Ilha do Desterro: A Journal of English Language, Literatures in English and Cultural Studies, 2007
How to cite Complete issue More information about this article Journal's homepage in redalyc.org ... more How to cite Complete issue More information about this article Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Scientific Information System Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative Linguistic and figurative patterns... 95
This article discusses the use of metaphors and metonyms in texts about climate change in differe... more This article discusses the use of metaphors and metonyms in texts about climate change in different registers, with a particular focus on the information given to young people, and what they understand about the topic. It begins by considering the role of metaphorical thinking and language in science, and reviews some of the work on scientific metaphor in expert and popular genres. The article analyses the different functions of metaphors in two texts about anthropogenic climate change from different genres, arguing that in the popular text analysed, metaphors tend to have the function of entertaining and dramatizing, and introducing and concluding (interpersonal and textual), as opposed to their informational (ideational) function in the research article that was analysed. I then discuss a corpus and discourse analysis of young people’s talk about climate change. The young people’s use of figurative language is compared with that of researchers and educationalists. The analysis fin...
Experts are generally in agreement that anthropogenic climate change is happening and will increa... more Experts are generally in agreement that anthropogenic climate change is happening and will increase in severity, but this view is not clearly reflected in more non-specialist texts. Research has shown that school students have a limited and sometimes faulty understanding of climate change. Metaphors are used by scientists in developing thought and communicating with non-scientists; they are also used by educators. This research investigates students' understandings of climate change by comparing metaphor use in three corpora, of research articles, student educational materials, and of transcribed interviews with school students aged 11-16 from the north of England. We find that some metaphors are shared by the three corpora; where this happens, the researchers' use tends to be highly conventionalized and technical, while educational materials extend and explore metaphors, and the students' use is still more creative, sometimes resulting in inaccurate descriptions of the science. Students also develop some of their own distinctive metaphors based on their immediate concrete experience, and possibly on visual educational materials; these metaphors convey highly simplified and often inaccurate understandings of climate science.
The analysis of corpus data can reveal features of language use not available to unaided intuitio... more The analysis of corpus data can reveal features of language use not available to unaided intuition. At the detailed level of collocation and lexical grammar, corpus data show features that are apparently specific to literal uses of words and to different types of non-literal uses, such as metaphor and metonymy. These patterns are mainly consistent with categories developed by cognitive linguists. However, there are some more detailed features that are not explained by cognitive theory. These include the proliferation of semi-fixed collocations, speakers' apparent acceptance of ambiguity, and the very specific evaluative meanings associated with many non-literal uses.
... The term 'conceptual metaphor&am... more ... The term 'conceptual metaphor' is used to refer to a connection between two semantic areas at the level of thought, such as the metaphorical connection that seems to exist between anger and fire for speakers of many languages (Lakoff 1987). ...
In this paper, I argue that the general notion of an image metaphor, which has been traditionally... more In this paper, I argue that the general notion of an image metaphor, which has been traditionally confined to so-called “one-shot metaphors”, as used in literary and poetic language, could be expanded to describe many expressions that are found in everyday language. Following Caballero (2003a), I argue that the division in cognitive linguistics of metaphors into “image” and “conceptual” is over-simplistic. I show that many of the most frequent metaphors in my data have characteristics which would qualify them for inclusion in both categories. I also argue that connotational meaning is an important characteristic of these expressions, unifying their literal and non-literal meanings. A detailed analysis of the Bank of English corpus concordance for heel shows the numerical importance of such metaphors. I refer to research into metaphor that takes an emergentist perspective, and which has led a number of other existing distinctions to be questioned. I argue that these expressions, term...
This article presents an explicit method that can be reliably employed to identify metaphorically... more This article presents an explicit method that can be reliably employed to identify metaphorically used words in discourse. Our aim is to provide metaphor scholars with a tool that may be flexibly applied to many research contexts. We present the "metaphor identification procedure" (MIP), followed by an example of how the procedure can be applied to identifying metaphorically used words in 1 text. We then suggest a format for reporting the results of MIP, and present the data from our case study describing the empirical reliability of the procedure, discuss several complications associated with using the procedure in practice, and then briefly compare MIP to other proposals on metaphor identification. The final section of the paper suggests ways that MIP may be employed in disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies of metaphor. One of the major developments in metaphor research in the last several years has been the focus on identifying and explicating metaphoric language in real discourse. Isolated constructed examples, often seen in linguistic research, or stimuli created by psychologists for experimental purposes, provide important materials for studying the structure and functions of metaphor. Yet making claims about the ubiquity and realistic understanding of metaphoric language demands that metaphor scholars explore "metaphor in the wild" as speakers and writers produce it in varying contexts. The primary difficulty with this line of work, however, is that researchers often differ in their intuitions about what constitutes a metaphoric word or phrase. Metaphor scholars often do not provide criteria in their empirical investigations
In this paper, I look at four different aspects of metaphor research from a corpus linguistic per... more In this paper, I look at four different aspects of metaphor research from a corpus linguistic perspective, namely: (1) the lexicogrammar of metaphors, which refers to the patterning of linguistic metaphor revealed by corpus analysis; (2) metaphor probabilities, which is a facet of metaphor that emerges from frequency-based studies of metaphor; (3) dimensions of metaphor variation, or the search for systematic parameters of variation in metaphor use across different registers; and (4) automated metaphor retrieval, which relates to the development of software to help identify metaphors in corpora. I argue that these four aspects are interrelated, and that advances in one of them can drive changes in the others.
Ilha do Desterro: A Journal of English Language, Literatures in English and Cultural Studies, 2007
How to cite Complete issue More information about this article Journal's homepage in redalyc.org ... more How to cite Complete issue More information about this article Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Scientific Information System Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative Linguistic and figurative patterns... 95
This article discusses the use of metaphors and metonyms in texts about climate change in differe... more This article discusses the use of metaphors and metonyms in texts about climate change in different registers, with a particular focus on the information given to young people, and what they understand about the topic. It begins by considering the role of metaphorical thinking and language in science, and reviews some of the work on scientific metaphor in expert and popular genres. The article analyses the different functions of metaphors in two texts about anthropogenic climate change from different genres, arguing that in the popular text analysed, metaphors tend to have the function of entertaining and dramatizing, and introducing and concluding (interpersonal and textual), as opposed to their informational (ideational) function in the research article that was analysed. I then discuss a corpus and discourse analysis of young people’s talk about climate change. The young people’s use of figurative language is compared with that of researchers and educationalists. The analysis fin...
Experts are generally in agreement that anthropogenic climate change is happening and will increa... more Experts are generally in agreement that anthropogenic climate change is happening and will increase in severity, but this view is not clearly reflected in more non-specialist texts. Research has shown that school students have a limited and sometimes faulty understanding of climate change. Metaphors are used by scientists in developing thought and communicating with non-scientists; they are also used by educators. This research investigates students' understandings of climate change by comparing metaphor use in three corpora, of research articles, student educational materials, and of transcribed interviews with school students aged 11-16 from the north of England. We find that some metaphors are shared by the three corpora; where this happens, the researchers' use tends to be highly conventionalized and technical, while educational materials extend and explore metaphors, and the students' use is still more creative, sometimes resulting in inaccurate descriptions of the science. Students also develop some of their own distinctive metaphors based on their immediate concrete experience, and possibly on visual educational materials; these metaphors convey highly simplified and often inaccurate understandings of climate science.
The analysis of corpus data can reveal features of language use not available to unaided intuitio... more The analysis of corpus data can reveal features of language use not available to unaided intuition. At the detailed level of collocation and lexical grammar, corpus data show features that are apparently specific to literal uses of words and to different types of non-literal uses, such as metaphor and metonymy. These patterns are mainly consistent with categories developed by cognitive linguists. However, there are some more detailed features that are not explained by cognitive theory. These include the proliferation of semi-fixed collocations, speakers' apparent acceptance of ambiguity, and the very specific evaluative meanings associated with many non-literal uses.
... The term 'conceptual metaphor&am... more ... The term 'conceptual metaphor' is used to refer to a connection between two semantic areas at the level of thought, such as the metaphorical connection that seems to exist between anger and fire for speakers of many languages (Lakoff 1987). ...
In this paper, I argue that the general notion of an image metaphor, which has been traditionally... more In this paper, I argue that the general notion of an image metaphor, which has been traditionally confined to so-called “one-shot metaphors”, as used in literary and poetic language, could be expanded to describe many expressions that are found in everyday language. Following Caballero (2003a), I argue that the division in cognitive linguistics of metaphors into “image” and “conceptual” is over-simplistic. I show that many of the most frequent metaphors in my data have characteristics which would qualify them for inclusion in both categories. I also argue that connotational meaning is an important characteristic of these expressions, unifying their literal and non-literal meanings. A detailed analysis of the Bank of English corpus concordance for heel shows the numerical importance of such metaphors. I refer to research into metaphor that takes an emergentist perspective, and which has led a number of other existing distinctions to be questioned. I argue that these expressions, term...
This article presents an explicit method that can be reliably employed to identify metaphorically... more This article presents an explicit method that can be reliably employed to identify metaphorically used words in discourse. Our aim is to provide metaphor scholars with a tool that may be flexibly applied to many research contexts. We present the "metaphor identification procedure" (MIP), followed by an example of how the procedure can be applied to identifying metaphorically used words in 1 text. We then suggest a format for reporting the results of MIP, and present the data from our case study describing the empirical reliability of the procedure, discuss several complications associated with using the procedure in practice, and then briefly compare MIP to other proposals on metaphor identification. The final section of the paper suggests ways that MIP may be employed in disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies of metaphor. One of the major developments in metaphor research in the last several years has been the focus on identifying and explicating metaphoric language in real discourse. Isolated constructed examples, often seen in linguistic research, or stimuli created by psychologists for experimental purposes, provide important materials for studying the structure and functions of metaphor. Yet making claims about the ubiquity and realistic understanding of metaphoric language demands that metaphor scholars explore "metaphor in the wild" as speakers and writers produce it in varying contexts. The primary difficulty with this line of work, however, is that researchers often differ in their intuitions about what constitutes a metaphoric word or phrase. Metaphor scholars often do not provide criteria in their empirical investigations
In this paper, I look at four different aspects of metaphor research from a corpus linguistic per... more In this paper, I look at four different aspects of metaphor research from a corpus linguistic perspective, namely: (1) the lexicogrammar of metaphors, which refers to the patterning of linguistic metaphor revealed by corpus analysis; (2) metaphor probabilities, which is a facet of metaphor that emerges from frequency-based studies of metaphor; (3) dimensions of metaphor variation, or the search for systematic parameters of variation in metaphor use across different registers; and (4) automated metaphor retrieval, which relates to the development of software to help identify metaphors in corpora. I argue that these four aspects are interrelated, and that advances in one of them can drive changes in the others.
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