Cover not available
Part of
Figurative Thought and Language in Action
Edited by Mario Brdar and Rita Brdar-Szabó
[Figurative Thought and Language 16] 2022
► pp. 19–36

Important challenges in the study of metaphors

The world of metaphor scholarship is amazingly diverse, involving a myriad of empirical methods and theoretical frameworks. This diversity is greatly appealing, given the enormous complexity of metaphorical thinking, language, and human action. This chapter identifies some challenges for metaphor scholars both in doing particular empirical work and in offering theoretical accounts of metaphor and its role in human life. These challenges focus on issues with metaphor identification, the meanings of metaphor in discourse, online metaphor processing, and the metaphorical character of source domains. I see these challenges as “matters for all of us to think about” as we try to explain both the regularities and variations in metaphorical thinking, language, and multimodal action.

Keywords: conceptual metaphor, embodied metaphor, psycholinguistics, regularities, source domains, variations
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Identifying metaphors: The view from nowhere?
  • 3.What meanings do people understand when they understand metaphor?
  • 4.Online, incremental metaphor processing
  • 5.The metaphorical essence of source domains
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 28 July 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.16.01gib
References
Burgers, C., Brugman, B., Renardel de Lavalette, K., & Steen, G.
(2016) HIP: A method for linguistic hyperbole identification in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 31, 163–178. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cardillo, E., Schmidt, G., Kranjec, A., & Chatterjee, A.
(2010) Stimulus design is an obstacle course: 560 matched literal and metaphorical sentences for testing neural hypotheses about metaphor. Behavior Research Methods, 42, 651–664. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chiang, A., & Chiang, W-y.
(2016) Behold, I am coming soon! A study of the conceptualization of sexual orgasm in 27 languages. Metaphor and Symbol, 31, 131–147. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Colston, H. L.
(2015) Using figurative language. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Csordas, Th. J.
(Ed.) (1994) Embodiment and experience: The existential ground of culture and self. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dąbrowska, E.
(2013) Functional constraints, usage, and mental grammars: A study of speakers’ intuitions about questions with long-distance dependencies. Cognitive Linguistics, 24, 633–665. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Divjak, D., Dąbrowska, E., & Arppe, A.
(2016) Machine meets man: Evaluating the psychological reality of corpus-based probabilistic models. Cognitive Linguistics, 27, 1–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duffy, S. 
(2014) The role of cultural artifacts in the interpretation of metaphorical expressions about time. Metaphor and Symbol, 29, 94–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duffy, S. & Feist, M.
(2014) Individual differences in the interpretation of ambiguous statements about time. Cognitive Linguistics, 25, 29–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M.
(2002) The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gibbs, R.
(1980) Spilling the beans on understanding and memory for idioms in conversation. Memory & Cognition, 8, 149–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1986) Skating on thin ice: Literal meaning and understanding idioms in conversation. Discourse Processes, 7, 17–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1994) The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2006) Embodiment and cognitive science. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2011) The allegorical impulse. Metaphor and Symbol, 26, 121–130. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013a) Walking the walk while thinking about the talk: Embodied interpretation of metaphorical narratives. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 42, 363–378. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2017) Metaphor wars: Conceptual metaphor in human life. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, R., & Cameron, L.
(2007) Social-cognitive dynamics of metaphor performance. Cognitive Systems Research, 9, 64–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, R., & Colston, H.
(2012) Interpreting figurative meaning. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, R., & Santa Cruz, M.
(2012) Temporal unfolding of conceptual metaphoric experience. Metaphor and Symbol, 27, 299–311. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, R., Tendahl, M., & Okonski, L.
(2011) Inferring pragmatic messages from metaphor. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, 7, 3–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kok, K., & Cienki, A.
(2017) Taking simulation semantics out of the laboratory: Towards an interactive and multimodal reappraisal of embodied language comprehension. Language & Cognition, 7, 1–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Okonski, L., & Gibbs, R.
(2019) Diving into the wreck: Can people resist allegorical meaning? Journal of Pragmatics, 141, 28–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pragglejaz Group
(2007) MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically-used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 22, 1–40.
Reijnierse, G., Burgers, C., Krennmayr, T., & Steen, G.
(2018) DMIP: A method for identifying potentially deliberate metaphor in language use. Corpus Pragmatics, 2, 129–147. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffman, H.
(2011) Sensation and perception: An integrative approach. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Semino, E.
(2010) Descriptions of pain, metaphor, and embodied simulation. Metaphor and Symbol, 25, 205–226. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shapiro, J., & D’Espisito, M.
(2016) The segregation and integration of distinct brain networks and their relations to cognition. Journal of Neuroscience, 36, 12083–12094. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steen, G.
(2008) The paradox of metaphor: Why we need a three-dimensional model of metaphor. Metaphor and Symbol, 23, 213–241. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(Ed.) (2018) Visual metaphor: Structure and process. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steen, G., Dorst, A., Herrmann, J., Kaal, A., Krennmayr, T., Pasma, T.
(2010). A method for linguistic metaphor identification. From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stefanowitsch, A.
(2011) Constructional preemption by contextual mismatch: A corpus-linguistic investigation. Cognitive Linguistics, 22(1), 107–129. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tendahl, M., & Gibbs, R.
(2008) Complementary perspectives on metaphor: Cognitive linguistics and relevance theory. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(11), 1823–1864. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thibodeau, P., & Boroditsky, L.
(2011) Metaphors we think with: The role of metaphor in reasoning. PLoS ONE, 6(2), e16782. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.