Metaphor

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences


Selected Abstracts


THE PRICE OF METAPHOR

HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 1 2005
JOSEPH FRACCHIA
ABSTRACT In his critical response to our skeptical inquiry, "Does Culture Evolve?" (History and Theory, Theme Issue 38 [December 1999], 52,78), W. G. Runciman affirms that "Culture Does Evolve." However, we find nothing in his essay that convinces us to alter our initial position. And we must confess that in composing an answer to Runciman, our first temptation was simply to urge those interested to read our original article,both as a basis for evaluating Runciman's attempted refutation of it and as a framework for reading this essay, which addresses in greater detail issues we have already raised. Runciman views the "selectionist paradigm" as a "scientific""puzzle-solving device" now validated by an "expanding literature" that has successfully modeled social and cultural change as "evolutionary." All paradigms, however, including scientific ones, give rise to self-validating "normal science." The real issue, accordingly, is not whether explanations can be successfully manufactured on the basis of paradigmatic assumptions, but whether the paradigmatic assumptions are appropriate to the object of analysis. The selectionist paradigm requires the reduction of society and culture to inheritance systems that consist of randomly varying, individual units, some of which are selected, and some not; and with society and culture thus reduced to inheritance systems, history can be reduced to "evolution." But these reductions, which are required by the selectionist paradigm, exclude much that is essential to a satisfactory historical explanation,particularly the systemic properties of society and culture and the combination of systemic logic and contingency. Now as before, therefore, we conclude that while historical phenomena can always be modeled selectionistically, selectionist explanations do no work, nor do they contribute anything new except a misleading vocabulary that anesthetizes history. [source]


THE KINDNESS OF GOD: METAPHOR, GENDER AND RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE by Janet Martin Soskice

NEW BLACKFRIARS, Issue 1032 2010
MARGARET ATKINS OSA
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


FROM IDEAS TO CONCEPTS TO METAPHORS: THE GERMAN TRADITION OF INTELLECTUAL HISTORY AND THE COMPLEX FABRIC OF LANGUAGE

HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 2 2010
ELÍAS JOSÉ PALTI
ABSTRACT Recently, the diffusion of the so-called "new intellectual history" led to the dismissal of the old school of the "history of ideas" on the basis of its ahistorical nature (the view of ideas as eternal entities). This formulation is actually misleading, missing the core of the transformation produced in the field. It is not true that the history of ideas simply ignored the fact that the meaning of ideas changes over time. The issue at stake here is really not how ideas changed (the mere description of the semantic transformation they underwent historically), but rather why they do. The study of the German tradition of intellectual history serves in this essay as a basis to illustrate the meaning and significance of the recent turn from ideas as its object. In the process of trying to account for the source of contingency of conceptual formations, it will open our horizon to the complex nature of the ways by which we invest the world with meaning. That is, it will disclose the presence of different layers of symbolic reality lying beneath the surface level of "ideas," and analyze their differential nature and functions. It will also show the reasons for the ultimate failure of the "history of ideas" approach, why discourses can never achieve their vocation to constitute themselves as self-enclosed, rationally integrated systems, thereby expelling contingency from their realm. In sum, it will show why historicity is not merely something that comes to intellectual history from without (as a by-product of social history or as the result of the action of an external agent), as the history of ideas assumed, but is a constitutive dimension of it. [source]


Metaphor and the Idea of a Dominant Conservation Ethic

CONSERVATION BIOLOGY, Issue 5 2010
Laura Martin
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Teaching and Learning Metaphor

ENGLISH IN EDUCATION, Issue 3 2003
Matthew Pollard
Abstract In this study I look at recent work done by psychologists in the field of metaphor comprehension as well as longer-established philosophical theories. I suggest that there is a great deal that English teachers can gain by having a broader understanding of metaphor. I look at how Year 7 pupils, in particular, can benefit a great deal from such notions. [source]


Pro-War and Prothalamion: Queen, Colony, and Somatic Metaphor Among Spenser's "Knights of the Maidenhead"

ENGLISH LITERARY RENAISSANCE, Issue 2 2007
Benjamin P. Myers
This essay charts the points of contact - or more precisely the "overlay" - between Spenser's gender ethics, his experience of the Irish landscape, and his singular reception of the Petrarchan literary heritage. Spenser portrays the Queen as Petrarchan lover against the background of a male-driven conquest of the feminized landscape, a juxtaposition in which the love-frowardness of the Petrarchan lady is translated into the frowardness of a queen hesitant to take the expensive and potentially devastating steps necessary for the expansion of her empire. Spenser uses the traditional metaphor of the land as female body to link colonial approaches to land with staunchly Protestant conceptions of marriage, working a double sense of "husbandry" to criticize the Queen for her restraint in supporting the Irish project. In an act of colonial poetic production unmatched in its era, the Faerie Queene presents a system of similitudes centering on the female body, the land, and literary history in which each term is a means of morally interpreting the remaining two. To grasp the full weight behind the colonial politics and the gender politics of the Faerie Queene one must attempt to read these three terms, often interpreted independently, as a carefully constructed nexus of meaning. To do so is to read the poem reading itself. [source]


News and Nuances of the Entrepreneurial Myth and Metaphor: Linguistic Games in Entrepreneurial Sense-Making and Sense-Giving

ENTREPRENEURSHIP THEORY AND PRACTICE, Issue 2 2005
Louise Nicholson
This article describes a social construction of entrepreneurship by exploring the constructionalist building blocks of communication, myth, and metaphor presented in a major British middle range broadsheet newspaper with no particular party political allegiance. We argue that the sense-making role of figurative language is important because of the inherent problems in defining and describing the entrepreneurial phenomena. Myth and metaphor in newspapers create an entrepreneurial appreciation that helps define our understanding of the world around us. The content analysis of articles published in this newspaper revealed images of male entrepreneurs as dynamic wolfish charmers, supernatural gurus, successful skyrockets or community saviors and corrupters. Finally, this article relates the temporal construction of myth and metaphor to the dynamics of enterprise culture. [source]


Union Citizenship,Metaphor or Source of Rights?

EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 1 2001
Norbert Reich
After nearly ten years of introducing Union Citizenship as a concept into Community law it seems time to draw a preliminary evaluation of its importance in reshaping the legal and social positions of citizens living in the EU, more precisely in its Member States. The balance sheet is however mixed: On the one hand, the prevalent position in legal doctrine seems to be that Union citizenship is merely a derived condition of nationality, while on the other side certain fundamental rights are based on criteria other than citizenship/nationality alone. The European Charter on Fundamental Rights will not overcome this dilemma. This can be shown in conflictual areas which are in the centre of discusion in the paper, namely the (limited!) use of the concept of citizenship to extend existing free movement rights in the new case law of the Court of Justice, the resistance towards granting ,quasi-citizenship' rights to third country nationals lawfully resident in the Union for a longer period of time, and the yet unsolved problem of imposing ,implied duties' based on a doctrine of ,abus de droit' upon citizens paralleling the rights granted to them. As a conclusion the author is of the opinion that the question asked for in the title can be answered in the positive only to a limited extent. Citizenship appears to be a sleeping fairy princess still be be kissed awake by the direct effect of Community law. [source]


More than a Metaphor: The Passing of the Two Worlds Paradigm in German-Language Diasporic Literature

GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 4 2006
Jim Jordan
ABSTRACT German-language diasporic literature published during the period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s frequently deploys images, metaphors and motifs depicting the migrant as suspended, trapped or stranded between two worlds. I briefly outline this phenomenon and the criticism it has been subjected to in recently published research, which emphasises the regressive effect which the persistence of this metaphor has had. The passing of the ,two worlds paradigm' marks a transition in the development of diasporic writing, making it an apposite time to achieve an understanding of this paradigm as more than merely an impediment to a more differentiated appreciation of the literature of migration. I therefore explore this paradigm in relation to debates concerning multiculturalism during the 1980s and early 1990s. In conclusion, I examine how a paradigm voluntarily adopted by diasporic writers as representative of their situation at that time has endured to become an outdated characterisation of all migrant writing. [source]


The Persuasive Effects of Metaphor: A Meta-Analysis

HUMAN COMMUNICATION RESEARCH, Issue 3 2002
Pradeep Sopory
Empirical investigations of metaphor's persuasive effects have produced mixed results. In an effort to integrate the literature, we present a review and meta-analytic summary of existing studies. Six explanations for the potential suasory advantage of metaphor over literal language were reviewed: (a) pleasure or relief, (b) communicator credibility, (c) reduced counterarguments, (d) resource-matching, (e) stimulated elaboration, and (f) superior organization. Next, a meta-analysis was conducted and the impact of seven moderator variables was tested. The overall effect for the metaphor-literal comparison for attitude change was r = .07, which supported the claim that metaphors enhance persuasion. The effect rose to r = .42 under optimal conditions, when a single, nonextended metaphor was novel, had a familiar target, and was used early in a message. Metaphor appeared to exert a small effect on perceptions of source dynamism (r = .06), but showed no demonstrable impact on competence (r =,.01) or character (r =,.02). Of the six theories considered, the superior organization explanation of metaphor's persuasive impact was most supported by the results. [source]


The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language , By Janet Martin Soskice

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, Issue 1 2010
R. Michael Allen
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


The Ecosystem: Model or Metaphor?

JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY, Issue 2 2010
Epistemological Difficulties in Industrial Ecology
Summary Industrial ecology offers an original way of looking at economic activities. The approach is based on an analogy between certain objects studied by the science of ecology (ecosystems, metabolisms, symbiosis, biocenosis, etc.) and industrial systems. However, this analogical relationship raises difficulties due to the various interpretations to which it is open. Although there is agreement regarding its heuristic function, the analogy can nevertheless be understood either as a model or as a metaphor. The present article first attempts to show how models differ from metaphors. It then sets out to justify the epistemological relevance of this distinction for industrial ecology research. The reflection should thus contribute to clarifying the debate on the (supposed or desired) role of analogy in the field of industrial ecology and heighten the interest this field of investigation represents for implementing sustainable development. [source]


Metaphor and the Dynamics of Knowledge in Organization Theory: A Case Study of the Organizational Identity Metaphor*

JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 4 2006
Joep P. Cornelissen
abstract Despite the increased salience of metaphor in organization theory, there is still very little conceptual machinery for capturing and explaining how metaphor creates and/or reorders knowledge within organization theory. Moreover, prior work on metaphor has insufficiently accounted for the context of interpreting a metaphor. Many metaphors in organization theory, including the ,organizational identity' metaphor, have often been treated in singular and monolithic terms; seen to offer a similar or largely synonymous interpretation to theorists and researchers working along the entire spectrum of disciplines (e.g. organizational behaviour, organizational psychology) in organization theory. We argue in this paper that contextual variation however exists in the interpretation of metaphors in organization theory. This argument is developed by proposing and elaborating on a so-called image-schematic model of metaphor, which suggests that the image-schemata (abstract imaginative structures) that are triggered by the metaphorical comparison of concepts may vary among individuals. Accordingly, once different schemata are triggered the completion and interpretation of a metaphor may equally vary among different individuals or, indeed, research communities. These points associated with the image-schematic model of metaphor are illustrated with a case study of the ,organizational identity' metaphor. The case study shows that this particular metaphor has spiralled out into different research communities and has been comprehended in very different ways as different communities work from very different conceptions, or image-schemata, of ,organization' and ,identity', and use different theoretical frameworks and constructs as a result. The implications of the image-schematic view of metaphor for knowledge development and theoretical progress in organization theory are discussed. [source]


"I Need You to Pin Me Down": Repetition, Redundancy and S/M as a Metaphor in One Eurythmics Song

JOURNAL OF POPULAR MUSIC STUDIES, Issue 3 2007
Gillian Rodger
[source]


Production of Ideas by Means of Ideas: A Turing Machine Metaphor

METROECONOMICA, Issue 2-3 2004
Stefano Zambelli
ABSTRACT In this paper production of knowledge is modelled in terms of Turing machines or compositions of Turing machines. The input tape and the output tape of the machines are seen as the encoding of ideas generated by Turing machines. This allows us, among other things, to define and measure the complexity of ideas and knowledge in the simple terms of algorithmic and computational complexity. Moreover the very existence of the halting problem allows for the introduction of a non-stochastic notion of uncertainty. Consequently uncertainty may be modelled not as the outcome of a predefined probability distribution, but in terms of the randomness associated with the halting problem. In this way the ,frequency distribution of innovations' is endogenously generated by the choices of the Turing machines. It is shown that a vast variety of alternative dynamic behaviours in knowledge evolution and hence in productivity can be generated. One can observe clusters of emerging innovations, persistent and increasing emergence of new discoveries as well as periods of explosive evolutions followed by stasis periods. [source]


Autism, Metaphor and Relevance Theory

MIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 2 2010
CATHERINE WEARING
The pattern of impairments exhibited by some individuals on the autism spectrum appears to challenge the relevance-theoretic account of metaphor (Carston, 1996, 2002; Sperber and Wilson, 2002; Sperber and Wilson, 2008). A subset of people on the autism spectrum have near-normal syntactic, phonological, and semantic abilities while having severe difficulties with the interpretation of metaphor, irony, conversational implicature, and other pragmatic phenomena. However, Relevance Theory treats metaphor as importantly unlike phenomena such as conversational implicature or irony and like instances of ordinary literal speech. In this paper, I show how Relevance Theory can account for the prima facie incongruity between its treatment of metaphor and the case of individuals with autism. [source]


Metaphor and What is Said

MIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 3 2006
CATHERINE WEARING
First, I show that two other possibilities,the Gricean account of metaphor as implicature and the strictly semantic account developed by Josef Stern,face several serious problems. In their place, I propose an account that takes metaphorical content to cross-cut the semantic-pragmatic distinction. This requires re-thinking the notion of metaphorical content, as well as the relation between the metaphorical and the literal. [source]


The Transparency of Metaphor

MIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 3 2006
SAMUEL GUTTENPLAN
In the second and longest section, I explore a major difficulty for certain of these accounts, namely the need to explain what I describe as the ,transparency' of metaphor. In the third section, I describe two accounts which can overcome the difficulty. The first is loosely based on Davidson's treatment of metaphor, and, finding this to be inadequate for reasons having nothing to do with transparency, it will be used solely to show the way. The second is my own, and, without attempting to defend it at length, I will content myself with suggesting how it can cope with the difficulty discussed in this paper in a way which mimics the Davidsonian proposal. Finally, in the fourth section, I shall briefly mention several considerations independent of transparency for adopting my account. [source]


Toward Mastering the Discourses of Reasoning: Use of Grammatical Metaphor at Advanced Levels of Foreign Language Acquisition

MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 2 2010
MARIANNA RYSHINA, PANKOVA
Situated within the framework of the systemic,functional linguistics (Halliday, 1994) and language-based theory of learning (Halliday, 1993), this article examines a shift toward a more objectified and "scientific" representation of reality in texts written by foreign language (FL) learners at various levels of acquisition. It argues that linguistic variation in style impacting communicative effectiveness of written texts created by learners representing different levels of FL acquisition can be partly captured by means of grammatical metaphor, as a phenomenon of,transcategorization, whereby processes (typically realized by verbs), attributes (typically realized by adjectives), or whole propositions (typically realized by sentences) are encoded as nouns. Based on a study conducted on 55 book reviews written by advanced American learners of German and 30 texts written by native speakers in the same genre, the article identifies various types of grammatical metaphors or approximations toward it as characteristic of various acquisition levels. It also demonstrates the role and functions of grammatical metaphor in enhancing the ability of writers to construct a logical argument or a persuasive evaluation. Comparisons to the use of grammatical metaphor in the texts produced by native writers of German show it to be a prominent feature of adult language use in literate and academic contexts, by native or nonnative language users. [source]


The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language , By Janet Martin Soskice

MODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 3 2009
Eugene F. Rogers Jr.
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Midwife to a learning community: Spirit as co-inquirer

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR ADULT & CONTINUING EDUCATION, Issue 94 2002
Whitney Wherrett Roberson
Working within a liberal feminist Christian tradition, six women seek to nurture learning communities that empower and transform. Metaphor and laughter guide their way in realizing Spirit is their Co-inquirer. [source]


Rethinking theatre in modern operating rooms

NURSING INQUIRY, Issue 1 2005
Robin Riley
Metaphor is a means through which a widely accepted meaning of a word is used in a different context to add understanding that would otherwise be difficult to conceive. Through etymological and metaphorical associations, we contend that aspects of ,theatre' are still relevant in the modern operating rooms and that the use of dramaturgical metaphors can add another layer of understanding about the social reality in this setting. We begin by exploring the historical roots and derivation of the word theatre as it applied to anatomical dissection and surgery. Briefly, we touch on the work of Erving Goffman and examine how his work has been used by others to explore aspects of operating room nursing. Then, drawing on data from a postmodern ethnographic study that has been used to examine communication in operating room nursing, four dramaturgical metaphors are used to illustrate the argument. They are drama, the script and learning the lines, the show must go on, and changing between back stage and front stage. To conclude, the small amount of previously published literature on this topic is compared and contrasted, and the relevance of using dramaturgical metaphors to understand modern operating rooms is discussed. Being able to distinguish between the inherent drama in operating room work and the dramatic realisation of individuals who work within, can help operating room nurses to think differently about, and perhaps re-evaluate their social situation and how they function within it. [source]


Metaphor in the Mind: The Cognition of Metaphor1

PHILOSOPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 2 2006
Elisabeth Camp
The most sustained and innovative recent work on metaphor has occurred in cognitive science and psychology. Psycholinguistic investigation suggests that novel, poetic metaphors are processed differently than literal speech, while relatively conventionalized and contextually salient metaphors are processed more like literal speech. This conflicts with the view of "cognitive linguists" like George Lakoff that all or nearly all thought is essentially metaphorical. There are currently four main cognitive models of metaphor comprehension: juxtaposition, category-transfer, feature-matching, and structural alignment. Structural alignment deals best with the widest range of examples; but it still fails to account for the complexity and richness of fairly novel, poetic metaphors. [source]


The Pendulum of Poetry: Metaphor and Mediation in Rilke's Duineser Elegien

THE GERMAN QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2006
Eleanor E. ter Horst
First page of article [source]


Mauritius von Craûn and Otto von Freising's The Two Cities: 12th - and 13th -Century Scepticism about Historical Progress and the Metaphor of the Ship1

THE GERMAN QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2006
ALBRECHT CLASSEN
First page of article [source]


Life is Not a Game: Reworking the Metaphor in Richard Ford's Fiction

THE JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTURE, Issue 5 2009
KEVIN BROOKS
First page of article [source]


Talk About Terrorism and the Media: Communicating With the Conduit Metaphor

COMMUNICATION, CULTURE & CRITIQUE, Issue 4 2008
Simon J. Harrison
The conduit metaphor is the primary expression of linguistic communication in our culture (M. J. Reddy, 1979). It structures theories and frameworks based on the "Code Model" (from C. E. Shannon & W. Weaver, 1949) such as the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (R. E. Kasperson et al., 1988; N. Pidgeon, R. E. Kasperson, & P. Slovic, [Eds] 2003). The conduit metaphor structure objectifies source, receiver, and messages, which are talked of as "objects" or "substances" passed along a conduit to a receiver to be recovered. Metaphor analysis of 6 semistructured interviews with laypersons about terrorism and the media showed how the conduit metaphor structures a subjective process of reification, quantification, comparison, and judgment. This interpretation suggests that the demands of the conduit metaphor structure for the transferred message to be "invariant" and "pure" can influence relationships of trust and blame between media and public. The authors suggest that a notion of interactive communication between the media and the public should take into consideration the power of the conduit metaphor structure to shape understandings. [source]


Semanticons: Visual Metaphors as File Icons

COMPUTER GRAPHICS FORUM, Issue 3 2005
Vidya Setlur
First page of article [source]


Racial Metaphors: Interpreting Sex and AIDS in Africa

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2003
Eileen Stillwaggon
Western preconceptions regarding African sexuality distorted early research on the social context of AIDS in Africa and limited the scope of preventive policies. Key works cited repeatedly in the social science and policy literature constructed a hypersexualized pan,African culture as the main reason for the high prevalence of HIV in sub,Saharan Africa. Africans were portrayed as the social ,Other' in works marked by sweeping generalizations and innuendo, rather than useful comparative data on sexual behaviour. Although biomedical studies demonstrate the role of numerous factors that influence HIV transmission among poor people, a narrowly behavioural explanation dominated the AIDS,in,Africa discourse for over a decade and still circumscribes preventive strategies in Africa and elsewhere. [source]


Healing with Stories: Your Casebook Collection for Using Therapeutic Metaphors

DRUG AND ALCOHOL REVIEW, Issue 4 2009
Fay Edebohls
[source]