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Article published In:
Metaphor Variation in Englishes around the World
Edited by Marcus Callies and Alexander Onysko
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies 4:1] 2017
► pp. 36–62

Metaphor variation of spatial conceptualizations in Irish English

A methodological design

| Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)

The current paper offers a novel methodological approach to gathering rich spatial data from Irish English speakers, showing variation in the cognition of physical and conceptual space. A mixed method study was conducted to gather conceptual and sociolinguistic data. This includes the first part of the data gathering: a structured interview, focusing on geographic aspects of the town and two wayfinding exercises. I then describe the second part of the study: twenty cloze procedure questions relating to a written example, followed by questions relating to seventeen hand-drawn images. I take as a baseline the instruments used by, inter alia, Levinson and Wilkins (2006a) and apply them to a within-culture study. I conclude this paper by discussing replicability and future studies. While Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) offers researchers a model to connect physical and conceptual elements of space, we have not seen a large-scale study of how CMT affects the language of space in varieties of English.

Keywords: methodology, conceptual metaphor, spatial language, cognitive sociolinguistics, apparent time language change
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Different types of spatial language
    • 2.2Conceptual Metaphor Theory
    • 2.3Variation in metaphor
    • 2.4How languages vary
      • 2.4.1Cross-linguistic studies of spatial reference
      • 2.4.2Sociolinguistic variation in Irish English
      • 2.4.3Cognitive Sociolinguistics: Variation in understanding
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Sociolinguistic methods
    • 3.2Cross-linguistic spatial methods
    • 3.3Cognitive mapping methods
    • 3.4The current study
      • 3.4.1Recruitment
      • 3.4.2Participants
      • 3.4.3Transcription
      • 3.4.4Coding
      • 3.4.5Questionnaire
  • 4.Results and analysis
    • 4.1Case studies
    • 4.2Interviews
      • 4.2.1Location metaphors
    • 4.3Questionnaires
      • 4.3.1Location metaphor summary
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 16 October 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.4.1.03luc
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