28.2944, Review: Cognitive Science; Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics: Herrmann, Sardinha (2015)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-28-2944. Thu Jul 06 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.2944, Review: Cognitive Science; Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics: Herrmann, Sardinha (2015)

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Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2017 11:39:41
From: Leila Khabbazi-Oskouei [leilakhabbazi_o at yahoo.co.uk]
Subject: Metaphor in Specialist Discourse

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-519.html

EDITOR: J. Berenike  Herrmann
EDITOR: Tony  Berber Sardinha
TITLE: Metaphor in Specialist Discourse
SERIES TITLE: Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication 4
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Leila Khabbazi-Oskouei, University of East Anglia

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

“Metaphor in Specialist Discourse” is a collection of articles edited by J.
Berenike Hermann and Tony Berber Sardinha aiming at investigating the role of
metaphor in various kinds of specialist discourse. The volume comprises four
main sections: Metaphor variation in specialist discourse, Metaphor in
specific contexts, Metaphor in science writing and Metaphor and
popularization. The contributions to this volume were selected from papers
delivered at the 2010 Researching and Applying Metaphor Conference in
Amsterdam.

In the Introduction, the editors introduce the overall purpose, theoretical
background and structure of the volume. They put a strong emphasis on the
importance of the empirical approach and naturally occurring data. Their main
purpose is to focus on the topic of metaphor and discourse specialization. One
of the key terms underlying the volume is Biber and colleagues’ notion of
register (Biber 1988; Biber & Conrad 2009; Biber et al. 1999), understood as a
language variety influenced by contextual (situational) factors. The other
concept is Swales’ (1990, 2004) notion of genre. Applying Biber’s concept of
register and Swales’ concept of genre, the editors intend to render a unified
approach to specialist discourse. In this regard, they define metaphor as set
at the level of discourse; that is, they identify metaphor “at the
linguistic/gestural level of analysis as well as the level of underlying
conceptual structure and that of language processing and communication” (p.
8). Bearing in mind that metaphor is difficult to identify in a reliable and
accurate way especially in a specialized discourse setting, the editors claim
that they have tried to maintain rigor and explicitness in metaphor
identification on all applicable levels of analysis. 

The section ‘Metaphor Variation in Specialist Discourse’, which includes two
studies by Tony Berber Sardinha and Anke Berger, suggests that metaphor use
varies both within and across particular domains of discourse due to specific
factors. 

In the first study ‘Register variation and metaphor use. A multi-dimensional
perspective’, Sardinha examines metaphor variation on a quantitative basis
across different registers (academic prose, news, fiction and conversation) on
a cline from more specialized to non-specialized discourse. Sardinha finds a
strong statistical association between the existing dimensions for English and
metaphor use. However, a possible ‘natural environment’ for metaphor use is
suggested (p. 27). The author identifies four dimensions of variation, two of
which replicates Biber’s (1988) dimensions. The other two are novel
metaphor-related dimensions that include metaphor in different degrees.
Sardinha believes that these dimensions suggest that registers vary with
respect to metaphor density and stance expression. In other words, metaphor
density seems to be differently distributed across registers.

In the second article entitled ‘Metaphor in psychology genres. Counseling vs.
academic lectures’, Berger analyzes metaphor use in specialist discourse by
comparing ‘anger’ and ‘love’ metaphor use in the two different genres of
online counseling and academic lectures. Berger argues that due to the
differences in the audiences of the two genres, that is, their position at the
expert-lay cline and their specific expectations of the discourse, there is a
distinct pattern of metaphor use. The author finds out that the metaphor use
of psychology experts seems to be highly influenced by the discourse goal, the
discourse structure and the discourse participants. Whereas the academic
experts may wish to change their students’ naïve conceptualizations of ‘love’
and ‘anger’ into expert theories, the goal of the counselors is to intervene
practically with personal problems of lay clients. Therefore, in case of
‘love’ counselors use conceptual metaphors involving aspects of activity,
creation and responsibility of partners (e.g. ‘love is a living organism’,
‘love is a structured object’). In case of ‘anger’ they aim at conveying a
concept of the emotion that involves the possibility to reduce anger and
aggressive behavior (‘anger is a weapon’ and one can control it by determining
the direction it points to). On the other hand, academic experts frequently
apply metaphors that are tightly connected to specific theories of ‘love’ that
regard romantic relationships as ‘business transaction’ or ‘anger as a fluid
in a container’. 

Section III entitled ‘Metaphor in Specific Contexts’ consists of three
articles that discuss the forms and functions of metaphor use in different
specialist discourse environments. In the first article entitled ‘Payback and
punishment. Figurative language in Scottish penal policy’, Deignan and
Armstrong discuss the most frequently used lexical metaphors and metonyms in a
sociologically significant corpus consisting of the four key policy documents
of the penal reform programme. Their objectives are to analyze  the
entailments that these metaphors have, and how they frame the topics of the
texts, and to consider the use of ‘payback’ as a metaphor in the texts, given
its salience in Scottish discourse around penal policy. They believe the
analysis shows the contribution that figurative language analysis can make to
a sociological analysis of thinking around contemporary issues.

The second contribution to this part is by Elmar Thalhammer entitled ‘They
have to die for the goals. ‘war’ metaphor in English and German football radio
community’. This study analyzes linguistic and conceptual metaphors in two
corpora of radio commentaries in English and German. The aim of the study is
to compare how the source domain ‘war’ is used to talk about football in
English and German and to demonstrate the variability of metaphor in this
particular register (p. 103). Thalhammer uses a theoretical framework based on
Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory and approaches metaphor
as language (as opposed to thought) and as symbolic structure (as opposed to
behavior); he also examines it in usage (as opposed to grammar). The author
argues that there is a striking difference in the two corpora with regard to
‘football is war’. 

The third article in this section is ‘The production line as a context for low
metaphoricity. Exploring links between gestures, iconicity, and artifacts on a
factory shop floor’. In this article Simon Harrison approaches technical
metaphor use on a multimodal level and discusses metaphor in gestures used on
the work floor of a French salmon factory. The main aim of the study is to
demonstrate that the gestures involved in technical communication were
constrained to concrete reference (p. 132). The author argues that the gesture
forms observed in technical communication along the production line exhibit
metonymic mappings within the source domain of raw materials, machinery and
production processes, but lack metaphoric mappings to abstract target domains
(p. 132). This is mainly due to the noisy environment and situations in which
communication has to be fast and speakers need to focus on short and highly
salient messages.

Section IV focuses on ‘Metaphor in Science Writing’ and includes three studies
analyzing science writing. In the first article entitled ‘High on metaphor,
low on simile? An examination of metaphor type in sub-registers of academic
prose’, J. Berenike Herrmann presents a quantitative analysis of distinct
metaphor types (indirect, implicit and direct) across sub-registers of
academic prose (humanities arts, natural sciences, politics, law and
education, social sciences) combining a genre and register analysis.  Herrmann
suggests that metaphor use in academic prose depends on sub-register and
discipline; that is, the specialist discourse with its internal setup has an
influence in metaphor type in terms of word frequency, and also seems to
regulate its particular communicative functions (p. 186).

In the second contribution in this section, ‘A mere metaphor? Framing of the
concept of metaphor in biological specialist communication’,  Sanne Knudsen
assesses the attitudes towards metaphor reflected in contemporary research
articles from biology. The author combines genre and register analysis in
order to study different framings of metaphor by means of a corpus-based
method. The aim of the study is to investigate the characteristics of the term
‘metaphor’ in a corpus of biological texts and to detect a pattern of context
associated to the particular framings. The author maintains that there are two
main positions regarding the emergence of metaphor in science: the classic,
internalist framing of metaphor maintaining that metaphor should be avoided or
sanitized; and a more externalist discursive framing maintaining that metaphor
is an integral part of scientific thought, discourse and communication. The
aim of the researcher is to investigate what characteristics metaphor is
associated with, and to detect a pattern of context associated to the
particular framings: that is, whether one particular framing of metaphor was
more established in a particular sub-discipline or sub-genre.

In the last article in this section entitled ‘Dynamical systems metaphors’,
Thomas H. Smith uses conceptual metaphor theory to investigate how ‘dynamical
systems theory’ is used in educational scientific texts from six disciplines:
cognitive psychology, linguistics, transportation studies, social psychology,
evolutionary biology and business management. Dynamical systems theory was
first used to describe the movement of celestial bodies. Later it was applied
to different fields such as chemistry, physics, medicine and so on. The
purpose of the study is to see if dynamical systems specialists choose or form
metaphors especially useful to non-specialists in understanding these systems.

Section V is devoted to ‘Metaphor and popularization’ and contains two
articles examining aspects of metaphor use when communicating to a general
public. The first article by Julia T. Williams Camus entitled ‘Metaphor, news
discourse and Knowledge’, uses a corpus of English and Spanish newspaper
articles on cancer to analyze the role of metaphor and to determine how
metaphor helps to decontextualize scientific knowledge in popularization
articles in the press. The author finds out that metaphors, particularly
personification and mechanistic metaphors are used in the press in order to
bring abstract and complex phenomena closer to the readers in a familiar way.
The author compares metaphor preferences in the English and Spanish data.

In the final article entitled ‘Metaphor as a tools of enrolment. A case study
exploration of the policy press release genre in regards to the Alberta
SuperNet’, Amanda Williams looks at metaphor use in the policy press release
genre in regards to a Canadian Broadband Network (the Alberta SuperNet).
Williams highlights the important role of metaphors in the realm of the genre
of policy by identifying the dominant metaphors and questioning the way these
metaphors were being deployed.

In the final section of the volume, ‘Metaphor in specialist discourse.
Insights and implications for metaphor studies and beyond’, Jeannette
Littlemore provides a summary of the contributions of this book.

 EVALUATIONS

Overall, ‘Metaphor in specialist discourse’ presents exciting insights
exploring different aspects of metaphor in a variety of specialist discourse
including written and spoken, formal and informal, academic and non-academic.
One of the strengths of the volume, according to Littlemore (p. 299) is that
all the authors have used real-life data to explore the roles played by
metaphors in everyday language and other forms of communication. However,
there will always remain some issues in need of further exploration. One of
the issues as Littlemore (p. 306) puts forward, is the relation between
metaphors identified for the specialist discourses and classic Lakoff and
Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphors. The other issue is whether metaphors
are used deliberately in specialist discourses. The articles in this volume
could instigate new thoughts and further investigations in these areas.

REFERENCES

Biber, D. 1988. Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Biber, D. & Conrad, S. 2009. Register, genre, and style. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511814358

Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. 1999. The
Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: Chicago
University Press.

Swales, J. 1990. Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Swales, J. 2004. Research genres: Explorations and applications. New York:
Cambridge University Press.


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