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Article published In: Current challenges in metaphor research
Edited by Nina Julich-Warpakowski and Paula Pérez-Sobrino
[Metaphor and the Social World 13:1] 2023
► pp. 37–58

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Literal or metaphorical? Conventional or creative?

Contested metaphoricity in intense emotional experiences

 | Coventry University
 | University of Birmingham
Published online: 7 July 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.00028.tur
Abstract
Metaphor has long been considered a ‘way in’ to people’s experiences, with metaphor analysis being used to gain insights into a range of psychological and physiological phenomena. However, a number of challenges arise when analysing metaphor in such contexts. We reflect on the challenges we have encountered in our research into intensely emotional and/or personal experiences related to bereavement and religious belief. Both areas showcase metaphor operating in the ‘liminal spaces’ of human experience. The spaces between life and death, personhood and non-personhood, and belief and non-belief prove rich ground for metaphor, but the qualities of these metaphors are as complex and elusive as the concepts they are being used to describe.
We explore how metaphoricity in general, and creative use of metaphor in particular, in these contexts are flexible phenomena, opening up new questions as to what ‘counts’ as a (creative) metaphor. We propose three levels at which people use or experience metaphor, show how these interact, and propose a number of methodological factors to be taken into consideration when conducting metaphor research in such complex areas of human experience.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction and background
  • 2.Our approach to metaphor identification
  • 3.Metaphor at the level of language – ‘I talk about it as if…’
    • 3.1Metaphorical or literal? The case of (embodied) metaphors for emotional states
    • 3.2Creative uses of metaphor
      • a.The (apparent) introduction of a new metaphorical comparison, drawing together previously unrelated elements
      • b.Altering the valence of a metaphor
      • c.Introducing more detail into a conventional metaphorical comparison, or extending it in a novel way
      • d.Using a conventional metaphorical expression/idiom in a new context where it is not usually used, or to talk about something that it is not usually used to talk about
      • e.Using a ‘twice true’ metaphor
      • f.Combining metaphor with metonymy in a novel way
  • 4.Beyond metaphor in language
    • 4.1‘I experience it as something else’
    • 4.2‘I believe it is something else’
  • 5.Conclusion: Towards an ecological approach to coding: Considerations to be taken into account when identifying and classifying metaphor in accounts of intense emotional experiences
    • Talking, experiencing or believing?
    • Consider your own viewpoint: Metaphorical for whom?
    • Is it metaphorical, metonymic, literal, or all three?
    • Creative for whom?
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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