{"title":"On Poetry and the Science(s) of Meaning","authors":"A. Katz, Carina Rasse, Herbert L. Colston","doi":"10.1080/10926488.2023.2172821","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2023.2172821","url":null,"abstract":"The genesis for this special issue arose in a rethinking of the presence of poetry in the cognitive and language sciences that arose as a consequence of two seminal moments in the 1990s. Gibbs (1994) book, “The poetics of mind” presented a comprehensive review of metaphor and other tropes in which they argued, and presented empirical evidence, in support of the thesis that the human mind was profoundly poetic and figurative in nature. At about the same time, George Lakoff (1993) updated his earlier work with Mark Johnson (1980) in his chapter the “Contemporary Theory of Metaphor.” There he argues that metaphoric expression is conceptual (and not merely a matter of language) and that this conceptual structure underlies both literal and poetic language. In both of these seminal works, the focus was on understanding the structure and functions of the mind through the analysis of language, including poetic language. We decided to frame this special issue around the obverse question: In the 30 years since the initial writings of Gibbs and of Lakoff, what have we learned from the cognitive and language sciences about poetry? We have gone off and explored metaphor and other meaning-making processes in practically everything that is human, but what has gone on in the world of poetry, where many people used to believe metaphor originated? We were cognizant of the fact that poetry is a ubiquitous feature of human beings (Rasse, 2022), found in pre-literate societies and in the earliest examples of written literature. As such, we wanted to throw the net widely and put out a call for papers that said in part: “We are seeking works that go beyond the mere documentation of metaphor in poetry.” We wanted papers that spoke to general themes about poetry qua poetry. We wanted to have a set of papers that, taken together, looked at poetry in different linguistic, cultural, and historical contexts. We wanted some papers that were largely empirical. We wanted some papers that were largely theoretical. Knowing that there were scholars who, in addition to their academic work, were poets in their own right (as, in fact, is the case with the three editors of this special issue) we hoped that some of these scholars would submit papers that integrated ideas drawn from their academic work along with their embodied experiences in producing poems. We are delighted that the set of papers bound in this special issue met our hopes. There are papers that examine aspects of poetry in Arabic, English, Serbian, and Vietnamese. There are papers that compare poetry across different languages, or from a historical perspective, or that examine the role played by specific psychological characteristics. There are papers that emphasize metaphoric expression in poetry and others that consider conceptual metaphor and figurative construction types such as zeugma. And, there are papers written by scholars who have published books on poetry and bring to bear that experience in thinking more ge","PeriodicalId":46492,"journal":{"name":"Metaphor and Symbol","volume":"38 1","pages":"113 - 116"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41565825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cognitive Factors Related to Metaphor Goodness in Poetic and Non-literary Metaphor","authors":"J. Nick Reid, Hamad Al-Azary, A. Katz","doi":"10.1080/10926488.2021.2011285","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2021.2011285","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this paper we examine the effect of two cognitive variables, Semantic Neighborhood Density and Interpretive Diversity, in first, distinguishing between literary (poetic) and nonliterary metaphor, and second, in determining what makes for a good metaphor. Analyses of items taken from a widely used set ofmetaphor norms indicated that while literary and nonliterary metaphor did not differ in many ways, the poetic items tended to 1) contain concepts that came from a more dense semantic space, 2) contain topic and vehicles that came from equally dense semantic space, 3) suggest a greater number of possible interpretations as the topic and vehicle became more semantically dissimilar, and 4) evoke more emergent interpretations (i.e., less likely to be a characteristic of the topic or vehicle when considered separately). In addition, we found one way that the two variables were related to metaphor goodness: better metaphors were those with vehicles that came from increasingly less dense semantic space. This correlation was only reliable for literary, poetic items, presumably because these items were taken from a richer semantic environment suggesting many more alternative possibilities.","PeriodicalId":46492,"journal":{"name":"Metaphor and Symbol","volume":"38 1","pages":"130 - 148"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47982419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Procedure for Identifying Metaphorical Scenes (PIMS): The Case of Spatial and Abstract Relations","authors":"Marlene Johansson Falck, Lacey Okonski","doi":"10.1080/10926488.2022.2062243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2022.2062243","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article tackles the tricky problem of identifying metaphors in language that includes prepositions. We demonstrate how the Procedure for Identifying Metaphorical Scenes (PIMS) reflected and evoked by linguistic expressions in discourse, Johansson Falck & Okonski, accepted) can be used to identify metaphorical relations reflected in language. The scenes evoked correspond to conceptualizations that are directly attested by the specific linguistic constructions in the sentences under analysis. We present two studies that test the reliability of the procedure and the sensitivity of the tool for prepositions. Results show that PIMS provides a simple procedure that increases both reliability and sensitivity for prepositional constructions. By focusing on the scenes evoked by linguistic constructions, the procedure highlights the contextual meanings of the constructions and the specific experiences that they code.","PeriodicalId":46492,"journal":{"name":"Metaphor and Symbol","volume":"38 1","pages":"1 - 22"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45507120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Metaphors and Related Expressions in Older Adults in the Field of Trauma and Stress-related Disorders: A Scoping Review","authors":"S. Rossi, A. Maercker, E. Heim","doi":"10.1080/10926488.2022.2091446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2022.2091446","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A scoping review was conducted to explore the metaphors and related expressions older adults use to describe extremely stressful events that may lead to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Complex PTSD (CPTSD), Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD), or Adjustment Disorder (AjD). Relevant databases from psychology, gerontology, and related fields were searched. In addition, relevant references found in included papers were considered. Inclusion criteria were: qualitative study, sample of older adults (age 65+), and focus on maladaptive rather than adaptive psychological aspects. Eleven studies focusing on PTSD, 5 on CPTSD, 13 on PGD, and 10 on AjD were included. Metaphors and other expressions related to extremely stressful events were then extracted and analyzed. Multiple linguistic expressions to describe extremely stressful events and stress-related symptoms were identified. Metaphors and related expressions often referred to the body and the theme of moving on with one’s life.","PeriodicalId":46492,"journal":{"name":"Metaphor and Symbol","volume":"38 1","pages":"50 - 69"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45628263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘The Genome Is the Brain of the Cell!’ How Japanese English Learners Mediate Understanding of Academic Content through Metaphor","authors":"Dennis Lindenberg","doi":"10.1080/10926488.2022.2091444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2022.2091444","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study investigates metaphor in its role to mediate concepts in academic textbooks and promote content understanding in the English-medium instruction (EMI) context. Of particular interest is how the language of the discourse affected and possibly hindered metaphor comprehension. Drawing on the theoretical insights found in sociocultural theory and cognitive linguistics, a stance was assumed in which language is treated as embodied and contextual, and verbalizing thoughts (languaging) assists understanding. Three pairs of Japanese students with varying English proficiency levels were invited to participate in online group-based think-aloud protocols where they read and discussed selected paragraphs taken from two social and two natural science textbooks written in English. After accessing the participants’ general knowledge about the main topic of each paragraph, content understanding was accounted for in form of prompts during the think-aloud sessions and a 3-week delayed posttest. In total, over 8 hours of video data were collected, transcribed, and treated with the metaphor identification procedure MIPVU. Qualitative inspections of charged moments in discourse pinpoint metaphor as an important tool for compressing abstract entities or processes into meaningful, dense bundles of information. Participants also created their own analogies and expanded on found metaphoric expressions in textbooks when attempting to make sense of abstract phenomena in science. Further, this study confirms that the lack of English proficiency or schematic knowledge can result in non-understanding, misunderstanding, or partial understanding of metaphoric expressions which has implications for the EMI context.","PeriodicalId":46492,"journal":{"name":"Metaphor and Symbol","volume":"38 1","pages":"23 - 49"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42042037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Piotr Kałowski, Maria Zajączkowska, Katarzyna Branowska, Anna Olechowska, Aleksandra Siemieniuk, Ewa Dryll, N. Banasik-Jemielniak
{"title":"Individual Differences in Verbal Irony Use: A Systematic Review of Quantitative Psycholinguistic Studies","authors":"Piotr Kałowski, Maria Zajączkowska, Katarzyna Branowska, Anna Olechowska, Aleksandra Siemieniuk, Ewa Dryll, N. Banasik-Jemielniak","doi":"10.1080/10926488.2022.2160253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2022.2160253","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT We carried out a systematic review of psycholinguistic, empirical, quantitative studies on verbal irony use and individual differences (i.e. psychological, not demographic, traits that significantly differentiate individuals). Out of 5,967 publications screened, 29, comprising 35 studies in total, were included. Following a qualitative content analysis, six thematic clusters were identified, representing areas of research in individual differences in irony use: (a) psychological well-being, (b) personality traits, (c) humor-related traits, (d) cultural factors, (e) social skills, and (f) cognitive factors. The results of the studies in each cluster are summarized and conclusions for further research are presented. In particular, the systematic review suggests that irony and sarcasm should be clearly delineated as separate, yet related phenomena due to differing patterns of correlations with specific individual differences. Additionally, significant methodological heterogeneity between the studies suggests the need for greater standardization of irony use measures.","PeriodicalId":46492,"journal":{"name":"Metaphor and Symbol","volume":"38 1","pages":"81 - 111"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42610014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Embodied Metaphor Processing: A Study of the Priming Impact of Congruent and Opposite Gestural Representations of Metaphor Schema on Metaphor Comprehension","authors":"Omid Khatin-Zadeh","doi":"10.1080/10926488.2022.2122830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2022.2122830","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study examined the performances of three groups of participants in interpreting metaphors in three different conditions: congruent gesture-prime conditions, opposite gesture-prime conditions, and no-prime conditions. In congruent gesture-prime conditions, each metaphor was preceded by the congruent gestural representation of metaphor schema. In opposite gesture-prime conditions, each metaphor was preceded by the opposite gestural representation of metaphor schema. The results showed that participants of congruent gesture-prime conditions had the best performance in interpreting metaphors, while participants of opposite gesture-prime conditions had the worst performance. It is suggested that metaphor schema is an important part of metaphorical meaning of a metaphor. Therefore, when this part of meaning is activated by a gestural prime, metaphor comprehension is facilitated. Furthermore, when a schema is used to metaphorically describe a concept or an event, that schema and the neural network that represents it become one part of a larger interconnected neural network that represents the meaning of the metaphor. It could mean that the activation of one part of it could facilitate the activation of the whole of the network. Finally, it is emphasized that a gesture that depicts the schema of a metaphor is in fact the embodied realization of that metaphor.","PeriodicalId":46492,"journal":{"name":"Metaphor and Symbol","volume":"38 1","pages":"70 - 80"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42768995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Metaphorical Humor in Satirical News Shows: A Content Analysis.","authors":"Ellen Droog, Christian Burgers","doi":"10.1080/10926488.2022.2160252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2022.2160252","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Satirical news is often characterized as a hybrid genre that consists of three important communicative functions: it is (1) humoristic, (2) informative, and (3) evaluative. The Humoristic Metaphors in Satirical News (HMSN) typology demonstrates that metaphors can be utilized by satirists to express this hybridity by consisting of a combination of one or more of satire's core communicative functions. Nevertheless, the underlying principles through which metaphors are capable of humorously explaining and/or criticizing current affairs are less clear. To broaden our understanding of how metaphorical humor is used in satirical news to fulfill these functions, we integrate the HMSN typology with the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH). The GTVH assumes that all verbal humor must draw from six interdependent Knowledge Resources (KRs). Through a content analysis of metaphorical humor used across various American satirical news shows, we investigated how these KRs are used to fulfill satire's core communicative functions across the various metaphorical sub-types of the HSMN typology. We found that: (1) some KRs can help fulfill the communicative function(s) of metaphorical jokes, while (2) some KRs constrain the options available for the expression of certain communicative function(s) or other KRs.</p>","PeriodicalId":46492,"journal":{"name":"Metaphor and Symbol","volume":"38 3","pages":"275-290"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10228511/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9923149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of the Book:","authors":"M. Kuczok","doi":"10.1080/10926488.2022.2091447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2022.2091447","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46492,"journal":{"name":"Metaphor and Symbol","volume":"37 1","pages":"354 - 357"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47858760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Like a Virus. Similes for a Pandemic","authors":"Maria-Josep Cuenca, Manuela Romano","doi":"10.1080/10926488.2021.1998902","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2021.1998902","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Covid-19 pandemic has had a great impact on the life of every inhabitant of the planet. During 2020 and 2021 a significant amount of work on how the pandemic is being conceptualized and communicated has been done. Most work has focused on the role of metaphor in the construal of specific cognitive frames. In this paper, we turn to a similar but different conceptualization mechanism, i.e. simile. Drawing from recent socio-cognitive and discursive empirical approaches to similes, this paper focuses on “target is like source” constructions in English and Spanish containing (corona)virus either as target or source of the simile. The analysis is based on 200 examples found in the digital media during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. First, the constructions, conceptualizations and mappings are analyzed. Second, the relevant discourse features (genre type, relation to subjectivity, text location and structuring properties) are described. Finally, the cross-linguistic English-Spanish analysis shows that, despite the many coincidences in both datasets, there are different tendencies as for the use of culture-specific mappings and the genres where the similes occur in. The study aims at testing to what extent the general features characterizing similes also hold in the case of (corona)virus, both as source and as target. The corpus analysis contributes, in addition, to the emerging line of research on the use of figuration in the communication of the pandemic, as well as to the study of the discursive dimensions of similes in real settings.","PeriodicalId":46492,"journal":{"name":"Metaphor and Symbol","volume":"37 1","pages":"269 - 286"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44674099","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}