Chapter 6
Non-verbal and multimodal metaphors bring biology into the
picture
The relationship between multimodality and cognitive
effects has become an important topic of discussion in Cognitive
Linguistics. A growing number of studies explore the multimodal
manifestations of figurative thought in a wide range of domains.
However, little research has been done on visual and auditory
metaphor in science. This chapter examines (i) pictures from a
corpus of publications covering different biology subdomains and
(ii) video clips that feature animals and biological processes. The
corpus includes expert material and popular science resources.
Empirical evidence is provided that visuals, non-verbal sounds, and
words work either separately or together to construe metaphors,
which have a major role in building scientific theories in biology
and in communicating these theories to laypeople and learners.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Objectives of the study
- 3.Monomodality
- 3.1Static images: Pictures
- 3.1.1Tree metaphors
- 3.1.2Other pictorial metaphors
- 3.1.3Summary of contents
- 3.2Dynamic images: Animal body language
- 3.2.1The Brazilian wandering spider
- 3.2.2The Gibb’s sea spider
- 3.2.3Summary of contents
- 4.Multimodality
- 4.1The archerfish
- 4.2The velvet worm and the harvestman
- 4.3Summary of contents
- 5.Conclusions
-
Acknowledgment
-
Notes
-
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