Metaphor and the Social World - Volume 8, Issue 1, 2018

This article starts by looking at the various ways metonymic and metaphoric thinking, as independent phenomena, organize text at discourse level. The literature on metaphor in discourse is classified under three broad categories, ‘metaphor clusters’, ‘metaphor chains’ and ‘extended metaphor’, while the less extensive body of research on metonymy in discourse is analyzed into parallel categories, ‘metonymy clusters’, ‘metonymy chains’ and ‘extended metonymy’. The article goes on to look at the ways in which metonymy-in-discourse and metaphor-in-discourse phenomena combine in making meaning at text level. The interplay of metonymy and metaphor in discourse, referred to here as ‘text metaphtonymy’, is explored under headings adapted from Goossens (1990) , namely, ‘metaphor within metonymy’ and ‘metonymy within metaphor’. The ways in which metonymy and metaphor combine at discourse level are shown to be varied and intricate. This has implications for applied linguists working with text. The direction further work in this area might take is indicated.

Set against the backdrop of a separation process between Britain and the EU, popularly referred to as Brexit, our paper explores how the married partners metaphor scenario structures the Brexit discourse via vivid metaphorical images of political reality describing complicated relations between Britain and the EU. We use a critical approach to metaphor ( Charteris-Black, 2004 , 2005 ) and especially apply Musolff’s (2006) concept of ‘metaphor scenario’ to the data collection gathered from various media sources published in English during the period closely preceding and following the Brexit vote. As “the married partners scenario is applicable to any bilateral […] relationship” ( Musolff, 2006 , p. 34), by exemplifying the Britain-EU relationship via numerous lexical instantiations (e.g., rocky marriage, messy divorce very hard on the children, shotgun divorce), we attest to a great generative potential of the married partners scenario as well as its argumentative use. Our main aim is to point out how the married partners metaphor scenario is used in political discourse both to simplify and enable the understanding of the tangled relationship between Britain and the EU at a crucial point in their history.

When people produce or understand verbal metaphors, and metaphoric gestures, do they do so automatically or with conscious deliberation? Metaphor scholars widely recognize that the answer to this question depends on several factors, including the specific kind of metaphor that was produced or understood. But many scholars assume that the automatic use of metaphor involves the simple retrieval of its figurative meaning, without having to draw any cross-domain mappings. We argue that automaticity in behavior, such as when using verbal metaphors, actually involves many complex embodied and conceptual processes, even if these may operate quickly and without conscious attention. This article reviews the evidence for this claim, and considers other attempts to explore automaticity in metaphoric experiences, such as in 20th-century automatic writing practices. Our argument provides another set of reasons, from cognitive science research, to reject simplistic assumptions that automatic metaphor behavior is necessarily different in kind from more conscious metaphor use and understanding.

This study focuses on simile in real language use. More specifically, it examines the explanatory power of similes in dialogic interaction where speakers are trying to bring their intimate experiences closer to others. The material under analysis comes from BBC Radio 4 “Woman’s Hour” programmes and is characterized by a relatively high simile frequency compared with other spoken genres, for example, academic lectures ( Low, 2010 ). In view of this fact, the study aims to explore the discourse functions of similes in radio talk: are they one-off rhetorical figures which cater for local discourse needs only, or do they also form extensive explanations with more global discourse functions? Apart from examining how simile-type comparisons are employed in radio conversations, the study also explores the interplay between similes and metaphors as well as their complementary role in realizing communicative discourse goals.

It is known that courtroom decisions can be influenced by subtle psychological biases, such as asking leading questions. Informed by metaphor research on the connection between spatial proximity and intimacy (e.g., ‘we are close’, ‘their views are far apart’), this paper reports four experiments that look at the potential role of psychological biases arising from the spatial layout of a courtroom. In particular, we ask the question: Does being close or far to a defendant influence one’s reasoning about who is likely to win or lose a court case? Working with an American (jury-based) legal system as an example, our experiments manipulated the physical distance between the jury box and the defendant’s table as shown on images of a courtroom. Across several manipulations, we discovered that participants judged the defendant to be more likely to win when the defendant’s table was located close to the jury box. These studies are in line with the research on ‘metaphor-enriched social cognition’, showing that the way we talk about relationships in terms of space corresponds to social reasoning in a spatial world.

This study provides an analysis of Arabic metaphorical and/or metonymical compounds, extracted from a 20,000-word corpus, based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory. The analysis focuses on the semantic transparency of these compounds, on the one hand, and their linguistic creativity, on the other. In line with Benczes ( 2006 , 2010 ), we suggest that the comprehension of Arabic metaphorical and/or metonymical compounds is possibly one of degree depending on which element is affected by metaphor and metonymy. Here, it is proposed that there are compounds which are more creative than others. We argue that in addition to the degree of semantic transparency and linguistic creativity of Arabic metaphorical and/or metonymical compounds, there are other factors that can influence the comprehension of these compounds; namely, the frequency of the compound, the conventionality of the metaphors involved in the compound and whether conceptual metonymy acts on the compound. Our proposal is supported by the judgments of 12 native-speaker informants, who were asked to provide the meaning of 35 Arabic metaphorical and/or metonymical compounds. The study concludes with recommendations for further research.