The general consensus emerging from decades of empirical investigation of metaphor processing is that, when appropriately contextualised, metaphorically used language is no more demanding of processing effort than literally used language. However, there is a small number of studies which contradict this position, notably Noveck, Bianco, and Castry (2001): they maintain that relevance-based pragmatic theory predicts increased cognitive costs incurred in deriving the extra effects that metaphors typically yield, and they provide experimental results that support this prediction. (...) In our study, we first surveyed and assessed the tasks and stimulus materials of many experiments on metaphor processing from the 1970's to the present day. The most telling result was an apparent disparity between the processing of metaphorical language used predicatively versus referentially. We then ran two self-paced reading experiments to test our hypothesis that when used as a predicate, metaphorical language is no more costly than literal language, but when used referentially, it does incur extra costs, even given a preceding biasing context. In the first experiment, all metaphorical referring expressions were in subject position so occurred early in the sentence; in the second experiment, we controlled for any effect of sentence position by placing metaphorical referring expressions in object position, thus later in the sentence, similar to the predicate metaphors. In both cases, metaphorical referring incurred significantly greater costs relative to literal equivalents than did metaphorical predication, with no effect of sentence position. We end with a brief analysis of why the referential use of metaphor is special and effort-demanding. (shrink)

Metaphor is much more than just a linguistic phenomena, argues Gemma Corradi Fiumara, it is in fact the key process by which we construct and develop our ability to understand the world and the people we share it with. Rationality as understood by philosophers has led to a disembodied view of ourselves in which interaction between life and language has been downplayed. By looking at the metaphoric process - in an interpersonal rather than a formal way - its importance (...) in allowing us access to new worlds of experience is revealed. The metaphoric potential in us all exposes us to the world and initiates our involvement in it. (shrink)

Metaphor is much more than just a linguistic phenomena, argues Gemma Corradi Fiumara, it is in fact the key process by which we construct and develop our ability to understand the world and the people we share it with. Rationality as understood by philosophers has led to a disembodied view of ourselves in which interaction between life and language has been downplayed. By looking at the metaphoric process - in an interpersonal rather than a formal way - its importance (...) in allowing us access to new worlds of experience is revealed. The metaphoric potential in us all exposes us to the world and initiates our involvement in it. (shrink)

But is not the word "metaphor" itself a metaphor, the metaphor of a displacement and therefore of a transfer in a kind of space? What is at stake is precisely the necessity of these spatial metaphors about metaphor included in our talk about "figures" of speech. . . . But in order to understand correctly the work of resemblance in metaphor and to introduce the pictorial or ironic moment at the right place, it is necessary (...) briefly to recall the mutation undergone by the theory of metaphor at the level of semantics by contrast with the tradition of classical rhetoric. In this tradition, metaphor was correctly described in terms of deviance, but this deviance was mistakenly ascribed to denomination only. Instead of giving a thing its usual common name, one designates it by means of a borrowed name, a "foreign" name in Aristotle's terminology. The rationale of this transfer of name was understood as the objective similarity between the things themselves or the subjective similarity between the attitudes linked to the grasping of these things. As concerns the goal of this transfer, it was supposed either to fill up a lexical lacuna, and therefore to serve the principle of economy which rules the endeavor of giving appropriate names to new things, new ideas, or new experiences, or to decorate discourse, and therefore to serve the main purpose of rhetorical discourse, which is to persuade and to please. Paul Ricoeur is professor of philosophy at the Université de Paris and John Nuveen Professor at the University of Chicago. He is editor of Revue de métaphysique et de morale and the author of many influential works on phenomenology, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of language. His most recent work to appear in English is The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language. He has also contributed "Narrative Time" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

This study examined the performances of three groups of participants in interpreting metaphors in three different conditions: congruent gesture-prime conditions, opposite gesture-prime conditions, and no-prime conditions. In congruent gesture-prime conditions, each metaphor was preceded by the congruent gestural representation of metaphor schema. In opposite gesture-prime conditions, each metaphor was preceded by the opposite gestural representation of metaphor schema. The results showed that participants of congruent gesture-prime conditions had the best performance in interpreting metaphors, while participants of (...) opposite gesture-prime conditions had the worst performance. It is suggested that metaphor schema is an important part of metaphorical meaning of a metaphor. Therefore, when this part of meaning is activated by a gestural prime, metaphor comprehension is facilitated. Furthermore, when a schema is used to metaphorically describe a concept or an event, that schema and the neural network that represents it become one part of a larger interconnected neural network that represents the meaning of the metaphor. It could mean that the activation of one part of it could facilitate the activation of the whole of the network. Finally, it is emphasized that a gesture that depicts the schema of a metaphor is in fact the embodied realization of that metaphor. (shrink)

In response to the increasingly acknowledged power of metaphor upon everyday and scientific thinking, the present essay aims to revitalize the metaphoric process in commonsense psychology from the interaction view perspective. As prerequisites, a historical review of the "man-the-scientist" metaphor inherited in commonsense psychology, and a situation analysis of its dormant state are attempted. With metaphorical imagination, a holistic-paradigmatic view of personal theories is postulated on the basis of new knowledge in the philosophy and history of science, namely, (...) the Duhem - Quine (holism) thesis and Kuhn's paradigmatic perspective of scientific activities. To optimize the metaphoric process, deliberations are made on the similarities as well as the differences between the principal subject (i.e. everyday activities) and the subsidiary subject (i.e. scientific activities). It is shown that the "man-the-scientist" metaphoric process can be far-reaching and dialectic in nature, resulting in fresh perspectives for understanding both everyday and scientific activities. The focus of the present essay lies in elaborating a more sophisticated view on personal theories, and in calling for a non-reductionist approach to the investigation of commonsense psychology. (shrink)

Following some initial interrogations on the experiential and creative nature of symbolic-metaphorical processes (e.g. Gendlin, 1997a; Gruber, 1988) and some work on the production and interpretation of linguistically novel metaphors (e.g. Gibbs, 1994; Lakoff & Turner, 1989), we propose a new, `emotional-experiential' perspective on creative metaphors — perhaps, the most historically and sociologically important type of symbolic constructions. The emotional-experiential perspective accounts for the production and interpretation of creative metaphors through idiosyncratic emotion-based associations. Introspective, laboratory, and illustrative case study evidence (...) from several Western cultures is provided. Implications for broad issues concerning creative metaphor and symbolization are discussed. (shrink)

In this article, I provide an account of the development of the "translate" concept from the verbs used in Old English through the Middle English period, including the establishment of the Latin-based translate. The development and current pattern of polysemy are described through the elaboration of a Lakoffian cognitive model structured by image schemas and various types of action on those schemas--more specifically combination, dissolution, and metaphoric projection. Concordance and corpus data illustrate the development at various stages.

Distinct from nominal metaphors, predicate metaphors entail metaphorical abstraction from concrete verbs, which generally involve more action and stronger motor simulation than nouns. It remains unclear whether and how the concrete, embodied aspects of verbs are connected with abstract, disembodied thinking in the brains of L2 learners. Since English predicate metaphors are unfamiliar to Chinese L2 learners, the study of embodiment effect on English predicate metaphor processing may provide new evidence for embodied cognition and categorization models that remain (...) controversial, and offer practical insights into L2 metaphor processing and pedagogy. Hence, we aim to investigate whether the embodiment of verbs, via the activation of sensorimotor information, influences two groups of L2 learners during their comprehension of conventional and novel predicate metaphors. The results show a significant effect of embodiment: a stronger facilitation for novel predicate metaphors in both higher-level and lower-level groups, and a weaker facilitation for conventional predicate metaphors in the lower-level group. The findings demonstrate preliminary evidence for a graded effect of embodiment on predicate metaphors processing, modulated by L2 proficiency and metaphor novelty. The study supports a hybrid view of embodied cognition and reveals that sensorimotor aspects of verbs may be the intermediate entity involved in the indirect categorization. (shrink)

The dissertation seeks answers to several foundational questions whose resolution is a necessary prerequisite to the development of a computational theory of metaphor processing. Working within a naturalistic framework, I address three main issues. Does metaphor fall within the domain of semantic theory or pragmatic theory? Is the concept of metaphor embedded in a 'folk' understanding of language and thought, and, if so, will the notion of metaphor-processing figure in any mature scientific psychology? Does (...) the distinction between the metaphorical and the literal inherently involve claims about truth and reference, and, if so, how can this distinction be addressed by a psychology that presupposes methodological solipsism? ;I defend the traditional, Aristotelean view which seeks to analyze both metaphors and similes in terms of underlying statements of comparison. This view implies that metaphors have semantic content, that they can, like literal claims, but true or false. I argue that Donald Davidson's analysis of meaning can, contrary to Davidson's own position, support this Aristotelean comparativist thesis. ;I then conclude that a semantic theory of metaphor must quantify over extra-psychological facts about the world. This raises the problems mentioned above concerning the psychological status of metaphor in a very pressing way. I reject both of the standard responses to these problems, eliminativism and sentential realism, and argue that explanations involving an extra-psychologically individuated type--such as metaphor--can constrain explanations involving a solipsistically individuated type. This offers some hope that an extensional theory of metaphor may be psychologically relevant. ;In Chapter Five I develop such an extensional theory. Through philosophical interpretation of work by some psychologists--principally A. Tversky and A. Ortony--I arrive at a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the metaphoricity of an utterance. This definition constitutes the principal positive accomplishment of the dissertation. ;Chapter Six reviews some unsolved foundational problems for future attention, sets my project in the context of other philosophical work on metaphor, and then looks forward to a computational theory of metaphor processing. (shrink)

This study investigated metaphor processing in a second language by considering both analogy and categorization. Previous studies found that forward metaphors...

Conventionality and aptness are two dimensions of metaphorical sentences thought to play an important role in determining how quick and easy it is to process a metaphor. Conventionality reflects the familiarity of a metaphor whereas aptness reflects the degree to which a metaphor vehicle captures important features of a metaphor topic. In recent years it has become clear that operationalizing these two constructs is not as simple as asking naïve raters for subjective judgments. It has been (...) found that ratings of aptness and conventionality are highly correlated, which has led some researchers to pursue alternative methods for measuring the constructs. Here, in four experiments, we explore the underlying reasons for the high correlation in ratings of aptness and conventionality, and question the construct validity of various methods for measuring the two dimensions. We find that manipulating the processing fluency of a metaphorical sentence by means of familiarization to similar senses of the metaphor (“in vivo conventionalization”) influences ratings of the sentence's aptness. This misattribution may help explain why subjective ratings of aptness and conventionality are highly correlated. In addition, we find other reasons to question the construct validity of conventionality and aptness measures: for instance, we find that conventionality is context dependent and thus not attributable to a metaphor vehicle alone, and we find that ratings of aptness take more into account than they should. (shrink)

The role of the two hemispheres in processing metaphoric language is controversial. In order to complement current debates, the current divided visual field study introduced scientific metaphors as novel metaphors, presenting orientation mapping from the specific and familiar domains to the abstract and unfamiliar domains, to examine hemispheric asymmetry in metaphoric processing. Twenty-four Chinese native speakers from science disciplines took part in the experiment. The participants were presented with four types of Chinese word pairs: scientific metaphors, conventional metaphors, (...) literal word pairs, and unrelated word pairs. The first word in each pair was presented centrally, and the second was presented to the left visual field or the right visual field. Event-related potentials were recorded when participants read the target words and judged whether words in each pair were related. The data demonstrated that both hemispheres were involved at the initial stage of metaphor processing, but the right hemisphere took a more privileged role. The significant activation of the left hemisphere for scientific metaphoric processing supports the fine-coarse coding hypothesis. During right-visual-field presentation, the left hemisphere, responsible for the processing of closely related domains, has to integrate the loosely associated domains of scientific metaphor, which greatly increased cognitive taxes. Moreover, the data of late positive components revealed different hemispheric activation between scientific metaphors and conventional metaphors. Compared with literal pairs, conventional metaphors elicited significantly higher LPCs during right visual field presentation, while the scientific metaphor elicited significantly lower LPCs during left visual field presentation. These results suggest different processing mechanisms between novel metaphors and conventional metaphors and the special role of the right hemisphere in novel metaphoric processing at the later mapping stage. (shrink)

Dual process theory proposes clusters of features that form two dichotomous groups in cognition. One standing internal issue is defining what the reference of these two dichotomous groups could be in the mind or brain. Does dual process theory speak of two systems, types, minds, modes, kinds or just metaphors? A particular common answer is that differences in clusters of features are evidence of different underlying systems, often called system 1 and system 2. However, the suggestion to abandon the ‘system’ (...) terminology is now common in the literature, but the consequences of doing so need to be addressed. This work reviews and critically discusses previous suggestions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPolitical actors use metaphor in their speeches in order to frame political issues [Charteris-Black, J.. Politicians and rhetoric: The persuasive power of metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan]. If they succeed in imposing a particular frame, especially when there is no agreement on the definition of certain political issues, this can become the prevailing way for referring to that issue [Semino, E.. Metaphor in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press]. In this research, we argue that this was the case for (...) the metaphor of the JOURNEY in the Catalan political conflict during electoral periods. To that end we use Critical Metaphor Analysis [Charteris-Black, J.. Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan] to analyse televised campaign ads from the last three elections for the Parliament of Catalonia – from 2010, 2012, and 2015 – in order to identify how political actors’ use metaphors to talk about the Catalan political situation during these years and to verify if JOURNEY metaphor resulted into the dominant narrative. The results show that the political situation has been conceptualized in terms of a ‘process en route,’ although the narratives generated by the political actors that shaped that discourse differ. (shrink)

A model of metaphor processing is suggested based on the application of pragmatic principles to the type of semantic information easy to access. It is argued that, with metaphor, higher-order categorical knowledge is given processing preference over instance-specific knowledge in an attempt to recover likely intended meaning. Instance-specific information is used more often when the higher-order knowledge is taken to violate conversational postulates. One such violation occurs when the categories implicated by metaphor topic and vehicle (...) are similar, and thus unlikely to provide new or relevant information. It is argued further that these differences could, in part, explain at least one condition that produces the asymmetry observed in metaphor when topic and vehicle are reversed. Predictions supportive of the model were obtained in three studies, employing different methodologies: feature listing, recognition memory and a vehicle choice task. (shrink)

To study the different mechanisms of understanding figurative language in a speaker’s native language and their second language, this study investigated how scientific metaphors in Chinese and English are electrophysiologically processed via event-related potential experimentation. Compared with the metaphors from daily life or in literary works, scientific metaphors tend to involve both a more complicated context structure and a distinct knowledge-inferencing process. During the N400 time window, English scientific metaphors elicited more negative N400s than Chinese ones at the parietal region. (...) In the late positive component time window, English scientific metaphors elicited less positive LPCs than Chinese ones at the parietal region, and larger late negativities encompassing smaller areas of the brain. The findings might indicate that for late unbalanced bilingual speakers, L2 scientific metaphor comprehension requires more effort in information retrieval or access to the non-literal route. Altogether, the possible findings are that non-native and non-dominant language processing involves decreased automaticity of cognitive mechanisms, and decreased sensitivity to the levels of conventionality of metaphoric meanings. (shrink)

Recent metaphor research has revealed that metaphor comprehension involves both categorization and comparison processes. This finding has triggered the following central question: Which property determines the choice between these two processes for metaphor comprehension? Three competing views have been proposed to answer this question: the conventionality view (Bowdle & Gentner, 2005), aptness view (Glucksberg & Haught, 2006b), and interpretive diversity view (Utsumi, 2007); these views, respectively, argue that vehicle conventionality, metaphor aptness, and interpretive diversity determine the (...) choice between the categorization and comparison processes. This article attempts to answer the question regarding which views are plausible by using cognitive modeling and computer simulation based on a semantic space model. In the simulation experiment, categorization and comparison processes are modeled in a semantic space constructed by latent semantic analysis. These two models receive word vectors for the constituent words of a metaphor and compute a vector for the metaphorical meaning. The resulting vectors can be evaluated according to the degree to which they mimic the human interpretation of the same metaphor; the maximum likelihood estimation determines which of the two models better explains the human interpretation. The result of the model selection is then predicted by three metaphor properties (i.e., vehicle conventionality, aptness, and interpretive diversity) to test the three views. The simulation experiment for Japanese metaphors demonstrates that both interpretive diversity and vehicle conventionality affect the choice between the two processes. On the other hand, it is found that metaphor aptness does not affect this choice. This result can be treated as computational evidence supporting the interpretive diversity and conventionality views. (shrink)

This book explores and offers solutions to a range of conceptual and philosophical problems that underlie attempts to understand metaphor processing in the context of cognitive science. The author vigorously criticizes the prevailing philosophical prejudice against traditional «comparison» theories of metaphor, arguing that the problems with the comparison theory are exciting problems that demand solutions, rather than grounds for rejecting the theory itself. Furthermore, it is through these problems that the study of metaphor processing is (...) linked to wider issues in cognitive science, including disputes about computational architectures and neural mechanisms. (shrink)

When a word is used metaphorically (for example “walrus” in the sentence “The president is a walrus”), some features of that word's meaning (“very fat,” “slow-moving”) are carried across to the metaphoric interpretation while other features (“has large tusks,” “lives near the north pole”) are not. What happens to these features that relate only to the literal meaning during processing of novel metaphors? In four experiments, the present study examined the role of the feature of physical containment during (...) class='Hi'>processing of verbs of physical containment. That feature is used metaphorically to signify difficulty, such as “fenced in” in the sentence “the journalist's opinion was fenced in after the change in regime.” Results of a lexical decision task showed that video clips displaying a ball being trapped by a box facilitated comprehension of verbs of physical containment when the words were presented in isolation. However, when the verbs were embedded in sentences that rendered their interpretation metaphorical in a novel way, no such facilitation was found, as evidenced by two eye-tracking reading studies. We interpret this as suggesting that features that are critical for understanding the encoded meaning of verbs but are not part of the novel metaphoric interpretation are ignored during the construction of metaphorical meaning. Results and limitations of the paradigm are discussed in relation to previous findings in the literature both on metaphor comprehension and on the interaction between language comprehension and the visual world. (shrink)

A criticism is offered of the chief argument employed by Davidson to debunk the notion of “metaphorical meaning”, which exploits the static nature of standard truth-conditional semantics. We argue, first, that Davidson's argument fails, and go on to suggest, secondly, that truth-conditional semantics would profit if the static feature were abandoned and were replaced by a processual, dynamic conception of meaning. We try to show that this processual aspect can be captured without making the ensuing semantic theory open to the (...) charge of psychologism. (shrink)

The theory of embodied semantics holds that verbal metaphors are strongly grounded in sensorimotor experience. Many studies have proven that besides sensorimotor simulation, the comprehension of verbal metaphors also requires semantic abstraction. But the interaction between simulation and abstraction, as well as the time course of metaphorical meaning integration, is not well understood. In the present study, we aimed to investigate whether embodiment or abstraction, or both, is employed in the processing of Chinese verbal metaphor. Participants were asked (...) to read subject-verb metaphorical, verb-object metaphorical, literal-concrete and literal-abstract sentences, and the target words were measured at the verb and the object of each sentence. The results revealed that a similar N400 effect was elicited by the target verbs in the verb-object metaphorical and the literal-concrete sentences, and a similar P600/LPC effect was induced by the target verbs in the subject-verb metaphorical and the literal-abstract sentences, reflecting that the verb-object metaphors trigger a simulation process, while the subject-verb metaphors trigger an abstraction process in the verb processing stage. Moreover, the subject-verb metaphors elicited a stronger P600/LPC effect by the target verbs than the verb-object metaphors, but there was no difference of the P600/LPC caused by the target objects between the two kinds of metaphors, revealing that the metaphorical meaning of a subject-verb metaphor is integrated in the verb processing stage, while that of a verb-object metaphor is reanalyzed in the object processing stage. These results suggest that a verbal metaphor is processed both by simulation and abstraction, and the metaphorical meaning is integrated immediately with the unfolding of the sentence meaning. The position where the semantic conflict lies in a sentence modulates the time course of metaphor sentence comprehension. (shrink)

Textbooks for social science research suggest that studies are necessarily grounded in foundational philosophies that shape the research process. However, the literature does not provide a consistent picture of how philosophical positions shape research, and few studies have investigated researchers’ own ideas about this process. This study aimed to classify researchers’ descriptions of how philosophical positions connect to aspects of the research process and to investigate metaphors used to describe these connections. From a sample of 1500 journal articles, 73 papers (...) were found that directly mentioned a philosophical position. The analysis found that philosophical positions are most often connected with study design and methodology, or with concepts and theories. The connections include that philosophical positions result in, support, match and result from aspects of the research process, and that philosophical assumptions could be inherent in methodologies and theories. Metaphorically, philosophical positions were a tool, path, location, support, resource, person and seeing. These classification frameworks can be used in future research to understand how researchers conceptualize philosophical positions and how this influences their decision making. (shrink)

Excerpts from Chapters 1 and 3 of New Maps for Old: Explorations in Science and Religion (Gerhart and Russell 2001) explore the ramifications of metaphoric process for changes in thinking, especially those changes that lead to a new understanding of our world. Examples are provided from science, from religion, and from science and religion together. In excerpts from Chapter 8, a double analogy—theology is to science as science is to mathematics—is proposed for better understanding the contemporary relationship between science and (...) religion. A conservation of epistemological sufficiency is disclosed as one moves from mathematics to empirical science to theology—a move from one discipline to another that involves a sacrifice of one aspect of thought to gain another. (shrink)

It has been argued that metaphor and emotion processing are tightly linked together. Here we explore whether neuroscientific evidence supports this claim.

We analyzed the processing of noun-noun metaphors, which have been relatively understudied, compared to other types of figurative expressions, such as X is Y metaphors (e.g., He...

In this article, we address the problem of how people understand predicative metaphors such as “The rumor flew through the office,” and argue that predicative metaphors are understood as indirect (or two-stage) categorizations. In the indirect categorization process, the verb (e.g., fly) of a predicative metaphor evokes an intermediate entity, which in turn evokes a metaphoric category of actions or states (e.g., “to spread rapidly and soon disappear”) to be attributed to the target noun (e.g., rumor), rather than directly (...) evoking a metaphoric category as argued by CitationGlucksberg's (2001) categorization theory. We test our argument using two experiments, namely, offline comprehension and online priming. The offline comprehension experiment showed that interpretation of predicative metaphors had greater overlap with words indirectly associated with the verb than those directly associated with the verb. The online priming experiment demonstrated that indirectly associated words were activated during predicative metaphor comprehension, but directly associated words were not. These results provide convergent evidence for our argument, and thus the psychological validity of two-stage categorization as a process of predicative metaphor comprehension was confirmed. (shrink)

An eye-tracking while listening study based on the blank screen paradigm was conducted to investigate the processing of literal and metaphorical verbs of motion. The study was based on two assumpti...

In a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, Cpt. Picard is captured and trapped on a planet with an alien captain who speaks a language incompatible with the universal translator, based on their societal historical metaphors. According to Shapiro (2004), the concept of a universal translator removes everything alien from alien languages, and since the Tamarian language refers only to their historical and cultural archetypes, Picard can only establish dialogue by invoking human analogues, such as Gilgamesh. The purpose of this (...) paper is threefold. First, we will tie such communication to standard cognitive models in cognitive linguistics, pioneered by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Lakoff (1987). Second, we will show that metaphorical imaging resembling the Tamarian language is already present in our culture, by analyzing Dawkins's (1982) notion of a meme, who presupposes that memes as cultural living structures physically reside in the brain, and comparing that to a common format of a meme in pop culture. We will also contrast this concept with living natural languages such as Wolaytta, using a great number of proverbs, which can be seen as desemanticized metaphors that are used to embody different domains of the social realm of life (Make et al. 2014). Third, we will compare the notion of such a language with the current state of machine-learning and deep-learning techniques for natural language processing of metaphorical phrases, pinpointing that even deep learning today is powerless without sufficient training datasets (cf. Perifanos et al. 2020) or specific known word contexts and embeddings (Rei et al. 2017), compared to the same situation the universal translator was faced with when dealing with the Tamarian language. (shrink)

Metaphor has a double life. It can be described as a directional process in which a stable, familiar base domain provides inferential structure to a less clearly specified target. But metaphor is also described as a process of finding commonalities, an inherently symmetric process. In this second view, both concepts may be altered by the metaphorical comparison. Whereas most theories of metaphor capture one of these aspects, we offer a model based on structure-mapping that captures both sides (...) of metaphor processing. This predicts (a) an initial processing stage of symmetric alignment; and (b) a later directional phase in which inferences are projected to the target. To test these claims, we collected comprehensibility judgments for forward (e.g., “A rumor is a virus”) and reversed (“A virus is a rumor”) metaphors at early and late stages of processing, using a deadline procedure. We found an advantage for the forward direction late in processing, but no directional preference early in processing. Implications for metaphor theory are discussed. (shrink)

We agree with Brette's assessment that the coding metaphor has become more problematic than helpful for theories of brain and cognitive functioning. In an effort to aid in constructing an alternative, we argue that joining the insights from the dynamical systems approach with the semiotic framework of C. S. Peirce can provide a fruitful perspective.

Metaphor plays a central role in changing the architectural process. In order to better appreciate the nature of architectural creativity, generating more positive forms and volumes is required. Exists many conclusions which demonstrate that metaphors plays an important role shaping the design creativity. The aim of this paper is about understanding the exact role of the metaphor in architecture design from the concept of Aristotle to nowadays. Essentially it is the process by which most of the ideas come (...) into being. Metaphors structure our understanding and perceptions. They make our thoughts more interesting and more vivid. There are similar distinct uses of metaphor in architectural criticism, which is often heavily reliant on metaphor both as a form of expression and a tool of analysis. There is a dimension of meanings attached to the various uses of metaphor, ranging from the ornamental view at one hand to the rational view at the other [1].Metaphors role in the ecological design is essential and necessary. Architects use a variety of methods and techniques to enrich the architectural language. This process is accomplished with the infiltration of metaphors as a literary figure. By adopting the models of nature, there is a chance to work more sustainably and produce more sustainable products. Is this the paradigm shift we have been looking for? Maybe biomimicry and nature could be super metaphors in order to develop sustainable design. This paper should take in consideration also the metaphor as a tool implemented into design reflecting either positive or negative reactions. This theory should be explained by concrete examples. The working metaphor in the design process is another important issue to be judged. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that architectural metaphors corporate in coherent ways with architectonic language shaping its functionality. Metaphor helps to perceive things from a different perspective that is new to us, changing and bringing new ideas. Architectural metaphors can be found everywhere also in the Albanian case. It is very evident how metaphor stretches architectural functionality. (shrink)

Metaphorical meaning can be analyzed as triggered by an apparent communicative breach, an incongruity that leads to a default of the presumptive interpretation of a vehicle. This breach can be solved through contextual renegotiations of meaning guided by the communicative intention, or rather the presumed purpose of the metaphorical utterance. This paper addresses the problem of analyzing the complex process of reasoning underlying the reconstruction of metaphorical meaning. This process will be described as a type of abductive argument, aimed at (...) explaining how the vehicle can best contribute to the purpose of the utterance. This type of reasoning involves the analysis of the possible predicates that can be and usually are attributed to the vehicle, and the selection of the one that can support the implicit conclusion constituting the communicative goal of the metaphorical utterance. Metaphorical meaning, in this perspective, becomes the outcome of a complex process of meaning reconstruction aimed at providing the best explanation of the function of the vehicle within a discourse move. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, studies on visual metaphor processing have gained increasing attention. The present paper is a review of the book entitled Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics: A Formalist Th...

War metaphors are ubiquitous in discussions of everything from political campaigns to battles with cancer to wars against crime, drugs, poverty, and even salad. Why are warfare metaphors so common, and what are the potential benefits and costs to using them to frame important social and political issues? We address these questions in a detailed case study by reviewing the empirical literature on the subject and by advancing our own theoretical account of the structure and function of war metaphors in (...) public discourse. We argue that war metaphors are omnipresent because they draw on basic and widely shared schematic knowledge that efficiently structures our ability to reason and communicate about many different types of situations, and they reliably express an urgent, negatively valenced emotional tone that captures attention and motivates action. Nevertheless, we find that the meaning of war metaphors is intimately tied to the context in which they are used, which may result in either positive or negative outcomes, depending on the situation. Thus, blanket statements about whether or not a war frame is useful are misguided or overly constraining. Here we situate our case study results in relation to popular theories of metaphoric representation and processing and offer some guidelines for using a war framing effectively. This work helps illuminate the complex, dynamic, and nuanced functions of metaphor in cognition in general, and in public discourse in particular. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 5, May 2022.

Metaphor has been considered as a cognitive process, independent of the verbal versus visual mode, through which an unknown conceptual domain is understood in terms of another known conceptual domain. Metaphor might instead be viewed as a cognitive process, dependent on the mode, which leads to genuinely new knowledge via ignorance. First, I argue that there are two main senses of ignorance at stake when we understand a metaphor: we ignore some existing properties of the known domain (...) in the sense that we disregard or neglect them; we ignore some “non-existing” properties of the known domain in the sense that they are not a piece of information belonging to the known domain, but emerge in metaphor interpretation. Secondly, I consider a metaphor as a reasoning device, guiding the interpreters along a path of inferences to a conclusion, which attributes to the target some properties of the source. In this path, interpreters might discover the ignored existing properties of the known domain and/or recover the “non-existing” properties, inferring or imagining the missing piece of information. Finally, I argue that, especially in visual metaphors, this process is guided by a “sentiment of rationality”, tracking a disruption of existing familiar conceptualisations of objects and/or actions and a recovery of ignored properties. (shrink)

In Metaphor and Film, Trevor Whittock demonstrates that feature films are permeated by metaphors that were consciously introduced by directors. An examination of cinematic metaphor forces us to reconsider the nature of metaphor itself, and the ways by which such visual imagery can be recognised and understood, as well as interpreted. Metaphor and Film identifies the principal forms of cinematic metaphor, and also provides an analysis of the mental operations that one must bring to it. (...) Recent developments in cognitive psychology, especially those relating to the nature and formation of categories, are called upon to explain these processes. Metaphor and Film ranges widely over film theory as it does over philosophical, literary, linguistic, and psychological accounts of metaphor. Particularly useful to those studying film, literature, and aesthetics, this study is also a provocative contribution to an important debate in which film theorists and philosophers are currently engaged. (shrink)