Abstracts: PhD Workshop
This will take place on 29th May at 15.30 in the Paraninfo
The interplay of metaphor and metonymy in spoken discourse in people’s talk about
terrorism.
Ewa Biernacka
The Open University (United Kingdom)
Discussant
Alice Deignan
University of Leeds (United Kingdom)
Introduction
I am investigating the way a focus group of nine speakers (educated professional women,
inhabitants of London) talk about the risk of terrorism. My major research questions are:
• What is the role of metaphor and metonymy in discourse?
• How do metaphorical and metonymic expressions interact?
• What does the way the speakers talk about terrorism reveal about their understanding
of this subject and the feelings connected with it?
The focus of this presentation is the methodological issues connected with the analysis, in
particular implications of employing a large corpus to complement the analysis of smaller
corpus and the need to present an explicit procedure for metaphor and metonymy
identification.
Overview
I am looking at metaphorical and metonymic language use in discourse, looking for
and at patterns and groupings, and the nature of the metaphor/metonymy interplay. The main
interest is how speakers use metaphorical and metonymic language to express their opinions
and feelings connected with terrorism, and to create common understanding and meaning.
The research might have implications for researchers in other fields in that it might reveal
appropriate ways of communicating such difficult problems to people.
Background
While my research incorporates ideas from the Cognitive Metaphor Theory
(Lakoff&Johnson 1980, 1993, Kövecses 2002, Gibbs 1994, 1999, Grady 1997) and cognitive
theories of metonymy (Barcelona 2000, 2003, Panther&Radden, 1999, Kövecses, 2002,
Radden, 2003, Radden&Kövecses 1999), for the data analysis I have adopted two major
perspectives – discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. The starting point for my analysis is
the spoken word. I attempt to place my analysis in the discourse dynamics framework as
described and applied by many studies by Cameron (2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007) and
Cameron&Deignan (2006). I see metonymy in discourse as a phenomenon as salient as
metaphor in human cognition and communication, yet for a remarkable time relegated to a
subordinate category in language and cognition studies.
Data and Analysis
My smaller corpus consists of about 25,000 words of transcribed talk, part of a series
of recorded interviews with focus groups. Instances of linguistic metaphors were identified in
a previous study by a group of researchers working on the whole set of interviews, from all
focus groups.
As the conversation proceeds, the speakers build common ‘resources’. They, for
example, refer to the same events and employ the same metaphors and metonymies. The
metonymy “9/11” is a good example of this phenomenon – it reoccurs throughout the text, is
employed in various forms by many speakers. I analyze this metonymy as emergent from the
recorded text, which reveals the existence of shared socio-cultural knowledge among the
speakers, and track its use in a larger database, Nexis UK.
Methodological issues to be discussed in the workshop
I am intending to follow the methodology developed in the studies of Cameron&
Deignan (2003, 2006) – using a combination of two types of corpora – smaller and larger. I
am using a smaller corpus of recorded and transcribed text and a larger corpus - Nexis UK –
an online database of news sources worldwide. I use software packages for coding and
searching through my data.
The methodological questions related to my research outline concern mainly the
possibilities that arise from a decision to use the larger corpus.
• How much qualitative and quantitative data analysis should be carried out and
described?
• What principle should guide the choice of reference corpus?
• How large should it be?
• Should the larger corpus be used for general reference tracking of particular
figurative expressions) or should it be transformed into a language corpus
which can be systematically searched through producing statistical results?
• What would be missing in the analysis and the outcomes if I did not include the
larger corpus?
• How does the larger corpus add to the validity of my research?
In my study I intend to take into account the need to present an explicit procedure for
identifying metaphorically used words in discourse, such as the MIP procedure for metaphor
identification (pragglejaz, 2007) or MIV (Cameron, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007). I identify
metonymy in discourse as another pervasive figure of thought, discussing the existing
typologies of metonymy and their applicability, taking the provisional standpoint that a clear
cut distinction between metaphor and metonymy for every instance of figurative language use
is not essential for the purpose of my analysis (following Deignan 2005:71).
Methodologically, having explicit procedures for metaphor and metonymy identification
would add to the replicability of research in the field. It is problematic, however, because for
metonymy, no explicit procedures exist; and for metaphor - the existing procedures are not
widely adopted ones.
Categorization of conventional and dead metaphors
Susan Mol
University of Oslo (Norway)
Discussant
John Barnden
University of Birmingham (United Kingdom)
The aim of my doctoral project is to investigate one aspect of the “foreign-soundingness” of
learner-produced written English by comparing the metaphorical competence of advanced
Norwegian learners of English with that of native speakers. To do so, metaphorical
expressions found in a series of argumentative essays written in English by Norwegian
university students are first identified using the newly-developed Metaphor Identification
Procedure (see Pragglejaz Group 2007, Steen et al. 2006), as are metaphorical expressions
produced in the same genre by native speakers of English. These essays have been extracted
from two comparable corpora, the Norwegian component of the International Corpus of
Learner English and the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays. The identified metaphors
are classified according to their degree of conventionality as dead, conventional, or novel in
order to compare and contrast the extent and characteristics of the production of metaphorical
expressions between the two groups.
The basic methodological issue I would like to discuss concerns the categorization of
linguistic metaphors according to their degree of conventionality. One problem I have come
across concerns how to distinguish between conventional and dead metaphors in a consistent
way that is both theoretically valid and practical. I employ a slightly modified version of
Deignan’s (2005: 39-52) methodology for corpus-based classification. She suggests more or
less clear-cut procedures to use when categorizing actual instances of linguistic metaphor. In
my project, metaphors are categorized as conventional or dead through semantic analysis of
the domains involved. More specifically, if the source domain is concrete and the target
domain abstract, then the metaphorical expression is conventional, following Deignan’s
reasoning that a concrete domain is more salient than an abstract one and that interpretation of
the abstract sense depends on knowledge of the concrete sense. An additional criterion is that
the sense be found in the dictionary, unlike the contextual sense of novel metaphors. As
Deignan suggests, I also categorize embodied metaphors as conventional, as well as
metaphors instantiating mappings involving metaphorical meaning that is primarily evaluative
[e.g. She’s such a little monkey (Deignan 2005: 46)]. Dead metaphors, by contrast, are
characterized by concrete-concrete mappings because both domains are perceived as equally
core, and knowledge of one domain is not necessary for knowledge of the other.
I have encountered three related problems while following this methodology. First,
categorization of metaphors as either dead or conventional hinges on the identification of
target and source domains as either concrete or abstract. In some cases, however, the dividing
line between the abstract and concrete is not clear. Moreover, this same distinction often
constitutes the deciding factor in determining whether a lexical unit is metaphorically used
according to the Metaphor Identification Procedure. Are communications, techniques,
announcements, spectre, and entertainment concrete or abstract terms? Apart from Grady
(1997) and Danesi (2001, 2004), the literature on metaphor does not discuss precise and
workable definitions of exactly what is concrete and what is abstract, perhaps because the
distinction is intuitive and seemingly simple. When applied in practice, however, this
distinction becomes less straightforward than one might first have anticipated.
Second, when following this procedure, I find that that the vast majority of linguistic
metaphors fall into the category of conventional rather than dead. This is perhaps a
consequence of there simply being fewer dead than conventional metaphors, but surely there
must also exist some sort of continuum within the category of “conventional,” with some
conventional metaphors closer to the “novel” end of the conventionality spectrum and others
in the process of “dying.” Is there any theoretically valid yet still practical way of further
breaking down the class of conventional metaphors?
Finally, the classification of some lexical units which are categorized as dead due to a
concrete-concrete cross-domain mapping does not always seem intuitively satisfying. For
example, the metaphoricity of many metaphorical expressions involving computer terms such
as mouse and keyboard still seems alive and well in that many speakers still sense a
connection, however distant, between the basic and metaphorical senses (see e.g. Dąbrowska
2004: 154). Deignan (2005: 45-46) claims that such metaphors are or soon will become dead
for most speakers, but the researcher surely cannot prejudge this development.
References:
Dąbrowska, Ewa (2004): Language, mind and brain: some psychological and neurological
constraints on theories of grammar. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Danesi, Marcel (2001): "Light permits knowing: Three 'metaphorical' principles for studying
the abstract concept-formation." In Semiotica, vol. 136 (1/4), 133-149.
——— (2004): "Metaphor and conceptual productivity." In Semiotica, vol. 148 (1/4), 399411.
Deignan, Alice (2005): Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins Publishing Company.
Grady, J. (1997): Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes. PhD
Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
Pragglejaz Group (2007): "MIP: A Method for Identifying Metaphorically Used Words in
Discourse." In Metaphor and Symbol, vol. 22 (1), 1-39.
Steen, Gerard, Ewa Biernacka, Lettie Dorst, Anna Kaal, Irene López-Rodríguez, and Tryntje
Pasma (2006): "Pragglejaz in practice: Finding metaphorically used words in natural
discourse." In RaAM 6 Conference Proceedings. Leeds, England.
Metaphor of TIME in women’s discourse
Solange Pereira Diniz Faraco
Universidade Federal Fluminense (Brazil)
Discussant
Graham Low
University of York (United Kingdom)
The abstract notion of TIME is always present in our lives. Consequently, it is
conceptualized in many different ways, for we have several different experiences of TIME.
However, all of our understandings of TIME are relative to other concepts such as motion,
space and events. In other words, as several authors point out (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980,
1999; Kövecses, 2002; Radden, 2004), TIME is not conceptualized in its own terms, but
rather is conceptualized in significant part metaphorically and metonymically. In this study, I
investigate talk about TIME in women´s discourse and discourses directed to women, and its
potentially ideological implications. Using the Cognitive Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and
Johnson, 1980, 1999; Köveces, 2002) as theoretical foundation, I use metaphor analysis as a
tool for exploring the ideology underlying text to investigate the concept of TIME for
Brazilian mature women living in urban and rural areas. The data used in this research come
from three different sources and they can also be divided into written and spoken discourse.
The written discourse consists of media texts – advertisements and articles published in
magazines whose readers are middle class adult women. The spoken discourse was obtained
using two different methodologies of data collection, both involving tape recording. The first
part of the data collection was done in a middle sized town, during two organised social
reading events with six middle class adult women, aged between 48-56 years old. The second
part of the spoken data collection was done in a remote rural area in central Brazil. That
involved five working class women, also aged between 48-56 years old. Due to the fact that
not all of the rural informants are literate, and the ones who can read do not do it frequently, I
chose to use semi-structured interviews with them. The larger part of our talk involved the
interviewee’s response to the question: “What can you tell me about your life: your childhood,
adolescence and adulthood?” Much of the talk that followed fell into the category defined by
Wolfson (1976) as “conversational narrative”, in which the role of the researcher is to
encourage the interviewee to speak freely, to introduce her own topics, and to tell stories
(1976:196). The data were analysed following a methodology developed by Cameron (2003,
2006) to research metaphor from language use in real time situations. The analysis revealed
the important role culture and ideology play in the conceptualization of TIME for the two
different groups of women who took part in this study.
From Small to a Large Financial Corpus: Scaling up the Procedure to Identify
Metaphorical Linguistic Expressions
Mª de Montserrat Rodríguez Márquez
University of Surrey (United Kingdom)
Discussant
Tony Berber Sardinha
Catholic University of Sao Paulo (Brazil)
Metaphor has been recognised as an issue in translation since the 1970s. However, research
studies in this area have mainly considered metaphor as an isolated linguistic phenomenon
rather than a mental phenomenon that makes a contribution to structuring our conceptual
system and that underlies a language (cf. Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Translation scholars have
also proposed procedures for translating metaphors based on looking at isolated metaphorical
expressions embedded in individual literary and journalistic texts rather than in a large
number of texts. Nowadays, it is recognised that metaphorical expressions are pervasive not
only in literary or journalistic texts, but also in specialised texts, such as economic texts. In
fact, economic language has been described as ’heavily metaphorical’ (McCloskey1983, p.
502); however, a common choice for texts in economic translation courses tends to be
economic articles published in newspapers or periodicals rather than texts that are
rapidlygaining an influential rolein the financialworld: annual reports.
In view of the above, the present research aims to identify patterns in the translation of
conceptual metaphors in a bidirectional parallel corpus of financial texts, more specifically,
annual reports written in American English (US) and translated into Mexican Spanish (MX),
and vice versa. For the purpose of a pilot study, a small-sized corpus was compiled (US
original texts = 8,259 words, MX translated version = 9,608 words; MX original texts =
8,641, US translated version = 9,341 words). Currently, this corpus is being expanded. The
pilot corpuswas analysed followingaseven-step procedure. The first three steps are based on
the metaphoridentification procedure (MIP) proposedby Group Pragglejaz. The remaining
steps were added in order to analyse parallel texts from the translation point of view. By
applying the procedure to the pilot corpus, one main problem became evident.
Pragglejaz’ MIP suggests as a first step to read a text to identify potential metaphorical
expressions. However, this step is problematic when using a large corpus. Some metaphor
researchershave proposed focusingon certain metaphoricalexpressions that realisea particular
conceptual metaphor. However, to do so would be to expect that a particular conceptual
metaphor would be realised in that corpus and, furthermore, only patterns of translation of
certain metaphors would be identified
References
Group Pragglejaz (2007) ‘MIP:A Method for Identifying Metaphorically Used Words in
Discourse.’ Metaphor and Symbol 22(1):1–39
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors We Live By. London: The University of
Chicago Press.
McCloskey, D.N. (1983) ‘The Rhetoric of Economics.’ Journal of Economic Literature
21(2):481–517.
Is there any generational metaphor change – on the examples of the spoken language
used to rationalise the European Union in Poland.
Michał Sadowski
University of Adam Mickiewicz (Poland)
Discussant
Jeannette Littlemore
University of Birmingham (United Kingdom)
The aim of this presentation is to present the results of a sample study of the
metaphorical language ordinary Polish people of different age use to rationalise and come to
terms with the European Union. Being the summary of the first experiences in a bigger PhD
project to be completed in the following years, it discusses the methodological and theoretical
problems the author was faced with, as well as draws critical conclusions based on the
outcome of the sample study. They can be instrumental in his own investigation of the topic,
which is designed to compare and contrast the metaphorical linguistic framework the Polish
and the British resort to in their everyday dealings with the topic of the European Union, but
also for other academics who research spoken discourse in specific areas for metaphorical
patterns.
In recent years, the analysis of metaphor has been slanted towards, first, written
discourse (Charteris-Black 2004, Musolff 2004) and, second, the Cognitive Metaphor Theory
(Lakoff – Johnson 1980, Köveceses 2002). While insightful in many ways, these approaches
have nonetheless largely ignored the relevance of spoken discourse in the production and
comprehension of metaphorical language. This paper is informed by the metaphor research
programme initiated by Cameron (2003, 2007), which focuses on the consequences of
metaphor use for the discourse dynamics, and seeks to contribute to its development. It is
based on focus group interviews, consisting of ordinary Polish people talking freely about
selected aspects of the European Union and its relationship with Poland. Part of a bigger
project which takes the participants’ age (two age groups: 18 and 50+) and nationality (two
national groups: British and Polish) as the outstanding variables, it tests the hypothesis that
these variables have an impact on the metaphorical rationalisation of the European Union. In
practice, this means investigating if there is anything like a generational metaphor change
within a specific topic (in this case – the EU talk) and if different European nations make use
of different metaphorical imagery of the EU. Since this is only a sample study in Polish,
necessary for preliminary conclusions which can prime and enhance the final version of the
research, the part on the national differences will be sidelined in favour of the generational
question.
The first step in a long-term metaphor-research project, this paper is suitable for the
PhD workshop since the critical commentary by other metaphor researchers can help the
author bring out the potential of the future study.
Cameron, Lynne. 2003. Metaphor in Educational Discourse. London: Continuum.
Cameron, Lynne. 2007. “Patterns of metaphor use in reconciliation talk”. Discourse and
Society, 18(2), 197-222.
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2004. Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2002. Metaphor. A practical introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Musolff, Andreas. 2004. Metaphors and Political Discourse. Analogical Reasoning in
Debates about Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lakoff, George – Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
Metaphorical gestures – an intercultural comparison of argumentative spoken language
Katrin Schmidt
Universitat de Barcelona (Spain)
Discussant
Alan Cienki
Vrije Universiteit (The Netherlands)
Since McNeill published Hand and Mind (1992) metaphors in gesturing had been generally
recognised as being a fact, even though they were rather neglected in gesture research. Only
recently, metaphors have been discussed in studies of nonverbal communication (Cienki 1998
/ 2005a / 2000b, Cienki/Müller (forthcoming), Kühn 2001, Müller 2003).
The following research questions have been of certain importance in this sector
- The way in which metaphoric gestures are related to speech (cf. Cienki/Müller,
forthcoming, p. 8)
- The existence of metaphorical concepts à la Lakoff/Johnson in kinesic communication
(Cienki 2005)
- Metaphor as a part of embodied cognition (Cienki 1998; Kühn 2001; Müller 2004)
- The role of gesture in the dynamic and gradable character of metaphoricity (Müller
2003)
- Metaphoricity in different gesture functions (McNeill 1992; Schmidt, forthcoming)
- Metaphoricity gestures in different cultures (Cienki 1999; Núñez/Sweetser 2001)
- Gesture families and their metaphoric background (Streeck 2007; Schmidt,
forthcoming)
The presented PhD Project
An analysis of gestures accompanying verbal metaphors in argumentative spoken texts in
Spanish and German, and a comparison between them.
The Corpus
The presented PhD project consists of an intercultural comparison of argumentative texts
chosen from the German-Spanish/Catalan subcorpus of the inter-universitary and interdisciplinary project VARCOM/PRAGMAESTIL 1 of the University of Barcelona (UB). I’m
analysing 10 segments of German native speakers arguing for or against being a father at an
advanced age and comparing them to 10 segments of Spanish/Catalan native speakers on the
1
VARCOM = Variation, Multimodal Communication, and Plurilinguisme. Since 2005 it is followed of the
project PRAGMAESTIL = Pragmatics, Style, and Identities: analysis of verbal and non-verbal properties in
multilingual speaker discourse. The principal investigator of the whole project is Dr. Lluís Payrató, the
principal investigator of the German subcorpus is Dr. Marta Fernández-Villanueva.
same subject. The segments are taken from the experimental part of a whole interview of
approximately 30 minutes and have been always provoked with the same question: “Are older
men better fathers?” In addition, there was given the instruction to convince the other person:
“Imagine you were in a TV contest and had to convince a jury of your opinion.” In total, the
20 segments make a corpus of about 75 minutes. The texts were chosen for several reasons:
firstly, because of the need of convincing the other person with the strength of their arguments
and secondly, because certain abstract concepts like time, age, vitality, calmness, strength,
conflict of generation, etc. were to be expected.
Research Questions
1. Are there intercultural differences in verbal metaphors?
2. What kind of gesture accompanies verbal metaphors?
3. What formal differences can we observe in the use of the same kinesic gestures?
4. What communicative function does the metaphor have?
In the comparison of two cultures with a relatively similar cultural background I do not expect
great differences in metaphorical concepts. Nevertheless, it could be interesting to analyse the
quantitative and qualitative differences in the usage of them, especially in the handling of the
concept of time. Furthermore, Müller (1998) found out that there exist kinesic differences
between German and Spanish gestures in their radius and form.
Methodology
The research will have been carried out with the following procedure:
- Marking of the verbal metaphor giving them the labels Topic and Vehicle (according
to the cognitive approach, I apply a wide definition of metaphor including prepositions
and delexicalised verbs, cf. Cameron/Low 1999, Pragglejazz Group), followed by the
compilation of a list containing the Topics and Vehicles
- Marking of the gestures giving them the following labels:
o function (referential, discursive, performative, modal, interactive; cf. Kendon
2004)
o metaphoricity?
o formal: (cf. McNeill 1992, Müller 1998, Sager 2000): handedness, place in
space where motion begins and ends, shape of trajectory, shape of hand and
finger orientation
- Linking of parameters: gesture: yes/no?, of which function?, if metaphorical: does the
kinesic metaphor follow the verbal one? What kinesic form does it have?
Methodological problems
The following methodological problems will have to be resolved
- Cienki/Müller (Forthcoming, p. 8) define metaphoric gesture as follows:
[We] characterize metaphoric gestures, regardless of the context of their occurrence
(sign or spoken language), as voluntary movements of the body which use a cross-domain
mapping to express certain thoughts or feelings.
Is it possible to avoid subjectivity in decision-taking if there is gestural metaphoricity,
e.g. in the form of a checklist?
- Is the formal analysis of the gesture distinctive enough for inter-cultural comparison?
- It’s a fact that gestures often do not coincide with their verbal equivalent. On the
contrary, they are often placed before it. How much context do I have to consider?