Channelling figurativity through narrative : the paranarrative in fiction and non-fiction

Contrary to wide-spread assumptions, metaphor in narrative is not a pre-established, extra-textual form appearing in different instances of discourse, but rather an event resulting from a strategic distribution of information in the narrative process. Hence, the appeal to conceptual cultural knowledge is to be considered as a consequence, and not as a prerequisite of metaphor interpretation. By means of the concept of the paranarrative, we highlight the rhetorical interconnectedness of metaphor with other figures of speech (such as metonymy) and we explore the narrative integration of diacritic forms of indirectness. In order to illustrate the terminology that can address these focal concerns, the paper discusses the relation between tropes and narrative, via selected examples from narrative texts (both fictional and non-fictional) written by Juli Zeh, Herta Müller, Jürgen Nieraad, and Siddhartha Mukherjee. As their common denominator, these examples channel through narrative figurative domains considered to be known intuitively to wit: personifications; iconic pars pro toto references to concentration camps; and metaphors for cancer in disease biographies

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

W. G. Sebald’s Late Lyrics Between Words, Images and Languages

W. G. Sebald wrote and published poetry from the early 1960s until his death in 2001. Even though Sebald’s oeuvre is among the most extensively studied in Germanistik today, however, his lyric poetry remains in the shadow of his prose and has yet to be afforded extensive critical attention. Working on what was to be his last novel, Sebald appears to have devoted more time to poetry than previously, which resulted in several publications: For Years Now (2001), a collection of micropoems juxtaposed with images by the British painter Tess Jaray, and Unerzählt (2003), a set of similar poems in German, published together with etchings by the artist Jan Peter Tripp. The present article takes as its point of departure the observation that these two books overlap substantially – many of the poems exist in several versions none of which can be said to be the definitive one – and attempts to interpret a selection of poems with a particular view to their material, linguistic and intermedial particularities. Using the concept of differential poetry, a term coined by Marjorie Perloff, it asks what meanings may emerge from Sebald’s sparse verses when the subtle variations between the different versions – caused by versification, typography, translation, and word-and-image interplay – are brought to the fore

Reviewing Figurative Chunks

In the field of second language learning, L2 learners always encounter situations where they can’t understand the meanings of sentences, although every word in the sentences is familiar to them. There are two known problems L2 learners of English have which exacerbates this, language fluency and native-like word selection (Pawley & Syder, 1983). This article summarizes the connotation of figurative chunks that can be considered as prefabricated strings of coherent or incoherent non-literal language structures that are stored in memory as a whole and extracted directly. By reviewing the concepts and classification of chunks and figurative language, combined with the research on the application of corpus linguistics, we can see that studying figurative chunks is necessary because figurative chunks are very common and occupy a very important place in English language use. The review of the literature indicates that there has been research into metaphors, idioms, and figurative language, but there has not been a lot of research that examines such language from the perspective of lexical chunks, and also very few studies combined pragmatics. L2 learners have great difficulties with comprehension and the use of figurative chunks. Translanguaging practices in teaching can help students develop effective learning strategies, which can improve their figurative chunks comprehension competence and communication skills

Hemispheric differences in figurative language processing: Contributions of neuroimaging methods and challenges in reconciling current empirical findings

a b s t r a c t The following review critically synthesizes the literature on hemispheric differences in idiom and metaphor comprehension. It has long been debated whether figurative language is inherently different from literal language and is processed specifically in the right hemisphere (RH), or rather, whether figurative and literal language form a continuum rather than a dichotomy, and call upon a similar network of brain areas. In this paper, a number of neuropsychological, behavioral and neuroimaging studies are reviewed in the context of major theoretical accounts of metaphor and idiom comprehension. Specifically, the role played by the RH in metaphor and idiom processing is evaluated, and advancements that neuroimaging methods have made to our understanding of figurative language comprehension are assessed. This review also highlights a number of critical methodological discrepancies between studies, and emphasizes how such inconsistencies in operational definitions, stimuli and tasks pose a serious challenge to reconciling the debate on hemispheric differences, and do not allow for a clear-cut conclusion of which neural networks underlie figurative language processing