Metaphor and the Social World - Volume 12, Issue 2, 2022

Abstract

This study examines the use of metaphors of war and journey in a million-word corpus of Spanish-language blogs written by patients with severe mental disorders and by mental health professionals. Quantitative results indicate that both metaphors are more prevalent among patients than professionals, supporting the idea that they are mostly used in this context for communicating complex and emotionally intense experiences. From a qualitative perspective, our results show that patients use both metaphors to deal with exactly the same ontological elements of the situation (the disorder, symptoms, negative emotions, everyday problems, social prejudice, medical activity, people close to the patients and the patients themselves) but framing them differently. Further analysis shows that both metaphors have positive and negative uses in terms of emotions conveyed, empowerment and suitability for coping with the situation. In light of this, we conclude with a discussion of proposals promoting the positive uses of these metaphors.

Abstract

Research into the persuasive quality of metaphor has a long standing tradition, with the topic of migration embodying one of its pet discourse genres. Yet, only few studies have recognized the existence of identical metaphors occurring across the ideological divide. The present paper explores the way in which three US-based news outlets with broadly different group alignments and overall attitudes in relation to the issue of migration wield metaphor to frame the Mexican migration debate in the US. The data suggests that, contrary to what one might expect, the mayor point of variation between these news instances does not consist in a predilection for idiosyncratic source domains. Rather, the three news sources appear to diverge most significantly in their situational use of similar metaphors. On a methodological plane, this case study illustrates the necessity of inspecting metaphor frames more closely, attending to their semantic roles and broader context, if we want to make assertions about the ideological implications and potential social impact of metaphor on public opinion formation. On a social and theoretical level, it sheds light on the ways in which these three news outlets employ metaphors to construct the social identity of ‘Mexican migrants’ living in the US in line with their stance on the matter, and to a possibly persuasive effect.

Abstract

This paper investigates the metaphorical framing of the concept of democracy in Nigerian Senate debates (henceforth, NSD) in a mini-corpus of 214 meta-discursive commentaries on democracy by legislators, with insight from metaphor scenario theory. Three source concepts – “erect structure”, “living organism”, “dividends” and their associate scenarios are analysed. These scenarios are exploited by legislators to effect specific argumentative and ideological conclusions, such as Nigerian democracy is weak, positive-self-presentation by legislators amongst others. The paper reveals the conceptual, evaluative and ideological structures that dominate the discourse about democratization in Nigeria, especially in the Fourth Republic, from the perspective of legislators.

Abstract

Numerous studies on political discourse claim that metaphors help politicians to construct coherent arguments to convince their voters. Yet, most of them, with a few notable exceptions, do not adhere to any theory of argumentation. In this paper, we integrate Discourse Dynamic Approach to Metaphor with Inference Anchoring Theory to enhance our understanding of the interaction of metaphors and arguments in dynamic discourse. Our data come from three pre-election debates: Two in Poland and one in the US. The focus is on the reform of the health service. We show how discourse participants co-construct metaphors and arguments in an attempt to achieve their illocutionary goals. Their interaction is curbed by a number of discursive forces identified in the data. We propose a classification of types of interaction between metaphors and arguments, which can be further used for developing tools for automatic or semi-automatic identification of these types in large corpora.

Abstract

This article explores the specifics of the semiosis of family in the Kazakh culture. The approaches of Halliday and Malinovsky were used to analyze the semiotics of wedding toasts, as well as the method of analyzing the “cultural metaphor” in Sharifyan’s linguistics. Language units in the texts of Kazakh wedding toasts demonstrate the specific understanding of marriage and family by the Kazakhs. The language contains “traces” of archaic, sacral, mythological ideas, rituals and traditions of the Kazakhs. In particular, the semiotics of marriage reflect the idea of a young family as a new home. The semiotic parts of the Kazakh yurt (shanyrak, kerege, and bosaga) are also sacred signs of marriage, symbolizing happiness, well-being, wealth, and family safety. This is evidenced by the frequent use of names of the yurt – ak otau and its components in the speech of the wedding party guests. The cosmogonic concepts ak jaryk, nur (‘light’, ‘shine’) are important for understanding the semiotics of family. The difficulties in interpreting wedding toasts arise in the intercultural communication due to Kazakh specific ideas about marriage and family presented in the non-equivalent units of the language.

Abstract

Metaphor plays a critical role in how people communicate and conceptualize complex activities like teaching. For example, a professor might be described as molding impressionable students (teacher as a sculptor), or helping students grow (teacher as a gardener). Prior research has largely focused on what metaphors like these communicate about the role of teachers, but many teaching metaphors simultaneously describe the role of students (e.g., students as clay; students as plants). We aimed to extend previous work with a recently developed method for mapping the structure of metaphorical concepts to examine the metaphorical entailments associated with students, rather than teachers. We presented participants recruited online with one of four common metaphors for the teacher-student relationship and found that different metaphors consistently bring to mind distinct, coherent clusters of student attributes and different intuitions about teacher and student responsibility and power – a finding we replicated with a larger sample and pre-registered analysis. Together with previous findings, this research suggests that teaching metaphors can efficiently capture and communicate structured beliefs about both teacher and student attributes.

Abstract

This study examines love and beloved metaphors from the cross-cultural perspective of Jordanian Arabic (JA) and English. The conceptual models suggested by Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999) and Kövecses (2014) and force dynamics proposed by Talmy (1988) are adopted as the theoretical frameworks for this study. The data was collected from contemporary songs by Jordanian and English-speaking artists. Unlike previous comparative studies on love and beloved metaphors, this study demonstrates that source domains found in JA songs such as pain/suffering, sadness, weakness, wound, stupid endeavour, cruelty and deadly force also exist in English songs to conceptualise love. It is argued that while the use of these source domains in JA is expected as they form part of the prototypical cognitive model of love or the love matrix in JA, they could be viewed as nonprototypical in English. The analysis also revealed certain JA culture-specific source domains used to conceptualise the object of love [beloved], i.e. arabian oryx and basil. We argued that despite the existence of similar conceptual metaphors in the two languages, geographical, historical and ideological factors may have an effect on the prevailing conceptual frames in a certain speech community creating some differences in the metaphorical conceptualisations of love and beloved.

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