Metaphor and Gesture

Metaphor and Gesture
Author: Alan Cienki
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2008-06-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027290806

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This volume is the first to offer an overview on metaphor and gesture — a new multi-disciplinary area of research. Scholars of metaphor have been paying increasing attention to spontaneous gestures with speech; meanwhile, researchers in gesture studies have been focussing on the abstract ideas which receive physical representation through metaphors when speakers gesture. This book presents a snapshot of the state of the art in these converging fields, offering research papers as well as commentaries from multiple perspectives. In addition to conceptual metaphor theory it includes different theoretical approaches to semiotics, and the methods used range from controlled experimentation, to cognitive ethnography, to lexical semantic analysis. The use of metaphor in gesture is shown to reflect idiosyncracies of thought in the moment of speaking as well as structural, cultural, and interactional patterns. The series of commentaries discusses the potential importance of studying metaphor and gesture from the perspectives of such fields as anthropology, cognitive linguistics, conversation analysis, psychology, and semiotics.

The Interaction of Syntax and Metaphor in Gesture

The Interaction of Syntax and Metaphor in Gesture
Author: Elise Stickles
Publisher:
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2016
Genre:
ISBN:

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This dissertation is a study of metaphor in usage: metaphor in language, metaphor in gesture, and how they interact. Gesture provides a route to study both the cognition associated with language and the domain-generality of cognitive processes. While English speakers may be producing metaphoric manner verbs due to the lexicalization patterns of their language, are they necessarily thinking in terms of metaphoric manner? This is difficult to judge when looking at language alone. To answer this question, we turn to metaphoric gesture. Metaphoric gestures, in which the gesture represents the source domain of a conceptual metaphor, are well-known but under-studied (Cienki and Müller, 2008b). Iconic gestures conveying information about a motion event are known to interact with the syntactic and semantic structure of speech; speakers of languages that express manner of motion in the verb gesture differently than speakers of languages that primarily express path of motion in the verb. Metaphoric usages of motion in language - prices falling, hopes rising, time flying - also interact with the grammatical patterns of language. However, we know little about how metaphoric motion in gesture interacts with grammar. In Part One of the dissertation, I focus on metaphor in language. In Chapter 2 I propose to represent metaphors as a complex network of frames, mappings, and bindings as implemented in the MetaNet Metaphor Repository (Dodge et al., 2015). This advances the representation of conceptual metaphors to a level that interfaces more accurately with representations of frames and constructions in FrameNet (Ruppenhofer et al., 2006) and Embodied Construction Grammar (Bergen and Chang, 2005). In turn, this enables the detailed analysis of metaphors and metaphor systems, as exemplified by the Location Event Structure Metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999) case study in Chapter 3. This corpus-based study is one of the first to make use of the MetaNet method for large-scale automatic metaphor identification and annotation. This approach reveals not only how the metaphor system is evoked in language, but further illustrates the conceptual structure of the metaphor. I demonstrate that although English, as a satellite-framed language, privileges manner in its lexicalization of motion events, metaphoric English motion backgrounds manner and foregrounds path. The foregrounding of path information in linguistic realization of metaphoric motion runs counter to the privileging of manner in English lexicalization patterns. This finding lays the groundwork for the investigation of the same metaphor system in gesture. In Part Two, I focus on metaphor in co-speech gesture. I investigate metaphoric motion-evoking metaphoric gestures using two complementary approaches. Chapter 4 uses a corpus approach; I analyze a parallel corpus of video gesture data in which speakers use a motion verb either literally or metaphorically in their speech while producing a co-expressive representational gesture. To analyze the corpora, I develop a set of annotation guidelines and then demonstrate the benefits of taking an image-schematic approach to gesture analysis. I argue that the image schema is the most appropriate level of structure in analyzing the form and meaning of metaphoric gestures. Results of this image schema analysis suggest that, reflecting the English language data in Chapter 3, these metaphoric gestures emphasize path and do not represent the manner of motion. Chapter 5 is the first study to take an experimental approach to metaphoric gesture that uses non-metaphoric stimuli. Participants were given short stories about state change, such as prices decreasing or grades improving, to read and re-tell to a friend; half of the stimuli contained metaphoric language and half did not. Results from this study demonstrated the viability of this methodology in eliciting both metaphoric speech and gesture, and supported those of Chapter 4. I find that speakers are more likely produce metaphoric gestures if they are also producing metaphoric language - even if the gesture evokes a different metaphor than the speech does. I unify my analyses of metaphoric motion in speech and gesture in a multi-modal Embodied Construction Grammar analysis of both co-expressive and complementary metaphoric co-speech gestures. I represent both the meaning and form of the gesture and the meaning and form of the speech including frame structure, argument structure, and metaphoric structure. This analysis provides the first formal representation of a multi-modal utterance in a construction grammar and an innovative approach to the unification of the construction of multi-modal meaning.

Intelligent Virtual Agents

Intelligent Virtual Agents
Author: Timothy Bickmore
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 559
Release: 2014-08-12
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3319097679

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This book constitutes the proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2014, held in Boston, MA, USA, in August 2014. The 14 full and 24 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 78 submissions. In addition, the volume includes 25 demo and poster papers which were on display during the conference. The papers cover many aspects of intelligent virtual agent theory and application with a special focus on their use in healthcare.

Multimodal Metaphor

Multimodal Metaphor
Author: Charles Forceville
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 487
Release: 2009
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110205157

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Metaphor pervades discourse and may govern how we think and act. But most studies only discuss its verbal varieties. This book examines metaphors drawing on combinations of visuals, language, gestures, sound, and music. Investigated texts include ad

Gesture and Thought

Gesture and Thought
Author: David McNeill
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2008-09-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0226514641

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Gesturing is such an integral yet unconscious part of communication that we are mostly oblivious to it. But if you observe anyone in conversation, you are likely to see his or her fingers, hands, and arms in some form of spontaneous motion. Why? David McNeill, a pioneer in the ongoing study of the relationship between gesture and language, set about answering this question over twenty-five years ago. In Gesture and Thought he brings together years of this research, arguing that gesturing, an act which has been popularly understood as an accessory to speech, is actually a dialectical component of language. Gesture and Thought expands on McNeill’s acclaimed classic Hand and Mind. While that earlier work demonstrated what gestures reveal about thought, here gestures are shown to be active participants in both speaking and thinking. Expanding on an approach introduced by Lev Vygotsky in the 1930s, McNeill posits that gestures are key ingredients in an “imagery-language dialectic” that fuels both speech and thought. Gestures are both the “imagery” and components of “language.” The smallest element of this dialectic is the “growth point,” a snapshot of an utterance at its beginning psychological stage. Utilizing several innovative experiments he created and administered with subjects spanning several different age, gender, and language groups, McNeill shows how growth points organize themselves into utterances and extend to discourse at the moment of speaking. An ambitious project in the ongoing study of the relationship of human communication and thought, Gesture and Thought is a work of such consequence that it will influence all subsequent theory on the subject.

The Routledge Handbook of Metaphor and Language

The Routledge Handbook of Metaphor and Language
Author: Elena Semino
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 765
Release: 2016-11-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1317374703

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The Routledge Handbook of Metaphor and Language provides a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art interdisciplinary research on metaphor and language. Featuring 35 chapters written by leading scholars from around the world, the volume takes a broad view of the field of metaphor and language, and brings together diverse and distinct theoretical and applied perspectives to cover six key areas: Theoretical approaches to metaphor and language, covering Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Relevance Theory, Blending Theory and Dynamical Systems Theory; Methodological approaches to metaphor and language, discussing ways of identifying metaphors in verbal texts, images and gestures, as well as the use of corpus linguistics; Formal variation in patterns of metaphor use across text types, historical periods and languages; Functional variation of metaphor, in contexts including educational, commercial, scientific and political discourse, as well as online trolling; The applications of metaphor for problem solving, in business, education, healthcare and conflict situations; Language, metaphor, and cognitive development, examining the processing and comprehension of metaphors. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Metaphor is a must-have survey of this key field, and is essential reading for those interested in language and metaphor.

The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought

The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought
Author: Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 550
Release: 2008-09-22
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 113947166X

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A comprehensive collection of essays in multidisciplinary metaphor scholarship that has been written in response to the growing interest among scholars and students from a variety of disciplines such as linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, music and psychology. These essays explore the significance of metaphor in language, thought, culture and artistic expression. There are five main themes of the book: the roots of metaphor, metaphor understanding, metaphor in language and culture, metaphor in reasoning and feeling, and metaphor in non-verbal expression. Contributors come from a variety of academic disciplines, including psychology, linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, literature, education, music, and law.

Recurrent Gestures of Hausa Speakers

Recurrent Gestures of Hausa Speakers
Author: Izabela Will
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004449795

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This book presents a repertoire of conventionalized co-speech gestures used by Hausa speakers from northern Nigeria.

Metaphors Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking

Metaphors Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking
Author: Cornelia Müller
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2009-10-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0226548260

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Traditional thinking on metaphors has divided them into two camps: dead and alive. Conventional expressions from everyday language are classified as dead, while much rarer novel or poetic metaphors are alive. In the 1980s, new theories on the cognitive processes involved with the use of metaphor challenged these assumptions, but with little empirical support. Drawing on the latest research in linguistics, semiotics, philosophy, and psychology, Cornelia Müller here unveils a new approach that refutes the rigid dead/alive dichotomy, offering in its place a more dynamic model: sleeping and waking. To build this model, Müller presents an overview of notions of metaphor from the classical period to the present; studies in detail how metaphors function in speech, text, gesture, and images; and examines the way mixed metaphors sometimes make sense and sometimes do not. This analysis leads her to conclude that metaphors may oscillate between various degrees of sleeping and waking as their status changes depending on context and intention. Bridging the gap between conceptual metaphor theory and more traditional linguistic theories, this book is a major advance for the field and will be vital to novices and initiates alike.