Jeannette Littlemore

The communicative effectiveness of different types of communication strategy

This study examines compensation strategies (techniques for dealing with knowledge gaps between learner and interlocutor), relates them to synoptic and ectenic learning (Ehrman and Leaver, 2002, 2003), and suggests reasons for the fact that ectenic learners, who need conscious control of what they are learning, seemed to communicate meanings of words to judges better than the synoptics, who feel freer to rely on their intuition and pre-conscious processing, but also tend to use more novel and therefore less readily comprehensible figures of speech. The subjects were French learners of English.

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.

How Basic Is “UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING” When Reasoning About Knowledge? Asymmetric Uses of Sight Metaphors in Office Hours Consultations in English as Academic Lingua Franca

Twenty-seven semi-guided conversations between lecturers and Spanish-speaking undergraduate students were recorded at five different universities in Europe where English is the medium of instruction. Examination of the metaphorical language used in these conversations revealed that SIGHT plays an important role in academic mentoring in English. Lecturers often frame their advice to undergraduate students in terms of what has been called “UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING,” on the face of it a somewhat unsurprising finding. If one takes it that the correlation between mental and visual activity is somehow “primary” (Grady, 1997; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Sweetser, 1991) then this way of reasoning about learning and knowledge should be common ground in conversations between English- and Spanish-speaking interlocutors. However, we found no such alignment between the two groups of participants in an academic setting. The Spanish speakers not only used words and terms associated with vision significantly less frequently than their English-speaking interlocutors, but also with different meanings. We explore these quantitative and qualitative differences in metaphorical uses of three of the terms used by all participants to talk about learning—see, look and focus—and conclude that, although the “UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING” mapping might be available as a way of reasoning about learning and knowledge to people from different cultures, discourse practices influences how salient it is for different groups of speakers. In this regard, it appears to be culturally salient for English-speaking academics, but not necessarily so for speakers of other languages.

What makes a good metaphor? A cross-cultural study of computer-generated metaphor appreciation

ABSTRACT Computers are now able to automatically generate metaphors, but some automatically generated metaphors are more well received than others. In this article, we showed participants a series of “A is B” type metaphors that were either generated by humans or taken from the Twitter account “MetaphorIsMyBusiness” (@MetaphorMagnet), which is linked to a fully automated metaphor generator. We used these metaphors to assess linguistic factors that drive metaphor appreciation and understanding, including the role of novelty, word frequency, concreteness, and emotional valence of the topic and vehicle terms. We additionally assessed how these metaphors were understood in three languages, including English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese, and whether participants thought they had been generated by a human or a computer. We found that meaningfulness, appreciation, speed in finding meaning, and humanness ratings were reliably correlated with each other in all three languages, which we interpret to indicate a more general property of “metaphor quality.” We furthermore found that in all three languages, conventional metaphors and those that contained an “optimal” (intermediate) degree of novelty were more likely to be perceived to be of higher quality than those that were extremely creative. Further analysis of the English data alone revealed that those metaphors that contained negatively valenced vehicle words and infrequent vehicle terms (in comparison with the topic terms) were more likely to be considered high-quality metaphors. We discuss the implications of these findings for the (improvement of) automatic generation of metaphor by computers, for the persuasive function of metaphor, and for theories of metaphor understanding more generally.

Eyelashes, Speedometers or Breasts? An Experimental Cross-cultural Approach to Multimodal Metaphor and Metonymy in Advertising

Metaphor and metonymy are key tools in communication, particularly when abstract ideas or emotions are discussed. While a number of studies have explored the role played by metaphor and metonymy in language and images, and at the ways in which they are understood, few studies have investigated the combination of metaphor and metonymy in the multimodal context of advertising, where they play a key role. Our study investigates the nature of figurative complexity (i.e. the ways in which metaphor and metonymy combine) in advertisements containing both words and images, and explores the relationship between figurative complexity and comprehension, accuracy of interpretation and advertising effectiveness. Through a mixed-methods approach of lab experiments and qualitative inquiry we assess the speed and depth of comprehension, the perceived appeal, and the physiological effect of advertisements on participants from three linguistic and cultural backgrounds (English, Spanish, and Chinese). We also explore variation in the types of interpretations provided by participants with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

On the Role of Embodied Cognition in the Understanding and Use of Metonymy

The majority of the chapters in this book focus on the symbiotic relationship between embodied cognition and metaphor. In contrast, this chapter focuses on the relationship between embodied cognition and metonymy. It argues that metonymy is also embodied, but in a different way, and that the social, environmental, dynamic and developmental aspects of embodied cognition can be expected to play an important role in shaping metonymic meaning. It is suggested that the relative transparency of the role played by embodied cognition in metonymy creation is influenced by the presence of movement and emotion, with increases in the amount of movement and emotion leading to increases in the transparency of embodied cognition. Following Deignan, Littlemore and Semino (2013), it is also suggested that the transparency of the role played by embodied cognition is affected by features of the genre (communicative purpose, staging and discourse community membership) and the register (field, tenor and mode).

More about Spinsters and their Cats: Encyclopaedic Knowledge and Second Language Learning

We saw in Chapter 1 that the words bachelor and spinster mean much more than ‘unmarried man’ and ‘unmarried woman’. The word bachelor connotes ideas of freedom and licentious behaviour, whereas the word spinster for many people connotes ideas of old age, loneliness, lack of desirability (and possibly the possession of lots of cats). These connotations are arguably as much part of the ‘meaning’ that these words have for a given individual as the state of celibacy, and thus reflect a person’s encyclopaedic knowledge. Encyclopaedic knowledge refers to all the information we store in our minds, which, according to Evans and Green (2006: 206) constitutes ‘a large inventory of structured knowledge’. Different areas of this inventory are triggered by the use of different words and phrases. The content of this inventory extends well beyond denotative information, and includes all the connotations that have come to be associated with those words and expressions, over the period during which we have been exposed to them. Thus ‘linguistic knowledge’ cannot be seen as being separate from ‘world’ knowledge, and ‘semantic’ knowledge cannot be seen as being separate from ‘pragmatic’ knowledge’ (ibid.). Encyclopaedic knowledge is made up of a complex network of links between ideas.

‘I see less of the surroundings. The story feels different’: Construal and Second Language Learning

We saw in Chapter 1 that a key claim in cognitive linguistics is that the words we use to talk about a particular phenomenon can never reflect a purely objective view of that phenomenon, because pure objectivity does not exist. In this way, language reflects general cognition. When we observe a particular scene or event, we always observe it from a particular perspective. Some aspects of the scene will be more noticeable than others, either because of the position from which we are viewing it, or because we are perhaps more interested in those aspects. Language also provides different ways of directing attention to certain aspects of the thing that we are talking about, and reflects different viewpoints. In cognitive linguistics, this phenomenon is referred to as construal. The most salient aspect of the scene is referred to as the figure, and the rest of the scene is referred to as the ground. Construal is defined by Evans and Green (2006: 536) as: the way a speaker chooses to ‘package’ and ‘present’ a conceptual representation, which in turn has consequences for the conceptual representation that the utterance evokes in the mind of the hearer.

‘You’ll find Jane Austen in the basement’ … or will you? Metonymy and Second Language Learning

Recently, I had a conversation with a postgraduate student from Singapore who had a part-time job at the university nursery. She told me that when she first began working at the nursery she had been puzzled by the expression ‘s/he’s got a loose nappy’, which was used frequently by the nursery staff to talk about one of the babies. Whenever she heard this, she duly checked that the baby’s nappy was fitted correctly. It was only after a few days in the nursery that she realised the expression did not actually mean that the nappy was literally loose, but meant, in fact, that the nappy needed changing. It was not the nappy itself that was loose, but the bowels of the baby in question (Tang, 2007). What she had not understood was that the expression ‘loose nappy’ was not being used literally, but metonymically.

‘Loud suits’ and ‘sharp cheese’: Motivated Language and Second Language Learning

One of the things that all humans do when faced with new input of any kind, is to search for meaning. Although recent approaches to language teaching, such as the lexical approach (LA), have emphasized the arbitrary nature of language, work in cognitive linguistics has shown that many aspects of language are in fact meaningful or motivated. Cognitive linguists use the term ‘motivated’ in a different way from mainstream applied linguists. In applied linguistics, the term is usually used to refer to keen and enthusiastic learners, whereas in cognitive linguistics, the term is applied to the language itself; it is used to refer to the fact that some aspects of language are not arbitrary and that there are sometimes reasons why we say things the way we do. For instance, as we have already seen in Chapter 7, some form-meaning connections are not as arbitrary as people claim, especially if we are aware of the types of processes (such as metaphor, metonymy and embodied cognition) that link form and meaning in language. Using these findings, teachers can explain, in theory, to their students why it is that certain expressions mean certain things, instead of simply telling them ‘that’s just the way it is’ and expecting them to learn expressions by heart. This engages learners in a search for meaning, which is likely to involve deeper cognitive processing which, according to Craik and Lockhart (1982), leads to deeper learning and longer retention.