Elena Semino

MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse

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.

Corpus stylistics : speech, writing and thought presentation in a corpus of English writing

This book represents a new direction at the interface between the fields of stylistics and corpus linguistics, namely the use of a corpus methodology to investigate the ways in which peoples words and thoughts are presented in written narratives. A 260,000 word electronic corpus of late 20th century written texts, including fiction, news reports and (auto)biographies is analysed by the authors, providing a detailed account of new theoretical insights, comparisons between different text types and detailed accounts of individual texts.

Politics is football : metaphor in the discourse of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy.

In this paper we examine the use of a set of recurring metaphors in the discourse of Silvio Berlusconi, the media tycoon who became Italys Prime Minister in 1994. We focus specifically on metaphors drawn from the source domains of football, war and the Bible. Drawing on the cognitive theory of metaphor proposed in Lakoff and Johnson (1980), we consider the possible effects that each metaphorical connection may have on Berlusconis audience in the specific political and cultural context within which he operates. We argue that Berlusconi adopts different metaphors in an attempt to alter the way in which Italians relate to politics, to create a positive public image for himself and his new political party and to attract particular sections of the electorate. We conclude that metaphor is an essential part of a new type of populist and heterogeneous political discourse that Berlusconi has introduced in Italian politics.

Revisiting the notion of faithfulness in discourse presentation using a corpus approach

A number of recent studies have argued that the notion of faithfulness to an original should be abandoned in models of discourse presentation, and particularly in accounts of direct speech presentation. This has coincided with a shift of attention in the study of discourse presentation from written to spoken data. This article discusses the arguments that have been made against the notion of faithfulness, and proposes a context-sensitive account of this notion, and of its relation to the various clines of discourse presentation and their categories. Our account is prompted partly by the results of a corpus-based approach to the study of discourse presentation, and partly by a qualitative analysis of a set of newspaper articles on a particular news story from outside this corpus, which we undertook to provide a check on the conclusions we had reached from our corpus study. We believe that if a general account of discourse presentation is to be reached, similarities and differences across a wide range of texts and text types need to be examined. Our corpus work, which involves careful and systematic comparison of a balanced set of written fictional, news and (auto)biographical narratives, is offered as a contribution to the general account referred to above. We also believe that if such a general account or theory is to be reached, scholars will need a clearer and more consistent application of the various descriptive terms which have been used in this area of study during the 20th century, in particular (a) ‘discourse’, (b) ‘speech’, ‘thought’ and ‘writing’ and (c) ‘report’, ‘presentation’ and ‘representation’.

Descriptions of Pain, Metaphor, and Embodied Simulation

The variety of sensations conveyed by the English word pain tend to be described via expressions that refer to potential causes of bodily damage (e.g., stabbing, burning). Such expressions are used metaphorically when they convey pain experiences that do not directly result from physical damage (e.g., migraine pain). In this paper, I discuss psycholinguistic and neuroscientific research that suggests that these uses of metaphor may facilitate some form of embodied simulation of pain experiences on the part of listeners/readers, which may in turn provide the basis for an empathic response. I suggest that different kinds of metaphorical descriptions of pain vary in terms of their potential for eliciting a response involving embodied simulation, and in terms of the nature and intensity of the simulation they may elicit. I argue that the most relevant characteristics of metaphorical descriptions of pain in this respect are their level of detail, degree of creativity, and textual complexity.

Linguistic metaphor identification in two extracts from novels

This article examines a series of issues involved in identifying metaphors in texts. Metaphor identification is, in turn, a fundamental part of the more complex issue of how to relate linguistic metaphors in texts to the conceptual metaphors of cognitive metaphor theory. In section 1 we list a number of general issues involved in metaphor identification. In sections 2 and 3 we examine two short fictional extracts from novels written in the 1990s (one from popular fiction and one from serious fiction), relating our detailed analyses to the general questions raised at the beginning of the article. We thus raise and exemplify a series of issues which do not have easy resolutions but which must be grasped (a) if a corpus-based approach to metaphor is to become a reality and (b) if the relations between conceptual and linguistic metaphors are to be fully understood. Interestingly, this attempt to be extremely detailed and systematic in turn leads us to comment on differences in aesthetic effects between the use of metaphors in the two extracts examined.

Metaphor, Genre, and Recontextualization

Earlier studies have demonstrated the dynamic properties of metaphor by showing how the meanings and functions of metaphorical expressions can flexibly change and develop within individual texts or discourse events (Cameron, 2011). In this article, we draw from Linells (2009) typology of “recontextualization” in order to analyze the development of particular metaphors in three pairs of linked texts, each produced over a number of years, on the topics of medicine, politics and the parenting of children with special needs. We show how key metaphorical expressions from earlier texts or conversations are re-used by later writers, in different genres and registers, to convey new meanings and serve new functions. We account for these new meanings and functions by considering the relevant domain of activity and the differences between the original context of use and the context(s) in which the metaphor is re-used. Our study contributes, from a diachronic perspective, to the growing body of literature that recognizes the dynamic and context-bound nature of metaphorical language.

The online use of Violence and Journey metaphors by patients with cancer, as compared with health professionals: a mixed methods study

Objective To compare the frequencies with which patients with cancer and health professionals use Violence and Journey metaphors when writing online; and to investigate the use of these metaphors by patients with cancer, in view of critiques of war-related metaphors for cancer and the adoption of the notion of the ‘cancer journey’ in UK policy documents. Design Computer-assisted quantitative and qualitative study of two data sets totalling 753 302 words. Setting A UK-based online forum for patients with cancer (500 134 words) and a UK-based website for health professionals (253 168 words). Participants 56 patients with cancer writing online between 2007 and 2012; and 307 health professionals writing online between 2008 and 2013. Results Patients with cancer use both Violence metaphors and Journey metaphors approximately 1.5 times per 1000 words to describe their illness experience. In similar online writing, health professionals use each type of metaphor significantly less frequently. Patients’ Violence metaphors can express and reinforce negative feelings, but they can also be used in empowering ways. Journey metaphors can express and reinforce positive feelings, but can also be used in disempowering ways. Conclusions Violence metaphors are not by default negative and Journey metaphors are not by default a positive means of conceptualising cancer. A blanket rejection of Violence metaphors and an uncritical promotion of Journey metaphors would deprive patients of the positive functions of the former and ignore the potential pitfalls of the latter. Instead, greater awareness of the function (empowering or disempowering) of patients’ metaphor use can lead to more effective communication about the experience of cancer.

Using a corpus to test a model of speech and thought presentation

This paper reports on a text-based empirical project aimed at testing and refining Leech and Shorts (1981) model of speech and thought presentation. A balanced British English corpus consisting of twentieth-century prose fiction and contemporary press stories was tagged using Leech and Shorts categories of speech and thought presentation as a starting point. The tagging of the corpus led to the introduction of two new categories (the narrators report of voice and the narration of internal states), and a number of sub-types of existing categories. We define and exemplify the new categories and sub-categories, indicate their frequencies in our data, and explore their effects in different text-types. We also discuss the coding difficulties posed by anibiguities and overlaps between categories, and consider the implications of such problems and other factors for the claim that the boundaries between speech and thought presentation categories are clinal in nature. Although our research reveals a wealth of evidence to support the idea that the speech and thought presentation scale is a cline rather than a series of discrete categories, it also suggests that some category boundaries (especially those at the direct/free indirect boundary) are less clinal than others.

Blending and characters' mental functioning in Virginia Woolf's Lappin and Lapinova.

In this article I apply Fauconnier and Turners (2002) theory of conceptual integration, or blending, to the analysis of a central aspect of the main characters’ mental lives in Virginia Woolfs story ‘Lappin and Lapinova’. The female protagonist of the story, Rosalind, has difficulties adjusting to her role as the new wife of Ernest Thorburn, and therefore constructs an alternative fantasy world where Ernest is a rabbit king called Lappin. At the beginning of their married life, Rosalind and Ernest develop this fantasy world together, and add to it a counterpart for Rosalind herself – a hare called Queen Lapinova. With the passing of time, Ernest loses interest in the fantasy, but Rosalind becomes increasingly dependent on it, so that Ernests announcement of Lapinovas death at the end of the story also results in the ‘end’ of their marriage. In my analysis, I show how the ‘rabbit’ fantasy world can be described in terms of what Fauconnier and Turner (2002) call a conceptual integration network: a dynamic construct resulting from the interaction of different mental spaces and involving the creation of a blended space with ‘emergent structure’ of its own. In order to account for the different roles that the blended space plays for Rosalind as opposed to Ernest, I adopt Palmers (2004) distinction between ‘intramental’ and ‘intermental’ functioning. I therefore describe the fantasy world as a multiple blend that begins as an intramental construct, develops into an intermental construct, and ends as a largely intramental construct once again, with serious implications for Rosalinds sanity and the relationship between the two main characters in the story.