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Visual Metaphor
Structure and process
Editor
Metaphor has recently been reconceptualised as a fundamental part of the human conceptual system. It can hence be expressed in language but also in other modalities and media of communication, including gesture and body language, sound and music, and film and visuals. In spite of this theoretical landslide, however, the wide range of nonverbal metaphor and its processing has neither been empirically investigated on the same scale nor with the same rigour as metaphor in language. The overarching goal of this book is to report on the findings of a research program aimed at exploiting the vast cognitive linguistic and psycholinguistic expertise on metaphor in language for a new, behaviourally founded approach to the structure and processes of metaphor in one of these nonverbal manifestations, namely static visuals. The book presents concepts and methods for the identification and analysis of metaphor in document structure as well as new approaches to the study of visual metaphor processing. Its results are intended to further the development of an encompassing and robust cognitive-scientific theory of metaphor by including visual metaphor while also enriching our understanding of the communicative possibilities and effects of visual metaphor in multimodal discourse.
[Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 18] 2018. vii, 198 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 9 November 2018
Published online on 9 November 2018
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Chapter 1. IntroductionWilbert Spooren | pp. 1–8
- Part I. Structure
- Chapter 2. Ways with pictures: Visual incongruities and metaphorJoost Schilperoord | pp. 11–46
- Chapter 3. VISMIP: Towards a method for visual metaphor identificationEster Šorm and Gerard J. Steen | pp. 47–88
- Chapter 4. VisMet 1.0: An online corpus of visual metaphorsMarianna Bolognesi, Romy van den Heerik and Esther van den Berg | pp. 89–114
- Part II. Process
- Chapter 5. Behavioral evidence for VISMIPRomy van den Heerik, Ester Šorm and Gerard Steen | pp. 117–146
- Chapter 6. How visual form affects metaphoric conceptualization: The role of shape similarityLisanne van Weelden, Fons Maes and Joost Schilperoord | pp. 147–162
- Chapter 7. Conventionality in visual metaphorDidier Hodiamont, Hans Hoeken and Margot van Mulken | pp. 163–184
- Chapter 8. ConclusionGerard Steen | pp. 185–196
- Index | pp. 197–198
“All in all, the book edited by Steen devoted to visual metaphors deserves numerous accolades. First, because it makes important contributions to this flourishing field of study, with the empirical research results obtained, and with the typology of incongruent advertising images, the methodology for identifying visual metaphors or the VisMet corpus description. Secondly, because it considers new questions and intriguing unexplored aspects. And lastly, because it can stoke the debate needed to build a solid theory that can explain all of the visual manifestations of this complex cognitive phenomenon called a metaphor.”
María J. Ortiz, University of Alicante, in Journal of Pragmatics 151 (2019) 65 – 66
“The framework, albeit firmly grounded in the findings of textual analysis, is clear and well thought-out and the various contributions are scholarly examples of methodological rigour. Within its pages, the reader can find a wide range of useful tools and empirical methods for exploring and examining the complex nature of visual metaphor in static images.”
Maarten Coëgnarts, University of Antwerp, in Metaphor and the Social World, 10:1 (2020)
Cited by (25)
Cited by 25 other publications
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Colston, Herbert L.
2025. The big figurative picture. In What makes a Figure [Figurative Thought and Language, 19], ► pp. 14 ff.
Muelas-Gil, María & Roberto Asenjo
Zhou, Xian
2025. Review of Gal (2022): Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics: A Formalist Theory of Metaphor. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 12:1 ► pp. 217 ff.
Batič, Janja
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Aurich, Dagny & Aida Horaniet Ibañez
Pan, Molly Xie & Dennis Tay
2023. Individual differences in identifying creative metaphors from video Ads. Metaphor and the Social World 13:2 ► pp. 221 ff.
Mo, Yongyi, Rong Zhou & Xi Chen
Pokrovskaia, Natalia Vladimirovna
Zibin, Aseel
Gibbs, Raymond W.
Gibbs, Raymond W.
2022. Important challenges in the study of metaphors. In Figurative Thought and Language in Action [Figurative Thought and Language, 16], ► pp. 19 ff.
Lancaster, Mason D.
Stasiuk-Krajewska, Karina
Cavazzana, Alessandro & Marianna Bolognesi
Cavazzana, Alessandro & Marianna Bolognesi
Hetmański, Marek
Hetmański, Marek
2022. Visual metaphor and its narrative function. In Visual Metaphors [Benjamins Current Topics, 124], ► pp. 147 ff.
Ibáñez-Arenós, María & Lorena Bort-Mir
Nacey, Susan, Aletta G. Dorst, Tina Krennmayr, W. Gudrun Reijnierse & Gerard J. Steen
2019. MIPVU in multiple languages. In Metaphor Identification in Multiple Languages [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 22], ► pp. 1 ff.
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