Teenie Matlock | University of California, Merced (original) (raw)

Papers by Teenie Matlock

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2015

PLOS ONE, Nov 17, 2020

We report a large-scale, quantitative investigation of manual gestures that speakers perform when... more We report a large-scale, quantitative investigation of manual gestures that speakers perform when speaking metaphorically about numerical quantities. We used the TV News Archivean online database of over 2 million English language news broadcasts-to examine 681 videos in which 584 speakers used the phrase 'tiny number', 'small number', 'large number', or 'huge number', which metaphorically frame numerical quantity in terms of physical size. We found that the gestures speakers used reflect a number of different strategies to express the metaphoric size of quantities. When referring to greater versus lesser quantities, speakers were far more likely to gesture (1) with an open versus closed hand configuration, (2) with an outward versus inward movement, and (3) with a wider distance between the gesturing hands. These patterns were often more pronounced for the phrases containing more extreme adjectives ('tiny/huge number'). However, we did not find that speakers performed two-handed versus one-handed gestures. Nor did we find that speakers performed righthanded versus left-handed gestures, when referring to greater versus lesser quantities. Overall, this work supports the claim that metaphoric thought is involved in the production of verbal metaphors that describe numerical magnitudes. It demonstrates that size-based numerical associations observed in previous lab experiments are active in real-life communication outside the lab.

Journal of Cultural Heritage, 2016

This study uses a novel, interdisciplinary approach to investigate how people describe ancient ar... more This study uses a novel, interdisciplinary approach to investigate how people describe ancient artefacts. Here, we focus on gestures. Researchers have shown that gestures are important in communication, and those researchers often make a distinction between beat and iconic gestures. Iconic gestures convey meaning, specifically, visual-spatial information. Beat gestures do not convey meaning; they facilitate lexical access. In our study, we videotaped participants while they described artefacts presented through varied media: visual examination, physical interaction, and three-dimensional virtual and material replica (i.e., 3D prints) interaction. Video analysis revealed that media type affected gesture production. Participants who viewed actual objects displayed in a museum-style case produced few gestures in their descriptions. This finding suggests that traditional museum displays may diminish or limit museum users degree of engagement with ancient artefacts. This interdisciplinary work advances our knowledge of material culture by providing new insights into how people use and experience ancient artefacts in varied presentations. Implications for virtual reproduction in research, education, and communication in archaeology are discussed.

Language and Linguistics Compass, 2019

Metaphor is pervasive in everyday communication. It is known to help people understand complex to... more Metaphor is pervasive in everyday communication. It is known to help people understand complex topics, communicate efficiently, and influence others. In this paper, we provide a review of the literature on the utility of metaphor, describing key findings and controversies while underscoring recent experimental and theoretical advances. We begin with a brief introduction to metaphor and offer a critical assessment of the claim that conventional metaphors in language reflect underlying conceptual representations and processing, a view associated with Lakoff and Johnson's groundbreaking conceptual metaphor theory (CMT). We then discuss recent research that examines whether and how metaphor shapes attitudes and reasoning, outlining some of the cognitive, affective, and social forces that moderate the efficacy of metaphors on decision making. Throughout the paper, we highlight theoretical implications of the research and identify challenges that warrant further investigation in the study of metaphor. In the end, this work paints a complex and dynamic view of metaphor in communication and cognition.

Figurative, spontaneous, interactive and potentially offensive:

How do we understand time and other entities we can neither touch nor see? One possibility is tha... more How do we understand time and other entities we can neither touch nor see? One possibility is that we tap into our concrete, experiential knowledge, including our understanding of physical space and motion, to make sense of abstract domains such as time. To examine how pervasive an aspect of cognition this is, we investigated whether thought about a non-literal type of motion called fictive motion (as in The road runs along the coast) can influence thought about time. Our results suggest that fictive motion utilizes the same structures evoked in understanding literal motion, and that these literal aspects of fictive motion influence temporal reasoning.

Benjamins Current Topics, 2014

How do people describe events they have witnessed? What role does linguistic aspect play in this ... more How do people describe events they have witnessed? What role does linguistic aspect play in this process? To provide answers to these questions, we conducted an experiment on aspectual framing. In our task, people were asked to view videotaped vehicular accidents and to describe what happened (perfective framing) or what was happening (imperfective framing). Our analyses of speech and gesture in retellings show that the form of aspect used in the question differentially influenced the way people conceptualized and described actions. Questions framed with imperfective aspect resulted in more motion verbs (e.g., driving), more reckless language (e.g., speeding), and more iconic gestures (e.g., path gesture away from the body to show travel direction) than did questions framed with perfective aspect. Our research contributes novel insights on aspect and the construal of events, and on the semantic potency of aspect in leading questions. The findings are consistent with core assumptions in cognitive linguistics, including the proposal that linguistic meaning, including grammatical meaning, is dynamic and grounded in perceptual and cognitive experience.

Revista signos, 2021

Discourse analysis studies offer tools to reveal, from patients' perspective, how complex disease... more Discourse analysis studies offer tools to reveal, from patients' perspective, how complex diseases such as cancer are understood. Although several studies have shed light on how metaphor and modality are used in cancer discourse in English, little is known about cancer discourse in Spanish. To discover how Spanish-speaking patients narrate their own personal experiences with cancer and what gender differences exist in cancer discourse, we compiled a corpus of 50 Spanish narratives. The narratives were collected from an online site dedicated to sharing personal experiences with the disease. We analyze how 25 men and 25 women use metaphor and modality in cancer narratives. Our main finding is that violence metaphors and travel metaphors predominate in health narratives. We note that writers used metaphors of violence to offer readers advice and to portray cancer as an enemy. They used travel metaphors to discuss their progress and to offer encouragement to their readers. We found that women tend to use cancer metaphors more often than men. Finally, we find that both the frequency and the types of modal verbs they use demonstrate the inclination of women to establish connections and the tendency of men to offer and seek information.

Cognitive Science, 2017

People often use spatial language to talk about time, and this is known to both reflect and shape... more People often use spatial language to talk about time, and this is known to both reflect and shape how they think about it. Despite much research on the spatial grounding of temporal language and thought, little attention has been given to how spatial metaphors influence reasoning about real events, especially those in the future. In a large online study (N=2362), we framed a discussion of climate change using spatial metaphors that varied on reference-frame (egovs. time-moving), speed of movement (fast vs. slow), and time horizon (near, medium, or far future). We found that describing climate change as approaching (time-moving frame) – versus something we approach – made the issue seem more serious, but also more tractable, at least when the rate of motion was fast (e.g., “it’s rapidly approaching”). These findings offer novel insights into the relationship between spatial metaphors and temporal reasoning and how we communicate about uncertain future events.

War metaphors are ubiquitous in discussions of everything from political campaigns to battles wit... more War metaphors are ubiquitous in discussions of everything from political campaigns to battles with cancer to wars against crime, drugs, poverty, and even salad. Why are warfare metaphors so common, and what are the potential benefits and costs to using them to frame important social and political issues? We address these questions in a detailed case study by reviewing the empirical literature on the subject and by advancing our own theoretical account of the structure and function of war metaphors in public discourse. We argue that war metaphors are omnipresent because (a) they draw on basic and widely shared schematic knowledge that efficiently structures our ability to reason and communicate about many different types of situations, and (b) they reliably express an urgent, negatively valenced emotional tone that captures attention and motivates action. Nevertheless, we find that the meaning (and consequences) of war metaphors is intimately tied to the context in which they are use...

PLOS ONE, 2020

Metaphor and Symbol, 2018

ABSTRACT War metaphors are ubiquitous in discussions of everything from political campaigns to ba... more ABSTRACT War metaphors are ubiquitous in discussions of everything from political campaigns to battles with cancer to wars against crime, drugs, poverty, and even salad. Why are warfare metaphors so common, and what are the potential benefits and costs to using them to frame important social and political issues? We address these questions in a detailed case study by reviewing the empirical literature on the subject and by advancing our own theoretical account of the structure and function of war metaphors in public discourse. We argue that war metaphors are omnipresent because (a) they draw on basic and widely shared schematic knowledge that efficiently structures our ability to reason and communicate about many different types of situations, and (b) they reliably express an urgent, negatively valenced emotional tone that captures attention and motivates action. Nevertheless, we find that the meaning (and consequences) of war metaphors is intimately tied to the context in which they are used, which may result in either positive or negative outcomes, depending on the situation. Thus, blanket statements about whether or not a war frame is useful are misguided or overly constraining. Here we situate our case study results in relation to popular theories of metaphoric representation and processing and offer some guidelines for using a war framing effectively. This work helps illuminate the complex, dynamic, and nuanced functions of metaphor in cognition in general, and in public discourse in particular.

Visually Situated Language Comprehension, 2016

This chapter is concerned with visual processing in the context of figurative language. Included ... more This chapter is concerned with visual processing in the context of figurative language. Included is background on research that has used the visual world paradigm to study the processing of fictive motion sentences. These sentences, which are ubiquitous in everyday language, include a motion verb but describe no motion (e.g., "A road goes through the desert", "The cord runs along the wall"). Also included is discussion of emerging concepts that form novel hypotheses for how figurative language is processed. This chapter grounds fictive motion processing in interactive dynamical systems and takes figurative language in a new direction.

PloS one, 2015

The past two decades have seen an upsurge of interest in the collective behaviors of complex syst... more The past two decades have seen an upsurge of interest in the collective behaviors of complex systems composed of many agents entrained to each other and to external events. In this paper, we extend the concept of entrainment to the dynamics of human collective attention. We conducted a detailed investigation of the unfolding of human entrainment-as expressed by the content and patterns of hundreds of thousands of messages on Twitter-during the 2012 US presidential debates. By time-locking these data sources, we quantify the impact of the unfolding debate on human attention at three time scales. We show that collective social behavior covaries second-by-second to the interactional dynamics of the debates: A candidate speaking induces rapid increases in mentions of his name on social media and decreases in mentions of the other candidate. Moreover, interruptions by an interlocutor increase the attention received. We also highlight a distinct time scale for the impact of salient conten...