Reviewing imagery in resemblance and non-resemblance metaphors

Abstract

This article analyses the nature of mental imagery in metaphoric thought as envisaged by the contemporary theory of metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics (Lako¤ 1993). Our study of metaphor in the field of marine biology draws on two crucial aspects of mental imagery, namely dynamicity and pervasiveness. Image metaphors and behaviour-based metaphors have generally been regarded as two di¤erent types of resemblance metaphor. In our view, the dynamicity of certain mental images highlights inherent similarities between these two types of metaphor, and makes the di¤erences between them more apparent than real. For this reason, we propose a more refined description of resemblance metaphors in terms of the static or dynamic nature of the mental images underlying them. Our study also underlines the fact that mental images permeate all classes of metaphor, and that the pervasiveness and dynamicity of mental images a¤ords insights into both resemblance metaphors and non-resemblance metaphors.

A case study of building and animal metaphors in specialized discourse: Are scholars’ metaphorical conceptualizations represented in discourse?

“…They reveal conceptual associations that are no longer perceived as such by specialists, but can be interpreted as novel metaphors by the non-specialist audience. Even though general discourse may show different patterns of language use in its metaphor themes, as opposed to specialized discourse, research by Ureña and Faber (2010) has revealed that certain conceptual metaphors are especially productive in generating metaphorical terms, which in general are notably frequent.…”

Proceedings of the 12th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications

“…Then, we perform an exploratory analysis to investigate how four psycholinguistic variables -age of acquisition (AoA), familiarity, concreteness, and imageability -, previously linked to metaphor comprehension (see, for instance, (Paivio et al, 1968;Paivio and Walsh, 1993;Gibbs, 2006;Ureña and Faber, 2010)) and also used in simplification models (e.g. (Cross- Jauhar and Specia, 2012;Crossley et al, 2012;), behave across simplification categories.…”

Running Rabbits and Shoulder Markings: Metaphorical Terms in Aviation English

“…they can be equally abstract or concrete (Stanojević, 2009, p. 348). Ureña and Faber (2010) found that Grady's distinction between correlation and resemblance metaphors, as well as Lakoff's (1993) between conceptualstructural/conventional and image metaphors is lacking when it comes to the description of metaphors the basis of which is mental imagery. They propose a classification into resemblance and non-resemblance metaphors, with resemblance metaphors further divided into static and dynamic.…”

“…The terms wing and the tail of the aircraft evoke more dynamic images, and the resemblance with a bird is not merely based on shape, but also on behavior and function. The metaphor AIRCRAFT IS A BIRD is thus a dynamic resemblance metaphor according to the classification by Ureña and Faber (2010), both a behavior-based and function-based metaphor. The aircraft acts as a bird because it can fly, and the aircraft's wings and the tail have the function of generating lift and keeping the aircraft aloft in the same way they serve birds in flight.…”

“…The role of metaphor as one of the basic cognitive mechanisms in the construction and retrieval of specialized knowledge has also been extensively studied within cognitive terminological theories (Tercedor Sánchez et al, 2012;Ureña & Faber, 2010;Temmerman, 2000). The insights on metaphoric and metonymic dimensions of specialized knowledge concepts serve as proof that specialized knowledge domains are conceptualized in a manner similar to the cognitive structuring of our everyday knowledge.…”