figurative language. Dickens’ use of
complex extended metaphors has been well-researched and analyzed (by J. Hillis Miller,
Alexander Welsh, Robert Alter and others). But I will argue that Dickens’ metaphors do not
remain on the level of style but are rather situated on the boundary between the diegetic and
extradiegetic level, becoming –almost but not quite – elements of setting. In other words, I will
argue for introducing a third textual level, midway between the diegetic and extradiegetic, in
which metaphors are semi-literalized as a sort of textual ghost.
Tzvetan Todorov famously argued that the supernatural in fiction originates in literalization
of figurative language (The Fantastic). In Dickens (with some exceptions such as his ghost
stories) literalization is not complete. Instead, his extended metaphors create a textual space
layered “on top” of his realistic diegesis. This textual space is fantastic in the sense of violating
the rules of Newtonian space-time which govern realistic representation. Examples would include
Workshops The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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the apocalyptic imagery of A Tale of Two Cities, where the extended metaphors of fire, flood,
pestilence and death generate a chaotic textual space which can be neither seen as purely stylistic
(since it actually intrudes into the action of the novel, for example in Darney’s attraction to the
“loadstone rock”) nor as part of the diegetic structure of the fictional world.
This paper will also address an earlier novel, Barnaby Rudge, which shares with A Tale of
Two Cities the thematic concern with social violence. As Steven Connor points out, the
representation of the urban space in the novel is penetrated by “some alternative geography,
which is interior and subterranean” (“Space, Place and Body of Riot in Barnaby Rudge”). I will
argue that this “alternative geography” is, in fact, the middle textual space, in which metaphors
are semi-literalized into ghosts of transgressive violence that cannot be incorporated into realistic
diegesis.
——— ♦ ———
3. Places as Things? Metonymy and the London Localities of Dombey and Son
Jason Finch
Åbo Akademi University (Finland)
Metonymy has long been seen by literary critics as a less interesting figure than metaphor. It has
even been associated with naivety, submissiveness and collusion. But now metonymy looks set
for a revival. Elaine Freedgood in The Ideas in Things (2006) proposes what she calls a “strong
metonymic reading” of nineteenth-century novels. Such a reading makes apparently small details
central.
In this paper I hypothesise that Freedgood’s approach to manufactured and packaged
‘things’ could also be used to interpret places. One could see literary place as not just setting or
something with thematic meaning but also examine what, in Freedgood’s words, the places of
fiction tell us about themselves or their own social lives.
Two challenges arise. One, the boundaries of places are harder to pin down than the
boundaries of – to think of some of the ‘things’ Freedgood alludes to – a barometer or a certain
brand of tobacco. Second, it is hard to offer any complete reading of a book this way, since a
close reading of one ‘thing’ (or place), one single detail, requires so much space and time.
This paper evaluates the extent to which the strong metonymic reading is helpful in
constructing a chart of the internal textual landscape of a pivotal Victorian novel like Dickens’s
Dombey and Son (1848). By landscape is meant the layout of places in the novel, the barriers and
Workshops The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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paths between them, their magnitude, their arrangement. Assessing the future prospects for this
sort of metonymic reading involves comparisons with other discussions of metonymy, for
example J. Hillis Miller’s classic account of Dickens. The relations between metonymy and other
figures, notably metaphor, also need attention.
The discussion of metonymy leads to a mapping of Dombey and Son. The places of the
novel are arranged in relation to one another: the house of ‘Good Mrs Brown’; Staggs’s Gardens;
the Dombey home; the premises of the firm of Dombey and Son; the ships’ equipment store
known as the ‘Wooden Midshipman’; the lodgings in Limehouse of Captain Cuttle; Princess’s
Place (the slummy genteel square inhabited by Major Bagstock and Miss Tox); the fields on the
perimeter of London where Walter Gay goes walking; and the railway termini and lines which
are built during the novel’s plot. All of these places have in common a position on the periphery
of central London, that London which existed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. All of
them (unlike the differing villas of the Carker brothers, one north of the centre and one south) are
within walking distance of the centre.
To what extent does strong metonymic reading help us understand the blend of
referentiality and invention contained in the novel? What are the consequences for a new
topographic criticism more generally?
——— ♦ ———
session 2
4. Agnes as the Sacrificial Lamb in Dickens’s David Copperfield
and Thackeray’s The Adventures of Philip
Marion Helfer Wajngot
Stockholm University (Sweden)
Dickens in David Copperfield (1850) and Thackeray in The Adventures of Philip (1862) both
have a woman character named Agnes. Both novels play on the allusion to the Latin agnus and
its implication of a sacrifice of the innocent, and both involve a retelling of the narrative in 2
Samuel about King David and the beautiful Bathsheba. While Dickens very obviously refers his
reader to the Biblical love triangle between King David, Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite,
Workshops The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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Thackeray develops an extended metaphor of Agnes as the lamb who is sacrificed to Mammon
by being brought as a sheep to market. The market is more particularly the marriage market, so
two metaphors are allowed to meet in the novel, and the story is played out against the same
biblical narrative, and the same inner-biblical parable or narrative commentary by the prophet
Nathan. In both novels there is an echoing, a bouncing back and forth, between the fictional text,
the biblical text, and the parabolic comment upon the biblical narrative, in itself an extended
metaphor. Dickens’s use of the biblical narrative as a subversive subtext which undermines the
narrative as told by David Copperfield has been carefully traced and interpreted, but this
interpretation has left the role of Agnes largely to one side. Nor has Thackeray’s way of letting
elements of the two biblical narratives find their way into various aspects of his fiction through
extended metaphors been explored. This paper seeks to compare the two novels’ reiteration of the
metaphorical parable, with the use of Bo Petterson’s theories about the relations between
narrative and metaphor.
——— ♦ ———
5. Hypallageand the Literalization of Metaphors in a Dickens Text
Leona Toker
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel)
In the context of the different forms and instances of hypallage, this paper discusses Dickens’s
use of the form of hypallage called “epithet transfer” in A Tale of Two Cities. In addition to
analyzing the local effects of this trope, the paper raises the question of this trope’s relationship to
plot events, in view of Dickens’s skill at turning metaphors into literal parts of the plot. It claims
that major plot events of this novel, and structurally similar events in other novels, parallel the
device of hypallage and that the main function of this parallel is aesthetic rather than cognitive.
——— ♦ ———
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6. “So Far Figurative”: The Troping of Word and Syntax
in Our Mutual Friend
Garrett Stewart
University of Iowa (USA)
Three important philosophers have borne down on the chapter of Riderhood’s near-drowning in
Our Mutual Friend: Gilles Deleuze stressing the immanence of “a life” rather than “the life” of
the man himself; Roberto Esposito pursuing the deterritorialized flow of such life; but with
Giorgio Agamben, building on Deleuze, being the only one of the three to attend even briefly to
any given phrasing in the Dickens passage. In the case of former legal scholar Agamben, this is
the term “abeyance” for the quasi-legalistic suspension of being between life and death. But in
regard to this passage there are more suspensions than are dreamt of in any of their philosophies,
lexical and grammatical both: more ways of troping the hovering limit between life and death.
The title of this paper comes from an explanatory sidebar early in the chapter, going out of
its way to foreground the question of figuration. Mr. Tootle, speaking of Riderhood’s collision
with a steamer, remarks that “she cut him in two,” and the narrator is quick to intervene for
clarity: “Mr Tootle is so far figurative, touching the dismemberment, as that he means the boat,
and not the man. For the man lies whole before them” (III, 3, 443). Not exactly, though, as we
will soon learn, since the man is in fact sundered on the brink of extinction between
personification and somatic remains, as the complexities of the passage wrench into view, and
sometimes torture into equivocation, from here on out — until even the tacit cliché and dead
metaphor (an unsaid semiotic matrix, in the terms of Michael Riffaterre), the seed phrase “fight
for life,” surfaces at the end only in retrospectively refigured and now quintessentially
characterological (pugnacious) form as a “little turn-up with Death.” En route, the full panoply of
Dickensian figurative ingenuity is recruited in the reciprocal displacement of life and death across
the elided borders delimited by sheer tropology.
——— ~ ———
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Workshop: Linguistic and Conceptual Metaphors
And Their Relations
This workshop is included in the University of Stockholm’s 2012 Metaphor Festival
(www.english.su.se/research/metaphorfestival).
Convener: Gerard Steen
Conceptual metaphors are conventionalized mappings across conceptual domains, such as TIME
and SPACE, LOVE and JOURNEYS, POLITICS and FAMILY LIFE, or ORGANIZATIONS
and MACHINES. Knowledge structures of the latter domains (source domains) are assumed to
be projected onto knowledge structures of the former domains (target domains), creating
conceptual structures in the target domains along the lines of the source domains. Primary
evidence for the nature, structure, and function of conceptual metaphors has been garnered from
the structures of languages, primarily at the level of lexical polysemy, but other forms of
evidence have been presented and discussed as well. Conceptual Metaphor Theory, first proposed
in 1980 by Lakoff and Johnson in their famous Metaphors We Live By, has enjoyed a great deal
of attention in linguistics and other disciplines over the past thirty years.
This workshop will discuss various aspects of the relations between conceptual metaphors
and metaphors in language. Attention will be paid to the deliberate versus non-deliberate use of
conceptual metaphors (Askeland), the possibility of producing a dictionary of conceptual
metaphors (Jurgaitis), the variation of linguistic forms expressing a specific conceptual metaphor
(Negrea), the role of embodiment in grounding the source domains of conceptual metaphors
(Päivärinta), the nature of visual and multimodal expression of conceptual metaphors
(Šarkauskiené and Juzelèniené), and the way conceptual metaphors translate between languages
(Albano). The discussion aims at achieving a clearer view of the complex interrelationships
between conceptual metaphors and the way they are expressed in language.
——— ♦ ———
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session 1
Impaired Embodiment as Theme and Theory: Dylan Thomas’s War Elegies
Anne Päivärinta
University of Tampere (Finland)
Something that is more or less taken for granted in Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) is the
physical foundation of spatial metaphors. However, over-emphasising the human body as the
archetypal container schema can lead to the rather unhelpful notion that all spatial metaphors are
necessarily embodied. Moreover, a distinction needs to be made between different types of
embodiment, based on whether the target in question is body-internal, body-external or neither,
i.e. completely abstract (Kimmel 2008). With all of this in mind, the present paper asks: What
kind of implications might the failing of the human scale have when reading texts that take
negative embodiment, or impaired embodiment, as their point of departure? Are distorted forms
of embodiment inevitably mapped against an intact version? How does the “unnaturalness” of
such projections relate to the resonance Lakoff & Turner (1989: 89) claim is induced in the
reader when identifying conceptual metaphors?
More specifically, the aim of the paper is to explore the gap between the fundamental, yet
somewhat vague role of embodiment in CMT and the different realisations of embodiment in a
literary environment, namely Dylan Thomas’s (1914–1953) so-called war elegies: “Among those
killed was a man aged hundred”, “Ceremony after a fire-raid” and “A refusal to mourn the death,
by fire, of a child in London” (1946). Rather than just saying that these poems invoke embodied
reader involvement with a negative twist, I want to illustrate how embodied metaphors perform a
particular rhetorical function in these poems. The communicative weight they carry is
foregrounded through the complexity of expression: embodiment creates both emotional and
stylistic estrangement. The reader does not merely process pre-existing conceptual
categorisations but is part of an ongoing figurative negotiation which also accommodates
negative metaphors (Biebuyck & Martens 2011; see also Yacobi 2011) – a point that can be
extended to non-literary contexts as well, though this paper does not deal with the differences of
“conventional” or “poetic” metaphors as such. The poems present the reader with an escaping
image of destruction; however, the evoking of a negativity or absence is not static but dynamic,
and this dynamicness seems to have everything to do with how a poetic speaker is able to
articulate, and manipulate, a sense of loss.
Keywords: impaired embodiment, negative embodiment, Dylan Thomas, Modernist poetry
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References:
Biebuyck, Benjamin & Gunther Martens. 2011: “Literary Metaphor between Cognition and Narration. The Sandman
Revisited”, in Fludernik, Monika (ed.), Beyond Cognitive Metaphor Theory. Perspectives on Literary
Metaphor. London: Routledge, 58–76.
Kimmel, Michael. 2008. “Properties of Cultural Embodiment: Lessons from the anthropology of the body”, in
Dirven, René et al. (eds), Body, Language and Mind, Vol II: Interrelations between Biology, Linguistics and
Culture, Berlin: de Gruyter, 77–108.
Lakoff, George & Mark Turner. 1989. More than Cool Reason. A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Yacobi, Tamar. 2011. “Metaphors in Context: The communicative structure of figurative language”, in Fludernik,
Monika (ed.), Beyond Cognitive Metaphor Theory. Perspectives on Literary Metaphor. London: Routledge,
113–134.
——— ♦ ———
‘The sinking euro’: An analysis of navigation metaphors in
the media coverage of the Eurocrisis
Elena Negrea
National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania
Research into political and economic discourse is not new to linguists and communication
scholars, in general. However, the current world financial crisis and its devastating effects on
society as a whole have spurred the interest to inquire into political and economic phenomena as
social practices and conceptual views of the world we live in. Consequently, metaphorical
approaches to the crisis have become very attractive and promising pathways for the study of
political and economic discourse. The media coverage of the crisis affecting the EU and the
Eurozone provides an excellent corpus for searching out metaphors used in relation to the
Eurocrisis.
This paper seeks to examine the metaphorical expressions relating to the source domain of
navigation used to present the Eurocrisis. This study is a part of a wider research project aiming
at analyzing the metaphors associated with the Eurozone crisis as they appear in articles
published in 2011 in The Economist. The analysis presented here shows that words belonging to
nautical domain, such as ship, to sink, to jettison, crew and to wreck, are used metaphorically to
talk about the Eurozone and the economic and political challenges it currently faces. The
approach used here is two-pronged: on the one hand, using the metaphor identification procedure,
it seeks to test the contextual meaning of “navigation-related” words against their basic meaning
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and thus determine their metaphorical use; on the other hand, it aims at identifying and
explaining cross-domain mappings between navigation and Eurozone crisis and leadership.
Identification of underlying conceptual structures on the basis of linguistic evidence is here
treated with prudence; nevertheless, it proves insightful for the understanding of the evaluative
and ideological functions of such “navigation metaphors” in the presentation of the Eurozone
crisis to the public. Moreover, the cognitive perspective on these metaphors fosters the
identification and examination of cognitive mechanisms used to conceptualize the political and
economic domains.
Keywords: Eurozone crisis, conceptual metaphor, political discourse, economic discourse
——— ♦ ———
Conceptual Metaphors in Lithuanian Public Discourse
Nedas Jurgaitis
Šiauliai University (Lithuania)
Anthropologically-orientated linguistic research allows us to reveal the role of language, not only
in an individual’s, but in an entire nation’s world view and mentality structure. Research into
national world views, as reflected in their linguistic structures and texts, is thus especially
relevant for solving the problems that arise from the contradictory tendencies of globalization and
the preservation of national identities. In this context, the significance of research into conceptual
metaphors in linguistics is obvious, because metaphors are a linguistic reflection of thinking
processes. Thus, by revealing the mode of conceptual metaphors as well as the ways they are
realized, we partially reveal the thinking and behavioral strategies that are characteristic for a
given nation, as the content of their consciousness, their conceptions of valuable concepts fixed
in it. The aim of this report is to review the research on conceptual metaphors that is currently
being conducted in Lithuania and to present a scientific project meant for the first systemic
research on conceptual metaphors in Lithuanian public discourse. This research seeks to analyze
conceptual metaphors that are characteristic of Lithuanian public discourse and to reveal the
possible impact of globalization on semantic processes in Lithuanian as one of the forms of
linguistic identity. The research specifies the relevant societal meanings of spheres which, in the
public discourse, become the source domain of metaphorization, such as sports (e.g. the election
marathon), economics (e.g. a triggered crisis), medicine (e.g. the poor health of a bank is neither
the flu, nor a serious cancer), alienation and aggression in society (e.g. choir wars), and so on.
Workshops The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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During the project, a collection of conceptual metaphors characteristic of the public
discourse of Lithuanian (from 1980 to 2012) is being compiled, in order to reveal the conceptual
metaphors that are appropriate for different parts of this era, and how they are realized, in order to
reveal the changes in linguistic consciousness due to the impact of globalization, changes which
are inevitably related to the change in national identity. Following modern compilation
principles, a dictionary of conceptual metaphors in Lithuanian public discourse will be produced.
This work is a complement to the paradigm of anthropologically-orientated linguistic
research because there exists neither fundamental nor systematic research about the change of
semantic processes in Lithuanian deriving from the impact of globalization.
Keywords: conceptual metaphor, public discourse, linguistic world view
——— ♦ ———
session 2
Verbo-pictorial (Multimodal) Conceptual Metaphors in the
Discourse of Lithuanian Advertisements
Skirmantė Šarkauskienė & Saulė Juzelėnienė
Vilnius University
[email protected], [email protected]
The theoretical basis of this article is the methodology of pictorial/visual metaphor research, as
presented in Charles Forceville's work Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising (2006), and multimodal
metaphor research, as proposed in his book Multimodal Metaphor (2009). Both verbal and non-
verbal metaphors are investigated, combining the interaction theory proposed by Max Black and
the principles of conceptual metaphor analysis, as formulated in cognitive linguistics. In a
metaphor, the primary and the secondary subjects are considered equal to the target and source
domains distinguished by cognitive linguists, and the result of their interaction (the properties of
the secondary subject [source domain] are mapped onto the primary subject [target domain]) is a
conceptual metaphor. The target domain in advertising is an item or service being promoted,
while the source domain is an object whose properties are attributed to the item or the service
being advertised.
In the discourse of advertising, metaphor is realised by verbal and non-verbal forms of
communication: written language, spoken language, image, music, sound and gestures. If the
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target and source domains in a conceptual metaphor are expressed by means of one of the forms
indicated, the metaphor is treated as a monomodal metaphor, whereas if they are expressed by
more than one of these forms, the metaphor is regarded as a multimodal metaphor. Since in the
case of pictorial metaphor one of the components is expressed verbally and the other by means of
an image, it is treated as one of the varieties of multimodal metaphor.
In Lithuanian printed advertising, pictorial metaphor is used to express various concepts. In
the article the following examples of conceptual metaphors are analysed: JUICE IS SUN, CAR
IS ANIMAL, TILE ADHESIVE IS BINDWEED, VODKA IS A NATION/PERSON. Our
research has revealed that in a metaphor both the source and the target domain can be expressed
using pictorial and verbal means and sometimes using both of them. As a result, both verbal and
pictorial means are equally important in metaphor, as their interaction makes an advertisement
more persuasive and effective.
——— ♦ ———
Metaphors of Truth in an Unbelievable Trial. Journalist Kjetil Østli as a case
study on the use of direct and deliberate metaphors in a personal essay about
the trial of the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik in Oslo District Court, spring
2012
Norunn Askeland
Vestfold University College (Norway)
As of spring 2012, there is an ongoing trial in Oslo District Court, where Anders Behring Breivik
is accused of, has confessed to and does not regret having killed 77 persons, most of them young
people, in Oslo and at Utøya, on July 22, 2011. The trial is not open to the public, only to next of
kin and journalists. The journalist Kjetil Østli, who has been rewarded for being an ardent
observer of details, for writing in a personal voice, and for including the reader, has written
personal essays about the trial every Saturday in the newspaper Aftenposten [The Evening Post]
from April 22 till June 22. The current presentation is an analysis of the signalling of direct and
deliberate metaphors (Cameron & Deignan 2003; Goatly 1997) about truth in his first essay from
April 22, but will also include recurring metaphors about truth from later essays. Earlier studies
of direct and deliberate metaphors reveal that these kinds of metaphors are not very frequent in
general and that these lexical signals are not frequent, either. Direct and deliberate metaphors are,
however, more frequent in fiction or literature than in academic texts, news and conversations
(Steen 2010, 2011). The personal essay is a literary genre very close to fictional literature and it is
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therefore of general interest to see if this genre and this extraordinary situational context,
including an ambitious journalist as a special case, promote more frequent use of signals for
direct, deliberate metaphors than what has earlier been assumed for the simile, as in a study by
Glucksberg (2001) which concludes that direct metaphors occur very seldom. My hypothesis is
that this extraordinary trial and situational context, including a journalist with language
awareness, will lead to both an extraordinary use of metaphors and signals for metaphors.
Keywords: Deliberate metaphor, metaphor signals, metacommunicative markers, rhetorical
situation
References:
Cameron, L., & A. Deignan. 2003. “Combining Large and Small Corpora to Investigate Tuning Devices Around
Metaphor in Spoken Discourse”, in Metaphor and Symbol 18: 3, 149–160.
Goatly, A. 1997. The Language of Metaphors. London: Routledge.
Steen, G. 2011. “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor - Now new and improved!”, in Review of Cognitive
Linguistics 9:1, 26–64..
—. 2010. A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: from MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
——— ♦ ———
Fixed Metaphors in Christa Wolf’s Novel Kassandra
and in its Italian and French Translations
Mariangela Albano
University of Palermo
This paper analyzes, in a comparative way, the fixed metaphors (Nunberg et al. 1994;
Dobrovol’skij 2004; Gross 1996; Hudson 1998; Augustyn 2009; Benson 1985; Burger 2007;
Kleiber 1999) used in the German text Kassandra, by Christa Wolf and in its Italian and French
translations. How these metaphors are translated is important, for two reasons: Firstly, this
reveals the socio-cultural aspects that permeate the source language and the target language.
Additionally, it allows us to investigate the role of language and linguistic choices.
This paper will analyze these translations through a mixed approach, employing both bu
linguistics (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) and psycholinguistics (Cacciari 1991) as well as drawing on
cognitive cultural studies (Zunshine 2010). The analysis of metaphors allows us to better
understand human comprehension of communicative intentionality, how cultures represent reality
(Kövecses 2005; Gibbs 2008) and cognitive transposition among the three languages in question.
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This research seeks to demonstrate how the use of fixed metaphors can help us gain insights into
the German culture of the 1980s because they present evidence that some conceptual “frames”
structure the moral system (Lakoff 2006).
Keywords: fixed metaphors, conceptual metaphors, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics,
cognitive cultural studies, translation
References:
Augustyn, Magdalena. 2009. “Métaphore et figement dans les collocations verbales comportant un nom de
sentiment” [Metaphor and frozen phrases in verbal collocations containing a noun of emotion], in Synergies:
Pologne 6. 19–27.
Benson, Morton. 1985. “Collocations and idioms”, in Ilson-Robert (ed.), Dictionaries, Lexicography and Language
Learning, VIII. Oxford : Pergamon, 61–68.
Burger, Harald (ed.). 2007. Phraseologie. Ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenössischen Forschung
[Phraseology. An international handbook of contemporary research]. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Cacciari, Cristina (ed.). 1991. Teorie della metafora. L’acquisizione, la comprensione e l’uso del linguaggio figurato
[Theory of Metaphors: The acquisition, comprehension and usage of figurative language], 269–301. Milan :
Raffaello Cortina Editore.
Dobrovol’skij, Dmitrij. 2004. “Idiome aus kognitiver Sicht” [Idioms from a Cognitive Point of View], in Steyer,
Kathrin (ed.), Wortverbindungen - mehr oder weniger fest. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 117–143.
Gibbs, Raymond. 2008. The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Gross, Gaston. 1996. Les expressions figées en français; noms composés et autres locutions [Figurative Expressions
in French : Compound nouns and other expressions]. Paris: Éditions Ophrys.
Hudson, Jean. 1998. Perspectives on Fixedness: Applied and theoretical. Lund: Lund University Press.
Kleiber, Georges. 1999. “Les proverbes: des dénominations d’un type ‘très très spécial’” [Proverbs: Denominations
of a “very, very special type”]. Langue française 123: 52–69.
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2005. Metaphor in Culture: Universality and variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, George. 2006. Whose Freedom? The battle over America’s most important idea. New York: Picador.
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Nunberg, Geoffrey, Ivan Sag & Thomas Wasow. 1994. “Idioms,” in Language 70/3: 491–538.
Zunshine, Lisa. 2010. Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
——— ~ ———
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“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”: A semantic analysis of
selected metaphors in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot
Maria Anufrieva
Stockholm University (Sweden)
This study focuses on the analysis of specific linguistic metaphors selected from the poem The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot. Initially, a wider scope of metaphors from this
poem was analyzed but only some of them were selected. Those selected are thematically
significant, that is to say, they are significant not only in the local context they occur in but also
in the global context of the poem, contributing to the construction of the theme of the speaker’s,
or the poetic persona’s, indecisiveness, inability to act and move forward to the overwhelming
question he intends to ask.
These metaphors have been analyzed using terms borrowed from Richards and Goatly,
namely ‘topic’, ‘vehicle’, ‘T-term’, ‘V-term’ and ‘grounds’. The specific, poetic context of the
metaphors has influenced their interpretation to a certain extent, which is in fact what literary
discourse tends to highlight, i.e. the experiences of subjectivity where the same metaphorical
statement could be interpreted in different or partially different ways. The aim of the study was to
see how the selected metaphors are constructed and how the metaphorical part in a poetic
construction interacts with a seemingly literal part.
The analysis shows that the metaphorical part of the poetic constructions tends to evoke a
complex and directly perceptible phenomenon which serves as the basis for the understanding of
the poetic persona’s feelings. Also, the metaphors that describe the setting of the poem seem to
be projections of the protagonist’s mood. Thus, the affective aspect of the metaphors is essential
in the poem, since it connects the metaphors to a network of meanings related to a prominent
theme of the poem, namely the speaker’s paralysis and insecurity about himself, adding to the
expressive complexity of the poem’s structure.
Keywords: Metaphor, linguistic metaphor, poem, vehicle, topic, grounds, context, affective
aspects
References: Alm-Arvius, C. Forthcoming. Comprehensive Semantics.
—. 2011. “Polysemy: Conventional and incidental cases”, in Linguistics Applied 4, 11–36.
—. 2008. “Metaphor and Metonymy”, in Johannesson, N.-L. & D. Minugh (eds), Selected papers from the 2006 and
2007 Stockholm Metaphor Festivals, 2nd ed., 3–24.
—. 2006. “Live, Moribund, and Dead Metaphors”, in Wikberg, K. & B. Tysdahl (eds), Nordic Journal for English
Studies, Special issue on metaphors, NJES 5:1, 7–14.
—. 2003. Figures of Speech. Lund, Sweden: Studentlitteratur.
Posters The Stockholm 2012 Metaphor Festival September 6–8
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Berggren, D. 1962. “The Use and Abuse of Metaphor”, in Review of Metaphysics 16, 237–258.
Black, M. 1955. “Metaphor”, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 55, 273–294. Blackwell Publishing.
Retrieved May 15 2012 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4544549.
Boyd, R. 1993. “Metaphor and Theory Change: What is ‘metaphor’ a metaphor for?”, in Ortony, A. (ed.), Metaphor
and Thought, 2nd ed., 481–532.
Brouwer, E. 2010. “Attitude, Style and Context”, in Low, G., Z. Todd, A. Deignan & L. Cameron (eds), Researching
and Applying Metaphor in the Real World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 245–264.
Camac, M., & Glucksberg, S. 1984. “Metaphors Do Not Use Associations Between Concepts, They Are Used to
Create Them”, in Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 13:6, 443–455.
Cameron, L., & Deignan, A. 2006. “The Emergence of Metaphor in Discourse”, in Applied Linguistics, 27:4, 671–
690. doi: 10.1093/applin/aml032.
Cienki, A., & C. Müller. 2008. Metaphor and Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Davies, M. 2008-. The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 425 million words, 1990–present [Online].
Retrieved March 13 2012 from http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/.
Forceville, Ch. 2008. “Metaphor in Pictures and Multimodal Representations”, in Gibbs, R. W. Jr. (ed.), The
Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 462–482.
Goatly, A. 1997. The Language of Metaphors. London: Routledge.
Goossens, L. 2002. “Metaphtonymy: The interaction of metaphor and metonymy in expressions for linguistic
action”, in Dirven, R. & R. Pörings (eds), Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast.Mouton De
Gruyter, 349–378.
Grady, J. 2005. “Primary Metaphors as Inputs to Conceptual Integration”, in Journal of Pragmatics 37, 1595–1614.
doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2004.03.012.
Glucksberg, S. & B. Keysar. 1992. “Metaphor Understanding and Accessing Conceptual Schema: reply to Gibbs
(1992)”, in Psychological Review, 99:3, 578–581.
Hanks, P. 2005. “Similes and Sets: The English preposition like”, in Blatná, R. & V. Petkevič (Eds.), Jazyky a
jazykovĕda (Languages and Linguistics: Festschrift for Professor Fr. Čermák). Prague: Philosophy Faculty of
the Charles University. Retrieved May 15 2012 from
http://www.patrickhanks.com/uploads/5/1/4/9/5149363/similes_and_sets.pdf.
Kittay, E. 1987. Metaphor: Its cognitive force and linguistic structure. New York: Oxford University Press.
Knowles, M., & R. Moon. 2006. Introducing Metaphor. Oxon, OX: Routledge.
Lakoff, G., & M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G. 1993. “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor”, in Ortony, A. (ed.), Metaphor and Thought, 2nd ed..
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 202–251.
Nowottny, W. 2000. Language Poets Use. London, GBR: Continuum International Publishing.
Ortony, A. 1993. “Similarity in Similes and Metaphors”, in Ortony, A. (ed.), Metaphor and Thought, 2nd ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 342–356.
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Richards, I. A. 1965. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Semino, E. & G. Steen, 2008. “Metaphor in Literature”, in Gibbs, R. W. Jr. (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of
Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 232–246.
Steen, G. 2008. “The Paradox of Metaphor: Why we need a three-dimensional model of metaphor”, in Metaphor and
Symbol 23, 213–241. doi: 10.1080/10926480802426753.
—. 1994. Understanding Metaphor in Literature: An empirical approach. NY: Longman Publishing.
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—. 1989. “Metaphor and Literary Comprehension: Towards a discourse theory of metaphor in literature”, in Poetics
18, 113-141. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0304-422X(89)90025-9.
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21: 4, 76–796. doi: 10.1515/COGL.2010.024
Ungerer, F. & H. Schmid, 2006. An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics. GBR: Pearson Education Limited.
——— ♦ ———
The Semiotics of Metaphor
Amir Biglari
University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
Metaphor, present everywhere in life, has been studied by many different theorists. Semiotics –
the field which studies signification systems – proposes a new theory to examine this figure.
Inspired by Ferdinand de Saussure, semiotics eliminates the reference from its conception of the
sign. Therefore, we cannot say that in metaphor, there is a content which substitutes for another
content, because this conception implies that there is a content 1 (= a reference) which is
designated by a content 2. In this paper, we will present the principles of the semiotic theory of
figures, especially of metaphors, and will seek to develop it further: a metaphor is not the result
of an exclusive relation (A is interpreted by B), but is the result of an associative relation (A and
B), produced by an original perception by the speaker.
References:
Bordron, Jean-François and Jacques Fontanille. 2000. “Présentation”, in Langages, 137, Sémiotique du discours et
tensions rhétoriques [The Semiotics of Discourse and Rhetorical Tensions], Paris: Larousse, 3–15.
Fontanille, Jacques. 2003. Sémiotique du discours [The Semiotics of Discourse]. Limoges: Presses Universitaires de
Limoges.
Ouellet, Pierre. 2000. “La métaphore perceptive: Eidétique et figurativité” [The Perceptive Metaphor: Eidetics and
Figurativity], in Langages, 137, Sémiotique du discours et tensions rhétoriques. Paris: Larousse, 16–28.
Ricœur, Paul. 1975. La Métaphore vive [The Living Metaphor]. Paris: Seuil.
Zilberberg, Claude. 2011. Des formes de vie aux valeurs. [From Forms of Life to Values]. Paris, Presses
Universitaires de France.
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A Linguistic and Conceptual Metaphor Analysis of Peace Speeches
Susie Caruso
University of Calabria (Italy)
There have been a number of studies of the metaphors used to talk about war or terrorism, but
very little has been published on the metaphors used to describe peace. To this end, this paper
explores how the three main actors in the Roadmap peace process (Bush, Sharon, Abbas)
conceptualize peace/the peace process through metaphorical expressions.
This involves the identification and analysis of the following elements: contextual and basic
meanings, metaphor keywords, source domains, and conceptual metaphors. The interpretation
and explanation of all these elements is provided within the socio-political context, allowing for a
more precise analysis of metaphorical expressions found within real data.
The corpus is based on political speeches given in the timeframe 2002-2005, by American
President George W. Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority Prime
Minister Mahmoud Abbas, all regarding the peace process, and which are often referred to as
‘peace speeches’.
Two main research questions guide the study described in this paper. The first asks which
metaphorical expressions are used by Bush, Sharon, and Abbas while framing peace/the peace
process in their political discourse. The second considers what the metaphorical language used by
the three politicians reveals about their ideology.
The corpus data will be analyzed using a combination of different methods, in order to
answer the above research questions. The tools are primarily Conceptual Metaphor Theory
(Lakoff & Johnson 1980), the MIPVU procedure (Steen et al. 2010), and Critical Metaphor
Analysis (Charteris-Black 2004).
Keywords: peace metaphor, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, critical metaphor analysis
References:
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2004. Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Houndmills, Hampshire:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Steen, Gerard , Aletta Dorst, Berenike Herrmann, Anna Kaal, Tina Krennmayr & Trijntje Pasma. 2010. A Method for
Linguistic Metaphor Identification Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
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The Understanding of Metaphors in Down Syndrome (DS): A case study
Ioannis Galantomos,¹ Dimitra Katsarou² & Georgia Andreou³
University of the Aegean¹, University of Thessaly²˴³ (Greece)
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
In this paper we report on the results of an experiment we carried out in order to investigate the
understanding of non-literal language (namely, metaphors) in Down Syndrome (DS). The
traditional view holds that metaphor is a figure of speech which is used mainly for rhetorical and
artistic purposes. In other words, metaphor lies at the periphery of everyday language use.
Contrary to this well-established view, current approaches and ample empirical data point at the
ubiquity of figurative vocabulary in everyday discourse. Certain tenets, such as those held in
cognitive linguistics, claim that metaphor arises naturally and unconsciously, because the human
mind is based on the various types of figurative language. In other words, figuration shapes the
way man acts, interacts and understands the world surrounding him. Given this perspective,
metaphor is a complex phenomenon. In particular, it is suggested that metaphor is conceptual,
linguistic, bodily, socio-cultural and neural. Metaphorical competence (i.e. the ability to
understand and produce metaphorically based sentences and words) in children with typical
cognitive and language development is evident at about the age of 4–5 years old. On the other
hand, research has shown that people diagnosed with DS experience problems related to
figurative language understanding. Experimental data suggest that this difficulty is due to right
brain damage sustained by people with DS. This damage impairs comprehension and use of the
contextual information which helps typically developing people in deriving the meaning of
metaphors and idioms. In view of the above, we conducted an experiment so as to investigate the
understanding of non-literal aspects of language in DS. Our subject, C.A., was a 12-year-old girl
of Greek origin, diagnosed with DS, with a mental age of 8.5 years. We used a translated version
of a previously used test in order to examine her ability in metaphor comprehension. Our results
are in line with previous research and showed that C.A. did not manage to understand certain
aspects of figurative language, with this difficulty even more evident with novel metaphors.
Keywords: Down syndrome, metaphors, idioms, linguistics, mental retardation
References:
Bottini, G., R. Corcoran, R. Sterzi, E. Paulesu, P. Schenone, P. Scarpa, R.S.J. Frackowiak & C.D. Frith. 1994. “The
Role of the Right Hemisphere in the Interpretation of Figurative Aspects of Language. A Positron
Tomography Activation Study”, in Brain, 117, 1241–1253.
Gibbs, R. 1994. The Poetics of Mind. Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. Cambridge: CUP.
Gibbs, R. 2006. Embodiment and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: CUP.
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Kövecses, Z. 2002. Metaphor. A Practical Introduction. Oxford: OUP.
Papagno, C. & G. Vallar. 2001. “Understanding Metaphors and Idioms: A single-case neuropsychological study in a
person with Down syndrome”, in Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 7, 516–528.
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Metaphorical Picture in Traumatology
Svetlana Mishlanova¹ & Nadezhda Zubareva²
Perm State National Research University¹ (Russia)
Medical Unit No. 9 named after M.A. Tverier² (Perm, Russia)
[email protected], [email protected]
This article deals with the study of metaphor in the discourse of traumatology, i.e. in trauma
surgery, orthopedic surgery and accident surgery. As knowledge representation in traumatology
often entails referring to other realms of knowledge, metaphor is regarded to be a universal
cognitive tool, based on previous obtained knowledge (Lakoff & Johnson 1980). The associations
in the above-named discourse are made by linking anatomic structures and pathologic conditions
with objects, places, and concepts, and codifying these relationships as metaphoric signs.
In our study metaphoric signs were obtained from special medical dictionaries and from
encyclopedic and academic texts in traumatology. The metaphors obtained were separated into
three basic categories, or metaphor models: Human Activity, Inanimate Nature, Animate
Nature. The overwhelming majority were the signs from the metaphor model Human Activity,
subdivided into the submodels Mechanism, Housekeeping and Profession. The largest
submodel, Mechanism, includes such metaphors as reverse motion, key, latch, toothing, spiral,
screw, pump handle, drawer. The second submodel, Housekeeping, consists of such metaphors
as watering-can handle, hammer, sickle, reins, stairs, spade, basin, ring, visor, glass, textiles,
breakables, rupture, breaking. The third submodel, Profession, contains such signs as drummer,
tennis player, soldier. Another frequent metaphor model is Inanimate Nature, which includes
the spatial metaphors vertical-horizontal, anterior-posterior, upper-lower, lateral-medial, Greek,
Egyptian etc. The metaphor model Animate Nature combines the submodels Animal and Plant,
e.g. swan, butterfly, frog, mouse, branch, green shoot, vegetation.
The data of metaphor modeling shows that the metaphor submodel Mechanism
predominates in traumatological discourse. This allows us to suggest that the discourse of
traumatology is constructed around the idea “the body is a machine” and is strewn with
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mechanistic language and concepts. Orthopedic surgeons should take this feature of metaphor
modeling into consideration, in order to better communicate with their patients.
The further study of metaphoric signs in the discourse of traumatology will contribute to
doctor-patient communication, since the metaphor can bridge the gap between the scientific
process and the patient’s understanding of his/her problem.
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All seminars and workshops are in “Södra huset”, sections E and F.
T -bana
The arrow on the right points to the walking paths to the Stora Skuggan Restaurant, where we
will be eating lunch on Thursday and Friday. It’s about a 15 minute stroll.
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Please note that the lecture hall F11 is in the long low building (running from A to F), while all
the seminar rooms are in blocks E and F.
The English Department is on the eighth floor, block E. Take the elevators in the middle of block
E.