Preaching the Story behind the Image a Narrative Approach to Metaphor for Preaching

Rossow, Justin P. “Preaching the Story behind the Image: A Narrative Approach to Metaphor for Preaching.” Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary,2008.296pp. In response to an increasingly image-driven culture, preachers have focused more and more attention on the use of imagery and metaphor in the sermon. The homiletics of metaphor, however, currently lacks a sufficient hermeneutical foundation. This dissertation lays the groundwork for a fuller understanding of how interpreters fill in the blanks left by metaphors in the biblical text and in the sermon. While the appendix describes a range of different theories on what metaphor is and how it works, the dissertation itself presents a uniquely narrative approach to metaphor for preaching. With some modification, A.J.Greimas’“actantial model” of narrative relationships provides a method for analyzing how the structured relationships in the “source domain” of a metaphor relate to structured relationships in the “target domain.” The narrative structure implicit in the relationship of a shepherd and a lamb, for example, is strikingly different than the narrative structure of a lamb in a sacrificial system. A lamb metaphor will highlight different characters, attributes, roles, and expected outcomes in Jesus’ relationship to his followers depending on which of these narrative structures is in view. The actantial model depicts stable narrative relationships that can be instantiated by a wide variety of specific actors or features. Applying the actantial model to metaphor theory, a narrative approach to metaphor is able to describe important dynamics of metaphor interpretation. The complexities of “cross-domain mapping,” the role culturally shaped “conceptual metaphors” play in interpretation, and the motivations and results of “blending” multiple metaphors together all directly affect how preachers interpret the biblical text and how hearers interpret sermons. Textual and homiletic examples throughout the dissertation demonstrate how a narrative approach to metaphor helps preachers slow down the often-automatic process of filling in the blanks left by metaphor. More aware of which interpretive decisions are being made and how, preachers are better equipped to approach the biblical text, individual sermons, and their preaching ministry over time

The computer comprehension of systematic metaphor

Digitisation of this thesis was sponsored by Arcadia Fund, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin

Linguistic and conceptual structures in the Beaver (Athapascan) mental lexicon. A study of body part terms and emotion expressions.

Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit den Strukturen im mentalen Lexikon des Beaver (Athabaskisch). Dabei werden zwei Ziele verfolgt: zum einen sollen Körperteilbezeichnungen und deren Verwendung v.a. zum Ausdruck von Emotionen untersucht werden. Zum anderen wird hier der aktuelle theoretische Überbau diskutiert und kritisiert. So wird die Konzeptuelle Metapher Theorie (v.a. Lakoff) sowie konzeptuelle Netzwerke nach Langacker angewandt und dort modifiziert, wo die Daten alternative Analyseansätze fordern. Hierbei werden, wenn möglich, metalinguistische Aussagen der Sprecher als relevante Daten hinzugezogen, um einen tieferen Einblick in die Konzepte zu erhalten, da diese direkt kaum zugänglich sind. Grundlagen für die Beschreibung der sprachlichen und konzeptuellen Formen sind "embodiment" und Konventionalisierung in Zusammenhang mit soziokulturellen und somit sprach-individuellen Aspekten. Als "Ergebnisse" dieser Prozesse entstehen polyseme Lexeme, die über diverse Strategien Bedeutungsextensionen erfahren haben. Diese werden hier in semantischen und konzeptuellen Netzwerken dargestellt, um die Verbindungen und konzeptuellen Distanzen zwischen den Lesarten nachzuvollziehen. Diverse Körperteilbezeichnungen werden hier detailiert dargestellt und in ihren vielfältigen Verwendungen analysiert. Ebenso werden die Emotionsausdrücke, welche Körperteilbezeichnungen beinhalten, in ihren Bedeutungen und Verwendungen beschrieben und mit Hilfe der Sprecheraussagen analysiert. Dabei wird deutlich, dass konzeptuelle Strukturen nicht immer in vollem Ausmaß für die Sprecher zugänglich sind, gewisse Verbindungen von Bedeutungen jedoch aufgrund ihrer lexikalischen Teile von den Sprechern nachvollzogen werden können. Dabei wird deutlich, dass die Konzeptuelle Metapher Theorie nicht für alle sprachlichen Formen als Erklärungsansatz herangezogen werden kann, da nicht jeder figurative Konstruktion auf eine konzeptuelle Metapher zurückzuführen ist bzw. da die in nicht prototypischer Bedeutung verwendeten Konzepte nicht immer auf zwei unabhängigen Domänen beruhen. Diese Arbeit leistet auf der einen Seite einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Beschreibung und zum Verständnis Athabaskischer Sprachen. Auf der anderen Seite wird die Diskussion innerhalb der kognitiven Linguistik, genauer im Bereich der Konzeptuellen Metapher und figurativen Sprache, mit neuen Daten gespeist und kritisch weiter angeregt

A la sombra de la funesta nube : una aproximación al análisis crítico-cognitivo de la representación de la era atómica por los medios de comunicación estadounidenses

Tesis inédita de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Filología, Departamento de Filología Inglesa, leída el 28-10-2014Depto. de Estudios Ingleses: Lingüística y LiteraturaFac. de FilologíaTRUEunpu

Cognitive metaphor in the West and the East : A comparison of metaphors in the speeches of Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao

The thesis discusses the metaphors used in the speeches of US President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. The framework is Cognitive Metaphor Theory, which introduces the idea that cognitive metaphors are conceptualizations or patterns of thought, not lingusitic phenomena, although these metaphors give rise to linguistic metaphors. The metaphorical mapping, the relations between conceptual metaphors and our experience, the differences between conceptual metaphors and poetic metaphors, as well as the functions of metaphors are also discussed. It is the purpose of the thesis to show the ubiquity of metaphor by analyzing the metaphors used in the West (represented by Obama) and the East (represented by Wen). A comparison of the similarities and differences of the conceptual metaphors used by the two politicians is made. The topics of speeches vary, from internal affairs (such as economy and domestic politics) to international affairs. The findings show that the conceptual metaphors TO PURSUE WELL-BEING IS A JOURNEY, PERSONIFICATION and POLITICS IS WAR are found to be the most dominant in both the English and the Chinese corpus, but some details or linguistic expressions in the same conceptual metaphors differ. Some specific American and Chinese metaphors are also highlighted, for instance, the American Dream and the Chinese flag. Metaphors are extensively used in both Obama and Wen’s speeches, and in fact among politicians as well, since metaphors not only have rhetoric functions, but also the power function of legitimization and delegitimization

A Cognitive Linguistic Approach to Phrasal Verbs: A Teacher\u27s Guide

Although ubiquitous in the English language, phrasal verbs are one of the most difficult constructions for English language learners to learn, as their meanings have traditionally been regarded as arbitrary and chaotic. However, recent developments in cognitive linguistics have shed light onto schematic motivations of phrasal verb meanings and thus present a number of pedagogical applications. The purpose of this thesis is to provide English language teachers with a foundation in the theory and pedagogical approaches to teaching phrasal verbs, using a cognitive linguistic framework

Figuration & Frequency: A Usage-Based Approach to Metaphor

Two of the major claims of the cognitivist approach to metaphor, the paradigm which has emerged as dominant over the last three decades, are 1) that metaphor is a conceptual, rather than strictly linguistic, phenomenon, and 2) that metaphor exemplifies processes which are at work in cognition more generally. This view of metaphor is here placed within the context of the functionalist approach to language, which asserts that linguistic structure is emergent in nature, the use of language directly influencing the storage and representation thereof. The dissertation argues that metaphors, as conventionalized cognitive structures, are themselves highly influenced by frequency effects, and that metaphorical cross-domain mappings exist in the mind as conceptual schemata. Two corpus-based methods for assessing the frequency of overall metaphorical mappings are presented, both based on the use of key terms, attained using a survey method, for metaphorical source domains. These findings inform the hypotheses of a series of three experiments which test three key predictions of the view that metaphors are affected by frequency: that frequent metaphors should be more productive, accessible, and acceptable than infrequent ones. Both the corpus and experimental approaches, as well as data from previous research on metaphor at varying levels of conventionalization, support the view that metaphors are a usage-based phenomenon. The properties of various types of metaphorical utterances (e.g., idioms and novel metaphors) are best accounted for as arising from the interaction of the conceptual schemata that license cross-domain mappings, and syntactic schemata that link meanings to syntactic templates