[Corpora-List] CFP: Third Workshop on Corpus-Based Approaches to Figurative Language

[Alan M Wallington]

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	Third Workshop on Corpus-Based Approaches to Figurative Language
		       July 14th 2005 Birmingham UK

	      http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~amw/CorpusLinguistics05.html

			part of Corpus Linguistics 2005
	(conference webpage: http://www.corpus.bham.ac.uk/conference/.

The third workshop will continue with one of the strengths of the series, namely
its interdisciplinary nature, asking only that attendees share an interest
either in the use of corpora to elucidate aspects of figurative language, such
as metaphor, metonymy, irony, or hyperbole, or in the study of corpus techniques
and tools that may be needed for this. However, we believe that the field has
now matured sufficiently to allow us to propose a theme, namely: 'the nature and
use of the source domain'. Papers and discussion addressing this topic will be
particularly welcome. Nonetheless, we will continue to accept good papers
examining any aspect of figurative language from a corpus-based perspective.

THEME

A leading hypothesis in metaphor theory is that our knowledge of familiar
source domains is used systematically to help understand or delineate difficult,
complex or abstract target domains. Importantly for this approach, source
domains are usually thought of as consisting of vast networks of knowledge such
as we would have of buildings, families, journeys wars, etc. Under this
approach, many different aspects of the source are viewed as being in a
systematic correspondence with aspects of the target and inferences that can be
made about the source are understood as transferring to inferences about the
target. And there has been much research using corpora amongst other tools to
uncover the systematically related sets of correspondences that would associate
these vast, ontologically rich, source domains to the more abstract target
domains.

However despite research detailing many examples of such systematic
correspondences, there remain problems with the hypothesis. For example, Grady
has noted numerous instances where individual correspondences, reported as
belonging to one set of source domain to target domain correspondences have a
much wider currency and can also be found amongst the correspondences proposed
for completely different source and target domain pairings. Conversely, he has
also noted the existence of common and prominent features of the source domain
that appear to have no target domain correspondents. For example, whilst the
language of buildings is often used to describe the target domain of theories,
such important parts of a building as the windows or the internal wiring have no
common equivalents in the target domain of theories. These observations suggest
that giving primacy to the type of rich domain suggested earlier might be a
mistake. But must all the apparently systematically related correspondences that
were previously taken to define the type of ontologically rich domain that can
be used to structure an abstract target be reanalysed either as primary
metaphors, the result of the interaction of primary metaphors or as novel
coinings? What role is there now for the traditional view of the source domain?
It is very difficult to rely solely on intuitions on this issue.

A further problem with source domains is that often the type of situations being
described are not ones that would normally hold of the source domain if one were
not speaking metaphorically, and can at times be extremely odd or counter to
much of our general knowledge about the source. This would cast doubt on the
view that familiar reasoning patterns imported from source are used to help
structure the target. For example, Musolff (2004) presents numerous examples
drawn from British and German newspapers in which various nations within the
European Union are described as "fathers of the Euro". But how can a child have
multiple fathers and why are no mothers assumed? This is not a case of using the
structure of the familiar to describe the less familiar or abstract. One might
entertain the hypothesis that if a recognisable odd situation holds within the
source domain, then the oddness would transfer in an invariant manner to the
target. Yet this is certainly not the case here.

Other examples in which important and familiar aspects of the source are ignored
when the source is used metaphorically are easy to find. Compare the following
two conventional metaphors: 'This reflects the views of the majority'; 'This is
a mirror image of the views of the majority'. The existence of the latter shows
that we are familiar with the 'reversing' property of reflections, but the two
metaphors have opposite meanings. Thus much of our familiar knowledge of
reflections is ignored when the former is used. Indeed, it is often not just
that source domain knowledge is ignored but that at times it is directly flouted
in the service of metaphor. Thus Aristotle argues that there is conventional
analogy (in modern terms) between 'the shield of Ares' and the 'cup of
Dionysus', and this allows the metaphor 'the cup of Ares' to be used to refer to
the shield. However, he also notes that one may deny the source term one of its
proper attributes and describe the shield as 'the wineless cup'. But what is a
wineless cup? It seems that the breaking of source domain expectations is a
signal that a metaphor is being used.

Andreas Musolff. 2004. Metaphor and Political Discourse Analogical Reasoning in
Debates about Europe. Palgrave Macmillan.

SUBMISSIONS

Anybody wishing to present at the workshop should submit a two-page extended
abstract. References and tables need not be included in the two pages. If
accepted, authors will be invited to submit a full paper (maximum eight pages)
prior to the workshop which will be included in the workshop proceedings and
published as a University of Birmingham Technical Report with an ISBN number. As
reviewing will be blind, the paper should not include the authors' names and
affiliations. Furthermore, self-references that reveal the author's identity,
e.g., "We previously showed (Smith, 1991)...", should be avoided. Send the pdf,
postscript, rtf, or MS Word form of your submission to: Alan Wallington
(A.M.Wallington at cs.bham.ac.uk ), who will also answer any queries regarding the
submission.

WORKSHOP DEADLINES

Abstract submission deadline:			Wednesday 25th May 2005
Notification of acceptance or rejection:	Monday 6th June 2005
Deadline for receipt of full papers for
inclusion in workshop proceedings:		Thursday 30th June
2005 Date of Workshop:				Thursday 14th July

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS

John Barnden
School of Computer Science University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT U.K.
J.A.Barnden at cs.bham.ac.uk

Sheila Glasbey
School of Computer Science University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT U.K.
S.R.Glasbey at cs.bham.ac.uk

Mark Lee
Schoolof Computer Science University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT U.K.
M.G.Lee at cs.bham.ac.uk

Alan Wallington
School of Computer Science University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT U.K.
A.M.Wallington at cs.bham.ac.uk

Li J (Jane) Zhang
School of Computer Science University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT U.K.
L.Zhang at cs.bham.ac.uk


Last modified 30th April 2005 by A.M.Wallington at cs.bham.ac.uk