The Visual Representation of a Systematic Metaphor in a UK Media Text

Much has been written on the organizational power of metaphor in discourse, eg on metaphor ‘chains’ and ‘clusters’ of linguistic metaphor in discourse (Koller 2003, Cameron & Stelma 2004, Semino 2008) and the role of extended and systematic metaphor in organizing long stretches of language, even whole texts (Cameron et al 2009, Cameron & Maslen 2010, Deignan et al 2013, Semino et al 2013). However, at times, this work belies the intricacies of how a single metaphoric idea can impact on a text. The focus of this paper is a UK media article derived from a HM Treasury press release on alleviating poverty. The language of the article draws heavily on orientational (spatial) metaphors, particularly metaphors of movement around GOOD IS UP. Although GOOD IS UP can be considered a single metaphoric idea, the picture the reader builds up as they move line by line through this text is complex and multifaceted. I take the idea of “building up a picture” literally in order to investigate the schema of motion relating to GOOD IS UP. To do this, fifteen informants (Masters students at a London university), tutored in Cognitive Metaphor Theory, were asked to read the article and underline words and expressions they felt related to GOOD IS UP. The text was then read back to the informant with emphasis given to the words they had underlined, while they drew a pictorial representation of the article based on the meanings of these words, integrating their drawings into a single picture as they went along. I present examples of the drawings the informants produced. I propose that using Metaphor-led Discourse Analysis to produce visual material in this way offers useful insights into how metaphor contributes to meaning making at text level. It shows how a metaphoric idea, such as GOOD IS UP, provides the text producer with a rich and versatile meaning-making resource for constructing text; and gives a ‘mind-map’ of how certain aspects of a media text are decoded by the text receiver. It also offers a partial representation of the elusive, intermediate ‘deverbalized’ stage of translation (Lederer 1987), where the sense of the source text is held in the mind before it is transferred to the target language. References Cameron, L., R. Maslen, Z. Todd, J. Maule, P. Stratton & N. Stanley. 2009. ‘The discourse dynamic approach to metaphor and metaphor-led analysis’. Metaphor and Symbol, 24(2), 63-89. Cameron, L. & R. Maslen (eds). 2010. Metaphor Analysis: Research Practice in Applied Linguistics, Social Sciences and Humanities. London: Equinox. Cameron, L. & J. Stelma. 2004. ‘Metaphor Clusters in Discourse’. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(2), 107-136. Deignan, A., J. Littlemore & E. Semino. 2013. Figurative Language, Genre and Register. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koller, V. 2003. ‘Metaphor Clusters, Metaphor Chains: Analyzing the Multifunctionality of Metaphor in Text’. metaphorik.de, 5, 115-134. Lederer, M. 1987. ‘La théorie interprétative de la traduction’ in Retour à La Traduction. Le Francais dans Le Monde. Semino, E. 2008. Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Semino, E., A. Deignan & J. Littlemore. 2013. ‘Metaphor, Genre, and Recontextualization’. Metaphor and Symbol. 28(1), 41-59.

Questioning the merits and demerits of electronic communication in Social Work

This paper examines the social dynamics of electronic exchanges in the human services, particularly in social work. It focuses on the observable effects that email and texting have on the linguistic, relational and clinical rather than managerial aspects of the profession. It highlights how electronic communication is affecting professionals in their practice and learners as they become acculturated to social work. What are the gains and losses of the broad use of electronic devices in daily lay and professional, verbal and non-verbal communication? Will our current situation be seriously detrimental to the demeanor of future practitioners, their use of language, and their ability to establish close personal relationships? The paper analyzes social work linguistic and behavioral changes in light of the growth of electronic communication and offers a summary of merits and demerits viewed through a prism emerging from Baron’s (2000) analysis of human communication.

The State of the Nation Debate as part of the democratic parliamentary ritual: Rajoy and Rubalcaba discourse analysis, 2014

In this article we analyze the Debate on the State of the Nation 2014. The methodology consists in coding the speeches of the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy (PP) and the then opposition leader Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba (PSOE) through extracting word clouds, branched maps and word trees that have shown the most common concepts and premises. This preliminary analysis of two dimensions, quantitative and qualitative, makes it much easier and viable subsequent discourse analysis where we focus on the different types of arguments in the communicative act: claim/solution, circumstantial premises, goal premises, value premises, meansgoal premises, alternative options/addressing alternative options.

Estructura formal, textual y oral del discurso público

Estructura formal, textual y oral del discurso públicoExisten tres competencias comunicativas muy valoradas en la sociedad de la información. Primero, la búsqueda, selección y gestión de grandes cantidades de información. Segundo, la redacción de textos claros, concisos y rigurosos. Y en tercer lugar, la exposición y defensa oral de esta información en un discurso público. Tradicionalmente, los estudios de periodismo han abordado estas competencias de forma independiente. Pero actualmente, instituciones y empresas de ámbitos diferentes demandan un perfil profesional capaz de aplicarlas ante cualquier tipo de información y con objetivos diversos. Se propone un modelo integral en tres niveles estructurales basado en teorías, conceptos y estudios específicos de periodismo, oratoria, retórica… o comunicación, en los últimos años. Este modelo puede contribuir a encauzar las investigaciones de académicos y representa una herramienta de entrenamiento para profesionales.

The Narrative Value of Dance Communication: "habitus", musicality and emotion

The richness of dance comes from the need to work with an individual body. Still, the body of the dancer belongs to plural context, crossed by artistic and social traditions, which locate the artists in a given field. We claim that role conflict is an essential component of the structure of collective artistic creativity. We address the production of discourse in a British dance company, with data that spawns from the ethnography ‘Dance and Cognition’, directed by David Kirsh at the University of California, together with WayneMcGregor-Random Dance. Our Critical Discourse Analysis is based on multiple interviews to the dancers and choreographer. Our findings show how creativity in dance seems to be empirically observable, and thus embodied and distributed shaped by the dance habitus of the particular social context.

Negative Archaeology. The Archaeological Borders of the Present

Nowadays, archaeology is trying to redefine its relation with objects. This change is taking place at the same time as the West is breaking once and for all with the generation who did the rural exodus in the mid of the twentieth century. The present paper proposes a revision of the conditions that allow us to both define this rupture and at the same time determine our affinity with materiality. This is done through a reconsideration of the relation between the past and the present and the dynamics marking this difference. We are situated in a moment when the experience of time is shifting and thus so is the integrity of archaeological objects. Under the name of Negative Archaeology, the border between past and present is explored. This border determines the creation of the past in a present which intends to homogenise changes. Archaeology is a unique discipline which could prevent this process, or at least bear witness to the dynamics to which objects seem to be subjected. Obscolescence is introduced as a concept in an attempt to name the aforementioned problem.

A cognitive study of polysemy in Chinese 手 shǒu and Spanish mano ‘hand’

When studying polysemy in Chinese and Spanish, a cognitive approach shows what is common in the polysemous patterns of both languages, so that we can make generalizations applicable to other languages and other semantic phenomena of language. The paper’s hypothesis is that there are universal mechanisms of semantic extension that can be highlighted and can be used in teaching and learning languages.

Being impolite while pretending to be polite. The rupture of politeness conventions in electoral debates

This paper is a part of a larger research that pursues a global understanding of impoliteness in face-to-face electoral debates. That research distinguishes three essential axes, three complementary analytical perspectives: functional strategies of impoliteness, linguistic-discursive mechanisms to implement them and social impacts of impolite acts. In this frame, the present work develops an in-depth analysis of a special category of mechanisms, namely the rupture of politeness conventions, a subgroup within postliteral implicit mechanisms. This subgroup acquires its identity by the fact of carrying out a linguistic action that is conventionally associated with a polite attitude, but doing it in a rhetorically insincere way: the consequence is that apparent politeness becomes impoliteness. Relevant aspects in the characterization of ruptures are isolated and, on this basis, it is developed a detailed analysis of three specific kinds of mechanisms in which ruptures take shape: using ironic statements, developing different forms of overpoliteness and adopting a falsely collaborative attitude toward the interlocutor. The analysis of that group of mechanisms takes into account, simultaneously, the other two axes of the main research, strategies and social impacts.

Assessment of the EEE-4 oral test: a discourse analysis based on complex networks.

With the development of information technology, the theory and methodology of complex network has been introduced to the language research, which transforms the system of language in a complex networks composed of nodes and edges for the quantitative analysis about the language structure. The development of dependency grammar provides theoretical support for the construction of a treebank corpus, making possible a statistic analysis of complex networks. This paper introduces the theory and methodology of the complex network and builds dependency syntactic networks based on the treebank of speeches from the EEE-4 oral test. According to the analysis of the overall characteristics of the networks, including the number of edges, the number of the nodes, the average degree, the average path length, the network centrality and the degree distribution, it aims to find in the networks potential difference and similarity between various grades of speaking performance. Through clustering analysis, this research intends to prove the network parameters’ discriminating feature and provide potential reference for scoring speaking performance.

Digging up the frequency of phrasal verbs in English for the Police: the case of "up"

The present study focuses on the frequency of phrasal verbs with the particle up in the context of crime and police investigative work. This research emerges from the need to enlarge McCarthy and O’Dell’s (2004) scope from purely criminal behavior to police investigative actions. To do so, we relied on a corpus of 504,124 running words made up of spoken dialogues extracted from the script of the American TV series Castle shown on ABC since 2009. Based on Rudzka-Ostyn’s (2003) cognitive motivations for the particle up, we have identified five different meaning extensions for our phrasal verbs. Drawing from these findings, we have designed pedagogical activities for those L2 learners that study English at the Police Academy.

Motivation and Vocabulary Breadth in CLIL and EFL Contexts. Different age, Same Time of Exposure

Numerous studies have found a positive connection between learners’ motivation towards foreign language and foreign language achievement. The present study examines the role of motivation in receptive vocabulary breadth (size) of two groups of Spanish learners of different ages, but all with 734 hours of instruction in English as a Foreign Language (EFL): a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) group in primary education and a non-CLIL (or EFL) group in secondary education. Most students in both groups were found to be highly motivated. The primary CLIL group slightly overcame the secondary non-CLIL group with respect to the mean general motivation but this is a non-significant difference. The secondary group surpass significantly the primary group in receptive vocabulary size. No relationship between the receptive vocabulary knowledge and general motivation is found in the primary CLIL group. On the other hand, a positive significant connection, although a very small one, is identified for the secondary non-CLIL group. We will discuss on the type of test, the age of students and the type of instruction as variables that could be influencing the results.

Who is in charge? An L2 Discourse Intonation Study on Four Prosodic Parameters to Exert the Pragmatic Function of Dominance and Control in the Context of L2 Non-specialist Public Speaking

This paper reports the findings from a study of the learning of English intonation by Spanish speakers within the discourse mode of L2 oral presentation. The purpose of this experiment is, firstly, to compare four prosodic parameters before and after an L2 discourse intonation training programme and, secondly, to confirm whether subjects, after the aforementioned L2 discourse intonation training, are able to match the form of these four prosodic parameters to the discourse-pragmatic function of dominance and control. The study designed the instructions and tasks to create the oral and written corpora and Brazil’s Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English was adapted for the pedagogical aims of the present study. The learners’ pre- and post-tasks were acoustically analysed and a pre / post- questionnaire design was applied to interpret the acoustic analysis. Results indicate most of the subjects acquired a wider choice of the four prosodic parameters partly due to the prosodically-annotated transcripts that were developed throughout the L2 discourse intonation course. Conversely, qualitative and quantitative data reveal most subjects failed to match the forms to their appropriate pragmatic functions to express dominance and control in an L2 oral presentation.

Receptive Vocabulary of CLIL and Non-CLIL Primary and Secondary School Learners

CLIL instruction has been reported to be beneficial for foreign language vocabulary learning since CLIL students show higher vocabulary profiles than students of their same age in traditional EFL contexts. However, to our knowledge, the receptive vocabulary knowledge of CLIL and non-CLIL learners at the end of primary and secondary education has not been examined yet. Hence, this study aims at comparing the receptive vocabulary size 79 CLIL primary learners with the receptive vocabulary knowledge of 331 non-CLIL learners at the end of primary and secondary school. Sex-based differences were also analysed. The 2k Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) was used for the purposes of the study. Results revealed that learners’ receptive vocabulary sizes lie within the most frequent 1000 words, non-CLIL secondary school students throw better results than primary students but the differences between the secondary group and the CLIL group are not statistically significant. As for sex-based differences, we found no significant differences among the groups. These findings led us to believe that the CLIL approach offers a benefit for vocabulary acquisition since CLIL learners have been exposed to the foreign language for a shorter period of time and the results are quite similar to their non-CLIL secondary school partners.

Mr Micawber anticipates Feist: transformations of mental labour.

This paper traces transformations of mental labour and its distribution between human and machine from Mr Micawber's parody of arithmetical calculation (result happiness) in the mid-19th century to the late 20th century judgment of the Supreme Court of United States in Feist v. Rural (1991), concerned with copyright in databases.