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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1997

Using metaphors as modifiers: children's production of metaphoric compounds.

Although much research has investigated children's use of metaphoric language, methodological concerns raise questions about the conclusions, and it remains unclear whether preschoolers can produce metaphors. These studies employed a new methodology to test children's ability to produce metaphors incorporated into metaphoric compounds. In two studies, 59 children aged 2:8-4:3, 63 children aged 4:4-6:1, and 34 adults participated in elicited production tasks. In Study 1, subjects in the COMPOUND condition corrected a puppet's incorrect compound labels for pictures that had metaphoric resemblances to other objects (e.g. 'leaf-bug' for a bug shaped like a stick). Subjects in the NONMETAPHORIC condition heard incorrect compounds describing pictures without obvious metaphoric resemblance (e.g. 'leaf-bug' for a round black beetle). Children in the REVERSAL condition heard compounds with nouns reversed (e.g. 'bug-leaf' for the stick-bug) to discover whether children distinguished between the literal and metaphoric labels. Study 2 provided an additional test of children's metaphoric-literal distinction. Results showed that children as young as 3:0 produced intentional, appropriate metaphors incorporated into compound nouns when the stimuli and puppet's labels primed recognition of metaphoric similarity and compound production. Moreover, children showed evidence of a distinction between literal and metaphoric labels. The data show that preschool children have an early ability to use metaphoric language but that significant developmental change occurs between the ages of 3:0 and 5:0 as well as beyond 5:0. Additionally, metaphoric language in preschoolers is not limited to single-word renamings.

Child↗
PubMed1994

Metaphor in illness and nursing: a two-edged sword. A discussion of the social use of metaphor in everyday language, and implications of nursing and nursing education.

Study of the use of language, and in particular metaphor, is a valuable approach to an understanding of the experiential, lived world of the patient. There is an emerging focus on the need for nursing care to be informed by an appreciation of the experience of the phenomena of illness and patienthood. Related nursing epistemological issues are discussed as background. The anatomy and social use of metaphor in language in general are described. The metaphors surrounding cancer are examined to illustrate the two main functions of metaphor; the instrumental and the expressive. Illness metaphors may have negative consequences, imbibing myth, fear and stigma. However, the author concludes that awareness of the expressive function of metaphor provides a valuable focus for listening to and understanding the experience of the patient. Finally, some of the implications of both functions of metaphor in nurse education are outlined.

Education, Nursing↗
PubMed1993

Metaphoric reference: when metaphors are not understood as easily as literal expressions.

Gibbs (1990) found that metaphoric referential descriptions take longer to read than literal references, in contrast to the usual result that metaphors and literal sentences are about equally easy to comprehend. This study was performed as an investigation of Gibb's finding. In Experiment 1, subjects received story contexts in which characters clearly shared knowledge relevant to the metaphoric referring term. In Experiment 2, we tried to ensure that the intended referent was very salient by mentioning it in the sentence just prior to the crucial sentence. Neither of these manipulations eliminated the large response time advantage for literal referring expressions. In Experiment 3, the same metaphors were used as sentence predicates rather than as referring expressions: the metaphors were no more difficult to understand than literal paraphrases. Possible explanations for the difficulty of metaphoric references, as opposed to metaphoric predicates, are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Hearing metaphor: an approach to working with family-generated metaphor.

This article presents a step-by-step approach to working with family-generated metaphor in family therapy. Although the use of therapist-generated "therapeutic metaphors" has been widely advocated and practiced for many years now, less attention has been paid to the metaphors used by family members. We argue that the family's metaphors are a neglected linguistic resource in family therapy. Highlighting and validating these metaphors produces a therapeutic conversation in which the voices of family members are heard more clearly by the therapist, and the families' own imaginative energies are engaged in defining and pursuing the goals of therapy. Several case examples illustrate the use of this approach with children of various ages.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

[Metaphors and power. A qualitative study of metaphorical thinking among Danish cancer patients].

The use of metaphors concerning cancer was investigated by interviewing nine Danish cancer patients, aged 30-85 years. Metaphors about the disease were widely used, e.g. personification metaphors. Most patients considered their cancer as a metaphor for a physical and psychological imbalance in the period before the disease. Some patients felt responsible for the disease. The metaphors of cancer patients should be considered when communicating with cancer patients.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Metaphoric structuring: understanding time through spatial metaphors.

The present paper evaluates the claim that abstract conceptual domains are structured through metaphorical mappings from domains grounded directly in experience. In particular, the paper asks whether the abstract domain of time gets its relational structure from the more concrete domain of space. Relational similarities between space and time are outlined along with several explanations of how these similarities may have arisen. Three experiments designed to distinguish between these explanations are described. The results indicate that (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, and (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. These findings provide some of the first empirical evidence for Metaphoric Structuring. It appears that abstract domains such as time are indeed shaped by metaphorical mappings from more concrete and experiential domains such as space.

Cognition↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Keeping the metaphor of scaffolding fresh--a response to C. Addison Stone's "The metaphor of scaffolding: its utility for the field of learning disabilities".

This author suggests three responses to Professor Stone's call for enriching the scaffolding metaphor: (a) repositioning the metaphor in its theoretical frame; (b) considering the ways in which contexts and activities, as well as individuals, scaffold learning; and (c) examining the relationship between scaffolding and effective teaching. The author describes research that has been conducted toward these ends.

Child↗
PubMed1995

Metaphor-based schemas and text representations: making connections through conceptual metaphors.

Four experiments were conducted to examine the role of metaphor-based schemas in text comprehension and representation. In Experiment 1, schemas facilitated recognition judgements for schema-related sentences that had been presented in a text. Similar facilitation was found for the recognition of individual words in Experiments 2, 3, and 4. The results are interpreted as evidence for the use of metaphor-based schemas to link elements within a text representation.

Humans↗
PubMed1997

The synergy of memory, affects and metaphor.

Recently, the concept of metaphor has been revitalized as a result of the convergence of interest in this subject from a variety of disciplines including neurobiology, linguistics and cognitive science. Metaphor is now viewed as an emergent property of mind. Metaphor is rooted in the body in two senses: metaphor is used to organize bodily sensation cognitively, especially affects, and secondly, metaphor is rooted in the body as it rests on the border between mind and brain. Metaphor is therefore viewed as a developmentally early, primitive mental function related to synesthesia. There is a significant distinction between frozen or foreclosed metaphors and open and generative metaphors. The foreclosed metaphor will dominate the perception of others in cases of trauma and can be understood as an explanation of transference repetition. Clinical examples of foreclosed metaphors are illustrated by vignettes of patients who have suffered traumas. Examples taken from two artists are used to illustrate instances in which the artist's own unassimilated experiences appear as generative metaphors.

Affect↗
PubMed1996

Health care teams as metaphors: a preliminary study.

This pilot study attempted to uncover similarities and differences in perceptions of health care teams by the professionals who work in them and are affected by them. This study used a convenience sample of 125 health professionals from 14 disciplines to explore the types of general metaphors and sports metaphors that they apply to health care teams. Data were analyzed by gender, type of metaphor, and stated reasons for choosing a particular metaphor. Fifteen themes emerged from the analysis. In response to a question about the metaphors that they apply to teams, health professionals identified more nonsports than sports metaphors. There was no difference between males and females in the application of sports metaphors as general metaphors for teams. Also, respondents reported using different metaphors in current practice than those they had used at the end of their formal professional training. This study demonstrates that many health professionals apply unidimensional metaphors to a dynamic and complex process. The findings suggest that trainers can help team members expose and develop their metaphors to more fully encompass the complexities of the health care team.

Female↗
PubMed1998

A psychoanalytic concept of metaphor.

Metaphor is defined as seeing something in terms of something else. Psychoanalysis sees the present in terms of the past and the past in terms of the present. It therefore relates past and present metaphorically to each other, which implies that both metaphor parts change each other. This view entails a broadening of the linguistic metaphor concept towards a supralinguistic, here psychoanalytic, one: metaphor is not only a phenomenon of language but of mentation; its units are not only words but psychodynamics. Familiar concepts of psychoanalytic theory are recast in the light of this psychoanalytic concept of metaphor. Symptoms are seen as the analysand's damaged ability to metaphorise past and present. Using interpretation the analyst helps the analysand to restore metaphorical processes that have been interrupted in their flow from the past to the present and from the present to the past. Metaphor restores the polysemy that is lost in neurotic suffering. The metaphorical processes within psychoanalysis are seen as common to all psychoanalytic schools that focus on the analysis of transference. The increasing attention the concept of metaphor is receiving within psychoanalysis is seen as related to a trend in today's science to more from objective categories to experiential ones.

Chronology as Topic↗
PubMed1993

Effects of familiarity and aptness on metaphor processing.

A cross-modal priming paradigm was used to examine the comprehension of metaphors varying in familiarity and aptness. In Experiments 1 and 2 high-familiar metaphors showed availability of the figurative meaning, but low-familiar (LF) metaphors did not. In Experiment 3, only LF metaphors that had been rated highly apt showed evidence of figurative activation. Experiment 4 showed evidence of figurative activation for most LF and moderate-apt metaphors. The locus of activation was investigated in Experiment 5 in which the individual words of the metaphor (topic and vehicle) served as primes. Neither topic nor vehicle showed evidence of priming the metaphor target, suggesting that activation of the metaphorical target in Experiments 1-4 was not caused by lexical activation of the words within the metaphors, but rather was due to activation of emergent properties of the metaphorical phrase.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

The moral metaphors of nursing.

The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another. Metaphorical concepts structure and reflect what we perceive, how we act, and how we relate to other people. In nursing ethics, several metaphors have emerged which have had a great impact on nursing practice. These metaphors include the military metaphor which exemplified nursing during the 1800s, the advocacy and academic metaphors which became a philosophical basis for nursing during the 1960s, and the individualist and community as caring metaphors which have emerged more recently. Although beneficial in some ways, these metaphors may be obscuring the complex moral reality of nursing practice. This article defines a moral metaphor, critiques nursing's moral metaphors, and provides an historical overview of their development with examples of how they have and do affect nursing practice.

Ethics, Nursing↗
PubMed1987

Metaphorization--making terms.

The analysts's receptivity to ambiguity is generally thought to be an essential part of his psychoanalytical practice. The interpretation of its multiple meanings can effectively create a 'bridging function' between personally metaphorical meanings and shared literal meanings. This function of ambiguous metaphor appears to be impossible in the treatment of the schizophrenic, who experiences metaphor in literal terms. Some of them, however, can utilize metaphor, indicating positive signs such as a non-psychotic part, anal retentive tendency, creativity, ambiguity tolerance, etc. This paper, based on my clinical experience, puts forward a hypothesis concerning the transitional process from the schizophrenic patient's literal experience to metaphorical understanding. To facilitate the process, the therapist's role of metaphorizing the patient's expressions, which are experienced literally, into 'here and now' events, is essential. Among the relevant technical issues, the appearance and usage of the 'in-metaphor' and the compound metaphor, which interweave the words and meanings of the two people in therapy, may play an important role. Ambiguous metaphor, which de-materializes and deodourizes the indigestible into a word, evolves alongside the establishing of interpersonal ambiguous area. It is concluded that this 'bridging' process can be promoted by the playfully shared metaphorization.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

The time-course of metaphor comprehension: an event-related potential study.

ERPs were recorded while subjects were reading short familiar metaphors (e.g., Those fighters are lions), unfamiliar metaphors (Those apprentices are lions), or literal control sentences (Those animals are lions) presented in isolation or preceded by either an irrelevant or relevant context (e.g., They are not idiotic: ...." vs. "They are not cowardly: Those fighters are lions"). The terminal word of metaphors elicited larger N400 components than did the terminal word of literal sentences (Experiment 1) suggesting that the (incongruous) literal meaning of metaphors was indeed accessed at some point during comprehension. The analysis of the 600-1000 and 1000-1400 latency bands (Late Positive Components) revealed no significant difference between metaphors and literal sentences. The manipulation of metaphor difficulty (Experiments 2 and 3) also failed to reveal any late effect specifically linked to metaphorical processing. Finally, an effect of the preceding sentence context was found in Experiments 3 and 4, as early as 300 ms following the terminal word onset. Overall, these results support a context-dependent account of metaphor comprehension stating that when contextually relevant, the metaphorical meaning is the only one accessed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Are metaphors elliptical similes?

What is the relation between metaphors and similes? Aristotle's "comparison theory" holds that metaphors are elliptical similes: "Sam is a pig" is simply a short form of "Sam is like a pig." In contrast, it has been suggested that metaphors cannot be elliptical similes because metaphors are "stronger" than similes. We know metaphors are stronger, it is argued, because of examples involving corrections, such as "Peter is not just like a rock, he is a rock." The argument from corrections can be challenged on logical and empirical grounds. The ability to correct a simile with a metaphor does not entail that metaphors are stronger than similes when used on their own, which is likely to be the most frequent case. Although four experiments indicate that when corrections are involved, metaphors are indeed stronger than similes in several respects, alas a further four experiments indicate that these differences are largely eliminated when metaphors and similes are used on their own. We note that this pattern of results is consistent with the comparison theory, and we offer an explanation of the effects of corrections.

Adult↗
PubMed1980

Understanding visual metaphor: developmental and individual differences.

The development of an instrument--the Metaphoric Triads Task (MTT)--for the assessment of metaphoric comprehension is described. In the tradition of earlier cognitive-style research, a visual triad format was adopted that offered three possible pairings of pictorial stimuli, one of which was metaphorical in character. A subject's score reflects the number of metaphoric pairings formed (with appropriate metaphoric explanations) across all of the triads of the task. Data are reported for 12 samples of subjects (ranging from 7 1/2 to 28 years of age) who responded to the MTT in a diverse array of studies. Internal analyses of the MTT yielded satisfactory reliabilities (interjudge and internal consistency) and item-sum correlations. Sex differences were negligible, but progressive improvement in MTT score with age was noted. At the same time, a slight modification of the MTT triad format generated performance levels from younger children that approximated those of children 1--3 years older who had taken the MTT in its standard form. Higher MTT scores were generally obtained by those subjects who attempted more pairings, spent more time at the task, and chose the metaphoric pair as "best" among the alternative pairing possibilities. Correlations of MTT performance with standardized tests of intellective aptitudes and achievements were inconsistent across samples and between the sexes within samples. In contrast, MTT scores were quite consistently related to solving difficult analogies, generating high-quality responses to divergent-thinking tasks, and manifesting broad categorizing and physiognomic sensitivity. Significant correlations between the MTT and a set of verbal metaphoric triads offered convergent validational evidence suggestive of a general metaphoric style. Some relation was found between MTT performance and teacher ratings of figurative language appreciation and esthetic sensitivity, though it appeared that these might be mediated by the teachers' estimate of the child's overall capability. Finally, three experimental training studies were carried out. A requirement of exhaustive pairing and informative feedback on pretest items significantly enhanced the MTT performance of the younger children. The provision of appropriate verbal labels for each picture in a triad also significantly enhanced performance by insuring that children's encoding of the pictures was consistent with the metaphoric linkage in each item.

Adolescent↗