刊讯｜SSCI 期刊《隐喻与象征》2022年第1-2期

Metaphor and Symbol

Volume 37, Issue 1-2, 2022

Metaphor and Symbol（SSCI二区，2021 IF：1.303）2022年第1-2期共发12篇研究性论文。研究论文涉及学术写作中的隐喻，疫情中的动物、战斗、疾病隐喻等。

目录

ARTICLES

■Metaphor in the Academic Mentoring of International Undergraduate Students: The Erasmus Experience by Rafael Alejo-González

■Evading the Lockdown: Animal Metaphors and Dehumanization in Virtual Space by Janet Ho

■Why is Semantic Change Asymmetric? The Role of Concreteness and Word Frequency and Metaphor and Metonymy by Bodo Winter & Mahesh Srinivasan

■Countering Undesirable Implications of Violence Metaphors for Cancer through Metaphor Extension by Dunja Y. M. Wackers & H. José Plug

■“World-beating” Pandemic Responses: Ironical, Sarcastic, and Satirical Use of War and Competition Metaphors in the Context of COVID-19 Pandemic by Andreas Musolff

■How We Escape Capture by the “War” Metaphor for Covid-19 by Michael Hanne

■Audience Perceptions of COVID-19 Metaphors: The Role of Source Domain and Country Context by Britta C. Brugman, Ellen Droog, W. Gudrun Reijnierse, Saskia Leymann, Giulia Frezza & Kiki Y. by Renardel de Lavalette

■What Else besides War: Deliberate Metaphors Framing COVID-19 in Chinese Online Newspaper Editorials by Cun Zhang, Zhengjun Lin & Shengxi Jin

■Acting like a Hedgehog in Times of Pandemic: Metaphorical Creativity in the #reframecovid Collection by Paula Pérez-Sobrino, Elena Semino, Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Veronika Koller & Inés Olza

■“Our Country Is a Freedom-Loving Country”: The Spreading Virus as Metaphor for “People on the Move”by David Gurnham

■COVID-19 in English and Persian: A Cognitive Linguistic Study of Illness Metaphors across Languages by Reza Kazemian & Somayeh Hatamzadeh

■Pull the weeds out or perish: Using pandemic metaphors to strengthen in-group solidarity in Turkish political discourse by Esranur Efeoğlu Özcan

摘要

Metaphor in the Academic Mentoring of International Undergraduate Students: The Erasmus Experience

Rafael Alejo-González, University of Extremadura

Abstract Metaphor use in university contexts has received some attention by the literature, which has mostly focussed on the language produced by academics. However, more dialogic forms of academic communications, where students are afforded opportunities for feedback on and discussion of opaque language use, are usually missing in the analyses of applied metaphor researchers. In order to partially redress this imbalance in research into metaphor in academic discourse, this article looks at lecturers’ use of metaphor in one such dialogic type of communication—academic mentoring—and how international students respond to these language uses. I examine the frequency and functions of metaphor in 27 video-recorded conversations between Spanish Erasmus students and their lecturers at five different European universities. My findings reveal that lecturers use metaphor frequently in this context too, but that it does not appear to pose obvious problems for interaction, although misalignments between speakers can be observed.

Evading the Lockdown: Animal Metaphors and Dehumanization in Virtual Space

Janet Ho, Lingnan University

Abstract COVID-19 has posed a serious threat to more than 200 countries, causing over one million deaths worldwide (as of December 2020) and leading to lockdowns that are unprecedented in modern times. Given the physical restrictions, social media platforms have become crucial for people to maintain contact and share ideas during the pandemic. In this paper, I examine the discursive representations of evaders of the Wuhan lockdown. Specifically, I investigate how social media users employed animal metaphors to portray the identities of people who fled Wuhan during this time. More than 250 posts with over 15,000 comments were collected from the Chinese microblogging site Weibo; data were thematically analyzed, and metaphors were identified. The results demonstrated that various kinds of animal metaphors were used to discredit the evaders and to highlight their objectionable behavior and moral standards. The use of violent expressions associated with animal metaphors also revealed the issue of dehumanization vis-à-vis all the residents in Wuhan, which has various theoretical and ideological implications. The findings suggest that, while dehumanizing the evaders by likening their health status to that of infected animals, the users unconsciously revealed the evaders’ helplessness and inability to control their situation, reflecting ideological ambivalence.

Why is Semantic Change Asymmetric? The Role of Concreteness and Word Frequency and Metaphor and Metonymy

Bodo Winter & Mahesh Srinivasan, a Department of English Language & Linguistics, University of Birmingham

Abstract Metaphors and other tropes are commonly thought to reflect asymmetries in concreteness, with concrete sources being used to talk about relatively more abstract targets. Similarly, originating senses in diachronic semantic change have often been argued to be more concrete than extended senses. In this paper, we use a dataset of cross-linguistically attested semantic changes to empirically test the idea that asymmetries in figurative language are predicted by asymmetries in concreteness. We find only weak evidence for the role of concreteness and argue that concreteness is not a helpful notion when it comes to describing changes where both originating and extended senses are highly concrete (e.g., skin > bark, liver > lungs). Moreover, we find that word frequency data from English and other languages is a stronger predictor of these typologically common semantic changes. We discuss the implications of our findings for metaphor theory and theories of semantic change.

 

Countering Undesirable Implications of Violence Metaphors for Cancer through Metaphor Extension

Dunja Y. M. Wackers & H. José Plug, University of Amsterdam

 

Abstract Violence metaphors for cancer can have undesirable implications. The metaphorical expression “She lost her battle with cancer,” for instance, is deemed inappropriate by some because of the implicit suggestions it would carry about patients’ responsibility to recover from the disease – if someone “lost” it is inferred they could also have “won” if only they had “fought harder.” The current study explores how language users may use a metaphor extension approach to argue against metaphorical implications they feel are harmful, offensive or otherwise inappropriate. More specifically, this paper will combine recent findings in metaphor research on metaphor extension with two case studies on argumentative resistance to violence metaphors for cancer to illustrate two ways in which these metaphors can be (re)interpreted in such a way that they are in line with language users’ (desired) perspective on the disease. Using analytical tools from Pragma-dialectics, the case studies will demonstrate how a close analysis of expressions of resistance to violence metaphors for cancer that extend these metaphors can 1) help pinpoint the precise metaphorical implications that are being contested in a given case of resistance, and 2) provide an insight into which alternative interpretations are deemed acceptable by the protagonists of resistance

“World-beating” Pandemic Responses: Ironical, Sarcastic, and Satirical Use of War and Competition Metaphors in the Context of COVID-19 Pandemic

Andreas Musolff, School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, UK

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic tempted some governments to promise to wage “war” against it and implement “world-beating” control mechanisms. In view of their limited success, such claims soon came in for massive criticism, which turned their hyperbolic implicatures and figurative framing against them. Our paper focuses on such cases of “metaphor reversal” within the context of the British public debate. Drawing on examples from a corpus of media texts, we identify several types of the dissociation, including irony (i.e., putting the figurative claims’ implicatures in doubt implicitly), sarcasm (i.e., explicitly decrying their plausibility) and satire (i.e., exhibiting their presumed absurdity), with reference to theory models of irony (echo, pretense, mental space structuring).In conclusion, we argue that the seesaw of exchanges between exaggerated figurative claims of (imminent) success made by government politicians and their sarcastic-satirical debunking by media and opposition politicians has an ambivalent effect on public discourse. On the one hand, it highlights contrasts in policy and policy assessment and may also have entertainment value, but on the other hand, it conveys experiences of repeated, serial exposure of hyperbolic government rhetoric. This in turn may lead to an erosion of trust in official communication as being unrealistic, which may foster beliefs in conspiracy theories.

How We Escape Capture by the “War” Metaphor for Covid-19

Michael Hanne, University of Auckland

 

Abstract We rely on metaphors and the stories they imply as heuristic devices for communication on all important social and political matters. We are easily trapped by dominant metaphors, though fresh metaphors may generate significant paradigm shifts. During the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, the “war” metaphor, standing for our relationship to Covid-19, established itself, like the virus itself, almost universally. This paper details the reasons for the early dominance of the “war” metaphor and shows how the adoption of the title of “wartime leader” by Donald Trump and Boris Johnson rebounded on them as it highlighted their subsequent abject failure to perform the roles they attributed to themselves. It highlights the objections, many valid, raised early on to the military metaphors and lists some of the alternative overarching metaphors which have been offered. It shows how, as the virus took root in most countries and governments had markedly different success in their responses to it, use of the “war” metaphor declined and people around the world coined a host of mini-metaphors relating to specific, local features, of their experience. It concludes by drawing attention to the potential of metaphors from ecology to generate insights relevant to some of the other major challenges faced by humanity.

Audience Perceptions of COVID-19 Metaphors: The Role of Source Domain and Country Context

Britta C. Brugman, a Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Ellen Droog, a Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

W. Gudrun Reijnierse, b Radboud University Nijmegen

Saskia Leymann, c University of Amsterdam

Giulia Frezza, c University of Amsterdam

Kiki Y.  Renardel de Lavalette, c University of Amsterdam

 

Abstract Metaphors abound in descriptions of the COVID-19 pandemic: it is described, among other things, as a war, a flood, and a marathon. However, not all metaphors may resonate equally well with members of the public. Given that the pandemic has impacted people’s lives across countries in divergent ways – both in terms of spread and in terms of government-imposed measures, we investigated whether audience perceptions of metaphors for the COVID-19 pandemic depend on source domain and country context. This mixed-design study examined how individuals across three European countries (Germany, Italy, and The Netherlands) perceived different COVID-19 metaphorical frames. Participants (N = 216) were randomly exposed to nine metaphorical frames and one literal-language frame and asked to express their perceptions in terms of liking, aptness, complexity, conventionality, and credibility. Results showed that audience perceptions of metaphorical descriptions of the COVID-19 pandemic differed between source domains and country contexts, but mostly in terms of aptness. These findings suggest that experience with the target domain may indeed be relevant for metaphor perceptions and highlight the importance of studying metaphor appreciation as a multifaceted phenomenon. Findings may also inform metaphor choice by governments, journalists, and other actors to describe this novel situation.

 

What Else besides War: Deliberate Metaphors Framing COVID-19 in Chinese Online Newspaper Editorials

Cun Zhang, a Northeast Normal University

Zhengjun Lin, b Beijing Foreign Studies University

Shengxi Jin, a Northeast Normal University

Abstract Through metaphor, we gain distinctive perspectives on reality and communicate in new ways, especially when we use metaphor intentionally. The COVID-19 pandemic broke out in early 2020, causing significant harm to people’s lives worldwide. This article moves the focus from the ubiquitous war metaphor used in the pandemic to other deliberate metaphors identified in five Chinese news media, i.e., China Daily, People’s Daily, Huanqiu, Cankaoxiaoxi, and Xinhuanet. 59 Chinese online newspaper editorials were collected between 22 January 2020 and 22 July 2020. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, we investigate season, disease and medicine, and homework metaphors. We contend that (a) originating from common bodily experiences in the physical environment, season metaphors have emotional valences and promoted public confidence when the epidemic was severe and urged caution when it was mitigated, (b) connecting physical and socio-cultural worlds, disease and medicine metaphors could simplify and evaluate social issues besides formulating editorials’ political stances, and (c) based on shared socio-cultural knowledge, homework metaphors call for more democratic and practical governance in disease control. This study reveals how these metaphors accomplish useful pragmatic purposes in the pandemic in particular contexts.

Acting like a Hedgehog in Times of Pandemic: Metaphorical Creativity in the #reframecovid Collection

Paula Pérez-Sobrino, a Universidad de La Rioja

Elena Semino, b Lancaster University

Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano, c Universidad de Zaragoza

Veronika Koller, b Lancaster University

Inés Olza, d Universidad de Navarra

Abstract The need to provide novel but meaningful ways to reason and talk about an unprecedented crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a surge of creative metaphoric expressions in a variety of communicative settings. In order to investigate novel ways of conceptualizing the pandemic, we consider the metaphors included in the #ReframeCovid collection, a crowdsourced dataset of metaphors for the pandemic that rely on non-war frames. Its heterogeneous makeup of multilingual and multimodal examples (to date, over 550 examples – monomodal and multimodal in 30 languages) offers a unique opportunity to explore the ways in which metaphors have been used creatively to describe different aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. The patterns of metaphor creativity discussed in this paper include: creative realizations (verbal and visual) of wide-scope mappings, the use of one-off source domains, shifts in the valence of the source domain evoked, and the exploitation of source domains that are specific to particular discourse communities. The analysis of multimodal examples contributes to our understanding of the role of metaphor in sense-making and communication at a time of an extraordinary global crisis and will also provide new insights into metaphor creativity as a multidimensional phenomenon that integrates conceptual, discursive and cultural factors.

 

“Our Country Is a Freedom-Loving Country”: The Spreading Virus as Metaphor for “People on the Move”

David Gurnham, University of Southampton

Abstract Although Covid-19 has been framed using all manner of metaphors, an as-yet under-examined question is how the spreading virus might itself serve as a metaphor and what purpose this might serve. The article redresses this deficit by identifying shared experiences of the mobile virus as the basis for a metaphorical framework for evaluating and judging human behavior, including alleged rule-breaking, during the pandemic. The article traces the appearance of the metaphor spreading across a broad spectrum of sources that includes political speech, the reporting of crime in prosecutorial and local media sources, judicial opinion and poetry. We observe in some limited contexts a straightforward metaphoric transfer or substitution between mobile people and the mobile virus. In a greater number and variety contexts, we find instead more subtle signs of the metaphor: the censuring of bad behavior and the justifying of coercive treatment using the metonymic elements of viral spread: its characteristic unpredictability, speed, agility, irrepressibility, and relentlessness.

COVID-19 in English and Persian: A Cognitive Linguistic Study of Illness Metaphors across Languages

Reza Kazemian & Somayeh Hatamzadeh, University of Isfahan

Abstract This article investigates conceptual metaphors for Covid-19 in two languages, American English and Persian, using two approaches, namely Lakoff & Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory and Kövecses’s approach to universal metaphors. The data for the analysis were drawn from a large corpus of Covid-19 metaphors in American English and a smaller corpus extracted from major news websites in Persian. The analysis focuses on examining the source domains for the conceptual metaphors used and describe the most common conceptual metaphors. We discuss systematic similarities and differences between the two languages regarding the way Covid-19 is talked about and conceptualized and highlight some novel conceptual metaphors that only appear in Persian.

Pull the weeds out or perish: Using pandemic metaphors to strengthen in-group solidarity in Turkish political discourse

Esranur Efeoğlu Özcan, Middle East Technical University & Gazi University

 

Abstract Political discourse relies heavily on specific discursive strategies to gain, exercise and sustain power. Among those are metaphors which have the power to persuade and the potential to carry certain ideological attachments with them. This study explores and discusses how political power holders in The Grand National Assembly of Turkey make use of conceptual metaphors while framing the COVID-19 outbreak. From 10 March to 10 June 2020, i.e. the time between the date of the first COVID-19 case in Turkey until the time when the government announced that the lockdown would start to ease, a total of 191 tweets were identified as metaphorically framing the pandemic. In accordance with Critical Metaphor Analysis and Discourse-Historical Approach, the results show that Turkish online political discourse uses COVID-19 metaphors in combination with specific argumentation schemes to foster self-presentationand promotes shared representations of Turkish national identity. The results also show that metaphorical framings of the pandemic in Turkish political discourse fit familiar experience patterns with roots in cultural and religious presuppositions. It is argued that the conceptual metaphors manifested in this crisis discourse act as significant tools to influence public opinion.

 

期刊简介

Metaphor and Symbol: A Quarterly Journal is an innovative, multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the study of metaphor and other figurative devices in language (e.g., metonymy, irony) and other expressive forms (e.g., gesture and bodily actions, artworks, music, multimodal media). The journal is interested in original, empirical, and theoretical research that incorporates psychological experimental studies, linguistic and corpus linguistic studies, cross-cultural/linguistic comparisons, computational modeling, philosophical analyzes, and literary/artistic interpretations. A common theme connecting published work in the journal is the examination of the interface of figurative language and expression with cognitive, bodily, and cultural experience; hence, the journal's international editorial board is composed of scholars and experts in the fields of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, literature, and media studies.

《隐喻与象征》是一本创新性的跨学科季刊，致力于研究语言中的隐喻和其他象征性手段（如隐喻、反讽）以及其他表达形式（如手势和身体动作、艺术作品、音乐、多模态等）。本刊对原创性、经验性和理论性研究感兴趣，其中包括心理学实验研究、语言学和语料库语言学研究、跨文化/语言学比较、计算模型、哲学分析和文学/艺术解释。本刊的共同主题是对形象化语言和表达与认知、身体和文化经验之间的联系进行研究；因此，本刊的国际编委会由心理学、语言学、哲学、计算机科学、文学和媒体研究等领域的学者和专家组成。

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