Motion and conflicted self metaphors in Sylvia Plath’s ‘Smith Journal’

SPLIT SELFBoth manual intensive analyses and automated corpus methodologies are employed in the investigation: Wmatrix (Rayson, 2009) is used to explore relevant expressions, in order to obtain a comprehensive understanding of metaphor groups. Relevant expressions are identified by an in-depth manual analysis of sample journal entries. The MIP procedure (Pragglejaz, 2007) is used for metaphor identification, and interpretations draw on research in psychology. Metaphors of mental states are analyzed in terms of their implications for conveying various aspects of mental states, such as valence and intensity.