Metaphoric competence and communicative language ability

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

Spatial metaphors of the ancient world: theory and practice

Group C-2 of the Excellence Cluster 264 Topoi Space and Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Texts is dedicated to the study of spatial metaphors and their functions in texts of different genres, languages, and epochs. This outline of the work of group C-2 takes as its point of departure and theoretical framework a general linguistic typology of spatial metaphors. This outline is followed by a series of case studies ranging from wisdom texts and philosophical treatises to tragedy and from Ancient Egyptian to Shakespearean English. These examples are aimed at illustrating both the challenges and the possibilities of the study and interpretation of spatial metaphors in their respective contexts

Analogy as Higher-Order Metaphor in Aquinas

At a Thomas Instituut conference in 2000, Otto-Hermann Pesch suggested somewhat enigmatically that the sharp distinction in scholastic Thomism between analogy and metaphor can no longer be maintained since on closer examination analogous statements are in effect instances of a kind of \u27higher-order metaphor\u27. I Pesch intended this qualification primarily to draw attention to the agnostic or negative aspect of analogous speech.2 It is evident from Herwi Rikhof\u27s portrait of \u27Thomas at Utrecht\u27 ,3 that this emphasis on the negative dimension did not introduce anything controversial or novel at the Instituut

Influencing interaction: Development of the design with intent method

Persuasive Technology has the potential to influence user behavior for social benefit, e.g. to reduce environmental impact, but designers are lacking guidance choosing among design techniques for influencing interaction. The Design with Intent Method, a ‘suggestion tool’ addressing this problem, is introduced in this paper, and applied to the briefs of reducing unnecessary household lighting use, and improving the efficiency of printing, primarily to evaluate the method’s usability and guide the direction of its development. The trial demonstrates that the DwI Method is quick to apply and leads to a range of relevant design concepts. With development, the DwI Method could be a useful tool for designers working on influencing user behavior

Argumentation as a Bridge Between Metaphor and Reasoning

UID/FIL/00183/2013 SFRH/BPD/115073/2016 WoS - record outside the portuguese subscription range.The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationship between metaphor and reasoning, by claiming that argumentation might act as a bridge between metaphor and reasoning. Firstly, the chapter introduces metaphor as a framing strategy through which some relevant properties of a (generally more concrete and known) source domain are selected to understand a (generally less concrete and known) target domain. The mapping of properties from the source to the target domain implicitly forces the interpreter to consider the target from a specific perspective. Secondly, the chapter presents metaphor as an implicit argument where some inferences can be drawn from the comparison between the source and the target domain. In particular, this chapter aims to understand whether and to what extent such an argument might be linked to analogical reasoning. The chapter argues that, in case of faulty analogy, this kind of argument might have the form of a quaternio terminorum, where metaphor is the middle term. Finally, the chapter presents the results of an experimental study, aiming to test the effect of the linguistic nature of the middle term on the detection of such faulty analogy. The chapter concludes that a wider context is needed to make sense of an analogical argument with novel metaphors, whilst in a narrow context, a lexicalised metaphor might be extended and the overall argument might be interpreted as metaphoric.authorsversionpublishe

The design with intent method: A design tool for influencing user behaviour

The official published version can be found at the link below.Using product and system design to influence user behaviour offers potential for improving performance and reducing user error, yet little guidance is available at the concept generation stage for design teams briefed with influencing user behaviour. This article presents the Design with Intent Method, an innovation tool for designers working in this area, illustrated via application to an everyday human–technology interaction problem: reducing the likelihood of a customer leaving his or her card in an automatic teller machine. The example application results in a range of feasible design concepts which are comparable to existing developments in ATM design, demonstrating that the method has potential for development and application as part of a user-centred design process

A linguistically-driven methodology for detecting impending and unfolding emergencies from social media messages

Natural disasters have demonstrated the crucial role of social media before, during and after emergencies (Haddow & Haddow 2013). Within our EU project Sland \ub4 ail, we aim to ethically improve \ub4 the use of social media in enhancing the response of disaster-related agen-cies. To this end, we have collected corpora of social and formal media to study newsroom communication of emergency management organisations in English and Italian. Currently, emergency management agencies in English-speaking countries use social media in different measure and different degrees, whereas Italian National Protezione Civile only uses Twitter at the moment. Our method is developed with a view to identifying communicative strategies and detecting sentiment in order to distinguish warnings from actual disasters and major from minor disasters. Our linguistic analysis uses humans to classify alert/warning messages or emer-gency response and mitigation ones based on the terminology used and the sentiment expressed. Results of linguistic analysis are then used to train an application by tagging messages and detecting disaster- and/or emergency-related terminology and emotive language to simulate human rating and forward information to an emergency management system

INFECTIOUS DISEASES ARE SLEEPING MONSTERS: Conventional and culturally adapted new metaphors in a corpus of abstracts on immunology

In this paper we examine the role played by metaphor in a corpus of sixty abstracts on immunology from Scientific American. We focus on the distinction between conventional metaphors and culturally adapted new metaphors and discuss the role played by metaphor choice in the communicative purposes of the abstracts and their register features. We argue that one of the main strategies used to attract the reader‘s attention is the combination of highly conventionalized metaphors, which occur more frequently in the corpus, together with what we call “culturally adapted new metaphors”, which display different degrees of creativity and are less frequent in the corpus. Conventional metaphors typically reinforce the world view shared by the scientific community and introduce basic ideas on the subject of immunology. Culturally adapted new metaphors include a cline from slightly new perspectives of conventional models, to highly creative uses of metaphor. Culturally adapted new metaphors appeal primarily to a general readership and not to the scientific community, as they tap human emotions and mythic constructions. These play a crucial role in the abstracts, as they contribute to persuasive and didactic communicative functions in the text

Online Group-exercises for Older Adults of Different Physical Abilities

In this paper we describe the design and validation of a virtual fitness environment aiming at keeping older adults physically and socially active. We target particularly older adults who are socially more isolated, physically less active, and with less chances of training in a gym. The virtual fitness environment, namely Gymcentral, was designed to enable and motivate older adults to follow personalised exercises from home, with a (heterogeneous) group of remote friends and under the remote supervision of a Coach. We take the training activity as an opportunity to create social interactions, by complementing training features with social instruments. Finally, we report on the feasibility and effectiveness of the virtual environment, as well as its effects on the usage and social interactions, from an intervention study in Trento, Ital