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

Of (flying) pigs and (black) swans: strengths and limitations of a risk-based food safety system for handling potential emerging pork risks

‘Black swans’ are a widely used metaphor for surprising, extreme events, generally with devastating consequences, that lie far outside the realm of anticipated possibility. Because they are inherently challenging to predict using traditional probability theory, black swans pose formidable challenges to risk analysis and risk management, regardless of whether the event is truly unknown to the scientific community (‘unknown unknowns’) or whether it is merely not known or adequately considered by the relevant parties

Language and Ideology: A role for scientific metaphor

A number of prominent popular science writers have recently argued for the active appropriation of scientific language in the formulation of modern ideologies and ethical systems. A critical examination of scientific narratives in light of contemporary theories of metaphor and relevance suggests that scientific language indeed harbors the same emotive potential that is traditionally ascribed to religious language, and can exhibit potent transformative effects in shaping human thought. Also highlighted through this approach are the challenges of constructing scientific metaphors that are generally meaningful, accurate, and ethically responsible

Pragmatism as a conceptual framework for Binx’s “search” in the Moviegoer.

I seek to show how Binx’s “search” serves as an example of intersubjectivity by challenging the scientific humanism prevalent in the mid 20th Century. Succinctly put, Binx challenges both the general and the localized versions of scientific humanism. Percy presents scientific humanism as a characteristic of general society, one co-opted by intellectuals, scientists, and Southern stoics to affirm their beliefs. I use a new methodology that analyzes the search as an educational experience. Binx sharpens and develops the tools necessary in challenging stoicism and scientific humanism. This paper builds on Percy criticism to show doubt and belief as the novel’s driving forces. Belief serves as a landing pad for the searcher who inevitably comes to doubt; the interplay between the two defines Percy’s new “thinking” individual. For Percy, doubt begets a matrix through which an individual tunes into the ideas of others by questioning their beliefs. Through this sharing of ideas –intersubjectivity- individuals form a community of “namers,” people who arrive at “truths” through a testing of ideas. In its presentation of belief and “doubt, the open plot of the novel becomes a metaphor for the way all humans come to “know.” Localizing the searcher’s struggles within scientific humanism and its apostles in Binx, the book demonstrates the constant shifting between doubt and belief. The “education” provided by the “the search,” however, leads to Binx’s ability to form “community” by engaging with them in semiotic community; a system built off the meaning of symbols as they pertain to others. Unlike scientific humanism’s tendency to isolate individuals as organisms separate from a community, Percy’s semiotics seek to base community off an intercommunication that affirms the individual’s ability to affect meaning

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

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

Data, problems, heuristics and results in cognitive metaphor research

Cognitive metaphor research is characterised by the diversity of rival theories. Starting from this observation, the paper focuses on the problem of how the unity and diversity of cognitive theories of metaphor can be accounted for. The first part of the paper outlines a suitable metascientific approach which emerges as a modification of B. von Eckardt’s notion of research framework. In the second part, by the help of this approach, some aspects of the sophisticated relationship between Lakoff and Johnson’s, Glucksberg’s, and Gentner’s theories are discussed. The main finding is that the data, the problems, the heuristics and the hypotheses which have been partly shaped by the rivals contribute to the development of the particular theories to a considerable extent

Metaphors and Metaphysics

Culture is a net of information exchange basing upon messages. To say anything about understanding within cultural communication one should study the very structure of a message. It seems that any message consists in at least five elements: sending – a node within the culture net projects and constructs the information transfer coding – the message is encoded in a specific language pattern medium – material carrier of the information decoding – the language of the message is identified and the content is read receiving – understanding of the message The process of understanding is engaged in the first and the last stage of communication and therefore the abilities of constructing and understanding a message are to be examined1