Papers by Gudrun Reijnierse
Wat gebeurt er in het Nederlands?! Over taal, frequentie en variatie, 2021
Nooit meer dansen? De veilige stad in tijden van pandemie, 2021
Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2020), 2020
Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world, 2019
Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world, 2019
Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world, 2019
Drawing attention to metaphor. Case studies across time periods, cultures and modalities, 2020
Journal of Science Communication, 2021
Metaphor and Symbol, 2022
Nederlandse Letterkunde, 2022
Corpora, 2019
There is renewed interest in the special role that metaphor can have in its communicative status ... more There is renewed interest in the special role that metaphor can have in its communicative status as metaphor between language users. This paper investigates the occurrence of such deliberate metaphors in comparison with non-deliberate metaphors. To this end, a corpus of 24,762 metaphors was analysed for the presence of potentially deliberate (versus non-deliberate) metaphor use across registers and word classes. Results show that 4.36 percent of metaphors in the corpus are identified as potentially deliberate metaphors. News and fiction contain significantly more potentially deliberate metaphors, while academic texts and conversations exhibit significantly fewer potentially deliberate metaphors than expected. Moreover, nouns and adjectives are used relatively more frequently as potentially deliberate metaphors, while adverbs, verbs and prepositions are used relatively less frequently as potentially deliberate metaphors. These results can be explained by referring to the overall communicative properties of the registers concerned, as well as to the role of the different word classes in those registers.
Cognitive Science, 2019
Concreteness ratings are frequently used in a variety of disciplines to operationalize difference... more Concreteness ratings are frequently used in a variety of disciplines to operationalize differences between concrete and abstract words and concepts. However, most ratings studies present items in isolation, thereby overlooking the potential polysemy of words. Consequently, ratings for polyse-mous words may be conflated, causing a threat to the validity of concreteness-ratings studies. This is particularly relevant to metaphorical words, which typically describe something abstract in terms of something more concrete. To investigate whether perceived concreteness ratings differ for metaphorical versus non-metaphorical word meanings, we obtained concreteness ratings for 96 English nouns from 230 participants. Results show that nouns are perceived as less concrete when a metaphorical (versus non-metaphorical) meaning is triggered. We thus recommend taking metaphoricity into account in future concreteness-ratings studies to further improve the quality and reliability of such studies, as well as the consistency of the empirical studies that rely on these ratings.
Scientific Study of Literature, 2018
Metaphors occur frequently in literary texts. Deliberate Metaphor Theory (DMT; e.g., Steen, 2017 ... more Metaphors occur frequently in literary texts. Deliberate Metaphor Theory (DMT; e.g., Steen, 2017 ) proposes that metaphors that serve a communicative function as metaphor are radically different from metaphors that do not have this function. We investigated differences in processing between deliberate and non-deliberate metaphors, compared to non-metaphorical words in literary reading. Using the Deliberate Metaphor Identification Procedure ( Reijnierse et al., 2018 ), we identified metaphors in two literary stories. Then, eye-tracking was used to investigate participants’ ( N = 72) reading behavior. Deliberate metaphors were read slower than non-deliberate metaphors, and both metaphor types were read slower than non-metaphorical words. Differences were controlled for several psycholinguistic variables. Differences in reading behavior were related to individual differences in reading experience and absorption and appreciation of the story. These results are in line with predictions from DMT and underline the importance of distinguishing between metaphor types in the experimental study of literary reading.
Cognitive Science, 2019
Concreteness ratings are frequently used in a variety of disciplines to operationalize difference... more Concreteness ratings are frequently used in a variety of disciplines to operationalize differences between concrete and abstract words and concepts. However, most ratings studies present items in isolation, thereby overlooking the potential polysemy of words. Consequently, ratings for polysemous words may be conflated, causing a threat to the validity of concreteness-ratings studies. This is particularly relevant to metaphorical words, which typically describe something abstract in terms of something more concrete. To investigate whether perceived concreteness ratings differ for metaphorical versus non-metaphorical word meanings, we obtained concreteness ratings for 96 English nouns from 230 participants. Results show that nouns are perceived as less concrete when a metaphorical (versus non-metaphorical) meaning is triggered. We thus recommend taking metaphoricity into account in future concreteness-ratings studies to further improve the quality and reliability of such studies, as well as the consistency of the empirical studies that rely on these ratings.
Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 2018
This paper offers a systematic, bottom-up, investigation of the role of adjectives as metaphor si... more This paper offers a systematic, bottom-up, investigation of the role of adjectives as metaphor signals in metaphorical domain constructions (MDCs) such as ‘budgetary anorexia’ and ‘economic crash’ within the framework of Deliberate Metaphor Theory (e.g., Steen, 2017). To this end, we analyse all MDCs in the VU Amsterdam Metaphor Corpus. Results of our analyses demonstrate that domain adjectives in MDCs do not by definition constitute signals of metaphor, and that not all nouns in MDCs are identified as potentially deliberate metaphors. We identify three different functions of domain adjectives: (1) signal of novel metaphor; (2) signal of conventional metaphor; (3) non-signal. The analyses in this paper provide new insights into both the role of domain adjectives in MDCs, and the position of MDCs as a typical manifestation of potentially deliberate metaphor.
![Research paper thumbnail of The distribution of potentially deliberate metaphor across register and word class (accepted for publication in Corpora 14[3])](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/56881763/thumbnails/1.jpg)
There is renewed interest in the special role that metaphor can have in its communicative status ... more There is renewed interest in the special role that metaphor can have in its communicative status as metaphor between language users. This paper investigates the occurrence of such deliberate metaphors in comparison with non-deliberate metaphors. To this end, a corpus of 24,762 metaphors was analysed for the presence of potentially deliberate (versus non-deliberate) metaphor use across registers and word classes. Results show that 4.36% of metaphors in the corpus are identified as potentially deliberate metaphors. News and fiction contain significantly more potentially deliberate metaphors, while academic texts and conversations exhibit significantly fewer potentially deliberate metaphors than expected. Moreover, nouns and adjectives are used relatively more frequently as potentially deliberate metaphors, while adverbs, verbs, and prepositions are used relatively less frequently as potentially deliberate metaphors. These results can be explained by referring to the overall communicative properties of the registers concerned, as well as to the role of the different word classes in those registers.
Corpus Pragmatics, 2018
This paper introduces the Deliberate Metaphor Identification Procedure (DMIP), a method for the s... more This paper introduces the Deliberate Metaphor Identification Procedure (DMIP), a method for the systematic and reliable identification of potentially deliberate metaphor in language use. We take a semiotic approach to deliberate metaphor, and propose that, on a semiotic level, the distinction between potentially deliberate and non-deliberate metaphor hinges on the question whether the source domain functions as a distinct referent in the meaning of a metaphorical utterance. We present DMIP and illustrate the procedure in practice on the basis of the analysis of a series of real-world examples. We also report on inter-rater reliability testing. Finally, we discuss the implications of adopting DMIP as a tool for deliberate-metaphor analysis, and point out how this approach can contribute to the further development of Deliberate Metaphor Theory.
Based on the assumption that extended metaphor may constitute a case of de- liberate metaphor and... more Based on the assumption that extended metaphor may constitute a case of de- liberate metaphor and therefore has the potential to influence people’s opinions, this paper investigates whether extending a metaphorical frame in a text leads people to perceive policy measures that are in line with that frame as more effec- tive for solving a crime problem than other policy measures. The metaphorical frames ‘Crime is a virus’ and ‘Crime is a beast’ were extended in one experiment each via a series of additional conventional metaphorical expressions having crime as the target domain and beasts/viruses as the source domain. Participants (N = 354, Experiment 1; N = 361, Experiment 2) were randomly assigned to one
of five experimental conditions with increasing numbers of sentences containing metaphorical expressions, and rated the effectiveness of a set of policy measures to solve the crime problem described in the text. The data yield limited support for our hypothesis. When controlling for political affiliation, the ratings for frame- consistent measures trended in the hypothesised direction in Experiment 2. Experiment 1 yielded a trend for frame-inconsistent measures. These results sug- gest that metaphorical framing effects may be more subtle than has been assumed.
The use of a dictionary in metaphor identification may lead to conflicts between sense descriptio... more The use of a dictionary in metaphor identification may lead to conflicts between sense descriptions in the dictionary and analysts’ (native speaker) intuitions about word meanings. This paper offers suggestions for dealing with these con- flicts by focusing on the descriptive rather than prescriptive role of the dictionary and the autonomy of the researcher. We argue that whether researchers decide
to follow the dictionary or favour their own intuitions and specific interests is ultimately up to them, but they should aim to make their decisions as systematic and explicit as possible.
In this article, we offer a critical view of Thibodeau and Boroditsky who report an effect of met... more In this article, we offer a critical view of Thibodeau and Boroditsky who report an effect of metaphorical framing on readers' preference for political measures after exposure to a short text on the increase of crime in a fictitious town: when crime was metaphorically presented as a beast, readers became more enforcement-oriented than when crime was metaphorically framed as a virus. We argue that the design of the study has left room for alternative explanations. We report four experiments comprising a follow-up study, remedying several shortcomings in the original design while collecting more encompassing sets of data. Our experiments include three additions to the original studies: (1) a non-metaphorical control condition, which is contrasted to the two metaphorical framing conditions used by Thibodeau and Boroditsky, (2) text versions that do not have the other, potentially supporting metaphors of the original stimulus texts, (3) a pre-exposure measure of political preference (Experiments 1–2). We do not find a metaphorical framing effect but instead show that there is another process at play across the board which presumably has to do with simple exposure to textual information. Reading about crime increases people's preference for enforcement irrespective of metaphorical frame or metaphorical support of the frame. These findings suggest the existence of boundary conditions under which metaphors can have differential effects on reasoning. Thus, our four experiments provide converging evidence raising questions about when metaphors do and do not influence reasoning.
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Papers by Gudrun Reijnierse
of five experimental conditions with increasing numbers of sentences containing metaphorical expressions, and rated the effectiveness of a set of policy measures to solve the crime problem described in the text. The data yield limited support for our hypothesis. When controlling for political affiliation, the ratings for frame- consistent measures trended in the hypothesised direction in Experiment 2. Experiment 1 yielded a trend for frame-inconsistent measures. These results sug- gest that metaphorical framing effects may be more subtle than has been assumed.
to follow the dictionary or favour their own intuitions and specific interests is ultimately up to them, but they should aim to make their decisions as systematic and explicit as possible.
of five experimental conditions with increasing numbers of sentences containing metaphorical expressions, and rated the effectiveness of a set of policy measures to solve the crime problem described in the text. The data yield limited support for our hypothesis. When controlling for political affiliation, the ratings for frame- consistent measures trended in the hypothesised direction in Experiment 2. Experiment 1 yielded a trend for frame-inconsistent measures. These results sug- gest that metaphorical framing effects may be more subtle than has been assumed.
to follow the dictionary or favour their own intuitions and specific interests is ultimately up to them, but they should aim to make their decisions as systematic and explicit as possible.
How does perceptual experience affect abstract concept processing and representation?
What is the role of language in shaping and indexing the content of concrete vs abstract concepts?
How and in which contexts are abstract concepts understood through metaphors?
Join us for this exciting academic debate, in Amsterdam, 18th November 2016 (09.00-18.00)
Keynote Speakers:
Prof. Friedemann Pulvermueller (Free University Berlin)
Prof. Gun Semin (Utrecht University)
Prof. Piek Vossen (VU University Amsterdam)
Dr. Diane Pecher (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Prof. Max Louwerse (Tilburg University)
Prof. Alessandro Lenci (University of Pisa)
Prof. Ken McRae (University of Western Ontario Canada)
Prof. Gabriella Vigliocco (University College London)
A 50,000 word corpus of French newspaper texts was analyzed with two dictionaries: Le Petit Robert (Rey-Debove, 2009) and Le Grand Robert & Collins (Durand, 2009). The findings show that metaphor identification is slightly more straightforward for function words (e.g. prepositions) than for content words (e.g. verbs).
The results are studied quantitatively by measuring agreement between the two dictionaries and qualitatively by investigating difficulties in more detail. This paper also sets forth how analysts can use dictionaries in a pragmatic way without detracting from the improved reliability and reproducibility of the method.
As non-specialized dictionaries generally aim to provide a standard overview of the meanings of words in a certain language, one would expect that the choice of a dictionary does not influence the identification of metaphorically used words. This is, however, not the case. The analysis of a 50,000 word corpus of French newspaper texts with two dictionaries, Le Petit Robert (Rey-Debove 2009) and Le Grand Robert & Collins (Durand 2009), shows varying degrees of agreement on lexical units that are identified as metaphors. Some words are thus considered metaphor-related when using one dictionary but not when using the other. The adjective prochain, for example, can either mean ‘next’ (temporal) or ‘near’ (spatial) according to Le Grand Robert & Collins. However, if one consults Le Petit Robert, the spatial sense seems to be unavailable to present-day speakers of French, because of the label “vieux” (‘archaic’).
This paper will provide both a quantitative and a qualitative account of the differences between the metaphors that were identified by the two dictionaries. It will elaborate on the reasons for disagreement by providing extensive analyses of various dictionary entries. It will also consider the question of how dictionaries can be used in a pragmatic way without losing track of the newly gained advantages that MIP presents: reproducibility and reliability.
Published in Metaphor and the Social World 8:1 (2018), pp. 143–149.