10,696 research outputs found

    Metaphoric coherence: Distinguishing verbal metaphor from `anomaly\u27

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    Theories and computational models of metaphor comprehension generally circumvent the question of metaphor versus “anomaly” in favor of a treatment of metaphor versus literal language. Making the distinction between metaphoric and “anomalous” expressions is subject to wide variation in judgment, yet humans agree that some potentially metaphoric expressions are much more comprehensible than others. In the context of a program which interprets simple isolated sentences that are potential instances of cross‐modal and other verbal metaphor, I consider some possible coherence criteria which must be satisfied for an expression to be “conceivable” metaphorically. Metaphoric constraints on object nominals are represented as abstracted or extended along with the invariant structural components of the verb meaning in a metaphor. This approach distinguishes what is preserved in metaphoric extension from that which is “violated”, thus referring to both “similarity” and “dissimilarity” views of metaphor. The role and potential limits of represented abstracted properties and constraints is discussed as they relate to the recognition of incoherent semantic combinations and the rejection or adjustment of metaphoric interpretations

    Metaphor Aptness And Conventionality: A Processing Fluency Account

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    Conventionality and aptness are two dimensions of metaphorical sentences thought to play an important role in determining how quick and easy it is to process a metaphor. Conventionality reflects the familiarity of a metaphor whereas aptness reflects the degree to which a metaphor vehicle captures important features of a metaphor topic. In recent years it has become clear that operationalizing these two constructs is not as simple as asking naïve raters for subjective judgments. It has been found that ratings of aptness and conventionality are highly correlated, which has led some researchers to pursue alternative methods for measuring the constructs. Here, in four experiments, we explore the underlying reasons for the high correlation in ratings of aptness and conventionality, and question the construct validity of various methods for measuring the two dimensions. We find that manipulating the processing fluency of a metaphorical sentence by means of familiarization to similar senses of the metaphor (“in vivo conventionalization”) influences ratings of the sentence\u27s aptness. This misattribution may help explain why subjective ratings of aptness and conventionality are highly correlated. In addition, we find other reasons to question the construct validity of conventionality and aptness measures: for instance, we find that conventionality is context dependent and thus not attributable to a metaphor vehicle alone, and we find that ratings of aptness take more into account than they should

    Verbal Concepts as Abstract Structures: The Most Basic Conceptual Metaphor?

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    Information and Experience in Metaphor: A Perspective From Computer Analysis

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    Novel linguistic metaphor can be seen as the assignment of attributes to a topic through a vehicle belonging to another domain. The experience evoked by the vehicle is a significant aspect of the meaning of the metaphor, especially for abstract metaphor, which involves more than mere physical similarity. In this article I indicate, through description of a specific model, some possibilities as well as limitations of computer processing directed toward both informative and experiential/affective aspects of metaphor. A background to the discussion is given by other computational treatments of metaphor analysis, as well as by some questions about metaphor originating in other disciplines. The approach on which the present metaphor analysis model is based is consistent with a theory of language comprehension that includes both the intent of the originator and the effect on the recipient of the metaphor. The model addresses the dual problem of (a) determining potentially salient properties of the vehicle concept, and (b) defining extensible symbolic representations of such properties, including affective and other connotations. The nature of the linguistic analysis underlying the model suggests how metaphoric expression of experiential components in abstract metaphor is dependent on the nominalization of actions and attributes. The inverse process of undoing such nominalizations in computer analysis of metaphor constitutes a translation of a metaphor to a more literal expression within the metaphor-nonmetaphor dichotomy

    Troping the Enemy: Metaphor, Culture, and the Big Data Black Boxes of National Security

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    This article considers how cultural understanding is being brought into the work of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), through an analysis of its Metaphor program. It examines the type of social science underwriting this program, unpacks implications of the agency’s conception of metaphor for understanding so-called cultures of interest, and compares IARPA’s to competing accounts of how metaphor works to create cultural meaning. The article highlights some risks posed by key deficits in the Intelligence Community\u27s (IC) approach to culture, which relies on the cognitive linguistic theories of George Lakoff and colleagues. It also explores the problem of the opacity of these risks for analysts, even as such predictive cultural analytics are becoming a part of intelligence forecasting. This article examines the problem of information secrecy in two ways, by unpacking the opacity of “black box,” algorithm-based social science of culture for end users with little appreciation of their potential biases, and by evaluating the IC\u27s nontransparent approach to foreign cultures, as it underwrites national security assessments

    Metaphoric competence and communicative language ability

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    Recent developments in cognitive linguistics have highlighted the importance as well as the ubiquity of metaphor in language. Despite this, the ability of second language learners to use metaphors is often still not seen as a core ability. In this paper, we take a model of communicative competence that has been widely influential in both language teaching and language testing, namely Bachman (1990), and argue, giving a range of examples of language use and learner difficulty, that metaphoric competence has in fact an important role to play in all areas of communicative competence. In other words, it can contribute centrally to grammatical competence, textual competence, illocutionary competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. Metaphor is thus highly relevant to second language learning, teaching and testing, from the earliest to the most advanced stages of learning

    Abstraction as a basis for the computational interpretation of creative cross-modal metaphor

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    Various approaches to computational metaphor interpretation are based on pre-existing similarities between source and target domains and/or are based on metaphors already observed to be prevalent in the language. This paper addresses similarity-creating cross-modal metaphoric expressions. It is shown how the “abstract concept as object” (or reification) metaphor plays a central role in a large class of metaphoric extensions. The described approach depends on the imposition of abstract ontological components, which represent source concepts, onto target concepts. The challenge of such a system is to represent both denotative and connotative components which are extensible, together with a framework of general domains between which such extensions can conceivably occur. An existing ontology of this kind, consistent with some mathematic concepts and widely held linguistic notions, is outlined. It is suggested that the use of such an abstract representation system is well adapted to the interpretation of both conventional and unconventional metaphor that is similarity-creating

    Mixing Metaphors In The Cerebral Hemispheres: What Happens When Careers Collide?

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    Are processes of figurative comparison and figurative categorization different? An experiment combining alternative-sense and matched-sense metaphor priming with a divided visual field assessment technique sought to isolate processes of comparison and categorization in the 2 cerebral hemispheres. For target metaphors presented in the right visual field/left cerebral hemisphere (RVF/LH), only matched-sense primes were facilitative. Literal primes and alternative-sense primes had no effect on comprehension time compared to the unprimed baseline. The effects of matched-sense primes were additive with the rated conventionality of the targets. For target metaphors presented to the left visual field/right cerebral hemisphere (LVF/RH), matched-sense primes were again additively facilitative. However, alternative-sense primes, though facilitative overall, seemed to eliminate the preexisting advantages of conventional target metaphor senses in the LVF/RH in favor of metaphoric senses similar to those of the primes. These findings are consistent with tightly controlled categorical coding in the LH and coarse, flexible, context-dependent coding in the RH. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)(journal abstract
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