32.1229, Review: Cognitive Science; Linguistic Theories: Nacey, Dorst, Krennmayr, Reijnierse (2019)

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Subject: 32.1229, Review: Cognitive Science; Linguistic Theories: Nacey, Dorst, Krennmayr, Reijnierse (2019)

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Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2021 17:44:41
From: Nina Julich-Warpakowski [nina_julich at yahoo.de]
Subject: Metaphor Identification in Multiple Languages

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-116.html

EDITOR: Susan  Nacey
EDITOR: Aletta G.  Dorst
EDITOR: Tina  Krennmayr
EDITOR: W. Gudrun  Reijnierse
TITLE: Metaphor Identification in Multiple Languages
SUBTITLE: MIPVU around the world
SERIES TITLE: Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research 22
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Nina Julich-Warpakowski, Universität Leipzig

SUMMARY

“Metaphor Identification in Multiple Languages. MIPVU around the world” is an
illustration and discussion of MIPVU ‘Metaphor Identification Procedure
developed at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’, a method for reliable and
replicable metaphor identification in discourse originally designed for
English language data, and the problems and challenges that emerge when
applying MIPVU to other languages. The edited volume begins with an
introduction of the purpose of the book and a brief overview of the individual
contributions. Chapter 2 is a reprint of the original MIPVU procedure from
Steen et al. (2010). Chapter 3 presents additional guidelines for practically
using MIPVU. Chapters 4 to 14 are the main body of the volume, each of which
includes an application of MIPVU to a languages other than English (French,
Dutch, German, Scandinavian languages, Lithuanian, Polish, Serbian, Uzbek,
Chinese, Sesotho,  and English as a lingua franca). Each chapter focuses on
“operational issues” (e.g. available dictionaries, demarcation of linguistic
units) as well as on more language-specific challenges (e.g. inflectional and
derivational morphology). The book ends with an afterword by eminent metaphor
scholar Elena Semino. In the following, each individual chapter will be
briefly summarised.

Chapter 1, MIPVU in multiple languages (pp. 1-21), is an introduction to the
book by the editors Susan Nacey, Aletta G. Dorst, Tina Krennmayr, and W.
Gudrun Reijnierse, as well as eminent metaphor scholar and initiator of the
development of MIP and MIPVU, Gerard J. Steen. While MIPVU as well as previous
publications with a methodological focus on metaphor analysis in discourse
(Cameron & Maslen 2010, Charteris-Black 2004, Heywood et al. 2002, Goatly
1997) have largely focused on English, metaphor identification procedures in
languages other than English remain largely underrepresented. The present
volume aims to fill this gap. Applications of MIPVU have started to appear
(such as Badryzlova et al. 2013 for Russian) but the present volume presents a
first and systematic collection of languages across the globe. This
introductory chapter by Nacey et al. provides background on MIPVU and its
predecessor MIP (Pragglejaz Group 2007). Other methods for metaphor
identification are briefly discussed (Kittay 1984, Charteris-Black 2004,
Cameron 2003). The chapter includes an interview with Gerard J. Steen
providing insights into developing MIP and MIPVU.

Chapter 2, MIPVU: A manual for identifying metaphor-related words (pp. 23-40)
by Gerard J. Steen, Aletta G. Dorst, J. Berenike Herrmann, Anna A. Kaal, Tina
Krennmayr, and Trintje Pasma is a reprint of the original procedure from Steen
et al. 2010. The procedure consists of a set of instructions to identify
metaphor-related words in discourse. The notion ‘metaphor-related word’ is
used to indicate that all lexical units identified as metaphorical by the
procedure “can be taken to be lexical expressions of underlying cross-domain
mappings” (p. 23). Details for each step are discussed in designated
subsections. The basic unit of analysis in MIPVU is the orthographic word, or
“lexical unit”. Metaphorical use of lexical units is identified by the
following steps: 1) determining the contextual meaning of a lexical unit in
the data with the help a dictionary (here the Macmillan English dictionary for
advanced learners and the Longman dictionary of contemporary English), 2)
determining whether the lexical unit has a more basic sense, i.e. a “more
concrete, specific, and human oriented” sense in contemporary language use (p.
32), 3) determining whether both basic and contextual meaning are sufficiently
distinct, and 4) deciding on whether both meaning can be related by some form
of similarity.

In Chapter 3, What the MIPVU protocol doesn’t tell you (even though it mostly
does) (pp. 41-67) by Susan Nacey, Tina Krennmayr, Aletta G. Dorst, and W.
Gudrun Reijnierse, potential challenges applying MIPVU are illustrated and
further practical guidelines are suggested. The authors focus on aspects of
the “nitty-gritty” details (p. 41) of the procedure that novice users often
tend to overlook. These regard deciding on what counts as a lexical unit,
determining a more basic meaning of a lexical unit, and establishing whether
contextual and basic meaning constitute a (metaphorical) comparison. Nacey et
al. also discuss and illustrate the use of software tools, such as Excel (for
which a MIPVU annotation template is provided in the volume’s online
supplementary material), File Maker, or R (R core team 2013). The chapter
concludes a brief illustration of the usefulness and rationale of inter-rater
reliability testing. Nacey et al. also provide more general advice on the
application of MIPVU to a research topic.

In Chapter 4, Linguistic metaphor identification in French (pp. 69-90), W.
Gudrun Reijnierse suggests adjusted guidelines for the identification of
metaphors based on language-specific lexical and grammatical characteristics
of French. The chapter includes an illustration of the procedure applied to
one sentence from the French newspaper Le Figaro. She presents a study, in
which the same corpus of approximately 45,000 words was analysed twice, each
time using a different dictionary. The dictionaries used were the electronic
versions of Le Petit Robert, and Le Grand Robert & Collins. The results reveal
that for 96.86% of the lexical units in the corpus both dictionaries yield the
same result. There are however more considerable differences when it comes to
the (non-)metaphorical status of lexical units with respect to word classes:
identification particularly deviates for adverbs, nouns, and verbs. The author
discusses qualitative differences in the organisation of entries in each
dictionary that may account for these discrepancies.

Chapter 5, Linguistic metaphor identification in Dutch (pp. 91-112) by Tryntje
Pasma, is a reprint of Chapter 7 in Steen et al. 2010 and reports the author’s
experience with the application of MIPVU to a corpus of Dutch. Since no
corpus-based dictionary for Dutch exists, the historically based Van dale
dictionary was used. Pasma shows that the three analysts who coded the data
agreed on the metaphorical status of more than 90% of the words analysed,
which indicates that MIPVU can be well adopted to Dutch, bearing in mind minor
language-specific adjustments. One issue concerns separable complex Dutch
verbs, which can be separated into verbal root and particle. In analogy to
English phrasal verbs, these are always considered as one unit. Another issue
concerns polywords such as “met name”, ‘in particular’. These are not listed
in the dictionary and thus have to be analysed into their component units,
which often poses a problem since the metaphorical status of the individual
components is difficult to establish.

In Chapter 6, Linguistic metaphor identification in German (pp. 113-135), J.
Berenike Herrmann, Karola Woll, and Aletta G. Dorst show how MIPVU can be
applied and adjusted to identify metaphors in German data based on the
analysis of a sample of 20,549 words from different genres. The data was
automatically POS-tagged. Due to language-specific characteristics of German
and the nature of the dictionaries used, the following issues call for an
adjustment of MIPVU to German: the demarcation of lexical units (especially
with respect to separable complex verbs (like Dutch above), compounds, and
polywords), non-autonomous sense descriptions in the dictionary (e.g. a
nominalisation derived from a verb may not have a separate entry), and
establishing distinctness between senses. Each issue is discussed in detail
and a set of clearly stated guidelines is provided. The authors report
reliability results for the analysis of a subset of the data. Reliability for
metaphorically used words is moderate (Fleiss’ Kappa: 0.71) suggesting that
MIPVU can be well applied to German. 

In Chapter 7, Linguistic metaphor identification in Scandinavian (pp.
137-158), Susan Nacey, Linda Greve, and Marlene Johansson Falck present a
metaphor identification procedure for Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. As in
the previous chapters, adjustments have to be made when applying MIPVU to
Scandinavian languages. The demarcation of lexical units should correspond to 
the orthographic word, i.e. complex words written solidly should be considered
one unit (reflexive verbs are discussed as an exception). As regards
polywords, the authors have created their own preliminary lists for each of
the three languages in part based on the Oslo-Bergen tagger. The procedure for
metaphor identification in Scandinavian is presented in a nutshell, and
illustrate in a sample analysis. The authors report reliability of a case
study, which was analysed in two rounds. For identification of
metaphor-related words, initially there was only moderate agreement, which was
largely due to the fact that the metaphoricity of prepositions was overlooked
or unclear, but strong to almost perfect agreement after round two.

In Chapter 8, Linguistic metaphor identification in Lithuanian (pp. 159-181),
Justina Urbonaitė, Inesa Šeškauskienė, and Jurga Cibulskienė present an
application of MIPVU to Lithuanian. In the absence of a contemporary
corpus-based dictionary of Lithuanian, the use of a number of lexical
resources is suggested. The authors discuss language-specific challenges that
call for an adjustment of MIPVU when applied to Lithuanian. Particularly this
concerns the rich inflectional nature of Lithuanian. The authors consider
abstract nouns that are marked for dative, locative, or instrumental case as
metaphorically used thus deviating from the original MIPVU by considering a
lexical unit’s internal morphological structure. The same applies to
derivational affixes, which often have prepositional meanings. The authors
present an exemplary application of MIPVU to selected lexical units. In a case
study, three analysis applied the Lithuanian MIPVU to 1,305 words of academic
legal discourse scoring an impressive Fleiss’ Kappa of 0.94, which is
considered “almost perfect agreement”.

In Chapter 9, Linguistic metaphor identification in Polish (pp. 183-202),
Joanna Marhula and Maciej Rosiński present an application of MIPVU to Polish
language data. Like Lithuanian, Polish is a language rich in inflections and
derivational morphology which calls for adjustments of the procedure.
Adjustments are based on the exhaustive analysis of a dataset of 7,604 words
by two analysts. The authors discuss the lexical unit status of multiword
expressions, reflexive verbs, prepositional verbs, as well as proper names. As
regards case inflections, Marhula and Rosiński follow the suggestion of the
authors of the previous chapter and consider case endings to be potentially
metaphorical. The authors illustrate this with an example of the vocative form
of inanimate nouns, which can be interpreted as a personification. Finally, an
illustration of the adjusted procedure is presented. As regards reliability of
the procedure, the authors report a Cohen’s Kappa value of 0.77 for their
analysis.

In Chapter 10, Linguistic metaphor identification in Serbian (pp. 203-226),
Ksenija Bogetić, Andrijana Broćić, and Katarina Rasulić present an application
of MIPVU to Serbian, which is also intended to be compatible to other standard
varieties of Serbo-Croatian, i.e. Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin. The main
part of the chapter focuses on the Serbian case system. In order to account
for this “hidden” case-encoded metaphoricity, the authors suggest including an
additional step for the application of MIPVU to Serbian, in which the analyst
should establish the contextual meaning for each case inflection and determine
whether it has a more basic meaning. For that purpose, the authors provide a
list of potential basic senses for the genitive, dative, accusative, and
instrumental case (p. 205). In a case study, the authors illustrate the
applicability of the procedure. Reliability scores are comparatively high,
both for lexical metaphor identification (Cohen’s kappa = 0.93) as well as
“inflectional metaphor” identification (Cohen’s kappa = 0.83).

In Chapter 11, Linguistic metaphor identification in Uzbek (pp. 227-245), Sıla
Gen Kaya presents an application of MIP, a predecessor to MIPVU, to the
Turkic, agglutinating language of Uzbek. The paper presents suggestions for
adjustments of MIP to the study of metaphor in Uzbek texts based on a sample
of 80,000 words of contemporary Uzbek fiction (Gen 2015). Gen discusses issues
with respect to the use of a dictionary. Regarding linguistic issues, she
discusses the potential metaphoricity of inflectional case endings of the
locative, dative and ablative case, and in line with previous chapters
suggests that abstract nouns with such a case ending should be regarded as
metaphorically used given the fact that case endings have a more basic meaning
referring to spatial relations. No reliability results are reported since
there was only one analyst. Gen Kaya still affirms that “when meticulously
applied, MIP [as well as MIPVU] provides valid results in Uzbek discourse” (S.
244).

In Chapter 12, Linguistic metaphor identification in Chinese (pp. 247-265),
Ben Pin-Yun Wang, Xiaofei Lu, Chan-Chia Hsu, Eric Po-Chung Lin, and Haiyang Ai
present an application of MIPVU to Chinese. The corpus material annotated for
this purpose is sampled from the Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese (LCMC).
Given that the Chinese orthographic system is character based, the fact that
there is no clear word delimiter poses a problem for lexical unit demarcation.
The data sampled from the LCMC, however, provides automatic word segmentation.
Chinese-specific types of lexical units such as verb-object compounds,
resultative verb compounds, and reduplications as well as the handling of
proper names, idioms, and fixed expressions are discussed. Despite some
challenges, the authors affirm that an application of MIPVU to Chinese data
especially in a processed and prepared format as provided by the LCMC is
“largely smooth” (p. 263) as is illustrated in a sample analysis. Reliability
results are not reported (but see Lu & Wang 2017).

In Chapter 13, Linguistic metaphor identification in Sesotho (pp. 267-287),
Nts’oeu Seepheephe, Beatrice Ekanjume-Ilongo, and Motlalepula Raphael Thuube
present an application of MIPVU to the agglutinating Bantu language of Sesotho
spoken in Lesotho and parts of the Republic of South Africa. The authors
discuss dictionary use as well as language-specific issues of Sesotho which
call for some adjustments when applying MIPVU, such as the demarcation of
lexical units, verb extensions, reduplications, and markers for the diminutive
and the augmentative. Seepheephe et al. then present an adjusted protocol of
MIPVU for metaphor identification in Sesotho and demonstrate its application
through an illustrative sample analysis of selected lexical units from the
novel Chaka by Thomas Mofolo. For the present study, reliability of the
procedure was not measured, and is suggested as a desideratum for future
research.

In Chapter 14, Linguistic metaphor identification in English as a lingua
franca (pp. 289-312), Fiona MacArthur discusses how ELF characteristics may
pose challenges to metaphor identification with MIPVU. She presents a detailed
description of her data, the EuroCoAT corpus (size = 55,718 words) and its
heterogenous nature comprising data from speakers with English as their first
(L1), second (L2) or third language (L3). She suggests, for example, that
polywords can be regarded as decomposable if there is potential for variation
(e.g. “a (little) bit of”) given that these might be less entrenched as chunks
for non-L1 speakers of English. In that light, MacArthur also discusses the
potential fixedness/decomposability of phrasal verbs and compounds as well as
the fact that dictionaries do not necessarily mirror non-native speaker
competence of English. The chapter closes with a brief illustration of the
modifications suggested for MIPVU when applied to ELF data.

The final chapter of the volume, Chapter 15, presents an “Afterword: Some
reflections on MIPVU across languages” by metaphor scholar Elena Semino (pp.
313-321). Semino emphasises how “MIP and MIPVU have dramatically changed the
field of metaphor research for the better” (p. 315) by rendering metaphor
analyses reliable, replicable and comparable. She stresses that the volume by
Nacey et al. is so important because it not only includes European languages
from different language families but takes on a much more international
perspective. She, however, also reminds scholars that MIPVU is a means to an
end, and that it should be applied flexibly in line with the overall research
goals. Moreover, although MIPVU uses a binary distinction of metaphor — either
a word is metaphorically used or not — the phenomenon in reality is often
multi-faceted, scalar, and multimodal (p. 321, see also Müller 2008, Müller &
Tag 2010, Jensen 2017).

EVALUATION

While the final chapter by Elena Semino already presents an excellent summary
and evaluation of the book, some additional aspects regarding the quality of
“Metaphor Identification in Multiple Languages. MIPVU around the world” edited
by Nacey, Dorst, Krennmayr, and Reijnierse shall be briefly provided in the
following paragraphs.

The edited volume is an excellent resource for researchers who want to apply
the procedure, and adopt it to a specific language, either one of the
languages discussed in the book, or one that has not been dealt with so far.
Furthermore, it is a good resource for advanced MIPVU users, researchers and
university lecturers who would like to teach the procedure in English or any
other language. Here, especially Chapter 3 presents a welcome addition to the
original procedure in Chapter 2 since it spells out common pitfalls and areas
in which MIPVU is best applied. This is done in a very approachable manner and
based on the editors extensive practical experience in using and teaching
MIPVU.

The book is very well edited. All chapters are similarly structured, address
similar issues, and also label these issues similarly, which renders the
volume a very coherent whole. Apart from that, each chapter is written in a
self-contained manner and thus readers interested in the application of MIPVU
to one specific language, may only consult that chapter. Given that the volume
includes a reprint of the original MIPVU procedure, the edited volume itself
is self-contained and presents a good resource for students and researchers
alike, ready to get their hands dirty and to analyse metaphor in the wild
across the globe. Working with the book is also facilitated by the presence of
an index of the most relevant terms and concepts. Finally, one of the main
advantages of this book is that it comes with an online repository
(https://osf.io/vw46k) where readers get access to templates for carrying out
there own analyses, individual languages’ polyword lists, and R scripts to
perform reliability tests. Through this supplementary, the authors keep in
line with the goal of making metaphor analysis transparent, and encourage
researchers to carry out their own analyses.

The book may thus inspire methodological discussion of metaphor research, as
well as future application to more languages. As the editors state in their
introduction: “With over 6,000 languages worldwide, this volume clearly will
not be the final word on the topic, although it does represent a solid start”
(p. 18).

REFERENCES

Badryzlova, Y., Isaeva, Y., Shekhtman, N., & Kerimov, R. (2013). Annotating a
Russian corpus of conceptual metaphor: A bottom-up approach. Proceedings of
the Workshop on Metaphor in NLP, 77–86. http://aclweb.org/anthology/W13-09

Cameron, L. (2003). Metaphor in educational discourse (Vol. 3). continuum.

Cameron, L., & Maslen, R. (2010). Identifying metaphor in discourse data. In
L. Cameron & R. Maslen (Eds.), Metaphor Analysis. Research Practive in Applied
Linguistics, Social Sciences and the Humanities (pp. 97–115). Equinox.

Charteris-Black, J. (2004). Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis.
Palgrave Macmillan.

Gen, S. (2015). Özbekçede metaforlar [Metaphors in Uzbek] [Doctoral
dissertation]. Cukurova University.

Goatly, A. (1997). The Language of Metaphors. Routledge.

Heywood, J., Semino, E., & Short, M. (2002). Linguistic metaphor
identification in two extracts from novels. Language and Literature, 11,
35–54.

Jensen, T. W. (2017). Doing Metaphor: An Ecological Perspective on
Metaphoricity in Discourse. In B. Hampe (Ed.), Metaphor: Embodied Cognition
and Discourse (pp. 257–276). Cambridge University Press.

Kittay, E. F. (1984). The identification of metaphor. Synthese, 58(2),
153–202.

Lu, X., & Wang, B. P.-Y. (2017). Towards a metaphor-annotated corpus of
Mandarin Chinese. Language Resources & Evaluation, 51(3), 663–694.

Müller, C. (2008). Metaphors Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking. A Dynamic
View. The University of Chicago Press.

Müller, C., & Tag, S. (2010). The Dynamics of Metaphor: Foregrounding and
Activating Metaphoricity in Conversational Interaction. Cognitive Semiotics,
10(6), 85–120.

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

R Core Team. (2013). R: A language and environment for statistical computing.
R Foundation for Statistical Computing. http://www.R-project.org

Steen, G. J., Dorst, A. G., Herrmann, J. B., Kaal, A. A., Krennmayr, T., &
Pasma, T. (2010). A method for linguistic metaphor identification: From MIP to
MIPVU. John Benjamins.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Nina Julich-Warpakowski holds a PhD in English linguistics. Her focus is on
conceptual metaphor, empirical approaches to metaphor, the gradable nature of
metaphor, as well as the relation of metaphor to other figurative processes
such as fictive motion. She works at Leipzig University, Germany, as a
researcher and teacher of English linguistics.





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