Metaphor Hacker - Hacking Metaphors, Frames and Other Ideas

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-05-13

Dominik Lukeš — Sun, 13 May 2012 10:17:00 +0000

The Mind isn't software running on the computer of the brain says @thealexknapp correctly http://t.co/4vN6t5bu #linguistics #
Philosophers are forever confusing 'reason' as a hermeneutic and as a heuristic which allows them to praise it too high http://t.co/9IS81Rsv #
We have to show "our epistemic principles are reinforced by our moral and practical principles" but are still rational http://t.co/Q0zsk5Ot #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-04-29

Dominik Lukeš — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 10:17:00 +0000

Feature: Raskally fellows: Are copyright infringers "pirates" and "thieves"? http://t.co/z6w7d0io < A history of a #metaphor negotiation #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-04-22

Dominik Lukeš — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 10:17:00 +0000

If you're still asking the same question after you got the answer, you got the wrong answer. A good answer makes the question look stupid. #
I find Michael Sandel's (@JusticeHarvard) probing questioning profoundly annoying. He must be a great philosopher. http://t.co/wVnsqUXP #
From an old blog post: "Medicine is simply witchcraft with better peer review." http://t.co/ErseRpIZ #witchcraft #medicine #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-04-15

Dominik Lukeš — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 10:17:00 +0000

Oracle thinks you can copyright a programming language, Google disagrees http://t.co/9NT8O4Cp #battleofmetaphors #
My fellow atheists are too keen on explanatory totalism. But appeals to wonder & mystery are not the alternative. http://t.co/LUrkeIhI #
Metaphor negotiation: "The Education Optimists: Our Students Aren't Customers" http://t.co/KJS0Nww3 #metaphor #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-04-01

Dominik Lukeš — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 10:17:00 +0000

New on http://t.co/fghOGDTS: RaAM 9 Abstract: Of Doves and Cocks: Collective Negotiation of a Metaphoric Seduction http://t.co/VyyzfYiK #
I took to Platonic dialogues like Socrates to hemlock. Nearly died of boredom! #simile #
A simile is like an analogy without the SAT credentials. #metaphor #

RaAM 9 Abstract: Of Doves and Cocks: Collective Negotiation of a Metaphoric Seduction

Dominik Lukeš — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 14:00:38 +0000

Given how long I’ve been studying metaphor (at least since 1991 when I first encountered Lakoff and Johnson’s work and full on since 2000) it is amazing that I have yet to attend a RaAM (Researching and Applying Metaphor) conference. I had an abstract accepted to one of the previous RaAMs but couldn’t go. This time, I’ve had an abstract accepted and wild horses won’t keep me away (even though it is expensive since no one is sponsoring my going). The abstract that got accepted is about a small piece of research that I conceived back in 2004, wrote up in a blog post in 2006, was supposed to talk about at a conference in 2011 and finally will get to present this July at RaAM 9).

Unlike most academic endeavours, this one needs to come with a parental warning. The materials described contains profane sexual and scatological imagery as employed for the purposes of satire. But I think it makes a really important point that I don’t see people making as a matter of course in the metaphor studies literature. I argue that metaphors can be incredibly powerful and seductive but that they are also routinely deconstructed and negotiated. They are not something that just happens to us. They are opportunistic and random just as much as they are systematic and fundamental to our cognition. Much of the current metaphor studies is still fighting the battle against the view that metaphors are mere peripheral adornments on the literal. And to be sure the “just a metaphor” label is still to be seen in popular discourse today. But it has now been over 40 years since this fight has been intellectually won. So we need to focus on the broader questions about the complexities of the role metaphor plays in social cognition. And my contribution to RaAM hopes to point in that direction.

Of Doves and Cocks: Collective Negotiation of a Metaphoric Seduction

In this contribution, I propose to investigate metaphoric cognition as an extended discursive and social phenomenon that is the cornerstone of our ability to understand and negotiate issues of public importance. Since Lakoff and Johnson’s groundbreaking study, research in linguistics, cognitive psychology, as well as discourse studies, has tended to view metaphor as a purely unconscious phenomenon that is outside of a normal speaker’s ability to manipulate. However important this view of metaphor and cognition may be, it tells only a part of the story. An equally important and surprisingly frequent is the ability of metaphor to enter into collective (meta)cognition through extended discourse in which acceptable cross-domain mappings are negotiated.

I will provide an example of a particular metaphorical framing and the metacognitive framework it engendered that made it possible for extended discourse to develop. This metaphor, a leitmotif in the ‘Team America’ film satire, mapped the physiological and phraseological properties of taboo body parts onto geopolitical issues of war in such a way that made it possible for participants in the subsequent discourse to simultaneously be seduced by the power of the metaphor and empowered to engage in talk about cognition, text and context as exemplified by statements such as: “It sounds quite weird out of context, but the paragraph about dicks, pussies and assholes was the craziest analogy I’ve ever heard, mainly because it actually made sense.” I will demonstrate how this example is typical rather than aberrant of metaphor in discourse and discuss the limits of a purely cognitive approach to metaphor.

Following Talmy, I will argue that significant elements of metaphoric cognition are available to speakers’ introspection and thus available for public negotiation. However, this does not preclude for the sheer power of the metaphor to have an impact on both cognition and discourse. I will argue that as a result of the strength of this one metaphor, the balance of the discussion of this highly satirical film was shifted in support of military interventionism as evidenced by the subsequent popular commentary. By mapping political and gender concepts on the basic structural inevitability of human sexual anatomy reinforced by idiomatic mappings between taboo words and moral concepts, the metaphor makes further negotiation virtually impossible within its own parameters. Thus an individual speaker may be simultaneously seduced and empowered by a particular metaphorical mapping.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-03-25

Dominik Lukeš — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 10:17:00 +0000

Science, Pseudoscience, Nutritional Epidemiology, and Meat http://t.co/729kRx4c < overreliance on experiments is as foolish as not… #
Vegeterians are to vegans what agnostics are to atheists. #analogy #
His teeth were grinding like teenagers at a rave. < Simile for a modern age? #simile #
Rather than a love of wisdom, too many philosophers have inherited from Plato a frustration with not being listened to by those in power! #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-03-18

Dominik Lukeš — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 10:17:00 +0000

"Points 4 My Future Principal to Remember: Students Are Not Customers" < they both are and are not – how metaphor works http://t.co/SP2thfdz #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-03-11

Dominik Lukeš — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 10:17:00 +0000

http://t.co/ZyTsoa2a: Skeletons in the closet < A beautiful scientific mea culpa, this is how knowledge is made http://t.co/hQVWzb1r #
I'm often sceptical about science's claims to monopoly on useful knowledge but sometimes it should have the last word. http://t.co/IBFM8kHT #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-03-04

Dominik Lukeš — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 10:17:00 +0000

There seems to be little correlation between intelligence and the content of held belief. Smart people have always believed stupid things! #