FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE IN SELECTED SONGS OF “RED” BY TAYLOR SWIFT

This study aims to explore the types and meanings of figurative language in Taylor Swift’s song lyrics. On the surface level, figurative language cannot be translated literally. The study is descriptive qualitative, and the data are in the forms of figurative language taken from eight selected songs in Taylor Swift's album "Red" collected by documentation technique. The data are then analyzed using content analysis by referring to the framework of Knickerbocker Reninger’s theory (1985) on figurative language. From the analysis, there are 57 types of figurative language in the selected songs, namely hyperbole 31,5%, simile 19,3%, metaphor 17,5%, metonymy 5,3%, irony 3,5%, symbol 7,0%, personification 10,6%, paradox 3,5% and synecdoche 1,8%. Furthermore, the meaning of each figurative language used in the song lyrics is contextually explored and allied with the content of the song lyrics which conveys the various deep expressions of feeling and emotion of Taylor Swift as both a singer and a songwriter

AN ANALYSIS OF THE FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE USED ON CREED ALBUM “WEATHERED”

Language has an important role in the literary works. Literary works gives information concerning human expression, realities and problems. Literary works play a role in the revealing the truth through their language and symbols behind the works. A lyrical poetry is representation of music, which can convey ideas and emotion to the listeners. In a song there are many expressions that the composer wants to show to the listener. The writer of this thesis analyzes the figurative expression that exists in Creed’s songs. He chooses one of the Creed’s album that is released in 2001 under titled “weathered”. Two major purposes considered being the main problem in analyzing Creed’s song: (1) what kinds of figurative language are found in Creed lyric? (2) What are the detail meanings of figurative language that are found in Creed lyric?. The approach that the writer uses in this thesis is objective approach because the analysis is related to the literary works itself by analyzing the lyric that uses figurative language. The method in this study is descriptive qualitative research method. This method started by collecting research literature to provide the research data. Next, the data are carefully examined in order to analyze the lyrics that are using figurative language. The data in this study are collected from cassettes, Internet and magazines. The population in this study is eleven songs in “weathered” album, and the writer take six songs as sample. The songs are: Bullets, My sacrifice, Stand here with me, Weathered, Hide and Don’t stop dancing. The result of this study shows that there are seven figurative languages used by Creed in this album, such as hyperbole, repetition, irony, personification, litotes, metaphor and metonymy. The detail meanings that are found in figurative language cannot be understood literally. It needs deeper understanding from the listener

Idiomatic expressions evoke stronger emotional responses in the brain than literal sentences

Recent neuroscientific research shows that metaphors engage readers at the emotional level more strongly than literal expressions. What still remains unclear is what makes metaphors more engaging, and whether this generalises to all figurative expressions, no matter how conventionalised they are. This fMRI study aimed to investigate whether idiomatic expressions - the least creative part of figurative language - indeed trigger a higher affective resonance than literal expressions, and to explore possible interactions between activation in emotion-relevant neural structures and regions associated with figurative language processing. Participants silently read for comprehension a set of emotionally positive, negative and neutral idioms embedded in short sentences, and similarly valenced literal sentences. As in studies on metaphors, we found enhanced activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus and left amygdala in response to idioms, indexing stronger recruitment of executive control functions and enhanced emotional engagement, respectively. This suggests that the comprehension of even highly conventionalised and familiar figurative expressions, namely idioms, recruits regions involved in emotional processing. Furthermore, increased activation of the IFG interacted positively with activation in the amygdala, suggesting that the stronger cognitive engagement driven by idioms may in turn be coupled with stronger involvement at the emotional level

When emotions are expressed figuratively:psycholinguistic and affective norms of 619 idioms for German (PANIG)

Despite flourishing research on the relationship between emotion and literal language, and despite the pervasiveness of figurative expressions in communication, the role of figurative language in conveying affect has been under-investigated. This study provides affective and psycholinguistic norms for 619 German idiomatic expressions and explores the relationships between affective and psycholinguistic idiom properties. German native speakers rated each idiom for emotional valence, arousal, familiarity, semantic transparency, figurativeness, and concreteness. They also described the figurative meaning of each idiom, and rated how confident they were on the attributed meaning. Results showed that idioms rated high in valence were also rated high in arousal. Negative idioms were rated as more arousing than positive ones, in line with results on single words. Furthermore, arousal correlated positively with figurativeness (supporting the idea that figurative expressions are more emotionally engaging than literal expressions) and with concreteness and semantic transparency. This suggests that idioms may convey a more direct reference to sensory representations, mediated by the meaning of their constituting words. Arousal correlated positively with familiarity. In addition, positive idioms were rated as more familiar than negative idioms. Finally, idioms without a literal counterpart were rated as more emotionally valenced and arousing than idioms with a literal counterpart. Although the meaning of ambiguous idioms was less correctly defined than that of unambiguous idioms, ambiguous idioms were rated as more concrete than unambiguous ones. We also discuss the relationships between the various psycholinguistic variables characterising idioms, with reference to the literature on idiom structure and processing

AN ANALYSIS OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE OF SONGS IN 70’S ERA AND MILLENNIUM ERA

NIKO SAPUTRA: AN ANALYSIS OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE OF SONGS IN 70’S ERA AND MILLENNIUM ERA Figurative language is the language style that uses words or expressions with a meaning that is different from the literal interpretation. Figurative language also include in literature theory. Figurative language usually found in poem, novel, short story and songs. Through Figurative language people can express their emotion, taste, and so forth, The aims of this research are to know the figurative language used in songs 70’s era, to know the figurative language used in songs millennium era, and to know the Similarity and the difference of figurative language in both era. The method of this study is qualitative research. Because the writer analyzes the data based on the document, and the writer observes the document itself. The data of this research taken from the lyrics of the songs in 70’s era and millennium era. In this case the writer means that the songs was launch between 1970-1979 namely the Hotel California (1976), The temple of the king (1975), Bohemian Rhapsody (1975), Smoke on The Water (1972), Brown Sugar (1971), The Long and Winding Road (1970) and some songs from Millennium era or 2000’s era is the era between years 2000-2009. Namely Perfect (2002), The Reason (2003), Wake Me Up When September Ends (2004) This Love (2002), All The Small Things (2000), Here Without You (2003). As a result of this research the writer found some figurative language from in the songs, the writer found Hyperbole, Personification, Alliteration, Allegory, Idiom, Paradox, Imagery, Metonymy. Base on the data In 70’s era, the Hyperbole and Personification usually appear, and also in millenium era, they usually appear, but the differentiation is the amount of the figurative language itself. Based on the data 70’era has more figurative language than millenium era. Finally the writer expects this research will able to help the next researcher who conduct the research in same field. It sugessted to further researcher to able to investigate other object which might contain figurative language

Affect and Metaphor Sensing in Virtual Drama

We report our developments on metaphor and affect sensing for several metaphorical language phenomena including affects as external entities metaphor, food metaphor, animal metaphor, size metaphor, and anger metaphor. The metaphor and affect sensing component has been embedded in a conversational intelligent agent interacting with human users under loose scenarios. Evaluation for the detection of several metaphorical language phenomena and affect is provided. Our paper contributes to the journal themes on believable virtual characters in real-time narrative environment, narrative in digital games and storytelling and educational gaming with social software

Beyond the literal meaning of words in children with klinefelter syndrome: two case studies

Literature on children with Klinefelter Syndrome (KS) points to general linguistic difficulties in both comprehension and production among other cognitive functions, and in the majority of cases, these coexist with an intellectual level within the norms. In these conditions, children having language delay generally engage in language therapy and are systematically monitored across ages. In this article, we present the profiles of two children with KS (47, XXY), aged 9.1 (Child S) and 13 (Child D), whose language development was assessed as adequate at age 3, and for this reason, did not receive any language treatment. At the present stage, their IQ, as measured by Wechsler Scales (Child S: 92; Child D: 101), is within the norm, but they both present marked weaknesses in pragmatic skills such as figurative language comprehension. The analysis of these two cases points to the need to go beyond global indexes of verbal abilities, as the same global index may mask a wide diversification of individual profiles. In addition, this study underlines the importance of monitoring the developmental trajectories of children like Child D and Child S, because weaknesses in pragmatic skills that are relevant for both academic achievement and social adaptation could emerge at later stages

Sensitizing a Gifted Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder towards Social Cognition: From Assessment to Treatment

Social cognition difficulties are well documented in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This clinical case study reports on social cognition assessment and treatment of a gifted child, SC (9 years), with ASD and an extraordinarily high verbal IQ (146). The assessment of theory of mind, emotion recognition and pragmatic abilities showed some weaknesses in these areas. The 4- month treatment was divided into 14 sessions and was aimed at helping SC to improve his abilities to recognize emotions and comprehend mental states. The main technique used in the intervention was “social reading” with video clips. The initial assessment was repeated after the treatment and in a follow up session. The results of this case study suggest that “social reading” can be considered as a beneficial technique for children with high-functioning ASD, and especially in giftedness conditions

Pragmatic language disorder in Parkinson's disease and the potential effect of cognitive reserve

It is known that patients with Parkinson\u2019s Disease (PD) may show deficits in several areas of cognition, including speech and language abilities. One domain of particular interest is pragmatics, which refers to the capacity of using language in context for a successful communication. Several studies showed that some specific aspects of pragmatics \u2013 both in production and in comprehension \u2013 might be impaired in patients with PD. However, a clear picture of pragmatic abilities in PD is still missing, as most of the existing studies focused on specific aspects of the pragmatic competence rather than on sketching a complete pragmatic profile. Moreover, little is known on the potential role of protective factors in compensating the decline of communicative skills as the disease progresses. The present study has two aims: (1) to provide a complete picture of pragmatic abilities in patients with PD, by using a comprehensive battery (Assessment of Pragmatic Abilities and Cognitive Substrates, APACS) and by investigating the relationship with other aspects of cognitive functioning (e.g., working memory and Theory of Mind) and (2) to investigate whether Cognitive Reserve, i.e., the resilience to cognitive impairment provided by life experiences and activities, may compensate for the progressive pragmatic deficits in PD. We found that patients with PD, compared to healthy matched controls, had worse performance in discourse production and in the description of scenes, and that these impairments were tightly correlated with the severity of motor impairment, suggesting reduced intentionality of engaging in a communicative exchange. Patients with PD showed also an impairment in comprehending texts and humor, suggesting a problem in inferring from stories, which was related to general cognitive impairment. Notably, we did not find any significant difference between patients and controls in figurative language comprehension, a domain that is commonly impaired in other neurodegenerative diseases. This might be indicative of a specific profile of pragmatic impairment in patients with PD, worth of further investigation. Finally, Cognitive Reserve measures showed a high degree of association with pragmatic comprehension abilities, suggesting that the modification of life-styles could be a good candidate for compensating the possible problems in understanding the pragmatic aspects of language experienced by patients with PD