The Stockholm 2010 Metaphor Festival ABSTRACTS · Abstracts The Stockholm 2010 Metaphor Festival Version 2.0 7 Metalinguistic Metonymy: A corpus-based study of WORD Annelie Ädel

Version 2.0

The Stockholm 2010 Metaphor Festival

ABSTRACTS

Abstracts The Stockholm 2010 Metaphor Festival Version 2.0

2

Abstracts: Plenary Speakers

Cazeaux, Clive Do We Live Metaphor? 5

Gibbs, Ray Experiencing Metaphor 6

Abstracts: Papers

Ädel, Annelie Metalinguistic Metonymy: A corpus-based study

of WORD

7

Alejo, Rafael, Ana Piquer-Píriz &

Fiona MacArthur

Figurative Thinking in CLIL and Non-CLIL

Contexts

9

Alm-Arvius, Christina Metaphor and Other Modes of Meaning Extension 11

Bᶏczkowska, Anna

Conceptual Metaphors and Gestures in Political

Contexts

14

Bergström, Annika On Gradual Metaphors 15

Budiy, Zinoviya Anthropocentricity of Metaphors in American

Romantic Prose

17

Burrows, Fiona

Synesthetic Metaphor in Early Twentieth Century

Poetry

19

Chow, Mei Yung Vanliza

The Economy is a Traveller – The

conceptualization of the state of the economy via

the JOURNEY metaphor

20

Daraselia, Nino

Metaphors of Initiation in Some Old English

Poems

22

Doǧan, Gürkan Literary Translation, Stylistic Equivalence and Ad

Hoc Concept Construction: A relevance-theoretic

approach

24

Egan, Thomas Metaphorical Extensions: Evidence from

prepositional constructions in translation corpora

26

Ellerström, Jonas From A Poetry Translator‘s Point Of View 28


3

Hodiamont, Didier, Hans Hoeken &

Margot von Mulken

Levels of Conventionality in Verbal and Visual

Metaphors

29

Idström, Anna Metaphors of Time in Inari Saami 31

Ikonen, Risto & Marja Nenonen

Market Forces For or Against The Greenhouse

Effect? A case study in Finnish

33

Jaki, Sylvia

What Modification Does to Motivation: The

transformation of figurative phraseological units

via lexical substitution

34

Johansson Falck, Marlene, Marcus

Perlman & Nathaniel Clark

Iconicity in Storytelling

36

Koch, Corinna

Metaphorical Challenges in Foreign Language

Classrooms

37

Kryvenko, Anna L. Temperature Metaphors in English and Ukrainian 39

Minugh, David C. Ic eom wunderlicu wiht: Metaphors and solving

Anglo-Saxon riddles

41

Nacey, Susan A Bible Falling Apart Belongs To One Who Isn‘t:

Metaphor in American church marquees

42

Niemi, Jussi, Juha Mulli, Marja

Nenonen, Sinikka Niemi, Alexandre

Nikolaev & Esa Penttilä

Conceptual Metaphors in Body-part Idioms: Five

pivotal physio-cognitive domains of human

activity in five languages

44

Dafni Papadoudi

The Functions of Metaphor in English Popular

Technology

45

Pietarinen, Ahti-Veikko An Iconic Diagram Logic of Metaphors 47

Sabzevari, Mehdi Animal Metaphors in Farsi 49

Samedova, Nezrin Goussein gizi

On The Heuristic Power Of Metaphors (The

Metaphors of LINE and POINT)

51

Sauciuc, Gabriela-Alina The Metonymic Access of Affective Concepts 53

Shon, Olena

Simile and Metaphor as Means of Expressing

Humour and Satire

55

Szwedek, Aleksander The Ultimate Experiential Basis (Source Domain) 57

Taiwo, Rotimi

Forms and Functions of Figurative Language in

Nigerian SMS Discourse

58


4

van Weelden, Lisanne, Joost

Schilperoord, Reinier Cozijn & Alfons

Maes

Perceptual Enhancement in Conceptual Processing

60

Kazuyuki Yamaguchi Two Types of Metaphors for Prepositions of

English and Other Languages

62

Abstracts: Posters

Kjellander, Daniel Digitally Away from Keyboard: An investigation

of the initialism AFK

64


5

Do We Live Metaphor?

Clive Cazeaux

University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (UK)

[email protected]

The idea that metaphor lives or that we live metaphor occurs many times in different contexts

within metaphor studies. Nietzsche asserts that the human being exists as a series of creative

leaps between one domain and another (Nietzsche 2000). For Ricoeur, following the title of his

book La métaphor vive, metaphor lives as an impetus to thought (Ricoeur 1978). Lakoff and

Johnson tell us (again with reference to a book title) that there are metaphors we live by in the

sense that metaphor is the mechanism which allows our thinking and perceiving to be informed

by our physical and social experience (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Finally, metaphor for Derrida

is an ‗intractable structure [of tropical playfulness] in which we are implicated and deflected from

the outset‘ (Derrida 1998: 109). But there is a major difference between ‗metaphor lives‘ and ‗we

live metaphor‘, with the philosophers siding with the former, and embodied metaphor theorists

siding with the latter. The difference, I argue, is both ontological and epistemological: ontological

in that it requires us to question the origin and place of human subjectivity within the world, and

epistemological in that it requires us to assess the kind of language we use and the stance we take

(poetic, philosophical, performative or scientific) in relation to metaphor.

Keywords: deconstruction, embodiment, epistemology, immanence, ontology, performativity,

subjectivity

References Cazeaux, Clive. 2007. Metaphor and Continental Philosophy: From Kant to Derrida. New York: Routledge.

Critchley, Simon. 2001. Continental Philosophy: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. 1998. ‗The Retrait of Metaphor‘(tr. F. Gasdner), in Wolfreys, Julian (ed.), The Derrida Reader:

Writing Performances. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: 102–29.

—— 1982. Margins of Philosophy (tr. A. Bass). Brighton: Harvester Press.

Gibbs, Raymond W. 2005. Embodiment and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

——1994. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding, Cambridge: Cambridge

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: University of Chicago Press.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible (tr. & ed. A. Lingis). Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern

University Press.

—— 1962. The Phenomenology of Perception (tr. C. Smith). London: Routledge.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2000. ‗On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense‘ (tr. D. Breazeale), in Cazeaux, Clide (ed.),

The Continental Aesthetics Reader. London: Routledge: 53–62.

Ricoeur, Paul. 1978. The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary studies of the creation of meaning in language (tr. R.

Czerny, K. McLaughlin & J. Costello). London: Routledge.

Stellardi, Giuseppi. 2000. Heidegger and Derrida on Philosophy and Metaphor. Amherst, New York: Humanity

Books.

mailto:[email protected]


6

Experiencing Metaphor

Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.

University of California, Santa Cruz

[email protected]

What is happening with us when we use or encounter a metaphor? Answering this question is a

primary goal for much interdisciplinary work on metaphorical thought, language, and culture.

One of the most intriguing ideas, a topic of great debate for over 30 years, is that people think

metaphorically by drawing cognitive mappings between distinct source and target domains

whenever they use or understand some metaphoric expression or visual event. Yet stating that

metaphor is a cognitive act, and not just a linguistic one, still leaves open various questions about

the ways that metaphoric experience may be cerebral, emotional, embodied, cultural, and

aesthetic. For example, does metaphoric talk capture what people are really experiencing, or

might it distract people from their more basic intellectual and emotional experiences? This

presentation outlines some of the possible ways that metaphoric experience may be described,

and how different fields of study can best contribute to this effort. One conclusion I draw is that

metaphor experience is not necessarily a single, definite state of being, cognitive or otherwise,

because people have different experiences of metaphor in different contexts. There may also be

limits on what we can understand about metaphoric experience if we limit ourselves to merely

looking at people‘s metaphoric language.



7

Metalinguistic Metonymy: A corpus-based study of WORD

Annelie Ädel

Stockholm University (Sweden)

[email protected]

WORD is one of the most frequently occurring noun lemmas in the English language, ranking at

number 35, between STATE and FAMILY, in a large representative corpus of present-day English

(Leech et al. 2001). The considerable frequency of word(s) illustrates the importance of the

metalinguistic function in language; since communication itself is such a central human activity,

we have a need to refer to it often.

The present study explores the metonymic patterns in which WORD is involved. Metonymy

is defined as the process by which we ―take one well-understood or easily perceived aspect of

something to represent or stand for the thing as a whole‖ (Gibbs 1994:3 20). To examine the role

of metonymy in WORD, naturally-occurring data were retrieved from the British National Corpus

(BNC), a corpus of 100 million words of spoken and written British English, which represents a

broad sample of different genres and speakers. The study included a total of 4,000 examples from

the BNC, a random sample of 10% of the total instances of word(s) in the corpus.

The results show that metonymy involving WORD is particularly frequent. Many of the

examples are conventional and part of multi-word units, such as in a word; have a [quick] word

with; in the words of X; give one’s word. The type of metonymy that predominates is

synecdoche, which occurs when ―a term normally referring to part of an entity is used to stand for

the whole entity‖ (Deignan 2005: 56). Metonymic WORD is highly polysemous, and thus differs

from prototypical examples of metonymy (e.g. Wall Street for the financial industry in the US, or

tongue for a language or speech). It has a range of semantic mappings at different levels within

the single domain of ‗communication‘. While the core meaning of WORD refers to a small unit of

language, it is extended through metonymy to refer to formal units of language of varying sizes,

such as phrases, propositions, utterances, and entire conversations. Moreover, the many multi-

word units involving WORD are also used metonymically to refer to functional communicative

units, such as various speech acts (e.g. promises, recommendations, insults), arguments,

quotations, and news. The referents can even extend to the participants of a communicative event,

in that speaker credibility can be invoked, as in my word against hers.

As the study is part of a larger investigation accounting also for patterns of metaphor

involving WORD, I will close the talk by comparing metonymy and metaphor involving WORD,

focusing specifically on ways in which the two types of tropes interact.

Keywords: metonymy, synecdoche, corpus, metalinguistic function

References

Deignan, Alice. 2005. Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.



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Gibbs, Raymond W. 1994. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language and Understanding. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Leech, Geoffrey, Paul Rayson & Andrew Wilson. 2001. Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: Based on

the British National Corpus. London: Longman.


9

Figurative Thinking in CLIL and Non-CLIL Contexts

Rafael Alejo, Ana Piquer-Píriz & Fiona MacArthur

University of Extremadura (Spain)

[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Metaphor scholars have long been concerned with the importance of figurative thinking when

learning an L2. This topic has been mainly approached from the perspective of the EFL learner‘s

need to develop a figurative competence to above all understand, but also to a lesser extent, to

produce metaphorical language (Low 1988, Cameron & Low 1999, Boers & Littlemore 2000,

Littlemore 2001, 2008, Littlemore & Low 2006, Boers et al. 2008, 2009). All these studies have

focused on mainstream EFL learners. However, CLIL (Content and Language Integrated

Learning) practices are becoming more widespread (Eurydice report 2006) and many European

learners of English are now instructed through CLIL programmes. This new context opens up

new possibilities and also new questions: Does figurative language have a different role in the

classroom in which English is the means to teach a content subject as well as part of the learning

objectives? The issue posed above, i.e. that L2 learners need to develop a figurative competence

as part of their process of learning the L2, could also be approached from a different perspective:

Are CLIL learners more sensitive to or aware of figurative language?

This paper reports on a research study that explores the understanding of figurative uses by

two different groups of learners of English: a group of Spanish Secondary School learners of

English who have been instructed in a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning)

environment for at least three academic years and another group of learners of the same age who

were receiving the average EFL tuition. The members of the former group have had a greater

length of exposure to English with richer and more varied L2 input. The two groups of students

(CLIL and non-CLIL) were confronted with different types of figurative expressions and asked to

explain their meanings and motivation. Their answers were categorised and correlated with their

style of memory and their level of English. The results of this study are discussed in relation to

some of the implications for ELT methodology.

Keywords: figurative language, figurative competence, L2 learning, CLIL

References

Boers, Frank & Jeannette Littlemore. 2000. ‗Cognitive Style Variables in Participants‘ Explanations of Conceptual

Metaphors‘, in Metaphor and Symbol 15, 3: 177–187.

Boers, Frank, Seth Lindstromberg, Jeannette Littlemore, Hélène Stengers & June Eyckmans. 2008. ‗Variables in the

Mnemonic Effectiveness of Pictorial Elucidation‘, in Boers, Frank & Seth Lindstromberg (eds), Cognitive

Linguistic Approaches to Teaching Vocabulary and Phraseology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 189–216.

Boers, Frank, Ana María Piquer Píriz, Hélène Stengers & June Eyckmans. 2009. ‗Does Pictorial Elucidation Foster

Recollection of Idioms?‘, in Language Teaching Research, 13, 4: 367–388.

Cameron, Lynne & Graham Low. 1999. ‗Metaphor‘, in Language Teaching, 32: 77–96.





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Eurydice Report. 2006. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) at School. Brussels: Eurydice European

Unit.

Littlemore, Jeannette. 2008. ‗The Relationship Between Associative Thinking, Analogical Reasoning, Image

Formation and Metaphoric Extension Strategies‘, in Zanotto, Maria Sophia, Lynne Cameron & Marilda C.

Cavalcanti (eds), Confronting Metaphor in Use: An applied linguistic approach. Amsterdam: John

Benjamins: 199–222.

—. 2001. ‗Metaphoric Competence: A Language Learning Strength of Students with a Holistic Cognitive Style?‘, in

TESOL Quarterly, 35, 3: 459–491.

Littlemore, Jeannette & Graham Low. 2006. Figurative Thinking and Foreign Language Learning. Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan.

Low, Graham. 1988. ‗On Teaching Metaphor‘, in Applied Linguistics 9, 2: 125–147.


11

Metaphor and Other Modes of Meaning Extension

Christina Alm-Arvius


[email protected]

A key mechanism of metaphorical extension is the suppression of central features or conceptual

and structural constraints in a usually concrete and literal source meaning. This involves a

selective restructuring of the content and will foreground features that tend to be peripheral, or

even just connotative, in the source.

But there are also meaning extensions that cannot be considered figurative, even if this–as

far as I know–has not been discussed much in semantics literature (cf. Alm-Arvius 1993: 27f.).

This paper will exemplify and analyse non-metaphorical extensions with similar or at least

comparable semantic changes, and compare them with metaphors. In this way metaphorical

extension can be positioned within a wider spectrum of semantic processes that seem to be based

on or proceed from literal sources by partial suppression and restructuring of their contents. This

ought to provide us with more general insights into meaning variation and its inter-relation with

cognitive and behavioural capacities in humans that appear crucial for what we are and how we

construct and maintain conceptual structures and cultural practices.

The analytical dimensions we will look at are

the contrast between semantic contents–literal or metaphorical–that describe

phenomena in the real world and those that deal with things in some merely imaginary

situation (cf. other possible worlds);

the (related) contrast between different types of world views, in particular pre-

scientific, religiously coloured world views and the kind of world view that arose with

the enlightenment and the development of modern science;

the contrasts between factually oriented descriptions, metaphors connected with them,

and emotive outbursts.

Using these contrastive dimensions as our distinctive criteria, we can analyse the difference

between meanings in examples like the following.

1) Inanimate things like walls cannot see and hear. (Factual claim)

These walls can see and hear. (Metaphorical, about a real-world situation)

If these walls could see and hear … (About a conceivable but merely imaginary

situation)

2) Horses cannot fly. (Factual claim)



12

The horse flew faster than the wind. (Metaphorical, if used about a real-world

situation)

We would like to see that horse develop wings and fly. (Metaphorical? Or about a

merely imaginary situation?)

A pegasus is a horse with wings that can fly. (A mythological creature)

3) That woman is a witch. (Are there witches in the real world, or should this

use of witch be understood metaphorically? Cf. That woman is like a witch.)

4) We stepped into a pile of dog shit. (Literal sense; cf. dirt or excrement)

The Internet is shit. (Metaphorical)

Oh shit! (Exclamation)

Comparative analyses of such examples should, for instance, help us to enquire into how logico-

empirical conceptions can be formed, how metaphors help us to deal with actual phenomena,

how myths are created and live on, or why emotions have commonly been described as abstract,

and in need of metaphorical representation, in spite of their direct experiential or bodily

character.

Keywords: affective meaning, metaphor, myths, non-metaphorical extension, possible worlds

References

Allwood, Jens, Lars-Gunnar Andersson & Östen Dahl. 1977. Logic in Linguistics. Cambridge Textbooks in

Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Alm-Arvius, Christina. 2008. ‗Metaphor and Metonymy‘, in Johannesson, Nils-Lennart & David C. Minugh (eds),

Selected Papers from the 2006 and 2007 Stockholm Metaphor Festivals. Stockholm: Department of English,

Stockholm University: 3–24.

Alm-Arvius, Christina. 2006. ‗Live, Moribund, and Dead Metaphors‘, in Nordic Journal for English Studies. Kay

Wikberg (ed.), Special Issue on Metaphors, 5, 1: 7–14.

Alm-Arvius, Christina. 2003. Figures of Speech. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Alm-Arvius, Christina. 1993 [photocopy version 1991]. The English Verb See: A study in Multiple Meaning.

Gothenburg Studies in English 64. Göteborg, Sweden: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.

Black, Max. 1962. Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University

Press.

Glucksberg, Sam, Matthew S. McGlone & Deanna Manfredi. 1997. ‗Property Attribution in Metaphor

Comprehension‘, in Journal of Memory and Language, 36: 50–67

Halliday, M.A.K. 1996. ‗Linguistic Function and Literary Style: An inquiry into the language of William Golding‘s

The Inheritors‘, in Weber, Jean Jacques (ed.), The Stylistics Reader. From Roman Jakobson to the Present.

London: Arnold, 56–86.

Jakobson, Roman. 1996. ‗Closing Statement: Linguistics and poetics‘, in Weber, Jean Jacques (ed.), The Stylistics

Reader. From Roman Jakobson to the Present. London: Arnold. 10–35.

Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western

Thought. New York: Basic Books.

Lakoff, George. 1993. ‗The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor‘, in Ortony, Andrew (ed.), Metaphor and Thought,

2nd ed. Cambridge, New York & Melbourne: Cambridge University Press: 2002–251.


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Lakoff, George. 1990. ‗The Invariance Hypothesis: Is abstract reason based on image-schemas?‘, in Cognitive

Linguistics, 1, 1: 39–74.

Langacker, Ronald W. 2002. Concept, Image, and Symbol. The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. 2nd ed. Berlin & New

York: Mouton de Gruyer.

Langacker, Ronald W. 2000. Grammar and Conceptualization. Cognitive Linguistics Research 14. Berlin & New

York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Langacker, Ronald W. 1990. ‗Subjectification‘, in Cognitive Linguistics, 1, 1: 5–38.

Lyons, John. 1981. Language, Meaning and Context. London: Fontana Paperbacks.

Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Vols. 1 & 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McCawley, James D. 1981. Everything that Linguists Have Always Wanted to Know about Logic – but were

ashamed to ask. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Richards, I.A. 1965. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. The Mary Flexner Lectures on the Humanities 1936. New York: A

Galaxy Book, Oxford University Press.

Talmy, Leonard. 2000a. Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Vol. I: Concept Structuring Systems. Cambridge,

Massachusetts & London, England: The MIT Press.

—. 2000b. Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Vol. II: Typology and Process in Concept Structuring. Cambridge,

Massachusetts & London, England: The MIT Press.

Taylor, John R. 1995. Linguistic Categorization. Prototypes in Linguistic Theory. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Wierzbicka, Anna. 1997. Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


14

Conceptual Metaphors and Gestures in Political Contexts

Anna Bᶏczkowska

Casimir the Great University (Bydgoszczy, Poland)

[email protected]

Some scholars believe that gestures uncover our thoughts, being ―the back door to cognition‖

(Sweetser 2007). Thoughts, on the other hand, are claimed to be fundamentally metaphorical, at

least by cognitive linguists. The purpose of our analysis is to demonstrate whether, and to what

extent, there exists a correlation between words (verbal signals) and gestures (nonverbal signals).

The data we will use come from interviews with politicians broadcast by local television. The

methodology employed stems from several sources. Different types of gestures are classified in

line with the theory of semiotics. Metaphorical expressions and their axiological charge discussed

in our research follow the theory voiced by, for example, Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Johnson

(1987), Krzeszowski (1997). Gesture studies (Kendon 2004, McNeill 1992) provide us with

further details concerning the procedures typical of analyzing gesture-word correlation,

particularly within the framework of cognitive linguistics (Cienki and Müller 2008, Gonzalez-

Marquez et al. 2007). The analysis supports the thesis that language and gesture coincide.

Keywords: conceptual metaphors, coverbal gestures, political context

References

Cienki, Alan & Cornelia Müller (eds). 2008. Metaphor and Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Gonzalez-Marquez, Monica, Irene Mittelberg, Seana Coulson & Michael J. Spivey (eds). 2007. Methods in

Cognitive Linguistics, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Kendon, Adam. 2004. Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: CUP.

Krzeszowski, Tomasz P. 1997. Angels, Devils in Hell. Warsaw: Energeia.

McNeill, David. 1992. Hand and Mind: What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Mittelberg, Irene. 2007. ‗Methodology for multimodality: one way of working with speech and gesture data‘, in

Gonzalez-Marquez, Monica, Irene Mittelberg, Seana Coulson & Michael J. Spivey (eds), Methods in

Cognitive Linguistics, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 225–49.

Sweetser, Eve. 2007. ‗Looking at Space to Study Mental Spaces: Co-speech gesture as a crucial data source in

cognitive linguistics‘, in Gonzalez-Marquez, M., S. Coulson, M. J. Spivey, and I. Mittelberg (eds). Methods in

Cognitive Linguistics, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 221–24.



15

On Gradual Metaphors

Annika Bergström

University West, Trollhättan (Sweden)

[email protected]

In cognitive semantics (metaphor theory), the source domain is said to be the target domain

(Lakoff and Johnson 1980, etc.), or, as Grady (1997) puts it, the primary source concept is the

primary target concept. The source is normally concrete (physical) and the target is abstract (non-

physical). The expressions given as examples constitute extended meanings (metaphors etc.).

The metaphorical structures in mind (and language) are present all the time, even if they are

not explicitly mentioned. Because of that, I will argue that a phenomenon which may be called

gradual metaphors is made possible (Bergström 2010). For example, the STATE OF MIND IS THE

TEMPERATURE OF THE ENVIRONMENT metaphor is present within us when we interpret simple

descriptions of the weather in literature, as in the following text from a Harry Potter novel (J.K.

Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2003):

Something had happened to the night. The star-strewn indigo sky was suddenly black

and lightless – the stars, the moon, the misty streetlamps at either end of the alley had

vanished. The distant rumble of cars and the whisper of the trees had gone. The

balmy evening was suddenly piercingly, bitingly cold. They were surrounded by

total, impenetrable, silent darkness, as though some giant had dropped a thick, icy

mantle over the entire alleyway, blinding them. (pp. 19–20)

[---]

There was something in the alleyway apart from themselves, something that was

drawing long, hoarse, rattling breaths. Harry felt a horrible jolt of dread as he

stood trembling in the freezing air. (p. 20)

[---] After the battle:

Moon, stars and streetlamps burst back into life. A warm breeze swept the

alleyway. Trees rustled in neighbouring gardens and the mundane rumble of cars in

Magnolia Crescent filled the air again. (p. 22)

If someone had only read the last phrase in bold-face (―A warm breeze swept the alleyway‖) they

would undoubtedly have interpreted the phrase as a purely physical description. In the above

context, it is clear that this simple, physical description also has a metaphorical nuance: it

symbolises Harry‘s happier state of mind, because things have turned out well.



16

This presentation will further develop the concept of gradual metaphors, and provide

additional examples.

Keywords: cognitive semantics, metaphor theory, primary metaphors, gradual metaphors

References

Bergström, Annika 2010. Temperatur i språk och tanke. En jämförande semantisk studie av svenska

temperaturadjektiv (Temperature in language and mind. A comparative semantic study of temperature

adjectives in Swedish). Gothenburg: Meijerbergs arkiv för svensk ordforskning 37. PhD thesis.

Grady, J. 1997. Foundations of Meaning: Primary metaphors and primary scenes. Berkeley: University of

California. PhD thesis.

Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson 1980 [new postscript 2003]. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago/London: University of

Chicago Press.


17

Anthropocentricity of Metaphors in American Romantic Prose

Zinoviya Budiy

National Pedagogical University (Ternopil, Ukraine)

[email protected]

In works of fiction, associated likeness as a result of metaphoric transference is based on the

author‘s cognition and subjective original view, which are revealed by contextual linguistic

means realized by means of particular linguistic forms. Our research deals with metaphor as one

of the most potent means of creating images in American romantic works of fiction. Our attention

is focused on the subjects‘ outer likeness as well as the similarity of their inner features and the

ability of a lexeme to combine both positive and negative derivative meanings. Analysis of the

meaning of separate lexical elements in their micro- and macrocontext, with special attention to

the stylistic contexts, brings to life special shades of meaning which enrich the semantic structure

of the word.

In most cases two concepts–the name of a living being or a thing and the name of a

human being–are brought together in the context via the interplay of their meanings. Thus, the

image of the former is materialized into the image of the latter, since the world is viewed from a

human-centered perspective.

Keywords: metaphor, similarity, figurative comparison, context, anthropocentrism, cognitive

metaphor, image, human being

References:

Evans, Vyvyan & Melanie Green. 2006. Cognitive Linguistics: An introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University

Press.

Fauconnier, Gilles. 1997. Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. 1994. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Guttenplan, Samuel D. 2005. Objects of Metaphor. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Levin, Samuel R. 1988. Metaphoric Worlds (Conception of a romantic nature). New Haven: Yale University Press.

Melville, Herman. 1993 [1851]. Moby-Dick. UK: Wordsworth Edition Limited.

Picken, Jonathan D. 2007. Literature, Metaphor, and the Foreign Language Learner. New York: Palgrave

Macmillan.

Ricoeur, Paul. 2003. The Rule of Metaphor: The creation of meaning in language. London: Routledge Classics.

Searle, J. R. ‗Metaphor‘, in Davis, Steven (ed.), Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press, 519–539.

Stern, Josef. 2008. ‗Metaphor, Semantics, and Context‘, in Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook

of Metaphor and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 262–280.

Thoreau, Henry David. 1989 [1854]. ‗Walden‘, in Krutch, Joseph W. (ed.), Walden and Other Writings by Henry

David Thoreau. New York: Bantam Books, 105–353.



18

Turner, Mark. 1996. The Literary Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

— 1991. Reading Minds: The study of English in the age of cognitive science. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Turner, Mark. & Gilles Fauconnier. 2003. ‗Metaphor, Metonymy, and Binding‘, in Dirven, René & Ralf Pörings

(eds), Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 469–489.


19

Synesthetic Metaphor in Early Twentieth Century Poetry

Fiona Burrows

The University of Western Australia (Australia)

[email protected]

This paper examines the use of synesthetic metaphor in the works of early twentieth century

poets including T.S Eliot, Wallace Stevens, W.H Auden and Dylan Thomas, to establish the

significance of conveying meaning through imagistic expression as opposed to outright

statement. The focus on image and experience in the early twentieth century arose from the

search for a language other than that of science, a language that could be used as a means of

expressing the complexity of the modern world and emphasizing the importance of the

knowledge that arose from lived experience. Meaning in poetry was embodied rather than

explained, which encouraged poets to turn to imagery and metaphor in order to communicate

their perceptual experiences. The link between metaphor and synesthesia, a neurological

condition defined by the Oxford Dictionary as ‗the production of a sense impression relating to

one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body‘ can be seen in

the shared nature of their basic conceptual functions. If metaphor, in the most basic terms,

involves the experience of one thing in terms of another, then synesthesia is, fundamentally, a

physical manifestation of the same concept. While the condition itself is uncommon, the

implications of synesthesia are universal. Research suggests that humans have an inherent

capacity for inter-sensory association that begins in early childhood, when perception is thought

to be synesthetic in nature (Van Campen 2008: 29–33). Metaphors which are essentially

synesthetic, such as ‗sharp cheese‘ or ‗warm colour‘, are entrenched in the English language and

have been evident in literature for hundreds of years. The poetic relevance of synesthesia lies in

the potential for creating an abstract linguistic representation of sensory experience through

synesthetic metaphor. As a poetic device in the early twentieth century, synesthetic metaphor

provided poets with the possibility of creating multiple associations within different sensory

realms in order to convey meaning through perceptual experience rather than through direct

statement.

Keywords: synesthesia, metaphor, poetry, Imagism, modernism, perception

References:

Cytowic, Richard. 1989. Synesthesia: A union of the senses, New York: Springer-Verlag.

Marks, Lawrence E. 1978. The Unity of the Senses: Interrelations among the modalities. New York: Academic

Press.

Van Campen, Cretien. 2008. The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in art and science. London: MIT Press.



20

The Economy is a Traveller – The conceptualization of

the state of the economy via the JOURNEY metaphor

Mei Yung Vanliza Chow

University of Birmingham (UK)

[email protected]

In an approach pioneered by Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 2003), cognitive linguists argue that

concepts are constructed through our embodied experience in a metaphorical way. In other

words, metaphor constitutes and constructs human thoughts, especially abstract thoughts. They

argue that embodied experience is organized and categorized in terms of image schema, or

experiential gestalts. On top of the embodied and conceptual nature of metaphor, many linguists

also argue for the importance of culture in conceptual metaphor. Based on the assumptions that

metaphor is conceptual and cultural, research has been conducted on economic news articles

extracted from two newspapers, The Guardian UK and Hong Kong Economic Journal, in order to

compare how these two publications conceptualize the abstract concept of economy. The

research also attempts to survey the extent to which cultural factors affect the conceptualization

of the abstract concept of economy in these two newspapers. In answering this main question,

news articles from 2006 related to ‗economy‘ and ‗Jing Ji‘ (經濟, economy) were extracted with

the software Wordsmith Tools 4.0 from these newspapers with the lexical items ‗economy‘, and

‗Jing Ji‘ (經濟, economy) set as the search words.

It may be observed that both newspapers conceptualize the state of the economy via the

JOURNEY metaphor. The two main constituent elements of the JOURNEY metaphor are the

‗economy‘ as the traveller and the journey (or the path) itself. They are mainly derived from the

image schemas PATH, BALANCE, UP-DOWN, IN-OUT (CONTAINER) and CYCLE. Although the

correspondences selected in the mapping are similar, they may entail in different ways, leading to

the manifestation of both similar and different conceptual metaphors regarding the economy. In

essence, the analysis indicates that the UKG corpus focuses more on the economy as the

traveller, while the HKEJ corpus focuses more on the background, i.e. the journey itself. It

appears that cultural differences have led to the different focuses while delineating the abstract

concept of the economy as a human traveller in the JOURNEY metaphor.

References

Deignan, Alice. 1995. Collins Cobuild Guides to English 7: Metaphor. London: HarperCollins.

Henderson, Willie & Martin Hewings. 1990. ‗A language of model building?‘, in Dudley-Evans, Tony & Willie

Henderson (eds), The Language of Economics: The analysis of economic discourse. London: Modern English

Publications in association with the British Council, 43–54.



21

Ji, Li-Jun, Kaiping Peng & Richard Nisbett. 2000. ‗Culture, Control, and Perception of Relationships in the

Environment‘, in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78:943–955.

Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

Kövecses, Zoltán. 2005. Metaphor in Culture: Universality and variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

—. 2002. A Practical Introduction to Metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lakoff, George. 1993. ‗The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor‘, in Ortony, Andrew (ed.), Metaphor and Thought.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 202–251.

Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 2003 (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago.

— . 2002. ‗Why Cognitive Linguistics Requires Embodied Realism‘, in Cognitive Linguistics 13-3:245–263.

— . 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic

Books.

Littlemore, Jeanette. 2003. ‗The Effect of Cultural Background on Metaphor Interpretation‘ in Metaphor and

Symbol 18(4): 273–88.

Morris, Michael & Kaiping Peng. 1994. ‗Culture and Cause: American and Chinese Attributions for Social and

Physical Events‘, in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67: 949–971.

Nisbett, Richard. 2005. The Geography of Thought. London: Nicholas Brealey.

Nisbett, Richard & Yuri Miyamoto. 2005. ‗The Influence of Culture: Holistic versus analytic perception‘, in

TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences 9 (10): 467–473.

Dictionaries:

Pass, Christopher, Bryan Lowes, Andrew Pendleton, Leslie Chadwick, D O‘Reilly & M Afferson. 2005. Collins

Dictionary of Business 3rd

edition. Glasgow: HarperCollins.

Sinclair, John (ed.). 2003. Collins CoBuild Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary. COBUILD: HarperCollins.

Pass Christopher, Bryan Lowes & Leslie Davies. 2000. Collins Dictionary of Economics. Glasgow: Harper

Collins.

Speake, Jennifer (ed.). 1998. Oxford Dictionary of Idioms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sinclair, John (ed.). 2002. Collins CoBuild Idioms Dictionary. COBUILD: HarperCollins.

Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage (Online Version)

http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Lindict/.

Iv S & Ding S (eds.) 2008. Xian Dai HanYu CiDan (The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary). Beijing: Commercial

Press.

http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Lindict/


22

Metaphors of Initiation in Some Old English Poems

Nino Daraselia

Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Georgia)

[email protected]

The paper is an attempt to prove that the archetype of initiation forms the cognitive basis of the

Old English poems: ‗The Wanderer‘, ‗The Seafarer‘, ‗The Wife‘s Lament,‘ ‗The Husband‘s

Message‘ and ‗The Panther‘. The poems in question have been analyzed from the standpoints of

frame semantics, discourse analysis and stylistic analysis. The study displays the archetype of

initiation, the elements of the initiation frame being revealed in the plot structures of the poems as

well as in their rich tropology.

In each of these poems (except ‗The Panther‘) the image and the story of an individual in search

of his Spiritual Self (‗the lost treasure‘) is presented from a different perspective: it is conveyed

through the dramatic monologue of the hero himself ( ‗The Wanderer‘, The Seafarer‘), reflected

in the lament of the wife (‗The Wife‘s Lament‘, where the wife can be perceived as the symbol of

the Anima), or depicted in the message carved on a rune-stave ( ‗The Husband‘s Message‘). The

path of initiation and the hardships of the initiation process are represented allegorically by

means of various symbols typical of the period of antiquity and the Middle Ages, the sea, for

example, being the symbol of the lower world, the lower instincts, or the act of wandering/the sea

journey being one of the components of initiation etc. It is noteworthy that the wife ( of ‗The

Wife‘s Lament‘) lives in a cave under an oak tree; in the language of initiation symbolism, the

cave is a sacred place denoting the mystic, unknowable depth of the conscious, and the oak, as is

well-known, is considered to be a sacred tree in many cultures.

The poem ‗The Panther‘ is of particular interest, since it is devoted to the symbol of initiation –

the panther; the panther‘s skin is the symbol of divine education, of the victory over the lower

instincts and the lower world (symbolized by the dragon), and of spiritual wisdom. Hence a

panther skin is worn by the gods and heroes of antique mythology and the priests of the

mysteries; almost all of them achieved initiation after their descent to the underworld. According

to the widely accepted interpretation of the poem, the panther serves as an allusion to Christ;

however, the mention of the dragon evokes associations of the Holy Rider, St. George.

The paper discusses a number of other stylistic devices conveying the basic ideas of initiation

wisdom.

Keywords: archetype of initiation, allegory, metaphor, symbol

References



23

Bayley, Harold. 1912. The Lost Language of Symbolism. London.

Biedermann, Hans. 1992. Dictionary of Symbolism. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Reference. Bolton, Whitney, F. 1963. An Old English Anthology. London: Edward Arnold.

Eliade, Mircea. 1956. Rites and Symbols of Initiation, trans. W.R. Trask. London: Harvill Press..

Gamsakhurdia, Zviad. 1991. ‗Tropology of ―The Knight in the Panther‘s Skin‖‘ [in Georgian]. Tbilisi: Metsniereba.

Propp, Vladimir. 1984. Morphology of the Folktale [in Georgian]. Tbilisi: Metsniereba.

Smithers, G.V. 1957. ‗The Meaning of ―The Wanderer‖ and ―The Seafarer‖, Medium Aevum XXVI: 137–53.

The Battle of Maldon and Other Old English Poems. 1966. Mitchell, Bruce (ed.). New York: St. Martin‘s Press.

Whitelock, Dorothy. 1950. ‗The Interpretation of ―The Seafarer‖ in The Early Cultures of North-West Europe‘, in

H.M. Chadwick Memorial Studies. Cambridge: 61–72.


24

Literary Translation, Stylistic Equivalence and Ad Hoc Concept Construction:

A relevance-theoretic approach

Gürkan Doǧan

Cankaya University (Ankara, Turkey)

[email protected]

The paper is a relevance-theoretic attempt to account for the inevitable loss of meaning that

initially pertains to the translator‘s interpretation of ‗what is meant‘ in a literary text by the

author. Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995 [1986]) claims that utterance interpretation

takes place through three successive stages: the language module handles any linguistic input

automatically, yielding a range of logical forms. Next, such logical forms are developed into

complete propositions via decoding and pragmatic inferencing. During this second stage the

hearer is expected to accomplish inferential tasks such as disambiguation, reference assignment

and enrichment. Finally, the new information is deductively contextualized with the old

information to yield strong/weak implicatures.

As for enrichment, Carston (2002) argues that concepts should be enriched until they are able

to represent complete propositions and that this can be done via narrowing, broadening, and

metaphorical extension (i.e. online concept construction). Regarding the first two strategies, the

interpreter is supposed to retrieve relevant information that is already available in her memory. In

contrast, metaphorical extension requires creating completely new sets of meaning during the

actual interpretive process:

(1) He ordered fish in the restaurant. (*whale / trout) narrowing

(2) He has a square face. (*square/ squarish) broadening

(3) She is an ocean. (deep, wide, limitless self, etc.) metaphorical extension

When translating a metaphorical concept, a two-phase problem challenges any translator: first she

should interpret the given metaphor herself via online concept construction and then she should

provide readers with an ‗equivalent‘ metaphor so that they can accomplish their own

metaphorical extension that results in weak implicatures. Given that most poetic effects are

triggered by weak implicatures, the success of a translator can only be judged upon her ability to

initiate in the target language weak implicatures ‗similar‘ to those that she already arrived at

during her own interpretation. In this sense, the translator‘s task is not simply to translate a

concept but to design an inferential path for the readers, leading them to weak implicatures that

are triggered by the given concept. The claim above will be tested on a number of poems by

Nazim Hikmet, a famous Turkish poet, considering a number of stylistic peculiarities, with

special reference to cost and effect relationships.



25

Keywords: relevance theory, translation, metaphor, metaphorical extension, style, implicature

References:

Boase-Beier, Jean. 2004. ‗Saying what someone else meant: style, relevance and translation‘, in International

Journal of Applied Linguistics 14: 2, 276–287.

Carston, Robyn. 2002. ‗Metaphor, ad hoc concepts and word meaning – more questions than answers‘, in UCL

Working Papers in Linguistics, 14, 83–105.

MacMahon, Barbara. 1996. ‗Indirectness, rhetoric and interpretative use: communicative strategies in Browning's My

Last Duchess‘, in Language and Literature, 5: 3, 209–223.

Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson. 1995 [1986]. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Blackwell: Oxford.

Xiumei, Xu. 2006. ‗Style is the relationship: A relevance-theoretic approach to the translator's style‘, in Babel 52: 4,

334–348.

Wilson, Deirdre & Robyn Carston. 2007. ‗A Unitary Approach to Lexical Pragmatics: Relevance, Inference and Ad

Hoc Concepts‘, in Burton-Roberts, Noel (ed.), Pragmatics. Palgrave, London, 230–259.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118505198/home

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118505198/home

http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=Babel%2052%3A4


26

Metaphorical Extensions: Evidence from prepositional constructions

in translation corpora

Thomas Egan

Hedmark University College (Norway)

[email protected]

In a seminal paper on metaphor, George Lakoff writes that ―many of the basic concepts in our

conceptual systems are […] comprehended normally via metaphor – concepts like time, quantity,

state, change, action, cause, purpose, means, modality and even the concept of a category‖ (2007

[1979]: 276). If such metaphorical extensions are the norm, one might expect to find a degree of

similarity between the linguistic expressions used to encode predications of space, time etc.

across languages. Certainly, one might expect to find some such similarity in the case of closely

related languages spoken by communities with similar cultural backgrounds. This paper

addresses the question of whether such expectations are in fact met. It does so by means of a

quantitative and qualitative case study of some prepositional constructions and their translational

equivalents in two closely-related languages. The data come from the English Norwegian Parallel

Corpus and the Oslo Multilingual Corpus (see Johansson 2007).

Given the growing number of translation corpora, it is perhaps surprising that they have

not formed the basis for more work on prepositions. Two notable exceptions are Schmied (1998)

and Cosmelle & Gilquin (2008). The starting point for this paper is the hypothesis that the senses

of a lexeme, in this case a preposition, which are usually translated by one and the same lexeme

(or construction) are likely to be more closely related within the semantic network of the original

lexeme than those translated by different lexemes. The methodology employed involves

classifying the original tokens in terms of the semantic domain of the predications in question.

Common domains are space, perception, time, means, cause etc. Translations which resemble the

original syntactically are labelled convergent; translations which differ syntactically are labelled

divergent. Convergent translations are further subdivided according to whether they employ the

most closely related preposition (Norwegian gjennom for English through, for example) or an

alternative preposition. Statistical calculations are then employed to establish whether the forms

of translation of the various semantic classes differ significantly from those of the other classes.

Finally, semantic networks are drawn on the basis of these calculations.

This paper examines all tokens of a selection of English prepositions in the English

Norwegian Parallel Corpus, as well as the English and French translation equivalents of the

closest corresponding propositions in Norwegian in the Oslo Multilingual Corpus.

Keynotes: translation equivalents, translation corpora, semantic networks



27

References

Cosmelle, Christelle & Gaetanelle Gilquin. 2008. ‗Free and bound propositions in a contrastive perspective: The case

of with and avec‘, in Meunier, Fanny & Sylvain Granger (eds), Phraseology: an interdisciplinary perspective.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 259–274.

Johansson, Stig. 2007. Seeing through Multilingual Corpora: On the use of corpora in contrastive studies.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Lakoff, George. 2007 [1979]. ‗The contemporary theory of metaphor‘, in Evans, Vyvyan, Benjamin. K. Bergen &

Jörg Zinken (eds), The Cognitive Linguistics Reader. London: Equinox: 267–315.

Schmied, Josef. 1998. ‗Differences and similarities of close cognates: English with and German mit‘, in Johansson,

S. & S. Oksefjell (eds), Corpora and cross-linguistic research: theory, method, and case studies. Amsterdam:

Rodopi, 255–275.


28

From A Poetry Translator's Point Of View

Jonas Ellerström (Sweden)

[email protected]

Translators of poetry and poetic prose, literary genres rich in meaning and associations, encounter

specific problems whenever the original text employs any kind of figurative language. These

instances can be anything from a challenge to a nightmare to an insurmountable obstacle, but

perhaps the professional experience of the relation of language to language in this context

provides us, their translators, with some insights into the workings of metaphors, similes, irony

and other comparable figures of speech. I have chosen two examples from my own area of work

as a translator, and hope that they can provide a certain illumination of the role of sarcasm and

what makes an image lose its meaning.

From T.S. Eliot's ―The Waste Land‖ I have chosen an epithet rich in connotations for the

readers of 1922, the year this long poem was first published, but one that would be simply

puzzling or incomprehensible if translated directly today.

Certain that the Festival will allow some French intrusion, I have chosen a provocative

phrase from Arthur Rimbaud's poem from 1873, ―Une saison en enfer‖ (―A Season in Hell‖), a

phrase that has been translated into Swedish in three markedly different ways by two earlier

translators and myself, giving an indication of what has been linguistically as well as ethically

possible at different times from the 1930's onwards.

The existence of multiple translations of these two key texts in the Modernist canon into

Swedish (and of course also into other languages) will provide further opportunities for

comparison of different solutions to these translator's dilemmas. I will also serve up some

additional examples of uses of figurative language and how it can or cannot be translated from

Eliot and Rimbaud.

Keywords: poetry translation, figurative language, irony, loss of meaning, sarcasm

References: Eliot, T.S. 1922. The Waste Land. Many subsequent editions.

—. Det öde landet. 2002, 2nd ed. Lund: Bakhåll.

Rimbaud, Arthur. 1873. Une saison en enfer. Many subsequent editions.

—. 2002. En tid i helvetet. Lund: Bakhåll: 2002.



29

Levels of Conventionality in Verbal and Visual Metaphors

Didier Hodiamont, Hans Hoeken & Margot van Mulken

Radboud University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands)

[email protected]

Recently, the question has been raised whether metaphors in different modalities (e.g. verbally or

visually) are rooted at a deeper conceptual level, or whether metaphor is primarily a linguistic

phenomenon (McGlone, 2007). If metaphors are indeed to be positioned on the conceptual level,

certain mechanisms in processing verbal metaphors should also be discernable in processing

metaphors in a different mode.

Bowdle & Gentner (2005) found that verbal metaphors undergo a career from novel to

conventional. Novel metaphors have to be interpreted by making a comparison between the

metaphor‘s base and target, while frequently and widely used metaphors become

conventionalised and can be interpreted directly by categorisation. In this project, we seek to

assess whether the differences in processing of novel versus conventional metaphors are also

operative in the processing of visual metaphors.

As a first step in this project, we investigated whether metaphors differ from one another

with regard to the level of conventionality in both the verbal and visual modality. Therefore, we

created 17 metaphoric items which could be presented either verbally (e.g. the phrase ―this car is

a rocket‖) or visually (e.g. a picture of a car juxtaposed to a rocket) as if they were concept

versions of advertisements. A group of participants individually rated conventionality (on 3

seven-point scales) for the visual metaphors, while a second group did the same for their verbal

counterparts. After this questionnaire was filled out, all participants were interviewed and asked

for their interpretation. Additionally, the items were rated for appreciation and aptness.

The results show that the experienced conventionality indeed varies with regard to the level

of conventionality in the visual mode. Thus, a car juxtaposed to a rocket is considered to be

conventional, a motorcycle helmet juxtaposed to a seashell is experienced as novel. For most of

these metaphors, the results are similar in the verbal mode. Analysis also shows that the

experienced conventionality of a metaphor is not dependent on the modality in which it is

presented.

Furthermore, in both modalities metaphors are liked better when they are conventional. The

theory presented by Philips & McQuarrie (2004) suggests that novel innovative metaphors should

awaken the pleasure of complexity, but in the present research we find that even very

conventional metaphors are preferred over novel metaphors.



30

Keywords: conceptual metaphor, novel, conventional, pictorial metaphor, juxtaposition,

advertisements

References

Bowdle, Brian F. & Dedre Gentner. 2005. ‗The Career of Metaphor‘, in Psychological Review, 112 (1), 193–215.

McGlone, Matthew S. 2007. ‗What Is The Explanatory Value of a Conceptual Metaphor?‘, in Language and

Communication, 27 (2), 109–126.

Phillips, Barbara J. & Edward.F. McQuarrie. 2004. ‗Beyond Visual Metaphor: A new typology of visual rhetoric in

advertising‘, in Marketing Theory, 4 (1/2), 113–136.


31

Metaphors of Time in Inari Saami

Anna Idström

University of Helsinki/Langnet (Finland)

[email protected]

Inari Saami is an indigenous, endangered language spoken in northern Finland. This paper will

provide numerous examples of how Inari Saami idioms systematically reflect the conceptual

metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 1999) TIME IS NATURE. In other words the Inari Saami people

frequently refer to certain moments or periods of time by mentioning what happens in nature at

that time. This metaphor systematically recurs throughout the research material. The ubiquitous

English metaphor TIME IS MONEY, on the other hand, is found to be extremely rare in Inari Saami.

This claim is based on the evidence provided by an idiom dictionary compiled by the author with

an Inari Saami colleague (Idström & Morottaja 2006), a 1,300-page Inari Saami dictionary

(Itkonen 1986–1989) and a few minor sources (e.g. Koskimies & Itkonen 1917, Itkonen 1992).

The cultural background that explains the conceptual metaphor TIME IS NATURE is discussed

within the framework of Edward Hall‘s (1983) theory of time concepts by comparing Inari Saami

with features of its material and social culture. The traditional Inari Saami culture was

polychronic: the timing of human action was based on observations in the natural environment

and spontaneous reactions to these observations rather than on preset schedules. This time

concept results from the requirements of human adaptation to the harsh natural conditions of

Lapland. The Inari Saami culture was based on fishing, hunting and reindeer husbandry and its

language reflects this culture. In conclusion, it is emphasized that the need to exhaustively

document the idioms of endangered, indigenous languages is an important and urgent priority.

Keywords: Inari Saami, idiom, conceptual metaphor/metonymy, time concept, endangered

language

References Hall, Edward Twitchell. 1983. The Dance of Life. The other dimension of time. Garden City (New York): Anchor

Press/Doubleday.

Idström, Anna & Hans Morottaja. 2006. Inarinsaamen idiomisanakirja [‗Inari Saami Idiom Dictionary‘]. Inari:

Sämitigge [Saami Parliament].

Itkonen, Erkki. 1986–1989. Inarilappisches Wörterbuch. Vol. I–III. Helsinki: Finno-Ugrian Society. Lexica

Societatis Fenno-Ugricae 20.

Itkonen, Erkki. 1992. Inarinsaamelaisia kielennäytteitä, aanaarkiela čájttuzeh [‗Inari Saami sample texts‘]. Helsinki:

Finno-Ugrian Society.

Koskimies, A.V. & T. Itkonen. 1917. Inarinlappalaista kansantietoutta [Inari Saami folk knowledge]. (Mémoires de

la Société Finno-Ougrienne 167.) Helsinki: Finno-Ugrian Society.




32

—. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic

Books.


33

Market Forces For or Against The Greenhouse Effect? A case study in Finnish

Risto Ikonen & Marja Nenonen

University of Eastern Finland at Joensuu (Finland)

[email protected], [email protected]

The correct and timely use of metaphors is an essential part of political speech. In this context

metaphors can be seen as semantic tools that make it easier for speakers to share their points of

view with other people. Metaphors are especially useful when one tries to clarify the core

meaning of an abstract or complicated idea. Thus, when in the mid-1990‘s Finns were discussing

the possibility of joining the EU, the proponents of membership utilized the metaphor of ―the EU

train‖ that was just about to leave the station. In the end, a referendum was held in which the

majority of Finns agreed that it is better to catch the train than miss it, even though some critics

claimed that instead of a train we had stepped on a steamer that alarmingly resembled the Titanic.

This presentation studies metaphors not merely as objects but rather as tools of political

persuasion. We assume that political discourse, when examined in real settings, may reveal the

creative and flexible nature of metaphorical utterances. They are like weapons that can be used

against their creators. As an example, the presentation will illustrate the dynamics of two

common metaphors in Finnish, i.e., markkinavoimat ‗market forces‘ and kasvihuoneilmiö ‗the

greenhouse effect‘. Since the late 1990‘s these two metaphors have been used as tools of

persuasion in the political debate concerning the prospects of various economic policies and their

environmental effects. Our data are collected from parliamentary documents and political texts

published in Finnish newspapers.

Keywords: political speech, persuasion, market forces, greenhouse effect




34

What Modification Does to Motivation: The transformation of figurative

phraseological units via lexical substitution

Sylvia Jaki

Munich University (Germany)

[email protected]

We have come a long way since the time phraseological units were considered to be completely

fossilized in phraseology. Nowadays, the creative use of multiword lexemes or proverbs as puns

has become more widespread than ever—its mastery is even required in some contexts, above all

in advertising (Don’t fall in love … fall in coffee) and newspaper headlines (A pain in the ash).

As part of an individual PhD project on the modification of phraseological units by means

of lexical substitution, and which includes less central categories like proverbs, familiar

quotations or advertising slogans, this paper focuses exclusively on figurative examples. Besides

a potential cultural or phonological motivation (onomatopoeia), a large number of multiword

lexemes are metaphorically and/or metonymically motivated. But what happens to this

motivation once the ties of fixed expressions are loosened, and the phraseology becomes altered

for a special purpose in journalistic or advertising texts? This is a question that should definitely

be addressed in a project which aims at establishing a comprehensive model of modificational

principles and restrictions.

More precisely, the present ‗work in progress‘ examines whether motivation is likely to be

maintained in the modified forms. Apart from dealing with the modification of metaphorically

and metonymically motivated phraseological units in general, some more specific questions also

require consideration: with metaphor, for example, it is particularly interesting to look at

conceptual metaphor and the impact modification has on it. Furthermore, when it comes to

unintended variation (systematic or not) of phraseological units, relationships of contiguity

between variants play an important role. Presumably, this will not, however, be the case with

intended, occasional alterations of phraseological units, which rely heavily on contextualization

and formal similarity. In treating these issues, a collection of German, English and French

newspaper headlines, as well as random examples from advertisements and television, will be

analyzed in detail.

Keywords: phraseology, metaphor, metonymy, modification, punning

References:

Dobrovol‘skij, Dmitrij. 2008. ―Idiom-Modifikationen aus kognitiver Perspektive‖, in Kämper, Heidrun & Ludwig

M. Eichinger (eds), Sprache – Kognition – Kultur. Sprache zwischen mentaler Struktur und kultureller

Prägung. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 302–322.

Langlotz, Andreas. 2006. Idiomatic Creativity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.



35

Sabban, Annette. 1998. Okkasionelle Variation sprachlicher Schematismen: eine Analyse französischer und deutsche

Presse- und Werbetexte. Tübingen: Narr.


36

Iconicity in Storytelling

Marlene Johansson Falck, Marcus Perlman & Nathaniel Clark

Umeå University (Sweden), UCSC (USA), UCSC (USA)

[email protected]

This paper deals with how storytellers vary their speech rate while reading aloud about ―fast‖

versus ―slow‖ events. Some of these events were non-metaphorical (e.g., those in which someone

is racing/crawling down highways) while other events were metaphorical (e.g., those in which

someone is on a fast track/slow path to success). University students were asked to read a number

of short stories in a dramatic way. The stories were recorded and the reading-aloud times

measured. The hypothesis we explored was that while reading, storytellers engage in embodied

simulation processes in which they tacitly imagined themselves doing the actions mentioned.

Creating these simulations should affect the speed with which people spoke of the different non-

metaphorical and metaphorical events. ―Fast‖ stories (about, e.g., people on the road to success)

should consequently be read faster than ―slow‖ stories (about, e.g., people on the path to success).

Psycholinguistic experiments have previously shown that people engage in simulation processes

during their understanding of metaphorical language (Gibbs & Matlock 2008). Other studies have

demonstrated that people produce relevant vocal gestures in conversation in which their rates of

speaking parallel the iconicity of the events referred to in real-world events (Perlman, in press).

Analyses of people‘s reading speeds indeed showed both non-metaphorical and metaphorical

descriptions of ―fast‖ events were delivered more quickly than were both the non-metaphorical

and metaphorical depictions of the ―slow‖ events.

These findings are consistent with the claim that understanding metaphorical events partly

engages imaginative simulation processes in which people think of themselves performing the

actions described in these events. Thus, people appear to imagine themselves moving in fast and

slow ways when thinking about, and reading aloud, events that are purely metaphorical and do

not specifically refer to real motion (e.g. the fast track to success). Moreover, our results suggest

that vocal iconic gestures are a fruitful way to study people‘s immediate conceptions of

metaphorical and non-metaphorical events in discourse.

References: Gibbs, R. W. Jr. & T. Matlock. 2008. ‗Metaphor, imagination and simulation: Psycholinguistic evidence‘, in Gibbs,

R. W. Jr. (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

247–261.

Perlman, M. In press. ‗Talking fast: The use of speech rate as iconic gesture‘, in Perrill, F., V. Tobin, & M. Turner

(eds.), Proceedings of the 9th

Conference on Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language, Cleveland,

OH.



37

Metaphorical Challenges in Foreign Language Classrooms

Corinna Koch

Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany)

[email protected]

When a foreign language learner encounters a metaphor, various problems arise. These

complications are, however, not simply negative stumbling blocks, which should perhaps be

avoided altogether, but also contain a particular potential that we need to harness for the purposes

of foreign language learning. This paper thus argues for a productive approach to metaphorical

challenges. To this end, two common complications will be examined more closely: first, the

socio-cultural shaping of metaphors and the attendant implications for learning and mastering a

foreign language, and second, the particular situation that occurs when foreign language learners

encounter a lexicalised metaphor unfamiliar to them via their mother tongue or other languages.

1. According to Lakoff & Johnson (2008: 22), lexicalised metaphors can be classified using

superordinate conceptual metaphors. Moreover, innovative metaphors are, consciously or

unconsciously, predefined by conceptual metaphors. Even if we cannot equate the use of a

metaphor with the belief in its content, the metaphors a speaker chooses tell us a good deal about

his or her attitudes towards the topic. Contrary to Weinrich‘s view of Europe as a unified

‗imagery community‘ (Weinrich 1976: 287), scholars have in recent decades argued that we can

uncover cultural differences by studying the conceptual metaphors of different languages. For

foreign language learners, knowing the most common conceptual metaphors is thus important if

they wish to express themselves idiomatically and acquire cultural knowledge. Apart from

idiomatic linguistic building blocks and cultural information, metaphors offer optimal occasions

for reflecting upon one‘s own and foreign languages and cultures.

2. What characterises the situation of the foreign language learner, who in contrast to a

native speaker must first consciously learn the language and the metaphorical cultural thought

patterns it contains, is that all lexicalised metaphors unfamiliar to the learner from other

languages begin by being innovative again. A learner is, consequently, confronted with an

enormous number of (subjectively viewed) innovative metaphors, making a high level of

metaphorical competence particularly important. This automatically more intense preoccupation

with metaphors can also make them easier to retain if this issue is explicitly addressed. By

working with metaphors, learners can also shield themselves from manipulative use of language

when they realise, by comparing metaphors in various languages, that a metaphor represents, not

a mimetic depiction of reality, but rather always only one possible point of view, a point of view

which emphasises a certain aspects of a subject and conceals others.

Keywords: education, learner, socio-cultural, lexicalised, innovative


38

References Baldauf, Christa. 2000. ―Sprachliche Evidenz metaphorischer Konzeptualisierung‖, in Zimmermann, Ruben (ed.),

Bildersprache verstehen. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 117–132.

Kurz, Gerhard. 1988. Metapher, Allegorie, Symbol. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 2008 [1980]. Leben in Metaphern. Konstruktion und Gebrauch von

Sprachbildern. Heidelberg: Carl-Auer.

Littlemore, Jeanette & Graham Low. 2006. Figurative Thinking and Foreign Language Learning. Houndmills:

Palgrave MacMillan.

Osthus, Dietmar. 1998. ―Nahrungsmittelmetaphern in Pressetexten: Beispiel eines deutsch-französischen

Bildfeldvergleichs‖, in Fuchs, Volker (ed.), Von der Unklarheit des Wortes in die Klarheit des Bildes? Tübingen:

Stauffenberg, 285–296.

Weinrich, Harald. 1976. Sprache in Texten. Stuttgart: Klett.


39

Temperature Metaphors in English and Ukrainian

Anna Kryvenko

Kyiv National Linguistic University (Ukraine)

[email protected]

Although temperature is reckoned to be a basic domain of human experience (Langacker 1987:

149), surprisingly, it has not been given due coverage in studies of either literal or figurative

senses both in individual languages and cross-linguistically. Among the few exceptions to this

dearth of research, there is some attention to the association between temperature and emotions,

which has been formulated in the conceptual metaphors AFFECTION IS WARMTH, INTENSITY OF

EMOTION IS HEAT and some others (Grady 1997, Kövecses 2006, to name a few). However, a

closer study shows that temperature is a rich source domain, which is also conventionally mapped

onto other basic domains like COLOUR or SOUND, as well as numerous abstract domains,

including but not limited to, REASON, WORK, INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS and SOCIAL

INTERACTION.

In fact, the temperature domain is treated in the current paper as part of a broader semantic

network manifesting conceptualization of the man–environment interrelation and interaction.

Given that this relation is ―interinclusive‖, i.e. on the one hand, people are part of the

environment, on the other hand, they internalize the world around them (cf. Piaget‘s (1980)

distinction between assimilation and accommodation), the emphasis on the fundamentality of

embodied experience (Johnson 2005, Lakoff 1987) should not lead to the underreporting of non-

egocentric frames of reference (Levinson 2003) activated in various semantic domains, including

those grounded in perception.

In the paper, the metaphorical potential of English and Ukrainian temperature adjectives

in both attributive and predicative functions as well as the nominal expressions for fire and

ice/frost, which are prototypical sources of heat and cold, respectively, is explored and

contrasted, in order to seek answers to three major research problems: 1) the role of the

temperature domain in spatial representation and conceptualization of reference frames; 2) a

typology of conventional target domains for temperature metaphors in English and Ukrainian;

and 3) similarity and variation in the distribution of metaphorically motivated polysemous

patterns of English and Ukrainian temperature terms and their phraseological activity in both

grammar and usage.

Keywords: temperature domain, conceptual metaphor, reference frames, English and Ukrainian

adjectives, polysemous patterns, phraseological activity

References



40

Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. 2006. Embodiment and Cognitive Science. Cambridge University Press.

Grady, Joseph E. 1997. Foundations of Meaning: Primary metaphors and primary scenes. PhD thesis. University of

Berkeley.

Johnson, Mark. 2005. ‗The Philosophical Significance of Image Schemas‘, in From Perception to Meaning: Image

Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics by Hampe, Beate (ed.), with Joseph E. Grady (contributor). Mouton de

Gruyter, Berlin / New York, 15–34.

Kövecses, Zoltán. 2006. Metaphor in Culture. Universality and Variation. Budapest: Loránd Eötvös University.

Lakoff, George.1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of cognitive grammar: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford

University Press.

Levinson, Stephen C. 2003. Space in Language and Cognition. Explorations in Cognitive Diversity. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press (Language Culture and Cognition 5).

Piaget, J. (1980). Adaptation and intelligence: Organic selection and phenocopy; transl. by Stewart Eames. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press; Paris: Hermann.

Steen, Gerard J. 2007. Finding Metaphor in Grammar and Usage: A Methodological Analysis. Amsterdam: John

Benjamins.

Tamm, Maria & Ekaterina Rakhilina. 2006. ‗―Some like it hot‖: On the semantics of temperature adjectives in

Russian and Swedish‘, in Giannoulopoulou, G. & T. Leuschner (eds), STUF (Sprachtypologie und

Universalienforschung), a special issue on Lexicon in a Typological and Contrastive Perspective. 59, 2: 253–

269.


41

Ic eom wunderlicu wiht: Metaphors and solving Anglo-Saxon riddles

David C. Minugh


[email protected]

―I am a wondrous creature‖—thus begins Exeter Book riddle 25 (or 23; the numbers vary).

Unlike many simpler metalinguistic brain-teasers such as misleading crossword-puzzle

definitions, or conundrums and puns (When is a door not a door? When it’s a jar! When is a

conundrum catching? When it’s a snare drum!), riddles have long taken the form of elaborate

short poems. Part of the art of a well-constructed poetic riddle is precisely its length (anywhere

from 5 to more than 100 lines), which allows the number of ambiguous clues to multiply. What is

at stake is finding an interpretation which accounts for all of the information in the poem, with no

loose ends. The nearly 100 Exeter riddles, written down in the 10th

century and studied since the

late 19th

century, have received numerous interpretations, suggesting that the choice of dominant

cognitive domain (required to read the riddle ―successfully‖) may not be as simple as a

deterministic view might suggest. Indeed, there are clearly riddles with at least two answers (in

parallel to e.g. allegorical texts such as Pilgrim’s Progress or The Faerie Queen, not to mention

the multilayered exegetical tradition of Biblical studies). In this paper, a series of answers to the

Exeter riddles will be examined, to see how modern approaches to metaphor can shed light on the

interpretive processes involved.

Keywords: Anglo-Saxon riddles, Exeter Book, riddles

References

Beech, Tiffany. 2010. The Poetics of Old English. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Bitterli, Dieter. 2009. Say What I Am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle

Tradition.Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Porter, John. 1995. Anglo-Saxon Riddles. Hockwald cum Wilton: Anglo-Saxon Books.

Tupper, Frederick, Jr. 1910. The Riddles of the Exeter Book. London: Ginn.

Williamson, Craig. 1982. A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle Songs. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press.

—. 1977. The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

http://www2.kenyon.edu/AngloSaxonRiddles/texts.htm, accessed June 2010.


http://www2.kenyon.edu/AngloSaxonRiddles/texts.htm


42

A Bible Falling Apart Belongs To One Who Isn’t:

Metaphor in American church marquees

Susan Nacey

Hedmark University College (Hamar, Norway)

[email protected]

This paper presents the results of an exploratory investigation into the use of metaphor in a

particularly American form of advertising, namely church marquees. Such marquees are outdoor

changeable copy or LED signs, typically located on church property but visible to passing

motorists. They serve various purposes, which include informing the congregation of church

events, boosting the church‘s attendance and–by extension–its finances, and allowing the minister

a means of influencing and/or serving the local community. Active users change their captions

weekly. In essence, these signs are billboards for the Lord, one-sentence sermons (J.M. Stewart

Corporation 2008, Rentaria 2005, Shafrir 2007).

The space available for messages on church marquees is extremely restricted, due to

practical considerations of traffic patterns near the sign (motorists must be able to digest the

contents in a brief moment while driving by) and local zoning regulations (which regulate the

size of signs). Consequently, careful consideration must be given to the message, which ideally

should be inspirational, thoughtful and/or humorous to attract the maximum amount of

(preferably) positive attention (J.M. Stewart Corporation 2010, Verbrugge 1999: 13-19).

Deliberate use of conventional metaphor, such as the word play that frequently features in

puns, newspaper/sports headlines, and bumper stickers, provides one effective means of fulfilling

church requirements (see Steen 2008: 223). In particular, bridge metaphors, which exploit a

―common boundary between two fields‖ (Kittay 1987: 275) by simultaneously affording a literal

and metaphorical reading, would appear to be especially effective. Documented examples of

such messages from how-to books as well as both online and coffee-table photo collections of

marquees are replete with pithy captions such as the light-hearted For a healthy heart, give your

faith a workout or the play on words To prevent sinburn use sonscreen, the more ominous Turn

or burn, and the thought-provoking Aim at nothing and you will always hit it (see e.g. Claassen

2005, Glusenkamp 1996, Harvey 2007, Paulson and Paulson 2006, Verbrugge 1999, Wikihow

2008).

This study is a corpus-driven pilot project, where a small corpus of weekly photos of

church marquees has been collected over a four-month period in 2010. Baptist, Methodist,

Pentecostal, and Unitarian Universalist denominations are represented in the corpus, together

with nondenominational Christian churches. The primary purpose is to shed light on the degree to

which documented collections of church signs reflect actual church practice, focusing on the use

of metaphor in the messages, in terms of both frequency and type. The study thus weds two areas



43

which have been the focus of little to no academic research: American church marquees and

bridge metaphors.

Keywords: American church marquees, bridge metaphor, religion in the United States

References

Claassen, David J. 2005. Silent Words Spoken Loudly: Church Sign Sayings. Lima, OH: CSS Publishing Company,

Inc.

Glusenkamp, Ronald T. 1996. Signs for These Times: Church Signs That Work. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia

Publishing House.

Harvey, L. James 2007. 701 Sentence Sermons, Vol. 4: Attention-Getting Quotes for Church Signs, Bulletins,

Newsletters, and Sermons. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications.

J.M. Stewart Corporation. 2010. Outdoor LED Church Signs–Using Your LED. Retrieved April 9, 2010 from

http://www.stewartsigns.com/church-signs-led-using.php.

— 2008. Stewart Church Signs - Part 1. Retrieved April 9, 2010 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-

14Z7WKM8o.

Kittay, Eva Feder 1987. Metaphor: Its cognitive force and linguistic structure. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Paulson, Steve & Pam Paulson. 2006. Church Signs across America. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press.

Rentaria, Melissa 2005. ‗Marquees a pulpit for one-sentence sermons‘, in The San Diego Union-Tribune. Retrieved

April 9, 2010 from http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050714/news_1c14signs.html.

Shafrir, Doree 2007. ‗Signs from God: The curious history of church marquees‘, in Slate. Retrieved April 8, 2010

from http://www.slate.com/id/2167297/.

Steen, Gerard 2008. ‗The Paradox of Metaphor: Why We Need a Three-Dimensional Model of Metaphor‘, in

Metaphor & Symbol, vol. 23: 4, 213–241.

Verbrugge, Verlyn D. 1999. Time-Saving Ideas for Your Church Sign: 1001 Attention-Getting Sayings. Grand

Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Wikihow 2008. How to write dynamic church signs for effective outreach. Retrieved April 9, 2010 from

http://www.wikihow.com/Write-Dynamic-Church-Signs-for-Effective-Outreach.

http://www.stewartsigns.com/church-signs-led-using.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-14Z7WKM8o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-14Z7WKM8o

http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050714/news_1c14signs.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2167297/

http://www.wikihow.com/Write-Dynamic-Church-Signs-for-Effective-Outreach


44

Conceptual Metaphors in Body-part Idioms: Five pivotal physio-cognitive

domains of human activity in five languages

Jussi Niemi, Juha Mulli, Marja Nenonen, Sinikka Niemi, Alexandre Nikolaev, Esa Penttilä

University of Eastern Finland at Joensuu (Finland)

[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],

[email protected]

Background. The aim of the present comparative study of English, German, Swedish, Russian

and Finnish is to analyze to which degree (N +) VP body-part idioms with human referents

exhibit conceptual links between the lexical items involving ‗head‘, ‗hand/arm‘, ‗eye‘, ‗mouth‘,

and ‗heart‘ and the activity domains of COGNITION, MOTOR ACTION, PERCEPTION,

COMMUNICATION and AFFECT, respectively.

Data. The data is based on lists of body-part idioms collected from various dictionaries in the five

languages analyzed and subjected to corpora-based frequency analyses (see Niemi et al. 2010).

The body-parts referring to ‗head‘, ‗hand/arm‘, ‗eye‘, and ‗heart‘ were the top four in our

frequency lists. ‗Mouth‘ was the seventh most frequent body-part in general, although in the

Finnish data it was the fifth most frequent body-part in idioms. It was nevertheless included in the

analysis because it allowed us to investigate whether the human capacity of (oral) communication

could be linked to it.

Results. Our results, which are based on detailed analysis of our body-part idiom lists, indicate

that in spite of the typological (structural) and genealogical differences among these five

languages, the lexical terms for the five body-parts ‗head‘, ‗hand/arm‘, ‗eye‘, ‗mouth‘, and

‗heart‘ frequently refer to the physio-cognitive domains of COGNITION, MOTOR ACTION,

PERCEPTION, COMMUNICATION and AFFECT, respectively. As could probably be expected on the

basis of our shared cultural background, there do not seem to be dramatic differences between the

five languages concerned, but there are more subtle differences that will be discussed in our

presentation.

Keywords: body-part idioms, conceptual metaphors, corpus analysis, cultural background

References

Niemi, Jussi, Juha Mulli, Marja Nenonen, Sinikka Niemi, Alexandre Nikolaev & Esa Penttilä. 2010. ‗Body-part

Idioms Across Languages: Lexical analyses of VP body-part idioms in English, German, Swedish, Russian

and Finnish‘, in Ptashnyk, Stefaniya, Erla Hallsteinsdóttir & Noah Bubenhofer (eds), Korpora, Web und

Datenbanker: Computergestützte Methoden in der modernen Phraseologie und Lexicographie/Corpora, Web

and Databases: Computer-Based Methods in Modern Phraseology and Lexicography. Baltmannsweiler:

Schneider Verlag Hohengehren. 67–76.








45

The Functions of Metaphor in English Popular Technology

Dafni Papadoudi

University of Manchester (UK)

[email protected]

Technology is so deeply embedded in everyday life that people have developed various beliefs,

values and attitudes towards it which may be expressed through language in technology texts.

Following this underlying assumption, the present project studies the metaphorical

conceptualisation of technology in English and Greek, in order to ascertain what kind of source

domains are involved in the structure of the target domain TECHNOLOGY (Lakoff & Johnson

1980). The paper examines how technology is described and perceived, with the aim of

highlighting social and cultural aspects in addition to technical and specialized aspects (Kövecses

2005). It also draws attention to the functions of metaphor within technological discourse

(Semino 2008).

The data comprises four popular technology magazines published in 2006/2007 in the UK

(PCWorld, ComputerActive) and USA (PCMagazine, T3). A total of 48 articles were selected and

distinguished into the broader themes of personal computing, the Internet and technology

gadgets. Analysis of the data produced approximately 7,000 metaphorical expressions divided

into 14 main metaphors and 29 submetaphors, varying from animate to inanimate objects

(PERSON, MACHINE) and from abstract to concrete concepts (LIFESTYLE, FORTRESS).

The metaphor categories reveal that metaphor serves a variety of functions for technology

and its users. Metaphor is employed as a means of understanding technology, which is closely

related to the development of terminology for making computers comprehensible. It is used for

communicating technology, involving metaphors which reflect personal views and perceptions; it

is employed as an image-maker and constructs a socio-cultural image of technology by

correlating it with social symbols and modern lifestyles. Metaphor is also used for humanizing

technology (personification), thereby rendering it more user-friendly and accessible. Lastly,

metaphor guides users about how to feel about and evaluate technology, by evoking positive or

negative emotional responses, which leads to making similar value judgments. These functions

are to some extent interrelated and coexist in many metaphor categories.

While the relationship of metaphor and technology has its roots in the creation of computer

terminology and software for exegetical purposes, it seems that users of technology exploit even

further the use of metaphor for the purpose of describing technology‘s multi-faceted nature. This

diversity in metaphor function demonstrates the shift of metaphor use alongside the development

of technology, and the changes in users‘ views of technology progressing from its inception as a

machine to its full integration into societal life as part of our modern lifestyle.



46

Keywords: functions of metaphor, popular technology discourse, English language

References

Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2004. Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Houndmills, Basingstoke,

Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kövecses, Zóltan. 2005. Metaphor in Culture: Universality and variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson.1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The Chicago University Press.

Pragglejaz Group. 2007. ‗MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse‘, in Metaphor &

Symbol, 22(1), 1-40.

Semino, Elena. 2008. Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


47

An Iconic Diagram Logic of Metaphors

Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen

University of Helsinki (Finland)

[email protected]

Three theses are defended: (1) that metaphors create non-literal meaning; (2) that metaphoric

meaning is a matter of iconic forms of logic; and (3) that a comprehensive semantics of such a

logic of metaphors requires a modal (‗many-world‘) interpretation. The logic of metaphors

takes similarity considerations to be a species of iconicity. We explain the logic by building

upon Charles Peirce‘s theory of logical iconity, diagrammatic logic (Peirce 1931-58, Pietarinen

2006). Peirce took metaphors to be iconic representations ―representing a parallelism‖ in

another media (Peirce 1931-58: 2.277), which we can explain in terms of (1), (2) and (3). A

consequence of this explanation is a refutation of another set of theses about linguistic meaning

prevailing in the literature in philosophy of language and cognitive linguistics (Turner &

Fauconnier 1995): (i) Meaning Holism, (ii) the Language of Thought hypothesis, and (iii)

psychologism about metaphoric meaning.

The logic of metaphors takes similarity considerations to be central to iconicity. I argue that

similarity considerations are a species of iconicity in the sense of Peirce‘s theory of diagrammatic

signs. He took metaphors to be iconic representations with parallelism in another media. An

explanation of this remark rests on the arguments defending the theses (1), (2) and (3).

According to Peirce, metaphors are specific kinds of iconic signs. He terms them hypoicons

and takes such hypoiconic signs to lie at the heart of metaphoric meaning. Such a characterisation

provides grounds for construing an argument for metaphors as conveyors of non-literal meaning.

In other words, iconicity enables various similarity considerations essential to non-literal

meaning, including metaphoric meaning.

My proposal for the logic of metaphors is built upon the diagrammatic system of Existential

Graphs (Peirce 1931-58, Pietarinen 2006). For instance, images are the ‗indecomposable‘

ingredients in the diagrammatic representations of the content of thought. Indecomposables

provide the points of termination for the meaning-constitutive processes of interpreting those

representations. However, the structure of these metaphor diagrams is more complex than what

might be expected if they were used to represent ordinary intensional concepts. The theory

moreover uses similarity comparisons through the composition of concepts, which is an operation

involving diagrammatic representations. Because metaphors are certain fairly sophisticated forms

evolved from diagrams, I formulate the logic of metaphors in an iconic language of diagrammatic

logic with a special modal ingredient (developing on an idea of Hintikka & Sandu 1994).

In consequence, metaphors can be true or false, and the current non-truth conditional

cognitive theories of semantics of metaphors can be dispensed with. What follows is a refutation



48

of another set of prevailing theses about linguistic meaning: (i) Meaning Holism, (ii) the

Language of Thought hypothesis, and (iii) psychologism about metaphorical meaning.

Keywords: hypoicons, Peirce, diagram logic, modality

References:

Hintikka, Jaakko & Gabriel Sandu. 1994. ‗Metaphor and Other Kinds of Nonliteral Meaning‘, in Hintikka, Jaakko

(ed.), Aspects of Metaphor. Dodrecht: Kluwer, 151–189.

Pietarinen, Ahti-Veikko. 2006. Signs of Logic: Peircean Themes on the Philosophy of Language, Games and

Communication. Dordrecht: Springer.

Peirce, Charles S. 1931-58. Collected Papers of C.S. Peirce. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

Turner, Mark & Gilles Fauconnier. 1995. ‗Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression‘, in Metaphor and Symbolic

Activity 10, 183–204.

http://www.springer.com/dal/home/philosophy/pragmatism?SGWID=1-40445-22-66194753-0&detailsPage=ppmmedia%7Creviews%7Creviews

http://www.springer.com/dal/home/philosophy/pragmatism?SGWID=1-40445-22-66194753-0&detailsPage=ppmmedia%7Creviews%7Creviews


49

Animal Metaphors in Farsi

Mehdi Sabzevari

Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies (Tehran, Iran)

[email protected]

When we encounter metaphors we are dealing with the figurative level of meaning of a language.

Metaphors and the way they are formed are always an intricate study which demands a holistic

approach.

In every language we may find many animal metaphors which function as substitutes for

human characteristics. In other words, by usage of an animal metaphor we intend to suggest a

human characteristic in the guise of an animal. For instance when we use dog as a metaphor for a

man‘s characteristics (loyalty or anger), we evoke the loyalty that is true about dogs because they

are animals loyal to their masters. This could be the case in many languages. However, there are

metaphors which are language- and culture-specific. In other words, some metaphors are used in

a given language, say Farsi, for a very special characteristic which might not be common in other

languages. For further proof we need to compare animal metaphors in several languages.

Many animals are characterized by one or more attributes which are common to human

beings. If we consider a wolf as an evil guy and a lion as a brave person, this appears in fact to be

universal, yet somehow cultural dependent, so that we might find differences in attribute

categorization among languages, due to cultural differences. However in no language does a lion

stand for a weak or evil person. In this case, we need comparative studies to determine which

attribute a given animal stand for and possibly why, and whether there is any difference among

cultures which may be traced in languages—and why is this so?

In cognitive semantics we consider the conceptual domain to shape our conceptual

metaphors. Animal metaphors could be considered as conceptual, since we have an attribute,

indeed a concept. This concept is abstracted out of human characteristics, then is realized and is

associated with an animal. The animal by which we express a human characteristic is selected

based upon cultural experiences of speakers of that language. Moreover, this selection is based on

universal ideas and concepts and is thus not random or without reason. In fact, based on human

behaviors and or appearance, we might draw some animal‘s characteristics (physically or

behaviorally) and compare them to human characters.

In this paper, animal metaphors in Farsi will be discussed as vehicles for human beings and

their characteristics as tenors, with examples drawn from literary and everyday language.

Keywords: Animal metaphors, attributes, categorization, cognitive semantics, concept

References



50

Blasko, Dawn G. 1999. ‗Only the tip of the iceberg: who understands what about metaphor?‘, in Journal of

Pragmatics, 31, 12: 1675–83.

Glucksberg, Sam. 2001. Understanding Figurative Language: From Metaphors to Idioms. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Glucksberg, Sam. 2003. ‗The psycholinguistics of metaphor‘, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 2: 92–96 .

Guttenplan, Samuel. 2005. Objects of Metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press.



51

On The Heuristic Power Of Metaphors

(The Metaphors of LINE and POINT)

Nezrin Goussein gizi Samedova

Azerbaijan University of Languages (Azerbaijan)

[email protected]

1. An apt metaphor suggests directions for a theory.

We will corroborate this slightly paraphrased thesis from Brown (2008: 26) with a case

from linguistics.

2. The metaphors of LINE and POINT are used by various theories in aspectology.

According to the most famous one, endorsed by de Saussure, the perfective aspect represents an

action as a point, whereas its representation by the imperfective aspect can be compared to a line

(Saussure 1995: 161-162).

The radically different aspectological theory developed by G.S. Samedov uses the

metaphors of LINE and POINT to interpret the meaning of a process and the meaning of the limits

of a process (its perfectivity), respectively. The cognitive nature of these meanings is explained

as the ability of attention to spread evenly (along a line) or focus (on a point).

The heuristic value of these metaphors can be illustrated with the following example.

3. This is the case of the synonymy of the Russian constructions nachat’+INF and stat’ +

INF1. Both have the meaning of beginning (or initiality) and are translated into English as to

begin + INF. Both are widely used. The areas of their usage fully coincide. The main components

of both are perfective, whereas only imperfectives are permitted as their non-main components. It

is clear, however, that the semantic identity of these constructions cannot be absolute.

Indeed, stat’+INF is used much more frequently than nachat’+INF. Hence, according to

the Kruszewski-Kuryłowicz rule (Березин 1998: 15) we can state that stat’+INF is semantically

simpler than nachat’+INF.

Thus, we face a paradox. On the one hand, our analysis (ignoring irrelevant details)

reveals three semantic components in the meaning of each construction: 1) the meaning of the

process that belongs to the main component – LINE; 2) perfectivity – POINT; 3) the meaning of the

process inherent in the non-main component – LINE. On the other hand, the meaning of stat’+INF

contains fewer than three components, for it is simpler than the meaning of nachat’+INF.

The paradox is solved if we consider the initiality inherent in nachat’+INF to be like a

LINE and the initiality belonging to stat’+INF to be like a POINT2.

1 Do not confuse it with the homonymous imperfective construction stat’+INF. 2 The idea is derived from G.S. Samedov (Самедов 1968: 117, 118).



52

The visual metaphors of LINE and POINT illustrate the meaning of nachat’+INF:

initiality as a process process

———————————•———————————

perfectivity (the final POINT)

As regards stat’+INF, here two meanings of a process (two LINES) merge into one

syncretic one. This is possible because perfectivity inherent in the stat’ is the initial POINT, and it

does not prevent this merger:

initiality as a limit,

or perfectivity (the initial POINT)

•——————————————————————

a syncretic process

Keywords: aspectology, linear initiality, non-aspectual initiality, punctive initiality, aspectual

initiality.

References

Brown, Theodore L. 2008. Making Truth: Metaphor in science. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1995. Cours de linguistique générale. Payot & Rivages.

Березин, Ф.М. 1998. Н.В. Крушевский – провозвестник лингвистики ХХ в. Н.В. Крушевский. Избранные

работы по языкознанию. Moscow: Наследие, 4–24.

Самедов, Гусейн С. 1968. О видах и подвидах русского глагола. Материалы 1-ой Республиканской

конференции по вопросам языкознания и методики обучения иностранным языкам. Баку: АПИЯ им. М.Ф.

Ахундова.


53

The Metonymic Access of Affective Concepts

Gabriela-Alina Sauciuc

Århus University (Denmark)

[email protected]

Examples from the affective domain have been plentifully employed for illustrating and

sustaining the claims of the conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff 1980, 1993, Kövecses 1986,

King 2007, Yu 1995, Matsuki1995, Soriano 2003, etc.). According to this position, affective

concepts (like many other abstract concepts) are metaphorically structured, i.e. conceptualized in

terms of more concrete domains. In the most radical version of this theory, the metaphoric

structure of affective concepts is posited as an obligatory conceptual universal: it is impossible to

think and talk about affective experience without resorting to metaphor. In this study, extensive

cross-linguistic qualitative data, collected on several superordinate affective categories in 6

languages (Scandinavian and Romance families) and on 18 different basic-level categories in

Danish and Romanian have been analysed with the aim of assessing (among other matters)

whether 1) affective concepts are metaphorically structured, and if so; 2) to what extent (i.e.

whether in an obligatory manner); 3) what the formats and conceptual domains involved are

likely to be; 4) whether ―national styles‖ can be delineated in people‘s use (extent, format,

content) of metaphor or other figurative language.

The data indicates that affective experience is generally conceptualized in terms of

scenarios and that respondents access affective concepts metonymically, focusing first and

foremost on antecedents and consequences of affect. Metaphor may abound when people have to

deal with explaining the subjective feeling of having an affective experience, or when focusing

on aspects pertaining to affect-induced cognitive biases, regulation and control strategies, but in

none of these cases can metaphor be said to be obligatory. Such metaphors do not appear to

accomplish a discriminatory role, such that it could capture the specificity of affective experience

in relation to other mental processes (such concepts may share, for instance, metaphors of mental

causation or psychological force dynamics). Instead, metonymy affords metaphor. It is not the

affective experience as a gestalt which is understood in terms of less abstract domains; the

metaphoric mapping, when it applies, concerns specific aspects of affective experience which can

be accessed, optionally, in a metaphoric or non-metaphoric way. Finally, the data do not allow for

the identification of some affective master-metaphor (as suggested by previous studies) that

would be able to summarize the types of knowledge elicited by accessing affective concepts (a

theory- or knowledge-based approach to concepts is adopted here, in line with Murphy & Medin

1985, Murphy 2003).



54

Keywords: emotion, metonymy, knowledge-based approaches, Romance languages,

Scandinavian languages

References King, Brian. 2007. The Conceptual Structure of Emotional Experience in Chinese. Canada: Global Language Press.

Kövecses, Zoltán. 2000, Metaphor and Emotion. New York: Cambridge University Press.

—. 1990, Emotion Concepts. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

—. 1986, Metaphors of Anger, Pride, and Love. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.


Lakoff, George. 1993. ‗The contemporary theory of metaphor‘, in Ortony, Andrew. (ed.), Metaphor and Thought, 2nd

edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 202–251.

Matsuki, Keiko. 1995. ‗Metaphors of anger in Japanese‘, in Taylor, John R. & Robert MacLaury (eds), Language

and the Cognitive Construal of the World. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Murphy, Gregory. 2003. The Big Book of Concepts. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Murphy, Gregory & Douglas Medin. 1985. ‗The role of theories in conceptual coherence‘, in Psychological Review,

92, 289–316.

Soriano, Cristina. 2003. ‗Some Anger Metaphors in Spanish and English. A Contrastive Review‘, in International

Journal of English Studies, 3, 107–122.

Yu, Ning. 1995. ‗Metaphorical expressions of anger and happiness in English and Chinese‘, in Metaphor and

Symbolic Activity, 10, 59–92.


55

Simile and Metaphor as Means of Expressing Humour and Satire

Olena Shon

Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatyuk National Pedagogical University (Ukraine)

[email protected]

This paper deals with the analysis of simile and metaphor as effective means of expressing

humour in fiction. Simile is defined as a stylistic device whose essence lies in comparing two real

objects that belong to different classes. The objects compared are not completely identical, but

resemble each other, and the realization of their similarity produces new understanding of the

objects described. The object compared is qualified as the ―subject of comparison‖, the object to

which the object is compared is qualified as the ―object of comparison‖. They are united by

common feature, the ―tertium comparationis‖. Humorous simile implies unexpected, non-

traditional comparison of objects or phenomena. The greater the discrepancy between subject and

object of comparison is, the more different they are in terms of semantics and style, and the more

striking the comical effect produced. Humorous simile implies ridicule and slight rejection of the

object, though it does not provoke negative evaluation, while satirical simile emphasizes negative

evaluation and a negative attitude to the object described. The humorous or satirical effect is

intensified when objects are compared to animals, birds, insects or lifeless objects.

Metaphor is regarded as a stylistic device that resembles simile in its functions, though it is

noted that metaphor and simile are not identical, and metaphor should not be regarded only as a

hidden comparison. While simile can indicate both permanent and temporary characteristics and

qualities of the object, metaphor primarily indicates permanent characteristics or qualities; it

functions as the secondary nomination* of the object or phenomena. Metaphors are powerful

means of expressing humour or satire. In the present case an individual author‘s metaphors are

considered. Like humorous and satirical simile, humorous and satirical metaphor compares

objects which seem incomparable; it creates unexpected, surprising, paradoxical associations.

The more unexpected this discrepancy is, the more powerful the comic effect becomes. But

unlike other expressive means, metaphor needs a prepared reader to decode any humorous or

satirical effect created by it.

The stylistic potential of simile and metaphor as means of expressing humour and satire, as

well as their interaction with stylistic devices at other language levels, is analyzed on the basis of

specific modern American short stories.

*Secondary nomination is used as the term to denote the process of giving a new name to the

object (as in case of metaphors, nicknames etc.).

Keywords: simile, metaphor, humour, satire, comical effect



56

References Backman, Gunnar. 1991. Meaning by Metaphor. An Exploration of Metaphor with a Metaphoric Reading of Two

Short Stories by Stephen Crane. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.

Bereza Aleksander. 1966. Problemy Teorii Stylizacji w Satyrze. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Polskiej akademii nauk.

Fornelski, Piotr. 1994. ‗L‘ironie et la métaphore: leurs connexions‘, in Les jeux de l’ironie littéraire, Drzewicka,

Anna (ed.). Prace historycznoliterackie, 87. Kraków: Zeszyty nauk. Uniw. Jagiellonskiego, 17–23.

Henry, Albert. 1984. Métonymie et Métaphore. Brussels: Mémoires de la Classe des lettres / Académie royale de

Belgique, 66, 2.

Kordus, Joanna. 1988. ‗Metafora — neurosemiotyka — antropologia‘, in Studia o tropach I, Dobrzyńska, Teresa

(ed.). Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii nauk, 105–149.

Mayenowa, Maria Renata. 1988. ‗Trochę polemiki: w obronie granic metafory‘, in Studia o tropach I, Dobrzyńska,

Teresa (ed.). Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii nauk, 11–21.


57

The Ultimate Experiential Basis (Source Domain)

Aleksander Szwedek

Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznań, Poland)

[email protected]

The current proposals for the fundamental experiential basis, the ultimate source domain, e.g.

space (Radden, 2005) and structure (Grady, Taub, and Morgan, 1996), are ill-grounded. Structure

and space relationships (orientation) are only aspects of physical objects.

The present paper claims that understanding phenomena in terms of physical objects, here

called objectification, is a primeval and fundamental mechanism in metaphorization. This

identification of the ultimate source domain is founded on a simple, elementary distinction

between the physical and non-physical worlds. In sensory terms, the distinction is based on the

most fundamental property of objects, density (mass), as experienced by touch. Everything we

touch and see consists of physical objects, and this is why the object level is absent from our

mind and language (e.g. we do not say: *it’s an object, and it’s a cow). This is so, because:

a) touch develops in the 8th

week of foetal life.

b) the neural system develops in the 8th

week of foetal life.

Thus, the experience of density (object) through touch is programmed earliest and at the deepest

level of the neural system.

The material/non-material distinction allows for the following typology:

concrete-to-concrete: Capt. Jones is a perfect iceberg;

concrete-to-abstract (OBJECTIFICATION): Thoughts can be scattered and collected, have

weight (like objects), can be born or be pregnant, or can strike (animate beings);

abstract-to-abstract: LIFE IS A JOURNEY; Love is the wisdom of the fool.

abstract-to-concrete (possibly): He is a threat/nuisance.

Objectification played the greatest role in the development of abstract thinking. In that stage

abstract entities were identified, conceptualized and assigned language expressions from the

physical domain.

This new typology reflects the phylogenetic development of metaphorization and abstract

thinking. Our ancestors first talked about the physical world, moving gradually from concrete-to-

concrete, through concrete-to-abstract, to abstract-to-abstract metaphorization, that is, in the

generally recognized direction from concrete to abstract.

Keywords: experiential basis, objectification, material/non-material distinction, typology of

metaphors



58

References

Grady, Joe, Sarah Taub & Pamela Morgan. 1996. ‗Primitive and Compound Metaphors‘, in Goldberg, Adele

(ed.), Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language. Stanford, CA: CSLI, 177–187.

Radden, Günther. 2005. ‗The metaphor TIME AS SPACE across languages‘, in Górska, Elżbieta & Günther Radden

(eds), Metonymy – Metaphor – Collage. Warsaw: Warsaw University Press, 99–120.

Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 2003 [1980]. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

Searle, John. 1990. ‗Consciousness, explanatory inversion, and cognitive science‘, in Behavioral and Brain

Sciences 13, 585–642.

Szwedek, Aleksander. 2009. ‗Conceptualization of space and time, in Łobacz, Pictra, Piotr Nowak & Władysław

Zabrocki (eds). Language, Science and Culture. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM,

317–333.

—. 2007. ‗Objectification: a new theory of metaphor‘, in Thormählen, Marianne (ed.), English Now: Selected Papers

from the 20th

IAUPE Conference in Lund 2007. Lund: Lund Studies in English. 308–317.

—. 2000. ‗Senses, Perception and Metaphors (of Object and Objectification)‘, in Puppel, Stanisław & Katarzyna

Dziubalska-Kołaczyk (eds), Multibus vocibus de lingua. Wydział Filologiczny UAM: Poznań. 143–153.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.


59

Forms and Functions of Figurative Language in Nigerian SMS Discourse

Rotimi Taiwo

Obafemi Awolowo University (Ile-Ife, Nigeria)

[email protected]

The advent of mobile telecommunication technology is a major communication breakthrough for

Africans. This technology, which reached Nigeria in 2001, has become the major technology of

socialization in the country, especially among young people (Chiluwa, 2008, Taiwo, 2009, 2010).

The written but conceptually oral nature of SMS, coupled with its elastic and less rule-governed

nature, encourages creative ingenuity in the users (Bush, 2005). This study is a report on an

investigation based on a corpus of 700 text messages composed and sent by Nigerian mobile

phone users. It discusses Nigerian SMS users‘ employment of imagery and rhetorical devices,

such as metaphor, irony, pun, hyperbole, metonymy, rhymes, and so forth to evoke and project

the meaning and truth of human experiences within the country‘s socio-cultural context.

Keywords: telecommunication, technology, SMS, Nigeria, text message, context

References

Bush, Corissa. 2005. ‗Language Beyond the Text: txt msgs 4 a new gnr8n‘, in The Journal of New Media and

Culture, Summer/Fall, 3 (2). On-line at http://www.ibiblio.org/nmediac/summer2005/text.html (retrieved on

20 October 2006).

Chiluwa, Innocent. 2008. ‗Assessing the Nigerianness of SMS text-messages in English‘, in English Today, 24, 51–

56.

Taiwo, Rotimi. 2010. ‗Respelling and Creativity in SMS: challenges for literacy in the digital age‘, in Lê, Thao,

Quynh Lê & Megan Short (eds), Language and Literacy Education in a Challenging World. New York: Nova

Science Publishers, 289–302.

—. 2008. ‗Linguistic Forms and Functions of SMS Text Messages‘, in Kelsey, Sigrid & Kirk St Armant (eds), The

Handbook of Research in Computer Mediated Communication. Pennsylvania: IGI Global, 969–982.


http://www.ibiblio.org/nmediac/summer2005/text.html

http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0266078408000102


60

Perceptual Enhancement in Conceptual Processing

Lisanne van Weelden, Joost Schilperoord, Reinier Cozijn & Alfons Maes

Tilburg University (The Netherlands)

[email protected]

In metaphor processing, one object, the target, is compared to and understood in terms of another

object, the source. A number of studies suggest that in processing visual metaphors, perceptual

similarity between two objects may enhance the conceptual (e.g., metaphorical) linking of the

two. Although several types of visual figuration have been extensively described (Schilperoord,

Maes & Ferdinandusse 2009, Teng & Sun 2002), little is known about how perceptual features

contribute to the establishment of this conceptual link. Answering this question requires us to

gain insight into the distinct roles of perceptual and conceptual similarities in the process of

matching object pairs. Therefore, we investigated the processing of the four possible

combinations of conceptually (C+/C-) and perceptually (P+/P-) (dis)similar picture pairs using a

same-different task. Each picture pair consisted of a match and a target picture, which were

presented successively.

In Experiment 1 we explored whether perceptual processes during object pair processing

were affected by conceptual (dis)similarities between the objects. The results indicated that it

took participants longer to give a ‗different‘ response if two objects shared perceptual features

than if they did not. The presence of perceptual similarity also led to more response errors. Both

findings were relatively unaffected by conceptual (dis)similarity of the objects. In general,

Experiment 1showed that perceptual similarity plays the leading role in picture pair processing.

In order to investigate whether perceptual features enhance conceptual processing,

Experiment 2 investigated whether conceptual processes during object pair processing are

affected by perceptual (dis)similarities. The results showed that perceptual similarity affects task

performance, both when the picture pairs do and do not show conceptual similarity. That is, if

objects are conceptually similar, perceptual similarity leads to faster ‗same‘ responses, whereas if

objects are conceptually dissimilar, perceptual similarity leads to slower ‗different‘ responses.

The former confirms perceptual enhancement in conceptual processing. But, considering the

interaction between conceptual and perceptual similarity, and our main topic of interest–i.e. the

influence of perceptual factors on visual metaphor processing–, the most telling result is that

perceptual similarity also influences the type of response given. That is, in processing apparently

conceptually dissimilar objects, perceptual similarity results in more ‗same‘ responses than when

there is no perceptual similarity. This finding suggests perceptual enhancement in metaphorical

processing. That is, participants judged a conceptually dissimilar object pair to be functionally

similar, simply based on perceptual features.

Keywords: visual metaphors, perceptual processing, conceptual processing



61

References

Schilperoord, Joost, Alfons Maes, & Heleen Ferdinandusse. 2009. ‗Perceptual and Conceptual Visual Rhetoric: The

case of symmetric object alignment‘, in Metaphor and Symbol, 24, 155–173.

Teng, Norman Y., & Sewen Sun. (2002). ‗Grouping, Simile, and Oxymoron in Pictures: A design-based cognitive

approach‘, in Metaphor and Symbol, 17 (4), 295–316.


62

Two Types of Metaphors for Prepositions of English

and Other Languages

Kazuyuki Yamaguchi

Nippon Sport and Science University (Japan)

[email protected]

The purpose of this study is to show the following two points; first, based on English and other

languages, metaphor plays a very important role for semantic extensions of prepositions of

natural languages. Second, this language sample shows many cases which at first sight appear to

be problematic for metaphorical explanation, but the author will argue that these can be explained

by more general metaphor, or what may be called ‗Source-directional pathway.‘ Metaphor has

been considered as the main mechanism for semantic extensions or grammaticalization cases of

prepositions in many languages throughout the world where the same relational meanings (or

topological structure, to use Talmy‘s term (1988)) are preserved between a lexical source and the

resulting grammatical meaning, or between two grammatical meanings along a

grammaticalization path (see especially Sweetser 1988, Heine et al. 1991, Croft 1991). On the

basis of 68 languages, this study argues that this is partly correct: the original semantic schemata

have been preserved, such as the change from Allative to Purpose meanings, as proposed by

many linguists. But unlike the claims of many previous studies, this approach is far from

sufficient.

Assuming that one inevitable element of causative structure is some kind of directionality

of force, we then have many ‗exceptional cases‘ such as Time to Cause, from Locative to Agent,

from Purpose to Cause, or from Locative to Cause. We can claim that these are, as Dirven (1995)

and others suggest, individual metaphors such as ‗cause as proximity‘ (e.g. by), ‗cause as

accompaniment‘ (e.g. with), ‗cause as connection and path‘ (e.g. by), ‗cause as volume‘ (e.g. in),

or as in Lakoff and Johnson (1980), ‗causer for states of affairs (agent)‘ as source of moving

entities (e.g. German von, Latin ab, Italian da), and reasonably find some motivations behind

these metaphors. But if we do this, we then miss one important point: these cases and others show

unidirectional change to Source meanings (instead of Goal meaning, such as ‗purpose‘). We will

discuss possible reason why this ‗general metaphor‘ (semantic extension from Source to Target

Domain) occurs across languages. Therefore, semantic changes of pre-/postpositions can be

explained by two types of metaphors: one is preservation of semantic structures from source to

target domains, and the other one is a more general metaphor (Source-oriented pathway

metaphor).

Keywords: grammaticalization, pre-/postpositions, semantic changes, Source-oriented pathway

metaphor



63

References

Croft, William. 1991. Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations: The cognitive organization of information.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dirven, René. 1995. ‗The Construal of Cause: The case of cause prepositions‘, in Taylor, John R. & Robert E.

MacLaury (eds), Language and Cognitive Construal of the World. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 95–118.

Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi & Friederike Hünnemeyer. 1991. Grammaticalization: A conceptual framework.

Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.


Sweetser, Eve Eliot. 1988. ‗Grammaticalization and Semantic Bleaching‘, in Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual

Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, 389–405.

Talmy, Leonard. 1988. ‗The Relation of Grammar to Cognition‘, in Rudzka-Ostyn, Brygida (ed.), Topics in

Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 165–205.


64

Digitally Away From Keyboard:

An investigation of the initialism AFK

Daniel Kjellander


[email protected]

From a historical perspective, the development of the Internet is a relatively recent phenomenon.

It has instigated changes in many areas of everyday life as well as in various specialized fields.

Depending to a large extent on written language, this field offers new possibilities for linguistic

research. However, exploring language phenomena in the Internet domain involves certain

difficulties. Collection and organization of data represent substantial challenges, as does the rapid

changes in Internet language, which quickly make results from traditional linguistic research out

of date (Crystal, 2001).

This presentation seeks to describe how an initialism in the Internet language domain can

be analyzed from a linguistic perspective, and thus exemplify linguistic versatility within the

Internet language context. A cognitive semantics approach constitutes the theoretical framework

of the investigation, which emphasizes sense relations, word formation, and domain analysis.

The initialism investigated is AFK, which most commonly stands for the expression Away

From Keyboard. To be AFK is a phrase that commonly occurs in the Internet language domain to

express an idea of distance or disconnection from some aspect of the Internet, or an Internet

activity.

The analysis of the primary data shows that phenomena such as conversion and

compounding frequently occur. Also, the findings of the study show that the initialism AFK can

undergo a metonymic shift from a literal meaning to a more abstract use within a specific Internet

context. In gaming and social media contexts this appears to be a prominent feature of the

initialism AFK.

Keywords: initialism, cognitive domain, Internet language, sense relations, word formation,

metonymy

References Alm-Arvius, Christina. In progress. Comprehensive Semantics: Lexicon, grammar, text, cognition and the world.

Stockholm: Stockholm University.

—. 1998. Introduction to Semantics. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Croft, William. 1993. ‗Metonymy: The role of domains in the interpretation of metaphors and metonymies‘, in

Geeraerts, Dirk (ed.), Cognitive Linguistics: Basic readings. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 269-302.

Crystal, David. 2001. Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Geeraerts, Dirk (ed.). 2006. Cognitive Linguistics: Basic readings. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Langacker, Ronald W. 2008. Cognitive Grammar. A basic introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.

—. 1991. Concept, Image and Symbol: The cognitive basis of grammar. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.



65

Saeed, John I. 2009. Semantics, 3rd

ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Ungerer, Friedrich & Hans-Jörg Schmid. 2006. An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics, 2nd

ed. Harlow: Longman.

Documents

The Stockholm 2010 Metaphor Festival ABSTRACTS · Abstracts The Stockholm 2010 Metaphor Festival Version 2.0 7 Metalinguistic Metonymy: A corpus-based study of WORD Annelie Ädel