Search results for "metaphorical"
showing 8 items of 8 documents
Metaphorical Competence in Italian EFL students: an Empirical Study
2018
A quantitative data analysis conducted on 230 Italian EFL students revealed that their metaphorical competence (MC) is inappropriate. In view of these findings, the development of MC, as crucial as linguistic and communicative ones, is fostered as a successful didactic methodology to improve the proficiency in the target language (TL).
Medical Metaphors in Economics News Articles in English and Italian
2017
As Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 3) state in Metaphors We Live by, “our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.” From a linguistic point of view, metaphors not only exist in everyday language but in specialized discourse too, where they are frequently the result of interdisciplinary borrowings. The language of economics, replete with medical metaphors, is one of the most representative examples of this phenomenon. This paper offers a quantitative and qualitative analysis of medical metaphors in English and Italian economics news discourse, as no research seems to have been conducted so far on the topic from a cross-linguistic…
Expressive compounds in German
2013
German adjectival and nominal compounds like ratten+scharf (‘rat sharp’) sau+schlecht, (‘sow bad’) Hammer+auftritt (‘hammer performance’), Arsch+gesicht (‘arse face’) contain meliorative or pejorative elements as part of their structure. The left-hand evaluative members of these compounds are usually considered as so-called semi-prefixes. Contrary to recent approaches within constructional morphology ( Booij 2009 , 2010 ), I will argue that these elements are still lexemes, but that they have undergone metaphorical extension. Evidence stems from the consideration of right-hand members like Kommunisten+schwein (‘communist pig’), which have never been considered as semi-suffixes in a similar…
Shining castles and humans of metal/floral appearance ? metaphorical language in the Palaiologan romances Kallimachos and Velthandros
2019
About eight centuries after Heliodorus, the Greek novel resurfaced in the twelfth century, in Komnenian Byzantium, and again two centuries later under the Palaiologan dynasty. This latter literary revival was due to the political stability of the imperial Byzantine government, which promoted cultural production, rhetorical education, and patronage networks. Kallimachos and Velthandros, two Palaiologan romances presented as court literature, combine ancient and medieval tropes with rhetorical artistry to blur the boundaries between the artificial and the natural. Castles and objects made of precious metals thus resemble living, natural spaces, and human characters are portrayed in metallurgi…
»just de niillä oli sovmorgon» : Kulturella och pragmatiska aspekter på kodväxling i tvåspråkiga ungdomssamtal i Haparanda, Stockholm och Helsingfors
2017
The aim of the study is to explore situational, cultural and pragmatic factors that might trigger code-switching during informal conversations outside of the classroom at school among bilingual adolescents in Haparanda, Helsinki and Stockholm. An attempt is made to clarify different functions of code-switching, i.e. why bilingual adolescents code-switch from Swedish to Finnish and vice versa. The conversational data, consisting of video-recorded group and pair conversations, was collected in 2014–2015 at six junior high schools in Haparanda, Helsinki and Stockholm. The analysis of the data is qualitative. The theoretical framework is found in the field of translanguaging, which aims to desc…
Rak - osobliwe metafory choroby
2016
W artykule zostały przedstawione metafory, jakimi obecnie posługujemy się, by opisać chorobę nowotworową. Ponieważ stała się ona chorobą publiczną i społeczną, i przestaje być tematem tabu, zatem wykreowała się wokół niej swoista metaforyka bliska terminologii wojskowej i fantastycznej. Artykuł zawiera także refleksję dotyczącą przemian w zakresie wspomnianej metaforyki i uwzględnia społeczne próby demitologizacji i złagodzenia dotychczasowego obrazu raka. Do tej pory uznawano raka za wroga, którego należy pokonać, obecnie natomiast zauważa się kuriozalną zmianę polegającą na podejmowaniu prób złagodzenia wizerunku choroby i odnajdywaniu w nim aspektów pozytywnych.
Cómo mirar una parte del mundo: el vocabulario del cuerpo en una lengua amerindia
2006
This paper analyses the vocabulary of body parts in Cha’palaachi, an Amerindian language of the Republic of Ecuador. A number of basic roots refers to (a) forms or (b) parts of the body, although in some cases reference is made to general areas more than to specific parts. These areas, as well as the general vocabulary of forms, points to the importance of spatial elements in Cha’palaachi, which is also identifiable in other parts of the vocabulary and grammar. A significant point is that the body-part terms are organised on the basis of the reference to form, in such a way that the body-part element itself is only of secondary importance. Metaphorical and metonymic extension is more freque…
The role of motor system in action-related language comprehension in L1 and L2: An fMRI study
2018
The framework of embodied cognition has challenged the modular view of a language-cognition divide by suggesting that meaning-retrieval critically involves the sensory-motor system. Despite extensive research into the neural mechanisms underlying language-motor coupling, it remains unclear how the motor system might be differentially engaged by different levels of linguistic abstraction and language proficiency. To address this issue, we used fMRI to quantify neural activations in brain regions underlying motor and language processing in Chinese-English speakers’ processing of literal, metaphorical, and abstract language in their L1 and L2. Results overall revealed a response in motor ROIs …