This article analyzes how the conceptualization LIFE IS A JOURNEY is conveyed within a series of paintings ranging from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century. While the previous research on visual metaphor generally aims to describe how the domains of metaphorical conceptualization interact or discusses the rhetorical effect that visual metaphor is able to induce, this article takes a historical perspective in order to identify the main conceptual aspects shared by the paintings under consideration. It is proposed that the (...) concept of a JOURNEY is associated with a PURPOSIVE ACTIVITY that involves the start of the journey and its termination as two qualitatively different moments that are faced as a collective/shared experience and that are inspired by some human wish. This article also shows how the conceptual potential of metaphor tends to maintain a coherent representation although the paintings represent different historical sensitivities and artistic approaches. (shrink)

This paper examines the forms and functions of religious Internet memes that relate to Covid-19, with a view to identifying the conceptual metaphors that underlie the creation of the memes. The data, which consist of thirty religious Internet memes shared in the Nigerian WhatsApp space, are analyzed qualitatively using the categorization of religious Internet memes, and the concept of multimodal metaphors. The memes contain (non-)linguistic metaphors such as the picture of Biblical Noah’s ark and expressions such as Noah’s family was (...) on lockdown, which reveal underlying conceptual metaphors such as LOCKDOWN IS A GODLY INSTRUCTION and COVID-19 IS A WAR. The memes are used to allay the fears of people in the face of the disease, and encourage adherence to lockdown orders, amongst others. The study concludes that the forms and functions of these religious memes assist in revealing the multimodal conceptual metaphors underlying the memes. (shrink)

Recent discussions on the use of metaphor have centered on how it may be used in a way that has been said to require mandatory attention to the fact that it is metaphorical, resulting in what has come to be known as deliberate metaphor (Steen, 2008 Steen, G. 2008. The paradox of metaphor: Why we need a three-dimensional model of metaphor. Metaphor and Symbol, 23(4): 213–241. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]). While metaphor deliberateness and conventionality/novelty (...) are conceptually distinct, associations are likely to exist in practice. This article focuses on the deliberate use of conventional metaphor in images, by way of examining the use of animate and anthropomorphic metaphors in an instance of corporate branding discourse (i.e., the prospectuses of Singapore's corporatized universities). Through our analysis, we show that deliberate conventional metaphor serves to reinforce particular conceptualizations rather than effect radical conceptual change. Moreover, we discuss visual and multimodal metaphor as deliberate if used in carefully crafted texts and draw on the notion of an image's connotative meaning to point out how such deliberateness can be further accentuated. The article concludes by discussing some implications for how the degree of conventionality is likely to have an effect on how deliberate metaphor achieves its key objective of changing addressees’ concepts of a particular Target. (shrink)

Religious symbols are often treated as mysterious, and even magical, links between the visible and the invisible worlds. They also lie in the nature of Christianity: they are present in its languag...

Concern for global warming, climate change and pollution has grown in recent years, with countries across the world facing natural disasters on unprecedented scales. The communication of environmental protection is therefore a necessary area of enquiry, especially from a Conceptual Metaphor Theory perspective. The present article explores (1) how the themes of global warming, climate change, pollution and activism are conceptualized in a corpus of 51 noncommercial advertisements, (2) the interaction of metonymy with metaphor, (3) the distribution across verbal and (...) visual modes of metaphoric source and target domains, and (4) how value is evoked. Findings show that half of the corpus frames environmental themes through source domains such as weapons, predators and natural disasters. The other half triggers incongruous mappings, such as between concrete entities, and relies on metonymic processes of inference to access the main rhetorical message. Among the most frequent metonymies, CAUSE-EFFECT and CATEGORY FOR SALIENT PROPERTY highlight the negative effects of the represented phenomena. Multimodality usually occurs within source and/or target domains rather than across the metaphoric mapping. Most of the campaigns project mixed value, where a negative evaluation of a theme is accompanied by a positive message, inviting the audience to take action. (shrink)

Cognitive research on Ego-Reference-Point models of time in English traditionally shows that “FUTURE IS IN FRONT OF EGO” and “PAST IS IN BACK OF EGO.” Recently, however, this view has been challenged by other results, showing that there exists a major static model of time wherein “FUTURE IS IN BACK OF EGO” and “PAST IS IN FRONT OF EGO.” However, evidence for both conceptual systems comes predominantly from linguistic and gestural forms of expression. For instance, convincing empirical evidence coming from (...) the manifestation mode of cinema is still lacking. This article attempts to fill this gap by bringing the discussion of temporal metaphors to the foreground of character subjectivity in film. Using concise case-studies taken from various films, this study provides evidence that a majority of flashback scenes seem to base their conceptions of time on a static Ego-Reference-Point model in which the past appears to be in front of the character’s eyes on screen. (shrink)

This study investigates metaphoric gestures in face-to-face conversation. It is found that gestures of this kind are mainly performed in the central gesture space with noticeable and discernable configurations, providing visible evidence for cross-domain cognitive mappings and the grounding of conceptual metaphors in people's recurrent bodily experiences and in what people habitually do in social and cultural practices. Moreover, whether metaphorical thinking is conveyed by gesture exclusively or along with metaphoric speech, the manual enactment of even conventional metaphors manifests dynamism (...) in communicating metaphors. Metaphoric gestures can provide salient, additional information about the aspect of the conceptualization which is the speaker's focus of attention in real-time multimodal communication. (shrink)