The immense increase in metaphor theory and research over the past decades is posing a threat of fragmentation to the field, which has been responded to by calls for new and more encompassing ...approaches to virtually all aspects metaphorical. This article argues that the opposite response may be more productive. By focusing on a different way of theorizing metaphor and its comprehension, existing theories and data can be re-ordered in an alternative and coherent way, which moreover breaks new grounds in tying up both with a general theory for all utterance comprehension as well as a general theory for all cognition as involving fast and slow thinking. The core of the new theory highlights the differentiation between deliberate and non-deliberate metaphor use, related to how people see the use of a metaphor as a metaphor in communication, that is, as a metaphor that counts as a metaphor between language users. It shows how this distinction can be employed to make sense of many insights about metaphor and its comprehension in innovative ways. The article outlines the foundations of the new theory and discusses how existing data, old and new, can be seen as supporting the new proposals.
In this article, we offer a critical view of Thibodeau and Boroditsky who report an effect of metaphorical framing on readers' preference for political measures after exposure to a short text on the ...increase of crime in a fictitious town: when crime was metaphorically presented as a beast, readers became more enforcement-oriented than when crime was metaphorically framed as a virus. We argue that the design of the study has left room for alternative explanations. We report four experiments comprising a follow-up study, remedying several shortcomings in the original design while collecting more encompassing sets of data. Our experiments include three additions to the original studies: (1) a non-metaphorical control condition, which is contrasted to the two metaphorical framing conditions used by Thibodeau and Boroditsky, (2) text versions that do not have the other, potentially supporting metaphors of the original stimulus texts, (3) a pre-exposure measure of political preference (Experiments 1-2). We do not find a metaphorical framing effect but instead show that there is another process at play across the board which presumably has to do with simple exposure to textual information. Reading about crime increases people's preference for enforcement irrespective of metaphorical frame or metaphorical support of the frame. These findings suggest the existence of boundary conditions under which metaphors can have differential effects on reasoning. Thus, our four experiments provide converging evidence raising questions about when metaphors do and do not influence reasoning.
Abstract
Framing is an important concept in communication, yet many framing studies set out to develop frames relevant to only one issue. We expand framing theory by introducing figurative framing. ...We posit that figurative language types like metaphor, hyperbole and irony are important in shaping public discourse, because these figures contain important linguistic and conceptual content about the issue under discussion. We first explicate the role of each individual figure (metaphor, hyperbole, and irony) in the framing of important societal issues. Then, we focus on complex figurative frames (combinations of metaphor, hyperbole, and/or irony). The article concludes with a research agenda, connecting figurative framing to the four key processes in framing research (frame building, frame setting, individual-level effects, and feedback loop).
This paper outlines a multi-dimensional/multi-disciplinary framework for the study of metaphor. It expands on the cognitive linguistic approach to metaphor in language and thought by adding the ...dimension of communication, and it expands on the predominantly linguistic and psychological approaches by adding the discipline of social science. This creates a map of the field in which nine main areas of research can be distinguished and connected to each other in precise ways. It allows for renewed attention to the deliberate use of metaphor in communication, in contrast with non-deliberate use, and asks the question whether the interaction between deliberate and non-deliberate use of metaphor in specific social domains can contribute to an explanation of the discourse career of metaphor. The suggestion is made that metaphorical models in language, thought, and communication can be classified as official, contested, implicit, and emerging, which may offer new perspectives on the interaction between social, psychological, and linguistic properties and functions of metaphor in discourse.
Metaphor has recently been reconceptualised as a fundamental part of the human conceptual system. It can hence be expressed in language but also in other modalities and media of communication, ...including gesture and body language, sound and music, and film and visuals. In spite of this theoretical landslide, however, the wide range of nonverbal metaphor and its processing has neither been empirically investigated on the same scale nor with the same rigour as metaphor in language. The overarching goal of this book is to report on the findings of a research program aimed at exploiting the vast cognitive linguistic and psycholinguistic expertise on metaphor in language for a new, behaviourally founded approach to the structure and processes of metaphor in one of these nonverbal manifestations, namely static visuals.
Expressions of resistance to violence metaphors for cancer provide important insights as to how these metaphors are perceived and which specific aspects of their use are deemed inapt or inappropriate ...by actual language users. The first objective of this paper is to examine different types of resistance standpoints that are expressed in critical responses to violence metaphors for cancer as well as the different metaphor dimensions these standpoints are focused on. Secondly, the paper aims to demonstrate the value of a close analysis of standpoints of resistance to metaphor from a combined argumentation theoretical and metaphor theoretical perspective. It will be shown how a combined argumentation theoretical and metaphor theoretical framework constitutes a useful and structured method for understanding the nature of resistance standpoints and the specific dimension(s) of metaphor they address. In this paper the combined framework will be put into practice in six case studies, each illustrating different manners in which language users express their disapproval of a particular use of violence metaphors for cancer.
•Violence metaphors for cancer are criticised in public discourse.•Different standpoints of resistance are expressed in relation to these metaphors.•These resistance standpoints can be descriptive, evaluative, or prescriptive.•Resistance standpoints can also be targeted at different dimensions of metaphor use.•Resistance standpoints provide insight in the shortcomings of violence metaphors.
While classical theories on rhetoric cluster figurative devices like metaphor, hyperbole, and irony under the encompassing category of tropes, current theories and research typically focus on one of ...the tropes in isolation. To determine how these different tropes are used in combinations, we conducted a large-scale corpus analysis of Dutch printed news discourse (54,851 words). For metaphor and hyperbole, we find that typical combinations are found in nouns and adjectives, showing that such combinations differ from the use of either trope in isolation. For hyperbole and irony, we find a relation between the two tropes in that ironic clauses contain more hyperbole than non-ironic clauses. In contrast, for metaphor and irony, we find no empirical evidence that the use of metaphors differs between ironic and non-ironic clauses. Analysis of clauses containing the three tropes of metaphor, hyperbole and irony shows that these may not always reflect novel and creative word use. Instead, various cases seem to contain conventional uses of metaphor and hyperbole.
•We study how metaphor, hyperbole, and irony are used in isolation and combination.•We conducted a corpus analysis of Dutch economic news discourse.•Typical combinations of metaphor-hyperbole differ from their usage in isolation.•Irony was associated with hyperbole, but not with metaphor.•Combinations of the three tropes reflected conventional rather than novel word use.
The rhetoric employed by right-wing populist parties (RWPPs) has been seen as a driver for their success. This right-wing populist (RWP) rhetoric is partly characterized by the use of ...anti-immigration metaphors and hyperboles, which likely appeal to voters’ grievances. We tested the persuasive impact of figuratively framed RWP rhetoric among a unique sample of Dutch RWPP voters, reporting an experiment with a 2 (metaphor: present, absent) x 2 (hyperbole: present, absent) between-subjects design. Our findings challenge prevailing ideas about how supportive voters respond to RWP rhetoric: Figurative language did not steer voters more in line with RWP ideas but pushed their opinion further away. These unexpected boomerang effects mainly held for weakly identified voters. This suggests that RWPP voters support their party, not because of but despite their rhetoric. Being heard in their grievances, rather than told what to grieve about, seems to be a main driver for RWPP support.
This paper examines patterns of metaphor in usage. Four samples of text excerpts of on average 47,000 words each were taken from the British National Corpus and annotated for metaphor. The linguistic ...metaphor data were collected by five analysts on the basis of a highly explicit identification procedure that is a variant of the approach developed by the Pragglejaz Group (Metaphor and Symbol 22: 1–39, 2007). Part of this paper is a report of the protocol and the reliability of the procedure. Data analysis shows that, on average, one in every seven and a half lexical units in the corpus is related to metaphor defined as a potential cross-domain mapping in conceptual structure. It also appears that the bulk of the expression of metaphor in discourse consists of non-signalled metaphorically used words, not similes. The distribution of metaphor-related words, finally, turns out to be quite variable between the four registers examined in this study: academic texts have 18.5%, news 16.4%, fiction 11.7%, and conversation 7.7%. The systematic comparative investigation of these registers raises new questions about the relation between cognitive linguistic and other approaches to metaphor.
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