Related Subjects

Abstraction

Analogic_reasoning

Brain_Science

Cognitive_Archeology

Figures_of_Speech,_Linguistic_tropes

General Cognitive Operations or Phenomena

Hemispheric_Specialization

Literal_Meaning

Mirror_Neurons

Perceptual_Simulation

Schemas

Sensitization

Similarity

Synesthesia

 

Figures of Speech, Linguistic Tropes -- Forms of Figurative Language:

Note that these figures of speech, each of which can be considered a significant deviation from “standard” or expected word usage, would not be needed if the meanings in natural language depended entirely on the rules of syntax. But, figures of speech are needed because such a large proportion of meaning is actually based on the relationships between what is said and the context in which it is said.  Figures of speech might better be called “figures of thought.”

 

Metaphor - ideas from different knowledge domains – one usually abstract, subjective and not well understood and the other more concrete, physically experienced and better understood – are implicitly combined such that the latter is projected or mapped onto the former (e.g., "You can build up your understanding").  Cameron (2003) points out that the term “metaphor” has been used (in past centuries) much more broadly, such that it seemed to include just about all of what we now differentiate as distinct figures of speech.  To be sure, metaphors can range from extremely weak comparisons, through interesting substitutions, insightful conceptual integrations, to catachreses employing what seems like totally wrong or inappropriate word use that might turn out to be a breakthrough in understanding.  M. H. Abrams (1999, A Glossary of Literary Terms, (7th edition) Boston: Heinle & Heinle. p. 97) discusses “implicit metaphors” where the target domain is implied but not mentioned, “mixed metaphors” where the source domains of two or more metaphors used together inadvertently clash or contradict (not to be confused with multiple metaphors that complement each other), the very common but extremely powerful “personification” or “animation” where an inanimate object or abstract idea is given human or animate attributes, and “dead metaphors” that are used so often in conventional discourse that they are equivalent to literal speech (although poets or humorists might revive their figurative meaning, and Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, demonstrate the conceptual correspondence between the source domains of many so called “dead” metaphors and their targets).

Simile - metaphor but where the combining of ideas is explicit, using "like" or "as" (e.g., Attentive as a cat before the mouse hole).

Analogy - related to metaphor except that both knowledge domains may be either abstract or concrete and elements of both are explicitly linked to illustrate parallelism and argue their similarity (e.g., Plan this project as you would cook a meal – first find the recipe, then gather the the things you need...).

Metonymy - part standing for whole (e.g., "words" standing for a language or "metonymies" for cognition); sometimes literal, sometimes referential (e.g., "The boats are neatly tied" referring to a depression in the fishing industry), sometimes propositional (e.g., "She's in someone else's room now" meaning that the woman has found another lover).  Metonymy substitutes a more vivid part to stand for the whole.

Synecdoche - closely related to metonymy, where the part stands for the whole, but also where the whole may be uttered to stand for the part - e.g., someone says, "The Navy is here," when one sailor enters the room.

Idiom - ideas expressed in codified form such that the words no longer convey the meaning intended except to those familiar with the particular idiom (e.g. "It's a tough row to hoe").  Idioms are specific to a particular language and few are shared by more than one language.

Proverb - similar to idiom except that conventional beliefs are expressed (e.g., "All's well that ends well").

Irony - statement whose literal meaning is the opposite of what is intended (e.g., "I wouldn't spend a minute considering this subject").  Gibbs (2000) includes jocularity, sarcasm, hyperbole, rhetorical questions and understatement all as forms of irony, pointing out that it often is not simply stating the opposite of what is intended, but echoing things already said, reminding of a previous occurrence, or pretending to be someone else.

Hyperbole - exaggerated form of a literal statement (e.g., "Without Prozac she'd be in the nuthouse").

Understatement, litotes or meiosis - stating something or some quality to be less than literally meant (e.g., "That paranoid seems suspicious").

Oxymoron - Stating two contradictory ideas or concepts in combination (e.g., "gracious cannibal").

 

Negation - (not strictly a figure of speech) a statement where the verb is negated and the subject is excluded from a category - does not necessarily suppress the negated aspect, but instead hedges or mitigates it.

Indirect Requests - questions about conditions that might lead to a direct request (e.g., "Is there a better way to do that?" Instead of, "Do it this way.")

From the Encyclopedia Britannica:  "In European languages figures of speech are generally classified in five major categories: (1) figures of resemblance or relationship (e.g., simile, metaphor, kenning, conceit, parallelism, personification, metonymy, synecdoche, [dysphemism] and euphemism); (2) figures of emphasis or understatement (e.g., hyperbole, litotes, rhetorical question, antithesis, climax, bathos, paradox, oxymoron, and irony [pejoration, amelioration, restriction of meaning, amplification of meaning]); (3) figures of sound (e.g., alliteration, repetition, anaphora, and onomatopoeia); (4) verbal games and gymnastics (e.g., pun and anagram); and (5) errors (e.g., malapropism, periphrasis, and spoonerism).  Figures involving a change in sense, such as metaphor, simile, and irony, are called tropes."

Figures of speech in general, and metaphors in particular, are understood through simultaneous reference to the "domains" of experience that one draws upon when employing them.  As irony draws on the subject at hand and its opposite ("You may learn nothing from what I have written…), euphemism draws on the subject at hand and something less offensive (but then you must have a certain appetite…), and simile draws on the subject at hand and something like it (as I might put a feast before a dinner guest…), so metaphor draws on the subject at hand (target domain) and an entirely separate domain of experience (source domain) (taking it in is up to you").
[Alternate version: Figures of speech in general, and metaphors in particular, are understood through reference to the "domains" of experience drawn upon.  As irony draws on the subject at hand and its opposite ("Reading this may not be the stupidest thing you've ever done…), euphemism draws on the subject at hand and something less offensive (but you may not be known for prudence…), and simile draws on the subject at hand and something like it (as the donkey is not known for cleverness…), so metaphor draws on the subject at hand (target domain) and an entirely separate domain of experience (source domain) (yet he carries our burden to wherever needed").]

Figures of speech are seen as mechanisms that explain semantic changes so that words, over time, come to mean something other than they did.  This is illustrated not only by tracing the usage of certain words over decades and centuries, but also by comparing words from the same root as they come to be used in different languages (e.g., cognates or false friends).

Synesthesia:  The involuntary joining in which the real information impinging on one sense is accompanied by a perception in one or more other sense modalities, illustrated in figurative speech, such as "The colors clattered together, shattering the still atmosphere."

Literal Meaning:
Not all speech, by any means, is figurative or metaphorical. Concepts do have (sometimes quite skeletal, impoverished) literal structure.


When negotiations are solidly framed by legal guidelines, contractual language, shared professional standards and cultural expectations, we would expect substantive issues to be relatively tractable.  This is because the principal issues are literally defined matters of times, places, amounts, specific acts that are and are not to occur (how much, how soon, how often…) that can for the most part be directly and reliably sensed and objectively accounted for.  While this does not assure easy or immediate resolution of disputes, it can help significantly.

General Cognitive or Linguistic Operations or Phenomena:
Relevance Theory (start here)
Recursion
Fractals
Mental Modeling
Categorization
Framing
Jokes
Math
etc.

Schemas:

In conceptual metaphor theory, schemas (usually image schemas) are what source domains have, but target domains do not.  Source domains involve image content, which is sensory, simple, contains universal elements of human experience, is relational, active, having to do with process.  By contrast target domains are abstract, lack image content, and are dominated by nominalizations.

Analogic reasoning:
Studied in cognitive psychology to explore how analogy is used when people perform certain kinds of tasks.  Typically the first part of a problem solving task consists of examples the solution to which involves a certain strategy, then in the second part another problem amenable to the same strategy is given.  If learners successfully use analogic reasoning then they will apply the learned strategy to the second problem.  A variety of conditions seem to inhibit or facilitate this transfer of learning, especially the explicitness with which the strategy is given or actively practiced in the first part. 


This would seem related to metaphor because ostensibly this kind of analogic reasoning involves the mapping of one domain of experience (the strategy learned previously) onto another (the second problem).  It is unlike metaphor to the degree that the strategy is not well grounded in concrete or sensorimotor experience, making it an abstract pattern practiced superficially (correspondences of elements have not necessarily been achieved; generic-level structure may not correspond; it is specially constructed and not necessarily presented with the help of syntactic and semantic relationships that normally occur in discourse; social conventions that support metaphors may not be present).


It appears to me that in analogic reasoning experiments the analogies or strategies are always taught to the experimental subjects; they are not analogies that would have been learned from people's everyday experience.  This corresponds to the ways analogies might be used as practical problem solving tools (e.g., plan the construction of a garage in terms of how you would put up a Christmas tree -- first select the tree, then cut it, place it, etc., now relate each of these steps back to building the garage.)   As this relates to metaphor the question arises as to how would you teach an experimental subject the source domain of a metaphor. Normally we rely on this having occurred naturally in one's life.  I wonder if anyone has ever deliberately taught a metaphor source domain from scratch.  What we usually do is to "invoke" a metaphor, reminding a person of the source domain using figurative language, etc., and depending on their previously having learned the source domain from extensive, repetitive experience.

Sensitization:
This topic derives from experimental psychology where pretests or preliminary procedures are sometimes found to bias subjects with regard to the experimental condition under study, that is, that subjects are primed to respond in certain ways.  But this effect can be used deliberately also in order to amplify and make more measurable certain possible differences between subjects.  For example, to test for the existence of metaphorical mapping, diagrams could be presented to the experimental group that actively illustrate a mapping, and neutral diagrams given to the control group. When sentences are presented in which the mapping aids interpretation, we would expect the group primed with the active diagram to interpret the sentences microseconds faster.


This paradigm might be modified for use where it was desired to sensitize or prime clients to use metaphors an interlocutor might introduce. For example, drawings or stories might casually be shown that show mappings in one (e.g., visual) modality, and then the interlocutor could introduce metaphors later (aurally) and expect mapping to be more readily achieved.

Similarity:  As in Metaphors work by transfer between different contexts on the basis of similarities.  Conceptual metaphor theory and blending theory speak of constraints on what will be projected based on similarities and differences among the [source and target domain] spaces (Grady,Oakley, & Coulson, 1999).  [much to be added to this]

 

Abstraction: (See discussion of concepts and categories in Main Menu, quoted in part as follows.)

Super-ordinate, basic level, and subordinate categories define conceptual categories in terms of levels of abstraction.  Lakoff and Johnson (1999) give the examples of "vehicles, cars, sports cars" and "furniture, chair, recliner" where the first example is super-ordinate, the second is basic, and the third as subordinate. The middle or second level, called "basic level" is of particular importance because it is the highest level at which a general shape or image accounts for all or most all of the members of the category.  (This would seem to link perception with conception such as to violate traditional theories of faculty psychology, that group mental capabilities as modular faculties, and suggest that perception and conception are actually based on the same processes, having much in common with motor control also.)

 

What is this an example of?  "What" is at a higher level of abstraction than "this."  I wonder to what extent abstraction is metaphorically understood, such as Abstract is Concrete Seen In A Coherent Group or Abstract is Concrete Viewed In Its Context From Above.

 

What are all the different ways that "abstraction" is conceived?  

Miriam Webster:  (1) disassociated from any particular instance; insufficiently factual; (2) expressing a quality apart from an object; (3) theoretical, speculative, hypothetical, detached, not applicable; (4) having only intrinsic form, with no pictorial representation or narrative content; (5) summary; (6) removed, separated.

 

A Platonist view would distinguish between objects that are in space and time and those that are not, with the latter being abstract and former concrete.  Compared to that might be a conceptualist view that recognizes mental objects as existing in a concrete sense and that they may or may not accurately refer to concrete objects.  Finally, a nominalist view recognizes words, language, etc. as having their concrete existence as writing, sounds, etc.  On any of these views we could recognize that symbolic representations in brains, minds, or media (no matter what they may symbolize) are not abstract, but that their referents may be.  For example, words or concept names might be considered more abstract than what they represent, but those words or concepts may be considered concrete in a conceptualist or nominalist sense.

 

Some theorists (e.g., Glucksberg) regard metaphor as transferring attributes of an abstract (source) category to a specific case (target) (e.g., the doctor is a butcher, attributes of butchers would be transferred to that doctor; interestingly a conceptual metaphor account would regard the source as concrete and target as abstract, in this example, the abstract nature or style of the doctor is metaphorically understood as the concrete behavior of a butcher [I think Glucksberg or Quinn would regard this as an example of shared cultural understanding, not embodiment).

The conceptualist view seems most likely to be what will serve us best when considering abstraction in the context of metaphors.  Most often want the term to indicate how we use clusters of attributes to talk about classes of objects or events; and how we further abstract and then cross-classify...

 

[from Exercises] Basic semantic categories are metaphorical [could be learned/taught recursively]: Categories are Containers; Levels of Abstraction in Categories are Levels of Concentric Containers; Linear Scales are Paths; Quantity is Up-Down; Concepts are Objects; Properties of Objects are Possessions of those Objects; also Concepts are Locations; Similarity is Proximity; Similar Concepts are Concepts Located Close to Each Other.


Brain Science:  Mental capacities found linked to angular gyrus (lesions on which are reported to render a patient singularly literal minded -- see info on Asperger's Syndrome; Sampson; Dooley, V. S. Ramachandran): ability to see whole picture, to understand several possible meanings based on assumed context, indirect speech, humor, ability to understand and take part in social relations, understand risk, anticipate pleasure and pain.

 

Perceptual Simulation:

Lawrence Barsalou has theorized and marshaled the evidence for a comprehensive theory in cognitive psychology that situates concepts in their experiential context.  He argues that people represent concepts with perceptual simulations.  Gibbs (RAAMV proceedings) suggests, with reference to Barsalou, that metaphor is understood when we implicitly simulate the actions that the source domain of a metaphor describes.

Mirror Neurons:

V. S. Ramachandran describes Rizzollati's recent discovery of this particular kind of neuron in monkeys as a key to exploration of language and cognition in humans.  Mirror neurons are said to be organized and to operate just as do motor neurons but without producing motor activity.  This may be the mechanism for what Gibbs suggests to be the understanding of metaphor via simulation.

 

Hemispheric Specialization: 
Robert Ornstein (The Right Mind: Making Sense of the Hemispheres. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co. 1997) summarizes work on right and left cortical hemispheres that encompasses tens of thousands of studies since the 1960s and 70s when Sperry and others cut the corpus callosum of severely epileptic patients and observed the results.  Current interpretations - much more nuanced than some of the original ones - find the hemispheres always working in a coordinated fashion with the left "quickly selecting a specific meaning" for words, while the right "has the ability to hold lots of different meanings of a word available for use." (p. 108) "...the right hemisphere seems [to maintain] the alternative meanings of ambiguous words in immediate memory... [and this] underlies the complexity of our normal metaphoric speech, as well as our jokes... while the left... [focuses] on only one meaning." (p. 110)


I find this relevant because we often detect metaphor in people's incongruous use of words; it would seem, then, that the right hemisphere's ability to hold different meanings available in memory may be key not only in speech but also in our metaphoric thinking.


This does not localize metaphoric thinking to the right hemisphere. Rather it indicates how the hemispheres may coordinate the mapping process from a source domain to a target domain. The right hemispheres memory of multiple meanings may be interpreted as multiple possible source domains; the choice among them results from criteria of "aptness" or relevance to the existing context; then metaphoric meanings from the right hemisphere are mapped to the specific situation. The specific situation is probably not localized to the left hemisphere. Perhaps all of this goes on in the right. Once the most apt meaning is selected, this is taken by the left hemisphere as the singular meaning and its logical implications, sequences, etc. are worked out. 


Ornstein's summaries emphasize that alternating or simultaneous work in both hemispheres would appear to offer the richest results. He also reminds us that left-hemisphere damaged individuals have difficulty selecting (or focusing) on any single meaning among many possible ones, while right-hemisphere damaged people are mostly literal and seem unable to access multiple possible (including metaphoric) meanings of words and pictures.


The discussions in the hemispheric specialization literature lump together metaphor, jokes, context, getting the gist (seeing the large or overall view, getting the point), putting together multiple sensory inputs, interpreting tone and complexes of visual features, and multiple meanings.

Cognitive Archeology and the Origin of Metaphor and Human Culture:
Neanderthal's surviving artifacts suggest an inability to map logic and inferences from one domain to another. Only Homo Sapiens had such things as burial rites, decoration, imagined person as animal (anthropomorphism).  Steven Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind 1996, Thames & Hudson:  The contemporary mind has resulted from three phases spanning a cross section of evolutionary time. Each phase denotes a response to the adaptive demands facing our ancestors and Natural Selection is to be regarded as the overseeing architect: 


"Phase 1. Minds dominated by a domain of general intelligence - a suite of general purpose learning and decision-making rules. 
Phase 2. Minds in which general intelligence has been supplemented by multiple specialized intelligences, each devoted to a specific domain of behaviour, and each working in isolation from the others. 
Phase 3. Minds in which the multiple specialized intelligences appear to be working together, with a flow of knowledge and ideas between behavioural domains." (p. 64) 


"The first (phase) is paralleled by the domain-general learning processes identified as critical to the very young infant; the second parallels the modularization of the mind with domain specific-thought and knowledge; and the third parallels what Karmiloff-Smith describes as 'representational redescription' and Carey and Spelke describe as 'mapping across domains' - when knowledge becomes available for use in multiple domains of activity." (p.64).