Cover not available
Part of
Metaphor in Specialist Discourse
Edited by J. Berenike Herrmann and Tony Berber Sardinha
[Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication 4] 2015
► pp. 131–160

The production line as a context for low metaphoricity

Exploring links between gestures, iconicity, and artefacts on a factory shop floor

This paper investigates metaphor use in a heavily industrialized context. Using video recordings collected at a salmon factory in France as data, I study metaphor in the gestures that workers perform in technical specialist communication along a noisy production line. Within a framework for describing gesture forms and identifying their underlying conceptual motivations, I analyse the iconicity of the gestures and argue that this stretch of the production line was a context for low metaphoricity. My analyses show that gesture iconicity was motivated by metonymic mappings within concrete source domains but not metaphoric mappings to abstract target domains. This finding emphasises that metaphor activation can depend on aspects of context, including the communicative environment and the artefacts it contains.

Published online: 16 December 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/milcc.4.06har
References
Barcelona, A
(2000) The cognitive theory of metaphor and metonymy. In A. Barcelona (Ed.), Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads: A cognitive perspective (pp. 1–28). Berlin/New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Bressem, J
(2013) A linguistic perspective on the notation of form features in gestures. In C. Müller, A. Cienki, E. Fricke, S.H. Ladewig, D. McNeill & S. Teßendorf (Eds.). Body-language-communication: An international handbook on multimodality in human interaction. (Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science 38.1.) Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brun, T
(1969) The international dictionary of sign language. London: Wolfe Publishing.Google Scholar
Cameron, L
(2003) Metaphor in educational discourse. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Cienki, A
(1998) Metaphoric gestures and some of their relations to verbal metaphoric expressions. In J.-P. Koenig (Ed.), Discourse and cognition: Bridging the gap (pp. 189–204). Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
(2005) Image schemas and gesture. In B. Hampe (Ed.), in cooperation with J. Grady, From perception to meaning: Image schemas in cognitive linguistics (pp. 421–442). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008) Why study metaphor and gesture? In A. Cienki & C. Müller (Eds.), Metaphor and gesture (pp. 5–25). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cienki, A., & Müller, C
(Eds.) (2008) Metaphor and gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Croft, W
(1993) The role of domains in the interpretation of metaphor and metonymy. Cognitive Linguistics, 4, 335–370. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ekman, P., & Friesen, W
(1969) The repertoire of nonverbal behavior: Categories, origins, usage and coding. Semiotica, 1, 49–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evola, V
(2010) Multimodal cognitive semiotics of spiritual experiences: Beliefs and metaphors in words, gestures, and drawings. In F. Parrill, V. Tobin, & M. Turner (Eds.), Form, meaning, and body (pp. 41–60). Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M
(2000) The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Forceville, C., & Urios-Aparsi, E
(Eds.) (2009) Multimodal metaphor. Berlin/New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harrison, S
(2011) The creation and implementation of a gesture code for factory communication. Proceedings from GESPIN 2011: Gesture and Speech in Interaction . Bielefeld, Germany. Retrieved from [URL]
Jakobson, R
(1956/1990) Two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances. In L. Waugh & M. Monville-Burston (Eds.), On language (pp. 115–133). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, M
(1987) The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, R.E
(1977) An extension of Oregon sawmill sign language. Current Anthropology, 18, 353–354. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kendon, A
(1980) Gesticulation and speech: Two aspects of the process of utterance. In M.R. Key (Ed.), The relation between verbal and nonverbal communication (pp. 207–227). The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
(1990) Signs in the cloister and elsewhere. Semiotica, 79, 307–329.Google Scholar
(1995) Gestures as illocutionary and discourse structure markers in Southern Italian conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 23, 247–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2004) Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2007) On the origins of modern gesture studies. In S.D. Duncan, J. Cassell, & E.T. Levy (Eds.), Gesture and the dynamic dimension of language (pp. 13–28). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kövecses, Z., & Radden, G
(1998) Metonymy: Developing a cognitive linguistic view. Cognitive Linguistics, 9, 37–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ladewig, S
(2012) Syntactic and semantic integration of gestures into speech – structural, cognitive, and conceptual aspects (PhD dissertation). European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder).Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M
(1980) Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, R.W
(1987) Foundations of cognitive grammar. Volume I: Theoretical pre-requisites. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
(1991) Concept, image, and symbol: The cognitive basis of grammar. Berlin/New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lapaire, J.R
(2007) The meaning of meaningless grams – or emptiness revisited. In W. Oleksy & P. Stalmaszczyk (Eds.), Cognitive approaches to language and linguistic data (pp. 241–258). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
McNeill, D
(1992) Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
(2005) Gesture and thought. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNeill, D., & Levy, E
(1982) Conceptual representations in language activity and gesture. In R.J. Jarvella & W. Klein (Eds.), Speech, place, and action (pp. 271–295). New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Meissner, M., & Philpott, S.B
(1975a) The sign language of sawmill workers in British Columbia. Sign Language Studies, 9, 291–347. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1975b) A dictionary of sawmill workers signs. Sign Language Studies, 9, 309–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mittelberg, I
(2006) Metaphor and metonymy in language and gesture: Discourse evidence for multimodal models of grammar (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation). Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
(2008) Peircean semiotics meets conceptual metaphor: Iconic modes in gestural representations of grammar. In A. Cienki & C. Müller (Eds.), Metaphor and gesture (pp. 115–154). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2010) Geometric and image-schematic patterns in gesture space. In V. Evans & P. Chilton (Eds.), Language, cognition and space: The state of the art and new directions (pp. 351–385). London: Equinox.Google Scholar
Mittelberg, I., & Waugh, L.R
(2009) Metonymy first, metaphor second: A cognitive-semiotic approach to multimodal figures of speech in co-speech gesture. In C. Forceville & E. Urios-Aparisi (Eds.), Multimodal metaphor (pp. 329–356). Berlin/New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Morris, D
(1994) Body talk: The meaning of human gestures. New York, NY: Crown.Google Scholar
(2002) Peoplewatching. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Müller, C
(1998) Redebeegleitende Gesten. Kulturgeschichte – Theorie – Sprachvergleich. Berlin: Berlin Verlag A. Spitz.Google Scholar
(2004) Forms and uses of the palm up open hand: A case of a gesture family? In R. Posner & C. Müller (Eds.), The semantics and pragmatics of everyday gestures (pp. 233–256). Berlin: Weidler.Google Scholar
(2007) A dynamic view of metaphor, gesture and thought. In S.D. Duncan, J. Cassell, & E.T. Levy (Eds.), Gesture and the dynamic dimension of language (pp. 109–116). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008a) What gestures reveal about the nature of metaphor. In A. Cienki & C. Müller (Eds.), Metaphor and gesture (pp. 219–245). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008b) Metaphors: Dead and alive, sleeping and waking, A dynamic view. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Müller, C., Bressem, J., & Ladewig, S
(2013) Towards a grammar of gestures: A form-based view. In C. Müller, A. Cienki, E. Fricke, S. Ladewig, D. McNeill, & S. Teßendorf (Eds.) Body – Language – Communication (HSK) (Vol. 38.1, pp. 707–733): de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Müller, C., & Cienki, A
(2009) Words, gestures, and beyond: Forms of multimodal metaphor in the use of spoken language. In C. Forceville & E. Urios-Aparisi (Eds.), Multimodal metaphor (pp. 297–328). Berlin/New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Müller, C., & Tag, S
(2010) The dynamics of metaphor foregrounding and activating metaphoricity in conversational interaction. Cognitive Semiotics, 10(6), 85–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Panther, K.-U., & Thornburg, L.L
(2004) The role of conceptual metonymy in meaning construction. Metaphorik.de, 6, 91–113. Retrieved from [URL]Google Scholar
Panther, K.-U
(2007) Metonymy. In D. Geerarts & H. Cuykens (Eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rijnberk, G. van
(1954) Le langage par signes chez les moines. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing.Google Scholar
Streeck, J
(2009) Gesturecraft. The manufacture of meaning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stubbe, M
(2000) “Just do it…!” Discourse strategies for ‘getting the message across’ in a factory production team. In J. Henderson (Ed.), Proceedings of the 1999 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. Retrieved from [URL]Google Scholar
Sweetser, E
(1990) From etymology to pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1998) Regular metaphoricity in gesture: Bodily-based models of speech interaction. In B. Caron (Ed.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Linguists (CD-ROM). Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Sweetser, E., & Sizemore, M
(2008) Personal and interpersonal gesture spaces: Functional contrasts in language and gesture. In A. Tyler, Y. Kim, & M. Takada (Eds.), Language in the context of use: Cognitive and discourse approaches to language and language learning (pp. 25–52). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Talmy, L
(1985) Force dynamics in language and thought. Parasession on causatives and agentivity, Chicago Linguistic Society, 21st Regional Meeting (pp. 293–337). Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Taub, S
(2001) Language from the body: Iconicity and metaphor in American sign language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilcox, P
(2004) A cognitive key: Metonymic and metaphoric mappings in ASL. Cognitive Linguistics, 15(2), 197–222. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilcox, S
(2005) Routes from gesture to language. Proceedings of ABRALIN, 4(1/2), 11–45.Google Scholar
Wilcox, P., & Wilcox, S
(1995) The gestural expression of modality in American sign language. In J. Bybee & S. Fleischman (Eds.), Modality in grammar and discourse (pp. 135–162). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Nielsen, Sara, Lucca Julie Nellemann, Lars Bo Larsen & Kashmiri Stec
2020. The Social Acceptability of Peripheral Interaction with 3D Gestures in a Simulated Setting. In Human-Computer Interaction. Multimodal and Natural Interaction [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 12182], ► pp. 77 ff. DOI logo
Sheikholeslami, Sara, AJung Moon & Elizabeth A Croft
2017. Cooperative gestures for industry: Exploring the efficacy of robot hand configurations in expression of instructional gestures for human–robot interaction. The International Journal of Robotics Research 36:5-7 ► pp. 699 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 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.