Chapter published in:
How Metaphors Guide, Teach and Popularize Science
Edited by Anke Beger and Thomas H. Smith
[Figurative Thought and Language 6] 2020
► pp. 175–208

Non-verbal and multimodal metaphors bring biology into the picture

| Universidad de Granada
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.
Keywords: nonverbal and multimodal metaphor, biology, expert and non-expert communication, resemblance and non-resemblance metaphors, productivity, effectiveness
Published online: 22 April 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.6.06gom
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