35 years of cognitive linguistics session 3: metaphor martin hilpert

35 years of Cognitive LinguisticsSession 3: Metaphor

Martin Hilpert

your questions

the invariance principle• Metaphorical mappings preserve the cognitive

topology (that is, the image-schema structure) of the source domain, in a way consistent with the inherent structure of the target domain.

• Entire image-schemas are mapped from source to target– balance: entity 1, entity 2, comparison between them

target domain override• not every part of the source domain can be mapped

onto the target domain• the target domain ‘limits’ what can be mapped• a target domain override means that a source

domain element is suppressed– THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS

• This theory has a shaky foundation.• ?This theory has nice windows.

– A CAREER IS A RACE• She is way ahead of her peers.• ? She is two laps ahead.

the event structure metaphor

• States are locations.– He was sliding into a depression.

• Changes are movements.– He was sliding into a depression.

• Causes are forces.– His alcohol problem almost pushed him over the edge.

• Actions are self-propelled movements.– He tried to get back on his feet.

• Means are paths.– He knew that therapy was the right way to go.

When is a metaphor a ‘dead’ metaphor?

• MENTAL STATES ARE CONTAINERS ?– He is in love.– She went into shock.– Don’t look back in anger.– Are you a damsel in distress?

– Diagnostic: Is the metaphor productive?– You can fall out of love, live through a shock, but

can you be ?out of distress?

metaphor

“The essence of metaphor is understanding one kind of thing in terms of another.”

(Lakoff and Johnson 1980)

domain of WAR domain of ARGUMENTS

Participants in an argument

Raising objections

Maintaining one’s opinion

Giving up youropinion

Fighting parties

Attacking

Defending

Surrendering

source domain target domain

mappings

Warmth makes you feel sympathy(Williams and Bargh 2008)

• Holding a warm cup of coffee makes you feel more sympathy for others:– “before the experiment”, subjects were casually

asked to hold the experimenter’s drink during an elevator ride

– two groups: hot coffee, cold soda– both groups were then asked to complete a

personality assessment questionnaire– the same person was rated as more friendly,

intelligent, etc. by the coffee group

• Source domain activates the target domain.

Sympathy feels warm, exclusion feels cold(Zhong and Leonardelli 2008)

• Two groups of subjects were asked to perform a number of tasks, among them – Group A had to imagine a scene of social inclusion– Group B had to imagine a scene of social exclusion

• After all the tasks, the experimenter asked each subject to estimate the room temperature “at the request of lab maintenance staff”.

• Significant difference between the two groups, exclusion group giving lower estimates.

• Target domain activates the source domain.

TEMPERATURE INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

sympathy

loneliness

developing a stronger relationship

alienation

warmth

coldness

warming up

chilling

source domain target domain

mappings

question for today:

• Does this bidirectional activation work with other metaphors as well? How about TIME IS SPACE?

SPACE TIME

point /event in time

time between events

aging

‘time travel’

place

distance between places

movement

going back

source domain target domain

mappings

???

Boroditsky 2000

• Three results:– (1) the domains of space and time do share

conceptual structure – (2) spatial relational information is just as useful

for thinking about time as temporal information– (3) with frequent use, mappings between space

and time come to be stored in the domain of time and so thinking about time does not necessarily require access to spatial schemas

the metaphoric structuring view

• “metaphors provide relational structure to those domains where the structure may not be obvious from world experience”

SPACE TIME

SPACE TIME

place

distance between places

movement

going back

SPACE TIME

point /event in time

time between events

aging

‘time travel’

place

distance between places

movement

going back

‘weak’ variant of this view

• The source domain is used initially in order to ‘get a grip’ on the target domain.

• Once we have talked about time and thought about time in terms of space for a while, we no longer access spatial reasoning when we think about time.

• ‘dead metaphor’

‘strong’ variant of this view

• We cannot understand time on its own terms.• We always have to use spatial reasoning when

we think about time.

Two flavors of TIME IS SPACE

He’s been going through some tough times, lately.

ego-as-moving

I hope that these things will soon pass.

time-as-moving

Experiment 1

Next Wednesday’s meeting has been moved forward 2 days. When is it taking place?

Monday Friday0

20406080

Next Wednesday’s meeting has been moved forward 2 days. When is it taking place?

Monday Friday0

20406080

Findings

• If you prime people with different ways of thinking about space, they will think differently about time.

• Source domain activates the target domain.

Warmth makes you feel sympathy(Williams and Bargh 2008)

• Holding a warm cup of coffee makes you feel more sympathy for others:– “before the experiment”, subjects were casually

asked to hold the experimenter’s drink during an elevator ride

– two groups: hot coffee, cold soda– both groups were then asked to complete a

personality assessment questionnaire– the same person was rated as more friendly,

intelligent, etc. by the coffee group

• Source domain activates the target domain.

Findings

• If you prime people with different ways of thinking about space, they will think differently about time.

• Source domain activates the target domain.• Does this also work the other way around?• According to the ‘strong’ version of the

metaphoric structuring view, thinking about time will necessarily make people think about space.

Experiment 2

spatial primes temporal primes

Thursday comes before Saturday.

temporal target question

Wednesday’s meeting has been movedtwo days forward. When is it?

spatial target question

Which of the widgets is ahead?

space to spacespace to time

time to time time to space

time does not prime space

thinking about time does notinfluence how you think aboutspace

contradiction of the ‘strong’ view

you don’t need spatial thinkingto reason successfully about time

the generic schema view

• Could it be that time is not thought about in spatial terms, but in terms of some general, domain-independent schema?

• The results would be consistent with the view that such a schema exists, and that it is activated more strongly by space than by time.

• However, this would mean that when you measure reaction times, people should be faster to make the connection from space to time than from time itself to time.

Experiment 3

spatial primes temporal primes

March comes before May.

temporal target question

Is August ahead of June?

spatial target question

Is O in front of T?

Findings

overall conclusions

• spatial reasoning influences how people understand time– connection from source to target domain

• but:– spatial schemas are not necessary to reason

successfully about time• time-to-time priming works just as well

– temporal reasoning failed to influence people’s understanding of space• no connection from target to source domain

conceptual metaphor theory, thus far

• people understand abstract domains (time, personal relations, etc.) in terms of more concrete domains (space, temperature, etc.)

• evidence for this idea:– linguistic structures (people talk about time in

spatial terms)– psycholinguistic evidence (people’s spatial

thoughts influence how they think about time)

a matter of thought, not words

• If metaphor is a matter of thought, not just words, it should reveal itself in non-linguistic behavior.

• Is there a way of showing that people think metaphorically when they are not using language?

• Casasanto & Boroditsky 2008 test TIME IS SPACE with growing lines

look at the growing line

estimate the length

. starting point

estimate the time

click to start

click to stop

asymmetry of space and time

• length influences duration estimates– longer lines >> greater time

estimates

• BUT:

• time does not influence length estimates– longer growing time >> no greater

length estimates

another example:SIMILARITY IS CLOSENESS

• These two shades of blue are not identical, but they are close.

• The opposing candidates couldn’t be further apart with regard to this issue.

• We talk about similarity as closeness, but do we also think about similarity in spatial terms?

How similar are the meanings of these words?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7very similar not at all similar

sympathy

loyalty

1 2 3 4 5 6 7very similar not at all similar

griefjustice

1 2 3 4 5 6 7very similar not at all similar

memory

hope

How similar are these faces?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7very similar not at all similar

1 2 3 4 5 6 7very similar not at all similar

1 2 3 4 5 6 7very similar not at all similar

How similar do these things look?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7very similar not at all similar

1 2 3 4 5 6 7very similar not at all similar

1 2 3 4 5 6 7very similar not at all similar

How similar are these things when you use them?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7very similar not at all similar

1 2 3 4 5 6 7very similar not at all similar

1 2 3 4 5 6 7very similar not at all similar

conceptualizing

perceiving

conceptualizing vs. perceiving

• conceptualized entities are subject to metaphorical thinking

• perceived entities are judged on their own terms, without influence from conceptual metaphors

• however: conceptual metaphor theory does not predict the ‘negative’ effect that is observed in the perceptual tasks

a matter of thought, not words

• Conceptual metaphors such as TIME IS SPACE or SIMILARITY IS CLOSENESS are used in non-linguistic reasoning.

• But: Just because a metaphor is there in language does not mean people use it to think about the world.– SIMILARITY IS CLOSENESS would predict that people judge

close faces as more similar, but they don’t do that. Perception intervenes.

• Linguistic examples are a good source for hypotheses about cognition, but not evidence for patterns of thought.

next time: polysemy

See you next time!

martin.hilpert@unine.ch