In:Performing Metaphoric Creativity across Modes and Contexts
Edited by Laura Hidalgo-Downing and Blanca Kraljevic Mujic
[Figurative Thought and Language 7] 2020
► pp. 97–118
Chapter 5Metaphor emergence in cinematic discourse
Published online: 29 May 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.7.05uri
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.7.05uri
Abstract
In this chapter, I analyze the creation of meaning in cinema with two of the components of their mise-en-scéne: food and cityscapes. I compare Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003) and Isabel Coixet’s Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009a) and I show how those components work as meaning attractors within the complex system of cinematic discourse following Larsen-Freeman & Cameron (2008) and Cameron & Deignan (2006). I consider that metaphor in cinema is a dynamic phenomenon in the Complex Adaptive System created by the work of a team actively participating in the development of a narrative. Processes such as metaphor and the interaction of repetition, intertextuality and cinematic resources are essential elements in this kind of group-creativity.
Keywords: metaphor, creativity, complexity theory, film
Article outline
- 1.Food in Lost
- 2.Food in Map
- 3.Metaphors of Tokyo
- 4.Conclusions
References
References (61)
Acord, L. (2004). Channeling Tokyo for Lost in Translation. American cinematographer, 85(1), 123–124.
Aoki, T. (2001). The domestication of Chinese foodways in contemporary Japan: Ramen and Peking duck. In D. Y. H. Wu, & C. B. Tan (Eds.), Changing chinese foodways in Asia (pp. 219–233). Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.
Ashkenazi, M. (2004). Food, Play, Business, and the Image of Japan in Itami Juzo’s Tampopo. In A. Bower (Ed.), Reel food (pp. 27–40). London: Routledge.
(2012). Metaphor and reconciliation: The discourse dynamics of empathy in post-conflict conversations. New York: Routledge.
Cameron, L., & Deignan, A. (2006). The emergence of metaphor in discourse. Applied Linguistics, 27 (4), 671–690.
Coëgnarts, M. & Kravanja, P. (2012). Embodied visual meaning: Image schemas in film. Projections, 6 (2), 84–101.
Coëgnarts, M., & Kravanja, P. (2015). Embodied cognition and cinema. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Harper Collins.
Doob, P. R. (1990). The idea of the labyrinth from classical antiquity through the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Eggertsson, G. T. & Forceville, C. (2009). Multimodal expressions of the human victim is animal metaphor in horror films. In Forceville, C. & Urios-Aparisi, E. (Eds.), Multimodal metaphor (pp. 429–450). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Fahlenbrach, K. (2008). Emotions in Sound: Audiovisual Metaphors in the Sound Design of Narrative Films. Projections, 2 (2), 85–103.
Forceville, C. (1999). The metaphor ‘colin is a child’ in Ian McEwan’s, Harold Pinter’s, and Paul Schrader’s The Comfort of Strangers. Metaphor and Symbol, 14 (3), 179–98.
(2002). The identification of target and source in pictorial metaphors. Journal of Pragmatics, 34 (1), 1–14.
(2011). The journey metaphor and the Source-Path-Goal schema in Agnès Varda’s autobiographical gleaning documentaries. In M. Fludernik (Ed.), Beyond cognitive metaphor theory: Perspectives on literary metaphor (pp. 281–97). London: Routledge.
Forceville, C. & Jeulink, M. (2011). The flesh and blood of embodied understanding: The source-path-goal schema in animation film. Pragmatics & Cognition, 19 (1), 37–59.
Forceville, C. & Renckens, T. (2013). The good is light and bad is dark metaphor in feature films. Metaphor and the Social World, 3 (2), 160–179.
Gibbs, Jr. R. W. & Colston, H. L. (2012). Interpreting figurative meaning. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Goldstein-Gidoni, O. (2001). The making and marking of the ‘Japanese’ and the ‘Western’ in Japanese contemporary material culture. Journal of Material Culture, 6(1), 67–90.
Hidalgo Downing, L. (2015). Metaphor and Metonymy. In Jones, R. (Ed.), Routledge handbook of language and creativity: Dimensions of creativity (pp. 107–128). Abingdon, Oxon/ New York, NY: Routledge.
Hiroko, T. (2008). Delicious food in a beautiful country: Nationhood and nationalism in discourses on food in contemporary Japan. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 8(1), 5–30..
Iedema, R. (2001). Analysing film and television: A social semiotic account of hospital: An unhealthy business. In Th. Van Leeuwen, & C. Jewitt (Eds), Handbook of visual analysis (pp. 183–204). London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Iwabuchi, K. (2008). Lost in TransNation: Tokyo and the urban imaginary in the era of globalization. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 9 (4), 543–556.
Kappelhoff, H. & Müller, C. (2011). Embodied meaning construction: Multimodal metaphor and expressive movement in speech, gesture, and feature film, Metaphor and the Social World, 1 (2), 121–153.
Kaufman, J. C. & Beghetto, R. A. (2009). Beyond big and little: The four c model of creativity. Review of General Psychology, 13(1), 1.
Kiss, M., & Willemsen, S. (2017). Impossible puzzle films: A cognitive approach to contemporarycomplex cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Knegt, P. (2009). Decade: Sofia Coppola on ‘Lost in Translation,’ Indiewire [URL] December 14, 2009.
Kushner, B. (2012). Slurp!: A social and culinary history of ramen, Japan’s favorite noodle soup. Leiden: Global Oriental.
(1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic books.
Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Müller, C., & Kappelhoff, H. (2018). Cinematic metaphor: Experience – Affectivity – Temporality. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
Ortiz, M. J. (2010). Visual Rhetoric: Primary Metaphors and Symmetric Object Alignment. Metaphor and Symbol 25, 162–180.
Ohnuki-Tierney, E. (1993). Rice as self: Japanese identities through time. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ott, B. L. & Keeling, D. M. (2011). Cinema and choric connection: Lost in Translation as sensual experience. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 97, 4, 363–386.
Rohdin, M. (2009). Multimodal metaphor in classical film theory from the 1920s to the 1950s. In C. Forceville, & E. Urios-Aparisi (Eds.), Multimodal metaphor (pp. 403–428). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Rose, C. (2003). A conversation with director Sofia Coppola. The Charlie Rose Show. Thursday, September 18, 2003. [URL]
Runco, M. A., & Richards, R. (1997). Eminent creativity, everyday creativity, and health. Greenwich, CT: Ablex.
Richards, R. (2011). Everyday creativity. In M. A. Runco, & S. R. Pritzker (Eds), Encyclopedia of creativity. San Diego, Academic Press.
Sanford, D. R. (2013). Emergent Metaphor Theory: frequency, schematic strength, and the processing of metaphorical utterances. Journal of Cognitive Science, 14 (1), 1–45.
Thompson, A. (2003). Tokyo Story in Filmmaker [URL]
Cited by (4)
Cited by four other publications
Almeida, Maria Clotilde
2025. The Rhetorical Mind. In The Rhetorical Mind [Figurative Thought and Language, 20], ► pp. 185 ff.
Urios-Aparisi, Eduardo
2025. Experience and film metaphor. In The Rhetorical Mind [Figurative Thought and Language, 20], ► pp. 109 ff.
Tseng, Ming-Yu
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
