scholarly journals Towards an embodied poetics of cinema

2012 ◽  
pp. 50-67
Author(s):  
Maarten Coëgnarts ◽  
Peter Kravanja
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Cinema Studies ◽  
Image Schemas ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Aesthetic

Central to Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) is the notion of embodied mind, which states that cognition is shaped by aspects of the body. Human beings make metaphoric use of recurring dynamic patterns of perceptual interactions and motor programmes (image schemas) for abstract conceptualisation and reasoning. According to film scholar David Bordwell the poetics of cinema studies the film as a result of a process of construction. He presents the following key question: how do film-makers use the aesthetic dynamics of the film medium to elicit particular effects from spectators? In this article we want to address an abbreviated case of meaning construction in film, namely the construction of abstract meaning in film. By combining insights from Bordwell as well as CMT, we will demonstrate how the poetics of abstract meaning-making in film is embodied. What does it mean to say that the construction of higher meaning in film is rooted in bodily experience and how can this be grasped without resorting to the confinement of words and sentences? By analysing the stylistics and the visual patterning of particular film scenes we will demonstrate how film-makers often resort to image schemas to come to terms with abstract notions such as time, love and psychological content.

Bodily experience as both source and target of meaning making

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Tay
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Image Schemas ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Metaphor Use ◽  
Programmatic Statement

Bodily experiences (BE) are often theorized by cognitive linguists as sources of meaning making, encoded and projected at the levels of grammar, semantics, and discourse. For example, Conceptual Metaphor Theory regards embodied image schemas (Johnson 1987) and, more recently, live simulations of embodied experiences (Gibbs 2013) as vital to the emergence and understanding of conceptual metaphors. Interestingly however, BE also feature as targets or topics in certain discourse contexts, which leads to underexplored scenarios where BE is simultaneously a source and a target of meaning making. This paper presents examples of metaphors in psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a case in point. In psychotherapy, experientially concrete sources are often used to conceptualize abstract issues such as emotions and subjective experiences. In the case of PTSD, however, bodily experiences turn out to be both potential source concepts as well as target topics of therapeutic discussion, a phenomenon seldom discussed in cognitive linguistics. I examine psychotherapy transcripts involving victims of the 2010–12 earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, discuss how this source-target simultaneity of BE is exploited for therapeutic ends, and highlight three strands of implications pertaining to cognitive, discursive, and strategic aspects of metaphor use in psychotherapy. I conclude with a more programmatic statement about psychotherapeutic discourse as a productive site of inquiry for applied cognitive linguistics and applied metaphor research.

‘The sickness stands at your shoulder …’: Embodiment and cognitive metaphor in Hornbacher’sWasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karsten Senkbeil ◽  
Nicola Hoppe
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Eating Disorders ◽  
The Body ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Marya Hornbacher ◽  
Linguistic Approaches

This paper applies cognitive linguistic approaches, particularly conceptual metaphor theory, to the study of literature, and analyses how Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (1998) by Marya Hornbacher communicates embodied experiences such as sickness, hunger, and (self-)loathing with the help of conceptual metaphors. It explores how the author renegotiates and partly recontextualizes highly conventionalized metaphors around eating disorders, mental illness, and identity to create new meaning, and how this strategy helped explain the mindset of a person with anorexia and bulimia to a broad critical readership in the late 1990s. This paper hence hypothesizes that the book’s emphasis on metaphors as a means to articulate bodily experiences surrounding a mental disorder may hint towards larger trends concerning the representation of the body–mind relationship in literature and culture in the last two decades.

scholarly journals A Study of English Vocabulary Learning in China—From the Perspective of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 427
Author(s):  
Hongyan Hua
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Chinese Students ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Cross Domain ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Domain Mapping

Vocabulary plays an essential role in foreign language learning, and it is the same with Chinese students’ learning English. However, in China traditional ways of English vocabulary learning focuses on the recitation and analysis of the sound, spelling and meaning of English words without considering their cognitive motivations and thus makes understanding and memorization of them invalid and boring, which directly affects Chinese students’ English level of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Therefore, some effective methods of English vocabulary learning must be found so as to arouse students’ interests and facilitate their learning of English words. Conceptual metaphor theory reveals that metaphor is not only a universal cognitive phenomenon but also a cognitive tool of human beings, which can shed some lights onto English words learning, a kind of cognitive activity. Conceptual metaphor theory also depicts cross-domain mapping as its working mechanism by saying that cross-domain mapping is a kind of thinking link from source domain to target domain. And this thinking link is of great help to the memorizing processes of words and understanding of words’ connotation and can make English vocabulary learning systematic and flexible. This paper explores the application of conceptual metaphor theory into college English vocabulary learning from three aspects, namely, polysemous words, idiomatic expressions and word connections, aiming at cultivating students’ metaphorical awareness and improving their metaphorical competence in vocabulary learning.

scholarly journals Discourses on Learning in Education:Making Sense of a Landscape of Difference

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brent Davis ◽  
Krista Francis
Keyword(s):  
Educational Research ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Iterative Process ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of “theories of learning” at play in the field of education. Given scant agreements on the meaning of “learning” and the purpose of “theory,” such quantity is perhaps unsurprising. Arguably, however, this situation is indefensible and debilitating in an academic domain so focused on interpreting and influencing learning. We describe our own efforts to come to terms with this matter. Oriented by Conceptual Metaphor Theory and network theory, we are attempting to “map” contemporary treatments of learning—whether implicit or explicit, written or spoken, descriptive or prescriptive, formal or informal, scientific or folk. We report on our iterative process, evolving design, and emergent insights. We discuss the potential relevance of this and similar efforts for the future of educational research and practice.

scholarly journals Konseptualisasi Citra Hara ‘Perut’ dalam Idiom Bahasa Jepang

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Akhmad Saifudin
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Japanese People ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Cognitive Experience

 Hara simply means belly, but for Japanese people it means more than physical. Hara is a concept, an important concept related to Japanese human life. This paper discusses the conceptualization of hara image for Japanese people. The study utilizes 25 idioms that contain hara ‘belly’ word that are obtained from several dictionaries of Japanese idioms. This paper is firmly grounded in cognitive linguistics, which relates linguistic expressions to human cognitive experience. The tool for analysis employed in this paper is the “conceptual metaphor theory” pioneered by Lakoff and Johnson. This theory considers human perception, parts of the body, and people’s worldview as the basis for the structure of human language. The analysis of this paper results that metaphorically, hara ‘belly’ is an entity and a container, which contains important elements for humans, such as life, mind, feeling, mentality, and physical. The concept of hara 'belly' for Japanese people is to have a spiritual, psychological, social and cultural, biological, and physical image. Keywords: conceptualization, conceptual metaphor, hara ‘belly’,  idioms, imagee.

Reanimating the Body in Conceptual Metaphor Theory

2019 ◽  
pp. 18-46
Author(s):  
Elisabeth El Refaie
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Semiotics ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Body Shapes

This chapter critically reviews the traditional notion of embodiment in Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), arguing that it is characterized by a somewhat inflexible view of the way the human body shapes one’s thinking. Probing more recent developments in CMT, including dynamic systems approaches and cross-cultural studies of metaphor, and confronting these with key theories from phenomenology, psychology, social semiotics, and media theory, the original notion of dynamic embodiment is developed. Accordingly, the degree to which people draw on their own bodies when producing and interpreting metaphors depends not only on the cultural practices and the specific actions in which they are engaged at any given moment, but also on the degree to which they are consciously aware of their physicality, as well as the affordances of the modes and media they are using to communicate.

The Body as Metaphor

2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-39
Author(s):  
Gregory E. Sterling
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
The Body ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Mark Johnson

AbstractThis essay considers Philo of Alexandria’s metaphor in which he used the dual nature of embodied existence (body and soul) to argue that both literal and allegorical readings are legitimate. It examines the metaphor in the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CTM) developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson that argues that experience is the key to meaning. A metaphor occurs when we apply a pattern that we have observed in one setting (gestalt) to another. In this case, Philo has drawn on a Platonic/Stoic understanding of being human and applied it to contested hermeneutics within the Alexandrian Jewish community in an effort to maintain a sense of unity among two groups. The metaphorical experience is the recognition that Scripture is polyvalent in the same way that being human is.

The structure of our concepts: A critical assessment of Conceptual Metaphor Theory as a theory of concepts

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peer F. Bundgaard
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Specific Domain ◽  
Conceptual Metaphors ◽  
Cross Domain ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
Experimental Findings

Abstract George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory is by and large a theory of what (abstract) concepts are, how they are structured, and how this structure is acquired — i.e., by mapping of structure from one more concrete or sensory-motor specific domain to another more abstract domain. Conceptual metaphors therefore rest on “cross-domain mappings.” The claims to the effect that our abstract concepts are metaphorically structured and that cross-domain mappings constitute one of the fundamental cognitive meaning-making processes are empirical and can therefore be put to the test. In this paper, I will critically assess Conceptual Metaphor Theory as a theory of concepts in light of recent experimental findings. Many such findings provide evidence for the psychological reality of cross-domain mappings, i.e., that structure activated in one domain actually can perform cognitive tasks carried out in another domain. They do not, however, support the claim that the structure of our (abstract) concepts is still metaphorical, as Lakoff and Johnson claim — that is to say, that our mind actually does perform cross-domain mappings when we process conventional conceptual metaphors such as “Death is Rest” or “Love is a Journey.” Two conclusions can be drawn from this: (1) it is necessary to distinguish between cross-domain mappings (which are psychologically real) and the metaphoric structure of our concepts (which is not, in the sense that such concepts do not any longer activate cross-domain mappings when processed); (2) Conceptual Metaphor Theory is not an adequate theory of concepts. I will therefore sketch another more viable theory of concepts where the structure of our concepts is defined as the full ecology of their situations of use, which includes the kind of situations (objects, agents, interactions) they apply to and the kind of emotional, cognitive, bodily, and behavioral responses they elicit. On this view, the contents of our concepts are to be considered as vague predicates, with vague extensions, which take on a specific form in their situation of use.

Metaphorical conceptualization of emotion in Spanish

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florencia Reali ◽  
Catalina Arciniegas
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Conceptual Structure ◽  
The Body ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Bounded Space ◽  
Concrete Concepts

Over the last two decades, accumulating work in cognitive science and cognitive linguistics has provided evidence that language shapes thought. Conceptual metaphor theory proposes that the conceptual structure of emotions emerges through metaphorization from concrete concepts such as spatial orientation and physical containment. Primary metaphors for emotions have been described in a wide range of languages. Here we show, in Study 1, the results of a corpus analysis revealing that certain metaphors such as EMOTIONS ARE FLUIDS and EMOTIONS ARE BOUNDED SPACEs are quite natural in Spanish. Moreover, the corpus data reveal that the bounded space source domain is more frequently mapped onto negative emotions. In Study 2, we consider the question of whether the instantiation of metaphorical framing influences the way we think about emotions. A questionnaire experiment was conducted to explore this question, focusing on the Spanish case of locura (‘madness’). Our results show that when madness was framed as a fluid filling a container (the body), people tended to rate symptoms as less enduring and as more likely to be caused by social and environmental factors, compared with when it was framed as a place in space. Results are discussed in the light of conceptual metaphor theory.

scholarly journals The role of multimodal metaphors in the creation of the fake news category: a proposal for analysis / A atuação das metáforas multimodais na criação da categoria fake news: uma proposta de análise

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 777
Author(s):  
Natália Elvira Sperandio
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Multimodal Texts ◽  
Specific Objective ◽  
Editorial Cartoons ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Analytical Category

Abstract: Almost forty years ago, the proposal of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory represented a milestone for Cognitive Linguistics studies. From this point, many pieces of research were developed around the analytical category of metaphor. However, the majority of these papers are still in the monomodal field, intending to build a concept resulting from the source and target domains that come specifically from the verbal structures. Taking this into consideration, this paper intends to focus on the metaphorical occurrence in diverse semiotic modes that constitute multimodal texts. In order to fulfill this aim, we outlined a corpus of five editorial cartoons about “fake news”. Our specific objective is to, making use of the concept of multimodal metaphors proposed by Forceville (1996, 2009), presented how the different semiotic modes, in this case the verbal and the visual ones, are interwoven in the building of these metaphors. In this way, in our study, besides validating the thesis proposed by Forceville (2009) about the occurrence of metaphors not only in the verbal mode, it was also possible to verify the importance of multimodal metaphors for the meaning construction process in the analyzed genre.Keywords: metaphors; multimodal metaphors; fake news.Resumo: Há quase quarenta anos atrás um marco nos estudos da Linguística Cognitiva, em especial em sua semântica, ocorreu: a proposta da Teoria da Metáfora Conceitual. A partir desse trabalho, muitas pesquisas foram desenvolvidas em torno da categoria analítica da metáfora. Porém, grande parte desses trabalhos ainda encontra-se no campo dos denominados textos monomodais, visando apenas a construção conceitual resultante de domínios fonte e alvo oriundos especificamente do modo verbal. Diante disso, o presente artigo propõe-se a promover um trabalho dedicado à ocorrência metafórica nos diferentes modos semióticos que constituem os textos multimodais. Para cumprirmos tal objetivo, delineamos como corpus cinco charges que versam sobre o conceito fake news. Nosso objetivo específico consiste em apresentar, através do conceito de metáforas multimodais, proposto por Forceville (1996, 2009), a forma pela qual diferentes modos semióticos, nesse caso em especial o verbal e o imagético, imbricaram-se na construção dessas metáforas. Assim, em nosso estudo, além de vislumbrarmos a validação da proposição de Forceville (2009) sobre a não ocorrência do processo metafórico apenas no modo verbal, foi possível a verificação da importância das metáforas multimodais para a construção dos sentidos do gênero em análise.Palavras-chave: metáforas; metáfora multimodal; fake news.

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