On a metaphorical scale in Expressive Dialogue (original) (raw)
Related papers
2012
When people make conversation they use all kinds of devices to convey their messages, including metaphor. Although metaphor is often associated with creative, complex and rhetorical texts (such as fiction, poetry, or speeches), metaphors are actually a characteristic feature of everyday discourse. The type of metaphor used varies per register, from extensive analogies to a single word and from novel comparisons to conventional expressions. Which type of metaphor is typical of conversation can only be established in comparison to other registers. This thesis provides a unique register-specific description of metaphor use in conversation that results from a corpus-based, cross-register comparison between conversation, fiction, academic writing and news texts. It shows how metaphors in conversation can be identified by using an explicit and reliable tool for metaphor identification (MIPVU) and adopts a three-dimensional perspective on metaphor analysis that distinguishes between metaphor in language, metaphor in thought and metaphor in communication. The quantitative analysis takes into account the frequencies, distribution, form, variation and communicative function of metaphorical expressions in casual conversation. Moreover, an experiment focuses on the multimodal nature of conversations by exploring the effect of tone of voice on metaphor processing. The thesis stresses the need for a clear distinction between different areas of metaphor analysis as well as the need for an explicit method for metaphor identification and shows how interdisciplinary, corpus-based and comparative research can lead to valid, new, register-specific insights.
The Pragmatic Functions of Metaphorical Language
A Life in Cognition, Language, Cognition, and Mind 11, 2022
Figures of speech have been suggested to play important pragmatic roles in language. Yet the nature of these pragmatic functions has not been specified in detail, and it is not clear what particular social-communicative purposes metaphors fulfill. I propose that metaphors are utilized in two distinct ways in communication. First, similarly to indirect speech, they can be utilized in social bargaining: by expressing intentions, beliefs and desires in a veiled manner, they put the burden of interpretation on the hearer, which makes them revocable and thus a great tool for negotiations. Secondly, metaphors can be used to transform the literal meaning of words to describe phenomena and refer to concepts that do not have a lexical entry, by transferring some abstract sense figuratively. This latter use is not only a tool of verbal creativity but a means of linguistic change as it adds novel senses to words. Metaphor does not seem to be a mere example of loose language use, but a sophisticated communicational tool, either to deliberately create ambiguity in a deniable manner, or to extend word meaning beyond the public lexicon, which puts some fundamental mechanisms of abstract thought to figurative use.
Talking Metaphors: Metaphors and the Philosophy of Language
PhD Dissertation – University of Nottingham, 2013
In this dissertation I defend a non-indexicalist contextualist account of metaphorical interpretation. This theory, which works within Kaplan's double-index semantic framework, claims that context does not have the only role of determining the content expressed by an utterance, but also the function of fixing the appropriate circumstance of evaluation relative to which that content is evaluated. My claim is that the metaphorical dimension of an utterance can be found in the circumstance of evaluation, and not in the content which is expressed by the utterance. To that effect,
Part I Metaphor in Discourse: Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives
In the current climate, it is taken for granted that metaphor is important and ubiquitous in language. Metaphor is no longer discussed as a 'violation'of normal verbal meaning (eg, Levin, 1977), but rather as one form of normal verbal meaning. But of course if metaphor were all that 'normal', it would not stimulate the interest that it does.
Notes towards the analysis of metaphor (2000)
Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: …, 2000
G. LAKOFF and M. JOHNSON's theory of cognitive linguistics and their definition of metaphor and metaphorical concepts have led to a variety of qualitative approaches whose common aim is to reconstruct metaphorical concepts and metaphorical reasoning in everyday language. Targets of these approaches were cross-cultural, cultural, subcultural, individual matters and metaphoric interaction. To illustrate this, two different strategies for a systematic procedure are briefly outlined.
The use of metaphor in evaluative utterances (Author: Tetiana Myroniuk)
Science and Education. A New Dimension, 2017
The present article studies the role of conceptual metaphor in evaluative utterances chosen from modern English fiction. In that connection, the author singles out typical conceptual metaphors in proper and manipulative evaluative utterances and considers their examples. The research concludes that conceptual metaphors make proper evaluative utterances more expressive, vivid and creative, thus, attracting an interlocutor’s intention. As for manipulative evaluative utterances, the metaphors contained in them help to achieve quicker and greater influence on the interlocutor.
Metaphor in language and thought: How do we map the field
This paper suggests that metaphor research can benefit from a clearer description of the field of research. Three dimensions of doing metaphor research are distinguished: metaphor can be studied as part of grammar or usage, it can be studied as part of language or thought, and it can be studied as part of sign systems or behaviour. When these three dimensions are crossed, eight distinct areas of research emerge that have their own assumptions about metaphorical meaning which have their own implications and consequences for the aims and evaluation of research. It is suggested that these distinctions will help in clarifying the validity of claims about the role of conceptual metaphor in language.
The contemporary theory of metaphor--now new and improved!
This paper outlines a multi-dimensional/multi-disciplinary framework for the study of metaphor. It expands on the cognitive linguistic approach to metaphor in language and thought by adding the dimension of communication, and it expands on the predominantly linguistic and psychological approaches by adding the discipline of social science. This creates a map of the field in which nine main areas of research can be distinguished and connected to each other in precise ways. It allows for renewed attention to the deliberate use of metaphor in communication, in contrast with non-deliberate use, and asks the question whether the interaction between deliberate and non-deliberate use of metaphor in specific social domains can contribute to an explanation of the discourse career of metaphor. The suggestion is made that metaphorical models in language, thought, and communication can be classified as official, contested, implicit, and emerging, which may offer new perspectives on the interaction between social, psychological, and linguistic properties and functions of metaphor in discourse. Keywords: metaphor, language, thought, communication, linguistics, psychology, social science