Lynne Cameron

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.

The Discourse Dynamics Approach to Metaphor and Metaphor-Led Discourse Analysis

The use of metaphor as a tool to uncover peoples ideas, attitudes, and values through analysis of discourse is demonstrated and illustrated with data collected in a social science research project. A “discourse dynamics” approach to metaphor situated within a complexity/dynamic systems perspective is developed. This approach is turned into a method of “metaphor-led discourse analysis” which is described in detail, using a focus group discussion to illustrate the procedure: transcription, metaphor identification, coding metaphors and using software, and finding patterns of metaphor use from coded data. The reasoning that justifies decisions at each stage of the procedure is made explicit so that the trustworthiness of the method can be maximized. The method of metaphor-led discourse analysis has been developed through a series of empirical projects to be accessible and relevant to social science researchers as well as to metaphor scholars.

Measuring vocabulary size in English as an additional language

The paper reports findings from a study in two stages to trial tests of vocabulary size in English as an additional language (EAL). The first, pilot, stage trialled the Levels test (Nation, 1990) and the Yes/No test (Meara, 1992) with secondary students aged 15 years, with an average of 11 years of education in the target language. The Levels test was found more useful, mainly because the inclusion of non-words in the Yes/No test produced unreliable results. In the second stage, the Levels test was used with students aged 13 and 14 years, 63 students for whom English was an additional language, and 84 monolingual English speakers. The results of the tests show a different profile of scores for EAL than occur in typical EFL contexts. EAL students, who have had on average 10.5 years in English medium education, show gaps in their knowledge of the most frequent words and more serious problems with less frequent words, with important implications for educational achievement. Comparison of mean scores of EAL students and their native speaker peers using t-tests reveal significant differences at 3K and 5K levels. The study shows that the Levels test offers a useful research and pedagogic tool in additional language learning contexts, yielding an overall picture of receptive vocabulary learning across groups. The test also produces information about individual language development that may help teaching. Implications include the need for further research into the effects of learning environments on language development, andvthe need for skilled intervention in additional language development to continue throughout secondary schooling.

Metaphors in the Learning of Science: A discourse focus

Childrens interpretations of metaphors used in a science text and their teachers use of explanatory metaphor are analysed and compared to identify key processes in metaphor understanding and to suggest factors that contribute to successful use of metaphor in learning science. The research adopts a Vygotskian socio-cognitive approach to metaphor in discourse. Participants are children in Years 5 and 6, aged around 10 years, and their teacher, in a UK school. The data include think-aloud protocols and teacher-led classroom discourse, analysed for metaphor processing. Sample episodes from the data are used to illustrate how conceptual knowledge is used to interpret metaphor, and how the learning potential of metaphor may be rendered ineffective by interpretation problems or by the choice of metaphor. The mediation of metaphor by a skilled teacher reveals strategies for avoiding such problems and maximising the impact of metaphor on the learning of the formalised concepts of science.

Metaphor and Reconciliation: The Discourse Dynamics of Empathy in Post-Conflict Conversations

Sixteen years after her father was killed by an IRA bomb, Jo Berry had her first conversation with the man responsible. She had made a long journey, ‘walking the footsteps of the bombers’ as she put it, determined not to give in to anger and revenge but to try to understand his motivations and perspective. Her preparedness to meet Pat Magee opened up a path to empathy that developed through their conversations over the following years. This book studies their growing understandings of each other by focusing on the rich networks of metaphors that appear in their conversations, and how these evolve in the process of reconciliation. The innovative research method, reported in a rigorous but accessible style, together with the rich and often poignant data, make this book a compelling read. In uncovering the development of empathy between these two extraordinary people, it illuminates the moral necessity, and the potential rewards, of persevering in trying to imagine the world and mind of the Other, however challenging we find that to be. Implications are drawn for how mediators in reconciliation contexts might make positive use of metaphor in supporting the dynamics of empathy.

Figurative variation in episodes of educational talk and text

Compares on the use of metaphor in classroom discussion and literature. Parameters of variation in metaphor use; Types of metaphor variation; Significance of the teachers knowledge on readers to the metaphor use of teachers in developing explanations.

Intonation units in spoken interaction: Developing transcription skills

Abstract This paper describes the transcription process and the development of transcription skills in a research project using recorded spoken interaction as its main data. The spoken data was transcribed using intonation units, and the paper traces the development of the first authors skills in identifying such intonation units. Intertranscriber checks of transcription, involving three researchers, were used to highlight ways in which the identification of intonation units could be improved. Subsequent re-transcription of the data highlighted stretches of talk that included many hesitations, false starts, and speech used to regulate ongoing spoken interaction. These features were linked to low levels of intertranscriber agreement. It is argued that the existing literature on intonation units does not address how to best deal with this quality of spontaneous spoken interaction. The paper concludes with an agenda that may be used to improve the quality of transcription in similar research projects, and to develop the transcription skills of the researchers that are responsible for transcription.

Open hearts or smoke and mirrors: metaphorical framing and frame conflicts in a public meeting

The concept of framing has been widely used to help understand how aspects of messages can shape people’s expectations and consequently influence the outcomes of communicative interactions. In this study we examine transcripts of a contentious and ultimately unsuccessful public meeting between police officials and members of the African American community following the fatal shooting of a young African American woman by police officers. We show how contradictory framing between public officials and members of the community as well as within each group may have contributed to unintended and asymmetrical ironies, and ultimately to the failure of the meeting to achieve the objectives of either group. We suggest steps that might lead to better outcomes in similar situations in the future.

Applied-linguistic comments on metaphor identification:

This short article has three aims, which are inevitably intertwined. The first is to examine the main implications for applied linguistics of Steen’s (1999) five-step metaphor identification and specification procedure. The second is to pick up important points made by the authors of the four core articles in this collection. The third is to indicate specific topics which rely on identification that need more research. As applied linguists, we are concerned to increase our understanding of how language is used in real discourse contexts. A central motivation for many applied linguists is to improve the teaching and learning of languages, but other, nonpedagogic, motivations require investigation of specialist uses of language, related to particular groupings of people (e.g. lawyers) or genres (e.g. research reports, literature). In taking naturally occurring discourse as the site and substance of our research, our applied linguistic approach overlaps with that of the contributors to this special issue. As will become clear, a key difference lies in our reluctance to jettison surface language features as ‘noise’ (Steen, 2002).

A Re-examination of UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING

Abstract Cognitive metaphor theorists have identified a number of mappings that, it has been claimed, are both central to thinking and productive of linguistic metaphors. One of these is UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING. In this article, we re-examine UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING using two sources of naturally occurring data. Our first source is the Oxford English Corpus: a two-billion-word corpus of authentic contemporary English texts, from which we extracted a 1,000-citation concordance of the lemma SEE. We analyzed this into major sense groups and identified the most frequent lexico-grammatical patterns. Our second source of data is transcribed spoken English from focus-group discussions. We analyzed this dataset, using detailed discourse analysis, to identify the meanings of SEE and its most frequent phraseologies. Both analyses lead us to conclude that SEE is, indeed, used to talk about understanding, as claimed by Conceptual Metaphor theorists, but that the metaphor usually describes difficulties with understanding another speaker’s point of view or, more generally, the process of reaching an understanding: that is, it is used to talk about understanding or not understanding as processes, not states. Our findings are consistent with the construal of language and thought as a dynamic system.