A metaphor is a metaphor

Journal of Social Issues, 1991

Metaphorical concepts have always played an important role in scientific thought. Through these metaphors, social and cultural conditions, ideological preconceptions, and everyday experiences influence ideas about nature. This article discusses two examples from the history of ideas about evolution and animal behavior: Darwin's "struggle for existence," and the rise and fall of zoopsychology. It also describes sociobiology as a current example. All theory is grey, but green, green is the tree of life.-Goethe

2011

Humans use metaphors to explore their relationship with nature. Our ability to make and understand metaphors appears to be an automatic cognitive process, one that likely evolved along with our ability to create and understand language. Because metaphors are processed automatically, without conscious appraisal, they can be used to rapidly communicate, or manipulate. Applying theories of evolutionary psychology and cognitive science to literary texts, we explored the role of animal metaphors in the making and partaking of stories in the context of a course in environmental studies. We investigated how humans are animals and yet use culture to shield themselves from this reality. We read and analyzed literature in which animal metaphors are central, such as Honoré de Balzac's short story Passion in the Desert and Langdon Smith's poem "Evolution." Throughout the course, the overarching theme is that animal metaphors are powerful tools for framing our relationship with the environment and that they can be best understood in the context of humans as evolved animals.

American Journal of Applied Sciences, 2016

Terminology of any science, as a result of verbalized scientific expertise, is formed in conjunction with the ordinary consciousness of native speakers. Metaphor in a particular scientific zoological discourse in the Russian and Kazakh languages has not become the object of researchers' attention yet. The comparison of the results of the cognitive mechanism of analogy in the zoological discourse in languages genetically and structurally not identical to each other is of research interest. Comparative analysis of scientific zoological terminology in the Russian and the Kazakh languages confirms the metaphorical nature of the scientific language, generated by the cognitive mechanism of analogy. Most of terminology metaphors in zoo-discourse are modeled on the universal archetype-anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and dendromorphic. Metaphors generated within universals are identical in the Russian and the Kazakh languages. Greco-Latin designations of zoological concepts to which metaphors date back also rely on identified metaphorical universals. In scientific communication the metaphorical expression functions as a readymade term, transmitting scientific information in accordance with the target settings of communication participants. Comparative analysis of metaphoric terms in the Kazakh and the Russian zoological discourse reveals that some terms are different due to different structural features of languages and the differences in the choice of signs that take place in the mechanism of analogy, which is caused by the peculiarities of understanding of the world, geographical, climatic, economic and living conditions of the Russians and the Kazakhs. The scientific metaphor is formed on the basis of conceptual structures already formed in each of the ethnic cultures. There are no rigid boundaries between scientific thinking and the "profane" consciousness; scientific knowledge uses common human knowledge of the world in the process of presenting knowledge in a particular field of science.

Published in 2015, in the proceeding of the International Meeting on Languages, Applied Linguistics, and Translation – LALT 2012, Évora, Portugal, Dec. 2012, pp. 217-227. Also to be published by the University of Évora with the title Recent Developments in Language Studies – Selected Papers

The phenomenon of AM (animal metaphor) can be discussed based on the class-inclusion model in cognitive linguistics. In this article, we try to prove that this kind of metaphor accords more with this model than with correspondence model of Lakoff. It does not mean that the correspondence model is not valid in this regard, but we argue that depending on the nature of this kind of metaphor, class-inclusion model can explain some of its characteristics better than the other models. The correspondence model assumes that metaphors are essentially analogical in character. Also, it suggests that mappings are one-to-one and structurally consistent. Invariance principle of this model states that metaphorical mappings preserve the cognitive topology (that is, the image schema structure) of the source domain, in a way consistent with the inherent structure of the target domain. But, the class-inclusion model does not treat metaphors as analogies rather the source is treated as prototypical instantiation of a larger, newly created super-ordinate category, which is seen then as encompassing both source and target domains. This newly created category uses a prototypical member as an exemplar. We tried to compare these two models in explaining AM in Persian.

This study compares the use of animal metaphors between Mandarin-and English-speaking societies. We adopt the Great Chain Metaphor as the theoretical framework, and employ semantic molecules in the analysis. The findings of this study are as follows: First, animal terms in Mandarin and English can be used as denominal verbs. In English, these verbs can be used transitively ( fox the people) and intransitively (chicken out of a fight). By contrast, Mandarin has significantly fewer animal terms that can be used as denominal verbs, most of which are static verbs. Among them, many are collocated with human relations ( ji1po2 雞婆 "chicken-grandmother; to be a busybody") or body parts (zhu1tou2 豬頭 "pig-head; to be stupid"). Animal metaphors reflect cultural history, and different animal metaphors used in various cultures may possess the same connotations. For example, metaphors with niu2 牛 "cattle" in Mandarin correspond to those with "horse" in English (li4da4ru2niu2 力大如牛 "power-big-as-cattle; as strong as an ox" vs. "as strong as a horse").

Biosemiotics

Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas, 2012

For over thirty years cognitive linguists have devoted much effort to the study of metaphors based on the correlation of events in human experience to the detriment of the more traditional notion of resemblance metaphor, which exploits perceived similarities among objects. draws attention to this problem and calls for a more serious study of the latter type of metaphor. The present paper takes up this challenge on the basis of a small corpus of 'animal' metaphors in English, which are essentially based on resemblance. Contrary to previous analyses by cognitive linguists (e.g. Lakoff & Turner 1989, who claim that such metaphors are based on a single mapping generally involving comparable behavioral attributes, I will argue that we have a more complex situation which involves different patterns of conceptual interaction. In this respect, I have identified cases of (i) animal metaphors interacting with high-level (i.e. grammatical) metaphors and metonymies, of (ii) (situational) animal metaphors whose source domains are constructed metonymically (cf. Goossens 1990;, and of (iii) animal metaphors interacting with other metaphors thereby giving rise to metaphoric amalgams (cf. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez & Galera Masegosa 2011).

2016

Abstract: For over thirty years cognitive linguists have devoted much effort to the study of metaphors based on the correlation of events in human experience to the detriment of the more traditional notion of resemblance metaphor, which exploits perceived similarities among objects. Grady (1999) draws attention to this problem and calls for a more serious study of the latter type of metaphor. The present paper takes up this challenge on the basis of a small corpus of ‘animal ’ metaphors in English, which are essentially based on resemblance. Contrary to previous analyses by cognitive linguists (e.g. Lakoff & Turner 1989, Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, 1998), who claim that such metaphors are based on a single mapping generally involving comparable behavioral attributes, I will argue that we have a more complex situation which involves different patterns of conceptual interaction. In this respect, I have identified cases of (i) animal metaphors interacting with high-level (i.e. grammatical)...

How Metaphors Guide, Teach and Popularize Science, 2020

The relationship between multimodality and cognitive effects has become an important topic of discussion in Cognitive Linguistics. A growing number of studies explore the multimodal manifestations of figurative thought in a wide range of domains. However, little research has been done on visual and auditory metaphor in science. This chapter examines (i) pictures from a corpus of publications covering different biology subdomains and (ii) video clips that feature animals and biological processes. The corpus includes expert material and popular science resources. Empirical evidence is provided that visuals, non-verbal sounds, and words work either separately or together to construe metaphors, which have a major role in building scientific theories in biology and in communicating these theories to laypeople and learners.