Metaphor UK
Areas of research
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John BARNDEN University of Birmingham |
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John believes that most metaphors that we encounter rely on already-known mappings, and that the respects in which they go beyond such mappings can usually be handled without creating new mappings. Instead, reasoning should be done to link those respects to the already-known mappings. He has developed and implemented a computer programme called ATT-Meta that does the requisite type of reasoning. He is also interested in looking at how artificial intelligence can deal with metonymy. He is somewhat sceptical of the domains theory of metaphor and metonymy, and of clearcut distinctions between them, preferring instead to think in terms of fuzzy categories. He is currently embarking on research into the link between metaphors and emotion, as this topic is one component of a new funded project he is involved in, concerned with on-line dramatic improvisation via computers (in collaboration with BT Exact, Hi8us Midlands and Maverick TV). Other interests include linguistic devices that signal metaphoricity, the use of metaphor for topic-shifting and closure, and (with little hope of having much time to devote to it) the role of metaphor in computer displays, diagrams and mental diagrammatic imagery. |
Selected publicationsBarnden, J.A., Glasbey, S.R., Lee, M.G.
& Wallington, A.M. (2004): ``Varieties and directions of
inter-domain influence in metaphor.'' Metaphor and
Symbol, 19(1), pp.1-30. Electronically accessible in: pdf
Barnden, J.A. & Lee, M.G. (2002): ``An artificial
intelligence approach to metaphor understanding.'' In Tomasz Komendzinski
(Ed.), ``Metaphor: A Multidisciplinary Approach,'' a special issue, Theoria et Historia
Scientiarum, 6 (1), pp.399-412. Barnden, J.A. (2001): ``Uncertainty and Conflict
Handling in the ATT-Meta Context-Based System for Metaphorical Reasoning.'' In
the proceedings of Context'01: Third International Conference on Modeling
and Using Context. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 2116. Copyright: Springer-Verlag. Electronically accessible in: postscript, pdf
Lee, M.G. & Barnden, J.A. (2001): ``Reasoning about mixed
metaphors with an implemented AI system.'' Metaphor and
Symbol, 16 (1&2), pp.29--42. (Also as Technical Report CSRP-00-11, School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, U.K., 2000.)
Barnden, J.A. (2001): ``Application of the
ATT-Meta metaphor-understanding approach to selected examples from Goatly.''
Technical Report CSRP-01-01, School of Computer Science, The
University of Birmingham, U.K., 2001. Electronically accessible in: postscript,
pdf
Barnden, J.A. & Lee, M.G. (2001): ``Understanding open-ended
usages of familiar conceptual metaphors: An approach and artificial
intelligence system.'' Technical Report CSRP-01-05, School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, U.K., 2001. Electronically accessible in: postscript, pdf
See http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~jab/ATT-Meta/Databank/
for a databank of collected real examples of metaphorical language about
mental states and processes. |
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Monika BEDNAREK University of Birmingham |
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Monika is interested in applications of cognitive linguistics to text analysis. She looks at the ways in which event construal operates in newspaper stories and how ‘tapping’ into specific conceptual metaphors contributes to the establishment of a specific construal alongside other semiotic devices. She plans to use corpus analysis to draw more generally-applicable conclusions than those made from the manual analysis and comparison of a small number of tabloid and broadsheet texts which she has undertaken so far. |
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Lynne CAMERON University of Leeds |
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Lynne is interested in metaphor in use, particularly in spoken discourse. She studies how metaphor in use relates to theories of metaphor. She thus combines cognitive linguistic and socio-cultural perspectives. She is particularly interested in the dynamics of talk, and looks at how things change through talk. She is currently studying post-conflict conciliation talk and is developing a computer program which plots metaphors in talk (AHRB funded). This throws into relief a number of interesting patterns of metaphor usage, including linguistic convergence. Work with Alice Deignan shows metaphor is often signalled in talk through ‘tuning devices’ e.g. sort of, like. Pausing also seems likely to signal metaphor. She is currently discussing with Zazie Todd a project to investigate how people conceptualise risk. |
Selected publicationsCameron, L. (2003) Metaphor in Educational Discourse. London: Continuum. Cameron L and
Deignan, A (2003) Combining large and small corpora to investigate tuning devices
around metaphor in spoken discourse. Metaphor
and Symbol, 18 (3). Cameron, L. (2002) Metaphors in the learning of science: a discourse focus. British Educational Research Journal, 28(5), 673-88. |
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Alice DEIGNAN University of Leeds |
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Alice takes a corpus-based approach to
metaphor research. She takes predictions made by conceptual metaphor theory
and investigates the extent to which they are borne out in real data. She is
interested in the relationship between metaphor and metonymy and would like
to explore Goosen’s ideas on metaphtonomy, and work back from real data in
order to re-examine the validity of domain theory. She usually combines small
and large corpora in her research, using a small corpus as a way into a
larger corpus. |
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Selected publications |
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Sheila GLASBEY University of Birmingham |
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Sheila works with metaphor in the field of artificial intelligence. She is interested in the conceptual metaphors that we use to speak about time, and the ways in which temporal metaphors contribute to the temporal structure of discourse, including how they interact with other temporal and aspectual information. She is particularly interested in the relationship between time and space. In relation to this, she is in the process of developing a piece of artificial intelligence that has no conception of space, but does have hearing and smell. She will examine how such an agent might conceptualise time, in the hope that this will shed light on the ways that humans conceptualise time partly in spatial terms. |
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Selected publications Glasbey, S. R., J.A. Barnden, M. G. Lee & A. M. Wallington (to appear). Temporal metaphors in discourse. To appear in Metaphor in Applied Linguistics, John Benjamin. Barnden,
J. A., S. R. Glasbey, M. G. Lee & A. M. Wallington (to appear). Varieties and Directions of Inter-Domain Influence in Metaphor. To
appear in Metaphor and Symbol. Glasbey, S. (2003). Let’s paint the town red for a few hours: Composition of aspect in idioms. In Proceedings of the ACL workshop The Lexicon and Figurative Language, ed. A. M. Wallington. ACL 2003, Sapporo, Japan. |
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Philip KING University of Birmingham |
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Philip works with parallel concordancing software to investigate the ways in which translators translate metaphors between European languages. He has found that translators often get the connotations of the metaphors wrong. He has also found interesting differences between languages in terms of their rhetorical style. For example, some languages, such as Greek, appear to favour informal idiomatic language less than other languages, such as English. He is interested in pursuing his research with other European partners. |
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Randal HOLME University of Durham |
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Randal Holme is looking at the applications of cognitive research into metaphor for language teaching methodology. He has looked at such issues as the use of conceptual metaphor in vocabulary building and in the teaching and use of construction grammar. He has also considered the possibility of a blend-structure model of language learning and has used the cognitivist position to criticise linguistic models of second language acquisition. His interest in literacy has led him to examine the use of metaphorical and metonymic processes in the construction of writing systems, and as these reflect general processes of sign creation. |
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Selected publications 2003 Mind, Metaphor and Language Teaching: Palgrave, Macmillan: Basingstoke and New York Forthcoming: (2004?) Literacy: an Introduction: Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2003 Grammatical Metaphor as a Cognitive Construct. In A-M. Simon-Vanderbergen, M. Taverniers, and L. Ravelli (ed.) Metaphor in Systemic Functional Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins 2003: The use of transcultural schemas in teaching the expression of cause-and-effect arguments in academic texts. In Johannes Eckerth and Michael Wendt (eds) Interkulturelles und transkulturelles Lernen Im Fremsprachenunterricht. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. 2002: Carrying the baby in the back. Teaching with an awareness of the cultural construction of language. Language Culture and Curriculum, 15: 3 Metaphor, Language Learning and Affect (2001) Humanising Language Learning 3.6, http://www.hltmag.co.uk/prev.asp With J.A. King (2000) Metaphor based techniques in the teaching of academic writing. Issues in EAP Writing Research 2. Reading: Reading University. (2000) Metaphor. In M. Byram (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning. London and New York: Routledge. |
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Almut KOESTER University of Birmingham |
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Almut is interested in functional aspects of figurative and non-literal language. She is particularly interested in when and why people tend to use this type of language. Her main source of data is informal workplace conversations. She looks at how idioms are used for summarising, evaluation, problem-solving, face-saving devices. She would like to carry out more research into how idioms can be taught to EFL students, and into the role of signalling devices for metaphor. |
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Jeannette LITTLEMORE University of Birmingham |
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Jeannette is interested in the ways in which second language learners deal with metaphor and metonymy in the target language. Her research focuses on ways in which language learners can be helped to understand and produce metaphor and metonymy appropriately. She is particularly interested in the involvement of cognitive processes in the comprehension and production of metaphor and metonymy. To date, she has focused on domain activation, mapping, semantic flexibility, associative fluency, analogical reasoning, and image formation. She is interested in the extent to which these processes are language-specific or more generally cognitive. She would like to extend her study to the investigation of the role of emotion in metaphor interpretation. She would also like to carry out bilingual corpus-research to investigate the extent to which the difficulties faced by second language can be predicted through contrastive analysis. |
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Selected publications Boers, F. and Littlemore, J. (2000). Cognitive style variables in participants’ explanations of conceptual metaphors. Metaphor and Symbol, 15, 3: 177-187. Littlemore, J. (2001). The use of metaphor by university lecturers and the problems that it causes for overseas students. Teaching in Higher Education, 6, 3: 335-351. Littlemore, J. (2001). Metaphoric competence: a possible language learning strength of students with a holistic cognitive style? TESOL Quarterly, 35, 3: 459-491. Littlemore, J. (2002).
Developing metaphor interpretation strategies for students of economics: a
case study. Les Cahiers de l’APLIUT, 22, 4: 40-60.
Boers, F. and Littlemore, J. (Eds.) (2003). Metaphor and culture in educational linguistics. Special edition of Metaphor and Symbol, 18 (4). Littlemore, J. (2003). The
effect of cultural background on metaphor interpretation. Metaphor and
Symbol 18 (4), 273-288.
Littlemore, J. (2004). Conceptual
metaphor as a vehicle for promoting critical thinking skills amongst
international students. In L. Sheldon (Ed.) Directions for the Future:
Directions in English for Academic Purposes. Oxford: Peter Lang, 43-50. Littlemore, J. (In
press). Metaphor interpretation strategies in the language classroom. Les
Cahiers de l’APLIUT. Littlemore, J. (In press). The misinterpretation of
metaphors by overseas students at Birmingham University: Examples,
implications, and possible remedies. Proceedings from Birmingham
University Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Colloquium, June
2000. Littlemore, J. (Under review). What kind of training is required to help language students use metaphor-based strategies to work out the meaning of new vocabulary? DELTA. Littlemore, J. (Under review). The relationship between associative thinking, analogical reasoning, image formation and metaphoric competence. Proceedings from conference on Metaphor in Language and Thought. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Press. Littlemore, J. and Low, G. (Under review) As pervasive as phonology: Metaphoric competence and communicative language ability. Applied Linguistics. |
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Graham LOW University of York |
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Graham is particularly interested in the detail of how writers use metaphor, alone or together with other ‘devices’, to achieve rhetorical effects. He has looked at attempts to manipulate reader-writer relations and explored the ways in which metaphor functions at transition points, finding metaphors to be multifunctional, and more spread out in written text than in spoken text. Indeed, in written text metaphor tends to be spread either side of transition points. He has recently extended his interest in personification in academic texts to animacy clusters in semi-formal science explanations and would like to explore empirically how they affect actual reader responses. He is currently trying to develop an appropriate tracking method. Graham still retains his original interest in teaching metaphor in an EFL context and is interested in finding new ways of doing this. |
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Selected publications Low, G.D. (1988). On
teaching metaphor. Applied Linguistics, 9, 2, 125-147. Low, G.D.
(1997). Celebrations and SQUID sandwiches: Figurative language and the
manipulation of academic writing. Project report. Cameron, L.
& Low, G.D. (1999). Researching & Applying Metaphor. Applied Linguistics Series. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Cameron, L & Low,
G.D. (1999). Metaphor. State of the Art survey article. Language Teaching
32, 2, 77-96. Low, G.D. (2002). Evaluating translations of surrealist
poetry: Adding Note Down protocols to close reading. Target 14(1): 1-41. Low, G.D.
(2003). Validating metaphoric models in applied linguistics. Metaphor
& Symbol 18(4): 239-254. Low,
G.D. (in press) “Explaining evolution: The use of animacy in semi-formal
science writing”, Language and Literature.
Cameron, L.
& Low, G.D. (In press) “Figurative variation in episodes of educational
talk and text”, European Journal of English Studies. Littlemore, J. and Low, G.D. (submitted) ‘As pervasive as phonology’ Metaphoric competence and communicative language ability. |
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Rosamund MOON University of Birmingham |
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Rosamund’s main research interests lie in the areas of lexis and phraseology, lexicography, and corpus linguistics. She is especially concerned with the challenge which corpus-based approaches and text-based approaches pose for traditional lexicological theory. With respect to metaphor, she is interested in the lexicographical description of metaphorical meaning; the connections between metaphor and idiom; the exploration of metaphorical patterns in written text; the etymological factor in metaphor; and the extent to which metaphorical mappings are idiolectal. Her current work in phraseology includes the contribution of corpus linguistics to an understanding of idioms and other phraseological units; and lexical signals of idioms. In the course of doing some work for Bloomsbury/Macmillan, she developed a database of conceptual metaphors, which she is keen to exploit for research purposes. |
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Selected publications 1998 Fixed Expressions and Idioms in English: A Corpus-based Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press (in press, March 2004) ‘Dictionaries
and metaphor, metaphor and dictionaries’, in H. Gottlieb et al (eds.), Symposium
on Lexicography XI:(Proceedings of the Eleventh International Symposium on
Lexicography, 2002. Niemeyer. (in press, June 2004) ‘On specifying
metaphor: an idea and its implementation’, International Journal of
Lexicography. |
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Andreas
MUSOLFF University
of Durham |
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Andreas conducts research into British and German media discourse and he is particularly interested in cross-national and intercultural uses of metaphor. He looks at international debates where metaphors are tossed to and fro between speakers, and looks at how these metaphors change over time. He has found that some metaphors transmit attitudes and ideologies by way of implicit or explicit presuppositions. In his studies, he has found that political debates framed in conceptual metaphors typically do not cover whole source domains but focus on metaphoric scenarios whose presuppositions are contested and in some cases highlighted and (re-)negotiated. In the long term, Andreas is interested in including a diachronic approach in his study of metaphor. |
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Selected publications 1993: Karl Bühler’s and Alan Gardiner’s Concepts of Metaphor in
the Context of their Theories of Speech and Language. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft 3, 255-272. 2000: Mirror Images of Europe. The imagery used in the public debate about European Politics in Britain and Germany. München: iudicium. (214 pp.) 2000b: Political Imagery of Europe: a house without exit doors? Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 21:3, 216-229. 2001a: together with Colin Good, Ruth Wittlinger, Petra Points (eds.): Attitudes towards Europe. Language in the Unification Process. Aldershot: Ashgate. (XVII + 233 pp.) 2001b: Cross-language metaphors: parents and children, love,
marriage and divorce in the European family. In: Janet Cotterill
and Anne Ife (eds.). Language across
Boundaries. (British Studies in Applied Linguistics 16). London and New
York: Continuum, 119-134. 2003a: together with Jonathan Charteris-Black: ‘Battered hero’ or
‘innocent victim’? A comparative study of metaphors for euro trading in
British and German financial reporting. English
for Special Purposes 22, 153-176. 2003b: Metaphor scenarios in political discourse in Britain and
Germany. In: Susan Geideck and Wolf-Andreas Liebert (eds.). Sinnformeln. Linguistische und soziologische Analysen von Leitbildern,
Metaphern und anderen kollektiven Orientierungsmustern. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 259-282. 2003c: Ideological functions of metaphor. In: René Dirven, Roslyn Frank and Martin Pütz (eds.). Cognitive Models in Language and Thought: Ideologies, Metaphors and Meaning. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 327-352. |
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Christina
SCHAEFFNER University
of Aston |
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Christina's main interest is in translation studies and political discourse analysis. Her research into metaphor is linked to these aspects. Specifically, she is interested in the decisions that translators had made in respect of metaphor and in the socio-political, ideological, and institutional conditions in which translators operated. In her research she has illustrated how translators handled metaphorical expressions, what effects this had for the text itself, for the text reception by the addressees, and for subsequent discursive developments across cultural and ideological barriers. She has investigated the ‘balance’ metaphor in the cold-war discourse in some depth and also metaphors in the context of European integration (e.g. common European house, core Europe).. |
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Selected
publications Schäffner,
Christina, 1996. Building a European House? Or at Two Speeds into a Dead End?
Metaphors in the Debate on the United Europe. In: Musolff, A., Schäffner, C.,
Townson, M. (Eds.), Conceiving of Europe - Diversity in Unity, Dartmouth,
Aldershot, pp. 31-59. Schäffner,
Christina, 1997 Metaphor and Interdisciplinary Analysis. Journal of Area Studies
11, 57-72. Schäffner, Christina, 1998. Metaphern.
In: Snell-Hornby, M. et al. (Eds.), Handbuch Translation, Stauffenburg,
Tübingen, pp. 280-285. SCHÄFFNER, Christina 2002 Auf der Suche
nach dem Feind - Anmerkungen zum NATO-Diskurs. In PANAGL, OSWALD and
STUERMER, HORST (eds) Politische
Konzepte und verbale Strategien. Brisante Wörter - Begriffsbilder -
Sprachbilder. Peter Lang, Frankfurt/M, SCHÄFFNER, Christina 2002 Translation, Politics, Ideology. In HELIN,
IRMELI (ed) Essays in Translation,
Pragmatics and Semiotics. (Helsinki University Translation Series
No.2), MonAKO, University of
Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, Helsinki, pp. 33-62, SCHÄFFNER, Christina 2002 Third Ways
and New Centres - Ideological unity or difference? In CALZADA PÉREZ, MARIA
(ed) Apropos of Ideology.Translation
Studies on Ideology - Ideologies in Translation Studies. St Jerome,
Manchester, pp.23-41, SCHÄFFNER, Christina (in press) Metaphor and Translation: Some implications of a cognitive approach. Journal of Pragmatics |
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Elena SEMINO University of Lancaster |
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Elena has a background in literary stylistics. She is becoming increasingly aware of the extent to which metaphorical patterns are used in novels to evoke the way a character’s mind works. She is interested in this connection between metaphor and characterisation, as it tells us a great deal about the idiosyncratic metaphorical patterns that might underlie individual world-views. The key thing that Elena is interested in is how, in fiction, we have the apparent experience of knowing what it’s like to be someone else. This connects to the explosion of research into consciousness in psychology. To what extent do literary metaphors for pain and emotion provoke cognitive simulation? Much of this phenomenon may be explained by the presence of mirror neurons, an area which Elena is keen to investigate. She is also interested in metaphors in the media, the identification of metaphor in discourse, and the use of corpora for metaphor research. |
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Selected publications Semino, E. (accepted) ‘Metaphors for
speech activity in written British English’, Metaphor and Symbol. Semino, E., Heywood, J, and Short, M. (forthcoming) ‘Methodological problems in the analysis
of a corpus of conversations about cancer’, Journal of Pragmatics. Semino, E. (2002) ‘A sturdy baby or a
derailing train? Metaphorical representations of the euro in British and
Italian newspapers’, Text , 22, 1,
107-39. Heywood, J., Semino, E. and Short, E.
(2002) ‘Linguistic metaphor identification in two extracts from novels’, Language and Literature, 11, 1, 35-54. Semino, E. and Masci, M. (1996) ‘Politics
is football: metaphor in the discourse of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy’, Discourse and Society, 7, 2, 243-269. Semino, E. and Swindlehurst, K. (1996) ‘Metaphor and Mind Style in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, Style, 30, 1, 143-166. |
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Alan WALLINGTON University of Birmingham |
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Alan takes a psycholinguistic approach to the study of metaphor. He is interested in minimising the number of mappings that are deemed necessary to understand metaphors. One thing that he is particularly interested in is the way in which certain notions cut across a range of conceptual metaphors. For example, the notion of ‘degree’ is common to both the expression ‘it’s at the back of my mind’ and ‘part of me thinks’. The notion of degree therefore cuts across both the MIND IS CONTAINER metaphor and the DIVIDED SELF conceptual metaphors. Other phenomena, such as quality and accessibility also have the capacity to cut across several conceptual metaphors. |
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Selected publications |
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Joerg ZINKEN |
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Joerg has done corpus-driven research on metaphor in public discourse, when he worked in a comparative project on metaphor in Russian and German transformation discourse. In that project, he collected around 8000 metaphor contexts for each language, described them in a database, and made quantitative and qualitative analyses of the use of source domains in both discourses. He is generally interested in developing a stronger empirical basis for claims about language and cognition made in metaphor theory. His Ph.D. theory was an argument for integrating social-cultural experience into the experiential framework of Cognitive Semantics. He is now starting research that is more explicitly aimed at scrutinising proposed metaphor universals and developing field methods for metaphor research in less documented languages. |
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Selected publications Zinken, J., Hellsten, I. & Nerlich, B. (in prep). How is
metaphorical reasoning embodied? The perspective of discourse studies. To
appear in R. Dirven, R. Frank & J. Zlatev (eds.), Body, Language, and
Mind. Vol. 2. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Zinken, J. (in print). Point of view as a category in discourse
analysis [in Polish]. In J. Bartminski (ed.), Point of view in language,
text, and utterance, Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS. Baranov, A. &
Zinken, J. (2003). The metaphorical structure of public discourse in Russia
and Germany: Perestrojka and Wende [in German]. In B. Symanzik
(ed.), Metapher, Bild und Figur. Osteuropeische Sprach- und Symbolwelten
(93-121). Hamburg: Verlag Dr Kovac. Zinken, J. (2003). Ideological Imagination. Intertextual and
correlational metaphors in political discourse. Discourse & Society
14 (4), 507-523. Zinken, J., Hellsten, I. & Nerlich, B. (2003). What is cultural about conceptual metaphors? International Journal of Communication 13 (1-2), 5-29. |