Teaching with Metaphors

DELTA: Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada, 2006

An important reason for the tremendous interest in metaphor over the past 20 years stems from cognitive linguistic research. Cognitive linguists embrace the idea that metaphor is not merely a part of language, but reflects a fundamental part of the way people think, reason, and imagine. A large number of empirical studies in cognitive linguistics have, in different ways, supported this claim. My aim in this paper is to describe the empirical foundations for cognitive linguistic work on metaphor, acknowledge various skeptical reactions to this work, and respond to some of these questions/criticisms. I also outline several challenges that cognitive linguists should try to address in future work on metaphor in language, thought, and culture.

Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1979

Several contemporary studies of metaphor are in agreement with respect to their assertion of the cognitive value of metaphor. They argue that metaphor is not merely a stylistic device, but an important means for expressing insights and information which cannot be stated in literal language. I shall set out this position through a brief summary of Max

This research note highlights the main points of a presentation given at the CEGLOC Faculty Development Seminar at the University of Tsukuba in the spring of the 2015 school year. It begins with a brief overview of English-language communicative proficiency in Japan and then an explanation of metaphor and its use in daily communication, offering examples and addressing some of the major work being done on metaphor and cognition. It then proceeds to outline a lesson plan for the language classroom that focuses on metaphor recognition and the utility of using metaphor for second-language learners in explaining abstract concepts in the English language. It concludes with ideas for the classroom for using other figures of speech to aid in second-language communication.

Cognitive Linguistics, 2004

The paper reviews the main approaches to the problem of metaphor that contribute to understanding the nature of this linguistic phenomenon emphasizing its significant and multifaceted functions.

This article deals with metaphor from a linguistic perspective. A question arises here as to whether to which field of language study metaphor belongs. How to answer the question is subject to our understanding of metaphorical expressions. When one encounters a situation in which a metaphorical expression is used, they have a kind of construal to conceptualize the expression. Thus, the field of linguistics which is concerned with studying metaphors is cognitive linguistics since people use their cognitive abilities to conceptualize and understand the metaphorical expressions. With respect to this, George Lakoff adopted a theory under the title Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). Here I try to shed light on some aspects of this theory. What is taken into consideration in the paper is a detailed account of metaphor as a cognitive device, the three basic types of conceptual metaphor proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), namely orientational, ontological, and structural. Also, the characteristic features of conceptual metaphors like asymmetry, systematicity, and conventionality. Additionally, the relationship between conceptual metaphor and image schemas is shown in the last section. One of the conclusions of the article is that conceptual metaphor is an integral part of our everyday lives; we cannot interact normally without using conceptual metaphors.

This paper suggests that metaphor research can benefit from a clearer description of the field of research. Three dimensions of doing metaphor research are distinguished: metaphor can be studied as part of grammar or usage, it can be studied as part of language or thought, and it can be studied as part of sign systems or behaviour. When these three dimensions are crossed, eight distinct areas of research emerge that have their own assumptions about metaphorical meaning which have their own implications and consequences for the aims and evaluation of research. It is suggested that these distinctions will help in clarifying the validity of claims about the role of conceptual metaphor in language.

Journal of Literary Semantics, 1999

For a long time, metaphor has been considered "äs a sort of happy extra trick with words" (Richards, 1936: 90)-a device of the poetic Imagination in which the poet coats his feelings to bestow on the language in which they are wrapped a touch of beauty or unfamiliarity. Accordingly, it has been relegated within this tradition to an ancillary function of mere embellishment. It is only in the early 1970s that its Status started to be rethought, thanks to the progress made in the fields of the philosophy of language, psychology, linguistics, stylistics, discourse analysis, and pragmatics. This period has actually witnessed a proliferation of symposia and publications such äs Black's Models and Metaphors (1962), Shibles's Metaphor. Annotated BMography and History (1971), Sacks's On Metaphor (1979), Ortony's Metaphor and Thought (1979), and Lakoff & Johnson's Metaphors We Live Bj (1980), to name only a few. The outcome of this research has been the questioning of the view of metaphor äs an achievement of the unordinary mind. Hence, it has been claimed that "to be able to produce and understand metaphorical Statements is nothing to boast about" (Black, 1979: 181), and that "children do not learn to speak metaphorically äs a kind of crowning achievement in the apprenticeship of language learning" (Cohen & Margalit, 1972: 723). It has also been claimed that metaphor is not only not a mark of excellence, but also "an incurable infirmity of the human mind" 2 to perceive reality äs it is (Bally: 1951:188). The paper is divided into sections, each studying a pair of dualities. The justification for dealing with metaphor in these terms could be found in the nature of metaphor itself which has been claimed to be "no different from any other kind of duality of meaning" (Morgan, 1979: 139), such äs ambiguity, irony, and indirect Speech acts. The first section will be devoted to dealing with the review of the massive literature about metaphor and the framework. The second section includes the pair imagnation-rationaKty, which is at the heart of metaphor making and processing. The third pair, assertion-speech act, investigates the logical Status of metaphor, and argues that metaphor cannot be approached in terms of truth claims. The fourth couple, convention-intention, seeks to draw a line between what is conventional and what is intentional in metaphor. The fifth, Speaker meaning-sentence meaning exploits the traditional distinction between literal and figurative meaning to show the continuum between the two.

International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2005

This paper presents a corpus-based approach to investigating the function of metaphor, specifically to the question whether the use of metaphorical language is motivated primarily by stylistic considerations or by cognitive principles. The paper focuses on concepts that can be expressed alternatively by a literal or a metaphorical linguistic expression with the same structural properties. Such expressions can be individual words (such as grasp and understand, which can both encode the concept understand), or fixed phrases (such as in the heart of and in the center of, which can both encode the concept in the center of). It turns out that a comparison of the distinctive collocates of the literal and the metaphorical variant in each case provides clear evidence for the hypothesis that metaphorical language has a cognitive function.

Journal of Pragmatics, 2000

Goatly's book The language of metaphors is an extensive description of the linguistic appearances of metaphors and their functions and purposes. New insights into the analysis of metaphorical interpretation are provided. Many corpus examples (from literature and common use) are analyzed, with respect to the different grammatical forms in which Vehicle, Topic, Ground, or marker of metaphorical interpretation each may occur in discourse. This review will not provide the most pleasant reading experience you ever had. Apart from the capabilities of the reviewer, there are three reasons why encapsulating The language of metaphors does not lead to a neat review. The first is that Goatly discusses many different approaches to the subject of metaphor, introducing a lot of terminology. Secondly, his way of analyzing metaphor consists of categorizing many different appearances of metaphors, which leads to mentioning a lot of category names. The last reason is that Goatly uses capital letters to indicate terminology and categorizing terms. Frankly, it does not make the book itself a pleasure to read. With respect to the use of capital letters, I have chosen to keep a term capitalized (e.g. Topic), whenever I cite one. When I use similar terminology myself, explaining aspects of Goatly's work, I do not capitalize (e.g. topicalize). So, a capitalized word in this review is always taken from Goatly's book. Terms that are not capitalized in the review, but obviously stem from the book, did not have capitals in the book either. The term 'metaphor', for instance, is not capitalized in The language of metaphors. The chapters of the book can be divided into three groups: the first four chapters are involved with various linguistic approaches to the analysis of metaphorical meaning. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 are dedicated to an analysis of how the linguistic appearance of a metaphor or one of its constituting parts influences its interpretation. Chapters 5 and lO treat the communicative functions of metaphors.