26.2512, Review: Cog Sci; Discourse; Ling Theories; Psycholing; Text/Corpus Ling: Csatár (2014)

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Subject: 26.2512, Review: Cog Sci; Discourse; Ling Theories; Psycholing; Text/Corpus Ling: Csatár (2014)

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Date: Mon, 18 May 2015 11:18:27
From: Nina Julich [nina_julich at yahoo.de]
Subject: Data Structure in Cognitive Metaphor Research

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-2886.html

AUTHOR: Péter  Csatár
TITLE: Data Structure in Cognitive Metaphor Research
SUBTITLE: Series: Metalinguistica - Volume 26
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Nina Julich, Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau

Review's Editors: Malgorzata Cavar and Ashley Parker

SUMMARY

This publication focuses on methodological issues in Conceptual Metaphor
Theory. It is a collection of four articles published between 2005 and 2014,
three of which first appeared in “Sprachentheorie und germanistische
Linguistik.” Throughout the book, Péter Csatár identifies three main issues in
conceptual metaphor research: first, the problem of metaphor identification,
second, the reliability of the methods applied, and third, the combinability
of data gathered by different methods.

In the first chapter, Csatár addresses the question of how relevant data, i.e.
metaphorically used language, can be gathered. In CMT, metaphor is seen as a
cognitive mechanism instead of a purely linguistic device. Therefore, formal
aspects seem to play a fairly insignificant role in the identification of
metaphors. Furthermore, metaphor is claimed to be pervasive in language and
its application is automatic and unconscious. Hence, to a great extent,
metaphorical expressions go unnoticed. Resulting from that, Csatár identifies
two major problems in CMT. The first problem is the theory-ladeness of the
researcher, i.e. findings are predetermined by the analyst‘s theory of
metaphor and his or her research questions. Second, data is usually gathered
to support pre-existing claims instead of being analyzed in terms of a
pre-theoretic status. Despite these issues, Csatár observes that so-far
metaphor identification has not been considered as problematic and metaphors
have largely been identified based on intuition.

In the next chapter, “Data collection in metaphor research: old problems and
new approaches,” Csatár discusses the application of the
introspective-intuitive method in CMT research. He identifies the method as
unreliable because it allows for a high degree of variation between scholars.
Furthermore, it is subjective and cannot be operationalized. Due to these
problems, Csatár judges the introspective-intuitive method to be too
restricted (p. 42). As a possible solution, Csatár reviews more recent
approaches to metaphor analysis. He discusses Steen’s five-step model (1999),
which introduces a procedure to reconstruct a conceptual mapping from a
metaphorical surface expression. Csatár concludes that, on the one hand,
Steen’s method is more transparent and more objective than the
introspective-intuitive method. On the other hand, however, it does not offer
a felicitous solution to the problem of reliability. According to Csatár,
Steen’s analysis still involves a degree of subjective judgement because it
does not make clear how metaphors are identified on the linguistic level in
the first place. Also, Steen’s analysis is very time-consuming and hence not
applicable to the analysis of large amounts of text.

Csartár goes on to review recent corpus-based approaches to CMT. He concludes
that these approaches cannot fully rule out intuition either, and face
problems of reliability as well because, again, metaphor identification is not
made transparent and still driven by the analyst‘s theoretical assumptions.
Csartár notes, however, that intuition can never be fully eliminated in CMT.
Instead the “inevitable subjective elements” (p. 64) in metaphor research
should be acknowledged and explicitly dealt with. Another problem that Csatár
mentions is that corpus-based approaches do not explicitly state how metaphor
is to be delineated from other phenomena like metonymy. Csartár emphasizes,
however, that especially automated corpus-based analyses exemplified by
Stefanowitsch (2006 a, b) and studies by Deignan (1999) offer a high degree of
representativeness and reduce the possibility of looking at phenomena that are
peripheral to every-day speech.

One of Csatár’s main criticism regarding methodology in CMT is its preference
for linguistic data. According to him, analyzing linguistic data can only be
counted as an indirect method in CMT research and needs to be complemented by
other, especially psycholinguistic data sources in order to do justice to
Cognitive Linguistics’ ‘cognitive commitment’. Thus, it is the aim of the
third chapter to introduce three principles for integrating psycholinguistic
experiments in metaphor research. Here, Csatár calls for a more explicit
definition of the term cognitive commitment because it does neither specify
which kinds of data can be used to lead to converging evidence nor how
different kinds of data can be combined and incorporated to further develop
one and the same theory. Csatár claims that the majority of experimental
results are interpreted too narrowly in that they are exclusively used to
support and illustrate theoretical assumptions based on linguistic data.
Reviewing four experiments (Boroditsky 2000, Núñez and Sweetser 2006,
Casasanto 2009, Gibbs et al. 2004), Csatár concludes that principles are
needed to guide the felicitous integration of experimental results in CMT
research. First, the principle of reproducibility is introduced, stating that
the results of an experiment can only be considered relevant when they have
been felicitously reproduced using different linguistic data and procedures.
The next principle is the principle of alignment, stating that both
experimental and linguistic data are of the same status and both have to be
re-analyzed if they should produce contradictory results. Finally, the
principle of considering alternatives is introduced, stating that experimental
results should always be evaluated in the light of several competing theories
in metaphor research (for example the class-inclusion theory or Gentner‘s
structure-mapping theory) in order to be relevant.

The last chapter, “Hybrid theories in contemporary cognitive metaphor
research,” presents an evaluation of Tendahl’s hybrid theory bringing together
ideas from CMT and Relevance Theory (henceforth RT) (Tendahl 2009). Csatár
begins by reviewing CMT and lists the basic assumptions that metaphor is
pervasive in language, that metaphor is a cognitive mechanism, and that
metaphor is a natural kind. In the following, he gives a very detailed account
of RT making direct reference to these three basic assumptions: In RT,
metaphor is not seen as prominent in language, the way metaphor is processed
is not different from how literal language is processed in general, and
metaphor is not a natural kind, showing that RT opposes all three basic CMT
assumptions. Finally, he presents Tendahl’s combination of CMT and RT. With
reference to the three assumptions above, Csatár concludes that within
Tendahl’s theory (1) metaphor is seen as a basic feature of language, however
(2) on-line metaphorical processing of meaning is probably limited to novel
cases of metaphor, and (3) only some metaphors represent specific knowledge
structures in terms of a natural kind.

EVALUATION

This compilation of articles highlights important methodological issues that
CMT yet has to solve. It is especially the set of principles which Csatár
offers for the integration of both linguistic and psycholinguistic data that
render this contribution valuable to the methodological debate in CMT. To my
knowledge, it has rarely been specified how the ‘cognitive commitment’ in
Cognitive Linguistics is to be implemented in practice in order to nurture
CMT. For this reason, Csatár’s book is aimed at CMT scholars encouraging them
to make their analyses more transparent and to critically reconsider their own
theoretical preassumptions. Furthermore, though recent studies have tried to
render metaphor identification and the reconstruction of conceptual mapping
more objective (Pragglejaz Group 2007, Steen et al. 2010), Csatár acknowledges
(however only in passing) the subjective nature inherent to the analysis of
metaphor. In a similar vein, Schmitt (2011) claims that the reconstruction of
metaphorical mappings is always a hermeneutical process. Schmitt has developed
a method for qualitative metaphor analysis (for application in the social
sciences) which does not strive to be fully operationalized but it rather
presents a guideline spelling out analytical steps and possible caveats that
have to be taken into consideration. Another problem put forward by Csatár is
the problem of delineating metaphor from other phenomena like metonymy.
Several scholars have called attention to that matter but it largely remains a
point of debate (cf. Dirven and Pörings 2003, Barcelona 2003, Barnden 2010).
Unfortunately, Csatár does neither elaborate on this issue nor does he offer
any possible solutions. All in all, Csatár systematically identifies major
issues of CMT, however, he does not always offer feasible solutions.

With its 150 pages, the book represents a concise overview of methodological
issues in CMT. However, in some parts of this volume, it is not clear whether
‘metaphor identification’ refers to the identification of the linguistic item
or the reconstruction of the conceptual mapping. So, the linguistic and
conceptual plane seem to be conflated. Moreover, some of the examples used to
illustrate different cases of metaphor lack embeddedness and are thus hard to
follow. Given that the articles were published in journals before — the first
one almost ten years ago — the book also does not always represent state of
the art although more recent approaches are briefly mentioned in the
introduction of the volume. Until now there have been approaches calling for a
more reliable and transparent identification procedure of metaphors, both in
terms of their linguistic surface expressions and the mappings behind them
(MIPVU, i.e. Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
cf. Steen et al. 2010, Schmitt 2011). When it comes to metaphor identification
on the language level, MIPVU presents a reliable tool rendering decisions in
the interpretation process more explicit and reproducable. When it comes to
the identification of metaphor on the conceptual level, however, CMT still
lacks an explicit methodological apparatus. Schmitt 2011, being in line with
Csatár’s suggestions here, urges researchers to acknowledge the subjective
nature of that analysis. Consequently, he highlights the importance of making
decisions within the interpretation process as transparent as possible. 

Despite some of its shortcomings, the book is a valuable resource for metaphor
scholars especially for those conducting empirical research as it calls for a
more explicit consideration of how to identify, interpret and integrate data
structure in cognitive metaphor research.

REFERENCES

Barcelona, A. (Ed.). 2003. Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: A
Cognitive Perspective.
Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Barnden, J. A. 2010. Metaphor and metonymy: Making their connections more
slippery. Cognitive 
Linguistics 21(1), 1-34.

Boroditsky, L. 2000. Metaphoric structuring: Understanding time through
spatial metaphors. 
Cognition, 75(1), 1–28.

Casasanto, D. 2009. When is a linguistic metaphor a conceptual metaphor? In V.
Evans and S. 
Pourcel (Eds.), New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 127–145).
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: 
Benjamins.

Dirven, R. and Pörings, R. (Eds.). 2003. Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison
and Contrast. 
Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Gibbs, R. W., Costa Lima, P. L., and Francozo, E. 2004. Metaphor is grounded
in embodied 
experience. Journal of Pragmatics, 36(7), 1189–1210.

Núñez, R.E. and Sweetser, E. 2006. Looking ahead to the past: Convergent
evidence from Aymara 
language and gesture in the crosslinguistic comparison of spatial construals
of time. Cognitive 
Science, 30(3), 401-450.

Pragglejaz Group. 2007. MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used
words in discourse. 
Metaphor and Symbol, 22(1), 1–39.

Schmitt, R. 2011. Systematische Metaphernanalyse als qualitative
sozialwissenschaftliche 
Forschungsmethode. Metaphorik.de 21, 47-82.

Steen, G. J. 1999. From linguistic to conceptual metaphor in five steps. In R.
W. Gibbs and G. J. 
Steen (Eds.), Metaphor in cognitive linguistics (pp. 57–77).
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Steen, G. J., Dorst, A. G., Herrmann, J. B., Kaal, A. A., Krennmayr, T., and
Pasma, T. 2010. A 
method for linguistic metaphor identification: From MIP to MIPVU.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: 
Benjamins.

Stefanowitsch, A. 2006a. Words and their metaphors: A corpus-based approach.
In A.
Stefanowitsch and S. T. Gries (Eds.), Corpus-based Approaches to Metaphor and
Metonymy. (pp.
63–105). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Stefanowitsch, A. and Gries, S. T. (Eds.). 2006b. Corpus-Based Approaches to
Metaphor and 
Metonymy. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Tendahl, M. 2009. A Hybrid Theory of Metaphor. Relevance Theory and Cognitive
Linguistics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Nina Julich is a PhD student at Leipzig University. Currently she teaches
technical English for Engineering at University of Applied Sciences Zwickau.
Her interests include conceptual metaphor, especially how it is used in
descriptions of music, and the notion of metaphor as a gradable phenomenon.





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