Metaphorical use of language in educational discourse : a theoretical and empirical investigation.

This thesis investigates metaphor used by teachers and textbook writers, and the impact\ud on children. The theoretical investigation clarifies definitions and descriptions of\ud metaphor, to establish a valid, adequate framework for analysis of metaphor in ordinary,\ud contextualised interaction. A "prosaics of metaphor" is developed, including metaphor\ud identification procedures, a set of graded descriptors of metaphor, and interactional units\ud of analysis to investigate metaphor in talk. Theoretical issues of the coherence of the\ud category "prosaic metaphor", and the relation between prosaic and poetic metaphor, are\ud discussed.\ud Two linked empirical investigations are centred around a ten year old child's discourse\ud experience in a U.K. primary classroom. The first analyses transcribed talk, collected\ud across several different lessons, for use of metaphor in relation to teaching/learning\ud goals. Results include information on the frequency, distribution and nature of metaphor\ud in use, and insights into how metaphor is signalled and supported in teacher-pupil\ud interaction. Metaphor use is explained in terms of contextual demands, and the set of\ud graded metaphor descriptors is refined. The second investigation uses a variation of\ud Think Aloud methodology to explore understanding of metaphors in scientific texts.\ud Analysis shows how knowledge brought to a text, selection of metaphors, the place of\ud metaphor in text structure, and peer or adult mediation can influence understanding and\ud learning.\ud The study reveals how metaphor choice can oversimplify concepts and skills which\ud children need to acquire in the middle years of education. Interaction is shown as central\ud in providing access to new ideas through metaphor. These results carry implications for\ud textbook writers, teachers, and others who may mediate content through metaphor. The\ud thesis contributes to the field of metaphor studies through links found between child and\ud adult use of metaphor, and through the development of tools for analysing metaphor in\ud interaction, which can be refined and extended to other discourse contexts

Anthropology of Color

The field of color categorization has always been intrinsically multi- and inter-disciplinary, since its beginnings in the nineteenth century. The main contribution of this book is to foster a new level of integration among different approaches to the anthropological study of color. The editors have put great effort into bringing together research from anthropology, linguistics, psychology, semiotics, and a variety of other fields, by promoting the exploration of the different but interacting and complementary ways in which these various perspectives model the domain of color experience. By so doing, they significantly promote the emergence of a coherent field of the anthropology of color

Teaching language as metaphor:: the potential of current research into metaphor and cognition for classroom practice

Recent developments in cognitive linguistics have revealed how abstract meaning in language is shaped by bodily experience. We understand and express such concepts as time, causation, direction or love through metaphors that are shaped out of our sense of ourselves as embodied creatures (Lakoff 1987, Johnson 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993). The diachronic analysis of syntax also shows how metaphor shifts lexical meaning towards grammatical meaning (Heine 1997). For example, in English and other Indo-European languages, we use what Heine (1993) identifies as a propositional schema of possession to express how in having taken hold of an action, we have completed it. Thus we grammaticalise a possessive 'have' (haber, avoir, etc.) or 'ter' (hold in Portuguese) to express an immediate past, or finally, as in modem French, the past itself Applied linguists are now asking how this cognitivist re-examination of the nature of meaning creation should impact upon language teaching (e.g. Low 1988, Lindostromberg 1991, Dudley Evans and St John 1998, and Boers 2000). One suggestion is that conceptual metaphors might prove an effective mechanism to help learners of specialist language group some forms of specialist lexis, using a conceptual metaphor such as 'cash is liquid', for example, to help students understand the language of finance, clustering and organising such terms as 'capital liquidity' and 'company floatation’. This thesis carries forward this exploration in a more comprehensive manner. It first examines the nature of metaphor in order to produce a useable construct. This construct differs from some mainstream cognitive views (e.g. Gibbs 1994 and Lakoff and Johnson 1999) in that it follows Glucksberg and Keysar (1993) in relating metaphor construction to class inclusion, and Glucksberg and McClone (1999) in affording similarity a role in metaphor interpretation. It treats metaphor as holding together three aspects of pedagogy: the nature of what is taught, the mechanisms through which it is learnt, and the learner's affective relationship to both. The picture of language and the language learner's mind that is produced rejects notions of adult acquisition and focuses upon the role of conscious learning through metaphor-based techniques. In the role of a participant observer, the author recounts how they implemented this in the classroom

VIL: A Visual Inter Lingua

As the world becomes smaller through advances in telecommunications, the need for communication between speakers of different languages becomes greater. Concerns about cultural and economic hegemony argue against the use of any natural language, and machine translation is not yet perfected and available to speakers of all languages. With the technological developments of the last decade, such as powerful computers, graphical interfaces, and the World Wide Web, an excellent opportunity has been created for a computer-mediated visual interlingua to meet this need. An iconic language could be designed to take advantage of the technology. People would be able to communicate with an iconic language without the need to draw pictures themselves, since they could choose these pictures from the screen. This dissertation describes VIL, an iconic visual interlingua based on the notion of simplified speech. Similar to pidgins, languages arising from the prolonged contact between people speaking two or more languages, VIL utilizes features that are in the \u27greatest common denominator\u27 of features in different languages. This allows its complexity to be significantly reduced; for example, it has no inflection, no number, gender, or tense markers, and no articles. VIL has no linear order. This is possible because it was designed as a visual language, in contrast to written languages which are the result of a transfer to visual modality of spoken language, which evolved in the context of auditory modality where sequencing and ordering is critical. After reviewing previous research on universal languages that are artificial, non-artificial, and visual, VIL is described in detail, including its parts of speech, its grammar, and its organization for verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Throughout the discussion a set of principles is proposed, some of which are relevant to any universal language, others specific to visual or iconic languages. The development of a set of icons is also presented. Finally, the evaluations of the icons, language, and the system itself are described

Concepts in Action

This open access book is a timely contribution in presenting recent issues, approaches, and results that are not only central to the highly interdisciplinary field of concept research but also particularly important to newly emergent paradigms and challenges. The contributors present a unique, holistic picture for the understanding and use of concepts from a wide range of fields including cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, and computer science. The chapters focus on three distinct points of view that lie at the core of concept research: representation, learning, and application. The contributions present a combination of theoretical, experimental, computational, and applied methods that appeal to students and researchers working in these fields

An examination of metaphor from Old English to present day English, focusing on notions of intelligence/cleverness and stupidity

Until recently, studies of metaphor and metonymy within cognitive linguistics have tended to rely on data collected on a fairly ad hoc basis from speakers' intuition, resulting in a largely theory-based method of analysis. In this thesis I present an analysis of the concept INTELLIGENCE, based on HTE data. By examining the etymologies of individual words and their roots I have identified a number of source concepts for INTELLIGENCE, and I consider the motivations that underlie these mappings. I hope to illustrate that the mechanisms of different mappings vary substantially; my evidence suggests that no one theory of metaphor is sufficient to account for all the mappings that characterise a single target concept, and that the crucial role of culture, as well as cognition, must be recognised. I have analysed a total of 1075 nouns and adjectives meaning a clever/stupid person, and clever/stupid. Although my study is not intended to be quantitative, I have used quantity as a very basic indication of the source fields that are particularly productive and therefore characterise our conceptualisation of intelligence. In the main part of the thesis, the source concepts the SENSES, ANIMALS and DENSITY are analysed in detail. These exhibit major differences in motivation, and each one raises particular theoretical issues. By taking a data-centred approach to a whole semantic area, and by looking from a historical as well as a cognitive perspective, I give an overview of a whole target concept. I hope that my analysis will challenge and illuminate both understanding of the way INTELLIGENCE is conceptualised, and beliefs about the motivations and mechanisms of figurative language. Above all, I wish to demonstrate the relevance and importance of diachronic language study in any consideration of metaphor

A discourse perspective on figurative expression in literary works with reference to English/Arabic translation

This dissertation is intended to fulfil two main objectives, firstly, to examine the function of figures of speech or figurative expression from a discourse point of view, and secondly, to assess whether English/Arabic or Arabic/English translators take into consideration this discourse aspect, and if they do, to what extent. The division of figures of speech is based on Arabic (Barigha) Rhetoric. The dissertation develops along the following lines. It examines the "anatomy" of each individual figure of speech with the aim of establishing their respective merits. It afterwards highlights their collective, social function in a wider sense. The research narrows down their social role concentrating on one main role: creating a bond of intimacy between the speaker and the audience. It further examines the mechanism on which intimacy is based, i.e. politeness. Politeness is a strategy adopted and exacted by a rational speaker on a rational audience and enables him to get them persuaded. It is concluded that each figure of speech presents the speaker with an ideal tool for addressing a particular audience. It follows, therefore, that the having recourse to a particular figure of speech is a stance or an attitude by the speaker towards his audience. Meanwhile, figures of speech collectively present the speaker with a tool which enables him to express a mobility of (discoursal) tones and attitudes. The dissertation develops the theme of attitude through "critical" discourse. Critical discourse fleshes the attitude of the speaker by denaturalizing the orderliness of talk and by providing social accounts which are intended to probe the social roots of language. Critical discourse also accounts for why things happen the way they do, by whom and the motive for their doing. It, therefore, establishes a link between verbal interaction and three social phenomena which determine and are determined by verbal interaction. These factors are: action, institution and higher social formation. Action is at the social base and is presupposed by social structure, institution is the loci of power and provides its subjects with motive and with a frame of work to act within, while higher social formation stands for a series of elements and their interrelations which conjointly define the persistence of a social formation and distinguish one society from another. The study develops an integrated model of critical discourse for the analysis of figurative expression. The model is composed of three components: (i) syntax, (ii) an interpretative guideline, and (iii) an explanatory framework. Finally, figurative expression is examined and a translation assessment based on an empirical approach is made. The dissertation examines figures of speech in literary works where they abound. Nevertheless its findings can be applicable to other discourse types. This is because it deals with figurative expression as a transaction that is negotiated between the two parties to the verbal interaction. The implication of the critical approach towards the study of discourse for the translator-trainee is two-fold. First, he should make a thorough linguistic analysis of figurative expression before he embarks on translating, and second, he should consider language as a social practice that has its roots in the society from which it emanates. He, therefore, has to try to account for all factors that might have a bearing on the meaning of the text he is going to handle. The findings deduced from this study are summed up as follows. First, figures of speech are functional in that they specifically help discourse to emerge and help to distinguish one discourse type from another. Second, figures of speech form an ensemble of thought which can express a body of (discoursal) attitudes and tones. Third, the dissertation corroborates that negligence or unawareness of the discourse aspect weakens the effect of figures of speech and sometimes distorts the meaning. Four, the present studies by both theorists and experimenters of figurative expression are not sensitive enough to its discourse function, nor are the translators of the two novels which form the data for this study.University of Jorda

Creative metaphor production in a first and second language and the role of creativity

The study of metaphor is an interdisciplinary endeavor crossing such fields as cognitive linguistics, psychology, and creativity studies. Two important conclusions on the nature of metaphor have been drawn to date: (1) the ability to use metaphor is a normal human cognitive ability and widespread in language; (2) metaphor is not a unitary construct and varies greatly from the highly familiar and conventional to the creative. Viewing metaphor as lying along a continuum, this thesis narrows the concept of metaphoric competence to creative metaphoric competence, which looks at this ability from a creativity perspective. In this thesis, it is hypothesized that creative metaphoric competence is an underlying competency, which is related to a more general creative competence, and therefore is projected onto both the L1 (Japanese) and L2 (English). In order to test this hypothesis, data from creative metaphor production tasks were collected in both languages. In addition, a number of creativity measurements were also developed with the aim of measuring the multifaceted nature of creativity. Relationships between these variables were investigated. Findings suggest that creative metaphoric competence is an individual difference variable, which could be described as a disposition towards novelty and is related to other measurements of creativity