Boase-Beier, J. (1987) Poetic Compounds: The Principles of Poetic Language in Modern English Poet... more Boase-Beier, J. (1987) Poetic Compounds: The Principles of Poetic Language in Modern English Poetry. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Culpeper, J. (2001) Language and Characterization: People in Plays and Other Texts. London: Longman. Culpeper, J., Short, M. and Verdonk, P. (eds) (1998) Exploring the Language of Drama. London: Routledge. Short, M. (1996) Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose. London: Longman. Stockwell, P. (2002) Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Tan, P.K.W. (1993) A Stylistics of Drama. Singapore: Singapore University Press.
Let us begin with a magnificent piece of literary metaphor: Shall I compare thee to a summer's da... more Let us begin with a magnificent piece of literary metaphor: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date; Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines. By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade. Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wandrest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.' Shakespeare's famous Sonnet 18 is a masterful display of literary genius, not least because of the playful, almost teasing quality of the opening line.
This paper present an experimental study of the distinction between the linguistic, conceptual an... more This paper present an experimental study of the distinction between the linguistic, conceptual and comunicative functions of metaphor in discourse. The study uses a song by Bob Dylan and creates three different reading conditions in which participants are requested to focus on the metaphors in the song as linguistic, conceptual or communicative structures. 39 metaphors have to be rated on three dimensions of affect. The results show that adopting a different mind set influences affective metaphor value in various ways. The findings are discussed and interpreted as providing support for the distinction between three discourse dimensions and functions for metaphor.
The VU Amsterdam Metaphor Corpus consists of manual annotations of metaphors in four different re... more The VU Amsterdam Metaphor Corpus consists of manual annotations of metaphors in four different registers—news texts, fiction, academic texts, and conversations. The goal of building this corpus was to investigate which metaphors are used in which forms, in which discourse contexts, in which registers, and for which purposes. This chapter reports on the development of the annotation scheme and its physical representation, describes the annotation process, and reports on inter-annotator agreement and quality control as well as current usage of the corpus. It also includes some quantitative results on the interaction between metaphor, register, and word class.
practice of ‘discursive exclusion’, an insight offered by Foucault as to how discourses operate. ... more practice of ‘discursive exclusion’, an insight offered by Foucault as to how discourses operate. In other words, it might be said that the mappings and definitions of ‘discourse’ in Mills’s book are to some extent only a part of a wider ‘disciplinary matrix’ which she herself inhabits. Mills (p. 33) draws attention to the fact that ‘Foucault does not hold that his own position is completely outside the ideas and practices which he is analysing’. So, within the reaches of Foucault’s position, the intermittent absence of critical distance in this book would have to be accepted – Mills cannot eradicate the ‘contaminatory’ effects of the discursive practices in which she operates. But since she aims to ‘focus on the limitations and theoretical difficulties which beset the term [discourse]’ (p. 27), this suggests a capacity to see ‘beyond’ the concept which has not been wholly exercised here.
In this paper, we aim to explain how metaphors can be employed for clarificatory purposes in Brit... more In this paper, we aim to explain how metaphors can be employed for clarificatory purposes in British parliamentary debates. These debates typically involve an exchange of arguments concerning complex issues, which more often than not may require clarification. In clarifying something complex, metaphors are often employed in which an unfamiliar and abstract concept is compared to a more familiar and concrete concept. Because the choice of metaphor affects how an issue is understood and reasoned about, discussants may wish to oppose such a metaphor to avoid biased conceptions or even misunderstandings of the issue under discussion. We present a number of cases in which metaphors used for clarificatory purposes are opposed in a British Public Bill Committee debate on the Digital Economy Bill. Our analyses uncover which metaphors are used for clarificatory purposes, to what extent these clarificatory metaphors contribute to furthering the resolution of a debate on the acceptability of l...
The central metaphor in cognitive science is the computer metaphor of the brain. In previous work... more The central metaphor in cognitive science is the computer metaphor of the brain. In previous work, we reconstructed the metaphor in a novel way, guided by the assumption that it functions as an explanatory hypothesis. We developed an argumentative pattern for justifying scientific explanations in which this metaphor functions as a standpoint supported by argumentation containing abduction and analogy. In this paper, we use the argumentative pattern as a heuristic to reconstruct recent scientific criticisms against the computer metaphor. The pattern generates expectations about the nature of these criticisms, and we show those expectations to be met in most respects. We then discuss the extent to which our findings render the reconstruction offered by the argumentative pattern feasible. A central question emerging from our analysis is whether the computer metaphor can be adequately characterized as an explanatory hypothesis based on abduction. We suggest some possibilities for future...
This paper explores the relation between metaphor and Sensory Motor concepts in language use. Sen... more This paper explores the relation between metaphor and Sensory Motor concepts in language use. Sensory Motor concepts in language use are de ned as a number of semantic elds distinguished by WMatrix, comprising Sensory lexis and Motor lexis, including words under 'Sight' and 'Sound' as well as 'Moving, Coming, Going' and 'Pushing, Putting, Pulling'. The incidence of this lexis and its metaphorical use is examined in the VU Amsterdam Metaphor Corpus, a 190,000 word selection from BNC Baby annotated for metaphor. The relation between the selected semantic elds and metaphorical and non-metaphorical use reveals a substantial distinction between the metaphorical use of Sensory Motor lexis and all other lexis as well as between the metaphorical use of Sensory lexis and Motor lexis. Interactions with word class and with genre are also explored, indicating more speci c behavior of each of the various groups of lexis expressing the distinct concept categories. The paper concludes by suggesting that Sensory-Motor concepts may indeed play a special role in metaphorical language use, and that additional distinctions are needed to capture the four-way interaction between metaphor, word class, register and semantic eld.
Current Approaches to Metaphor Analysis in Discourse, 2019
Recent studies of a behavioural kind (e.g., Glenberg and Kaschak 2002), neuroimaging kind (e.g., ... more Recent studies of a behavioural kind (e.g., Glenberg and Kaschak 2002), neuroimaging kind (e.g., Kemmerer et al. 2008) and neurophysiological kind (e.g., Papeo et al. 2009) have shown that the sensorimotor system is involved in language understanding. Listening to the sentence “John grasps the glass” activates hand-related areas of the motor cortex even if we are not carrying out any hand-related action. This mechanism is known as Embodied Simulation (Gallese and Sinigaglia 2011) and has been shown to be a widespread mechanism in the brain, also characterizing the control of emotion and perception. The recruitment of Embodied Simulation has even been observed during metaphor comprehension (e.g., Boulenger et al. 2012; Desai et al. 2011). This has led Gibbs (e.g., 2015a, 2015b) to conclude that when processing bodily metaphors people recruit bodily knowledge as a function of cross-domain mapping. Yet the role of Embodied Simulation in the construction of figurative meaning is still controversial, with reports of contrasting empirical findings (e.g., Lai and Curran 2013). We will review this literature in the light of a novel definition of Embodied Simulation (Cuccio 2015a, 2015b, 2018) and its role at various stages of language processing, in interaction with the distinction between deliberate and nondeliberate metaphors (Steen 2008, 2015, 2017). We claim that this approach can explain the apparent incongruity of findings showing that the mechanism of simulation that has not always been found activated during the processing of action related figurative language. We claim that only deliberate metaphor use recruits the full mechanism of Embodied Simulation and its potential for affecting the resulting mental representation of a metaphor in working memory (Cuccio 2018; Steen 2018).
An important challenge for communication scientists is to characterize and understand hybrid genr... more An important challenge for communication scientists is to characterize and understand hybrid genres. Satirical news is such a hybrid genre and comprises a blend of the genres of comedy, news, and political opinion. This theoretical article aims to contribute to this discussion by further specifying the concept of discursive mode. Discursive modes designate certain communicative orientations toward a particular genre element. We make our argument concrete by introducing a typology of metaphorical humor in satirical news. Our humoristic metaphors in satirical news (HMSN) typology, demonstrates that satirists can realize and switch between 4 different discursive modes through metaphors. These discursive modes comprise different combinations of core rhetorical functions in satirical news (humor, education, and evaluation). We describe each type of metaphor in our typology and present a research agenda identifying key issues that require future research and empirical verification.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form ... more All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers.
ions across individuals who are interacting with each other; this social level of representation ... more ions across individuals who are interacting with each other; this social level of representation is a complex area of research, which has recently begun to be studied from a complex systems perspective by for instance Cameron and her colleagues (e.g., Cameron, Maslen, et al., 2009). For a psychological approach to identify a metaphor in language, we would need to have empirical evidence that two distinct senses are in fact activated and related to each other in an individual’s mind. And for a psychological approach to identify a metaphor in thought, we would need to have evidence that two distinct conceptual domains are in fact activated and related to each other in an individual’s mind. The psychological identification of metaphor in communication, finally, would need to produce evidence that an individual is aware that they are producing or receiving a metaphor as a metaphor; this would relate to evidence for metaphor recognition, which is typically a post-comprehension process. A...
Boase-Beier, J. (1987) Poetic Compounds: The Principles of Poetic Language in Modern English Poet... more Boase-Beier, J. (1987) Poetic Compounds: The Principles of Poetic Language in Modern English Poetry. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Culpeper, J. (2001) Language and Characterization: People in Plays and Other Texts. London: Longman. Culpeper, J., Short, M. and Verdonk, P. (eds) (1998) Exploring the Language of Drama. London: Routledge. Short, M. (1996) Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose. London: Longman. Stockwell, P. (2002) Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Tan, P.K.W. (1993) A Stylistics of Drama. Singapore: Singapore University Press.
Let us begin with a magnificent piece of literary metaphor: Shall I compare thee to a summer's da... more Let us begin with a magnificent piece of literary metaphor: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date; Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines. By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade. Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wandrest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.' Shakespeare's famous Sonnet 18 is a masterful display of literary genius, not least because of the playful, almost teasing quality of the opening line.
This paper present an experimental study of the distinction between the linguistic, conceptual an... more This paper present an experimental study of the distinction between the linguistic, conceptual and comunicative functions of metaphor in discourse. The study uses a song by Bob Dylan and creates three different reading conditions in which participants are requested to focus on the metaphors in the song as linguistic, conceptual or communicative structures. 39 metaphors have to be rated on three dimensions of affect. The results show that adopting a different mind set influences affective metaphor value in various ways. The findings are discussed and interpreted as providing support for the distinction between three discourse dimensions and functions for metaphor.
The VU Amsterdam Metaphor Corpus consists of manual annotations of metaphors in four different re... more The VU Amsterdam Metaphor Corpus consists of manual annotations of metaphors in four different registers—news texts, fiction, academic texts, and conversations. The goal of building this corpus was to investigate which metaphors are used in which forms, in which discourse contexts, in which registers, and for which purposes. This chapter reports on the development of the annotation scheme and its physical representation, describes the annotation process, and reports on inter-annotator agreement and quality control as well as current usage of the corpus. It also includes some quantitative results on the interaction between metaphor, register, and word class.
practice of ‘discursive exclusion’, an insight offered by Foucault as to how discourses operate. ... more practice of ‘discursive exclusion’, an insight offered by Foucault as to how discourses operate. In other words, it might be said that the mappings and definitions of ‘discourse’ in Mills’s book are to some extent only a part of a wider ‘disciplinary matrix’ which she herself inhabits. Mills (p. 33) draws attention to the fact that ‘Foucault does not hold that his own position is completely outside the ideas and practices which he is analysing’. So, within the reaches of Foucault’s position, the intermittent absence of critical distance in this book would have to be accepted – Mills cannot eradicate the ‘contaminatory’ effects of the discursive practices in which she operates. But since she aims to ‘focus on the limitations and theoretical difficulties which beset the term [discourse]’ (p. 27), this suggests a capacity to see ‘beyond’ the concept which has not been wholly exercised here.
In this paper, we aim to explain how metaphors can be employed for clarificatory purposes in Brit... more In this paper, we aim to explain how metaphors can be employed for clarificatory purposes in British parliamentary debates. These debates typically involve an exchange of arguments concerning complex issues, which more often than not may require clarification. In clarifying something complex, metaphors are often employed in which an unfamiliar and abstract concept is compared to a more familiar and concrete concept. Because the choice of metaphor affects how an issue is understood and reasoned about, discussants may wish to oppose such a metaphor to avoid biased conceptions or even misunderstandings of the issue under discussion. We present a number of cases in which metaphors used for clarificatory purposes are opposed in a British Public Bill Committee debate on the Digital Economy Bill. Our analyses uncover which metaphors are used for clarificatory purposes, to what extent these clarificatory metaphors contribute to furthering the resolution of a debate on the acceptability of l...
The central metaphor in cognitive science is the computer metaphor of the brain. In previous work... more The central metaphor in cognitive science is the computer metaphor of the brain. In previous work, we reconstructed the metaphor in a novel way, guided by the assumption that it functions as an explanatory hypothesis. We developed an argumentative pattern for justifying scientific explanations in which this metaphor functions as a standpoint supported by argumentation containing abduction and analogy. In this paper, we use the argumentative pattern as a heuristic to reconstruct recent scientific criticisms against the computer metaphor. The pattern generates expectations about the nature of these criticisms, and we show those expectations to be met in most respects. We then discuss the extent to which our findings render the reconstruction offered by the argumentative pattern feasible. A central question emerging from our analysis is whether the computer metaphor can be adequately characterized as an explanatory hypothesis based on abduction. We suggest some possibilities for future...
This paper explores the relation between metaphor and Sensory Motor concepts in language use. Sen... more This paper explores the relation between metaphor and Sensory Motor concepts in language use. Sensory Motor concepts in language use are de ned as a number of semantic elds distinguished by WMatrix, comprising Sensory lexis and Motor lexis, including words under 'Sight' and 'Sound' as well as 'Moving, Coming, Going' and 'Pushing, Putting, Pulling'. The incidence of this lexis and its metaphorical use is examined in the VU Amsterdam Metaphor Corpus, a 190,000 word selection from BNC Baby annotated for metaphor. The relation between the selected semantic elds and metaphorical and non-metaphorical use reveals a substantial distinction between the metaphorical use of Sensory Motor lexis and all other lexis as well as between the metaphorical use of Sensory lexis and Motor lexis. Interactions with word class and with genre are also explored, indicating more speci c behavior of each of the various groups of lexis expressing the distinct concept categories. The paper concludes by suggesting that Sensory-Motor concepts may indeed play a special role in metaphorical language use, and that additional distinctions are needed to capture the four-way interaction between metaphor, word class, register and semantic eld.
Current Approaches to Metaphor Analysis in Discourse, 2019
Recent studies of a behavioural kind (e.g., Glenberg and Kaschak 2002), neuroimaging kind (e.g., ... more Recent studies of a behavioural kind (e.g., Glenberg and Kaschak 2002), neuroimaging kind (e.g., Kemmerer et al. 2008) and neurophysiological kind (e.g., Papeo et al. 2009) have shown that the sensorimotor system is involved in language understanding. Listening to the sentence “John grasps the glass” activates hand-related areas of the motor cortex even if we are not carrying out any hand-related action. This mechanism is known as Embodied Simulation (Gallese and Sinigaglia 2011) and has been shown to be a widespread mechanism in the brain, also characterizing the control of emotion and perception. The recruitment of Embodied Simulation has even been observed during metaphor comprehension (e.g., Boulenger et al. 2012; Desai et al. 2011). This has led Gibbs (e.g., 2015a, 2015b) to conclude that when processing bodily metaphors people recruit bodily knowledge as a function of cross-domain mapping. Yet the role of Embodied Simulation in the construction of figurative meaning is still controversial, with reports of contrasting empirical findings (e.g., Lai and Curran 2013). We will review this literature in the light of a novel definition of Embodied Simulation (Cuccio 2015a, 2015b, 2018) and its role at various stages of language processing, in interaction with the distinction between deliberate and nondeliberate metaphors (Steen 2008, 2015, 2017). We claim that this approach can explain the apparent incongruity of findings showing that the mechanism of simulation that has not always been found activated during the processing of action related figurative language. We claim that only deliberate metaphor use recruits the full mechanism of Embodied Simulation and its potential for affecting the resulting mental representation of a metaphor in working memory (Cuccio 2018; Steen 2018).
An important challenge for communication scientists is to characterize and understand hybrid genr... more An important challenge for communication scientists is to characterize and understand hybrid genres. Satirical news is such a hybrid genre and comprises a blend of the genres of comedy, news, and political opinion. This theoretical article aims to contribute to this discussion by further specifying the concept of discursive mode. Discursive modes designate certain communicative orientations toward a particular genre element. We make our argument concrete by introducing a typology of metaphorical humor in satirical news. Our humoristic metaphors in satirical news (HMSN) typology, demonstrates that satirists can realize and switch between 4 different discursive modes through metaphors. These discursive modes comprise different combinations of core rhetorical functions in satirical news (humor, education, and evaluation). We describe each type of metaphor in our typology and present a research agenda identifying key issues that require future research and empirical verification.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form ... more All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers.
ions across individuals who are interacting with each other; this social level of representation ... more ions across individuals who are interacting with each other; this social level of representation is a complex area of research, which has recently begun to be studied from a complex systems perspective by for instance Cameron and her colleagues (e.g., Cameron, Maslen, et al., 2009). For a psychological approach to identify a metaphor in language, we would need to have empirical evidence that two distinct senses are in fact activated and related to each other in an individual’s mind. And for a psychological approach to identify a metaphor in thought, we would need to have evidence that two distinct conceptual domains are in fact activated and related to each other in an individual’s mind. The psychological identification of metaphor in communication, finally, would need to produce evidence that an individual is aware that they are producing or receiving a metaphor as a metaphor; this would relate to evidence for metaphor recognition, which is typically a post-comprehension process. A...
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