Figurative language

D.Phil dissertation 

Parts of Part 1. of this dissertation are developed in:
* "Contours and Barriers: What is it to Draw the Limits of Moral Language?"

Parts Part 2. of this dissertation are developed in two papers:
* "A Splitting 'Mind-Ache': An Anscombean Challenge to Kantian Self-Legislation" * "Self-Legislation and Other Figurative Dramas" .

General description:
Part 1. explains essential features of Cora Diamond’s philosophical methods, and explains what it takes to draw the limits of moral language--the language trough which moral reality is reflected. Based on that account I then argue that imaginative and figurative thinking--thinking grounded in metaphors and images--has an essential role in moral and religious understanding. Figurative language is not just a helpful guide to the understanding of some moral phenomena, but is  constitutive of them. In Part 2. I show this in the case of the Kantian idea of self-legislation and in Part 3. in the case of Anselm’s idea of God as reflected in his Ontological Proof.

This paper describes how irony is used to negatively evaluate student behaviour in sequences where students disrupt or resist the official business of the lesson and thus challenge the teacher's authority. Irony-implicative utterances, i.e. utterances hearable as ironic in their context, are examined from two complementary perspectives: (i) the intricate interactional work utterances involve; how utterances are hearable as ironic and how participants negotiate their implications within the sequences of action in which the utterances are occasioned and used, and (ii) the use of irony in the local management of moral orders in the classroom. Findings show that irony-implicative utterances are used to deal with designedly cheeky utterances by students and invoke the boundaries of acceptable conduct especially at transitional phases during lessons. Irony can also be embedded in instructional questioning sequences, where it serves to convey disapproval or criticism for inappropriate student action. Finally, irony or sarcasm is used in conflictual exchanges to build opposition and manage resistance.▶ Irony is one resource for dealing with designedly cheeky utterances by students. ▶ It is used to invoke the boundaries of acceptable conduct especially at transitional phases during lessons. ▶ Irony occurs also in instructional questioning sequences, where it serves to convey disapproval or criticism for inappropriate student action. ▶ Irony or sarcasm is used in conflictual exchanges to build opposition and manage resistance.

Despite Prachett's popularity, his commercial success never fully matched his critical acclaim. This is partly due to critics often still having difficulty with seeing past the 'fantasy' label of most of his novels. What is more, the corpus of his work has, as of yet, not generated the amount of scholarly comment that one might expect due to the public reaction to his death. And although there are a number of academics who have already taken it upon themselves to analyse the Discworld series, for instance, in terms of its potential significance for the fantasy genre and even its political and social implications, more detailed analyses of Pratchett's linguistic style to this day remain quite scarce. This paper provides an attempt to close this gap a tiny bit by providing an overview over the usage of figurative language in his novels with which he imbued his
humorous observations, his playful puns and his usage of idioms and for which he will be remembered just as much as for his narrative capabilities.

Ironic language is typically more difficult to process and interpret than a literal equivalent, hence is assumed to serve several social and emotional functions not achieved by literal communication (such as politeness or introducing humor). Several factors may influence emotional responses to irony, such as the perspective from which the utterance is encountered (e.g., speaker vs. target) and the tone of voice (prosody) used. To examine these issues, we conducted two event-related brain potential (ERP) studies in which participants listened to scenarios describing emotional responses to either literal criticism or ironic criticism. Ironic criticism was delivered with either natural or ironic prosody. Scenarios either described an emotional response the speaker expected to elicit from the target (speaker perspective), or the target’s actual emotional response (target perspective). Expected or actual emotional responses were described as either “amused” (Experiment 1) or “hurt” (Experiment 2). ERPs were calculated time-locked to the end of the ironic or literal statements, and to the audio presentation of the critical emotion words. Results showed a significant effect of perspective for amused conditions, reflected by a larger late posterior positivity for the target than speaker conditions, indicating amused responses are more expected from speaker than target perspective. This effect was not seen for hurt conditions, suggesting these are equally expected from target and speaker perspectives. The data also revealed a more negative-going ERP waveform specifically for ironic criticism delivered with ironic prosody, reflecting prosodic processing. This suggests prosody may be able to speed the identification of irony.

One of the most noticeable problems in autism involves the social use of language such as metaphor and metonymy, both of which are very common in daily language use. The present study is the first to investigate the development of metaphor and metonymy comprehension in autism. Eleven children with autism were compared to 17 typically developing children in a metaphor-metonymy comprehension task. Cross-sectional trajectory analyses were used to compare the development of metaphor and metonymy comprehension using a child-friendly story picture task. Trajectories were constructed linking task performance either to chronological age or to measures of mental age. Children with autism showed an impaired metaphor comprehension in relation to both chronological and mental age, whereas performance on metonymy was delayed and in line with their receptive vocabulary. Our results suggest that understanding of metaphors and metonyms are severely affected at all ages examined in the current study.

The paper proposes a method for representing idioms (in particular, colour-related idioms) within the framework of Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG). The main purpose of this endeavour is to facilitate (figurative) language grounding in humanoid robots in the near future. There is sufficient evidence in the cognitive robotics literature that figurative language plays (or, will play) an important role in humanoid robots. Idioms pose a real challenge to satisfactory human-robot interaction due to the plethora of linguistic and contex-tual subtleties. In my approach, the starting point for encoding idioms within FCG was the selection of several colour-related idioms due to the fact that they could be well-integrated in current robotics experiments. Humanoid robots (for instance, the iCub) are frequently subjected to simple colour-related experiments (such as, learning how to lift and manipulate colourful objects, etc.). Introducing much more difficult tasks, such as recognising colour-idioms as abstract, is needed to achieve further robotic development. The paper presents some techniques on the theoretical encoding of idioms, as well as practical guidelines on how to implement custom figurative constructions within FCG.

The article is devoted to an examination of the relations between the payytanic epithet (Heb. Kinnuy) and  figurative language in Pre-Classical Piyyut (ca. fourth-fifth centuries CE). The poets used epithets when they did not wish to call a familiar concepts or  figures by their proper name. Some scholars even suggested that the relatively limited use of  figurative language in Piyyut relates to the extensive use of epithets. In the present article only those epithets which use  figurative language are discussed. The article examines  first instances in which the poet introduced original epithets. Then the more common epithets that are based on biblical  figurative language are discussed. In addition the article investigates rare cases in which  figurative poetic epithets are included in the broader development of  figurative language in a single line or over a number of lines, and cases where an epithet interrupts a  figurative sequence. The article is based on an analysis of numerous lines of poetry from the rich corpus of Pre-Classical Piyyut.

We report an eye-tracking study in which we investigate the on-line processing of written irony. Specifically, participants’ eye movements were recorded while they read sentences which were either intended ironically, or non-ironically, and subsequent text which contained pronominal reference to the ironic (or non-ironic) phrase. Results showed longer reading times for ironic comments compared to a non-ironic baseline, suggesting that additional processing was required in ironic compared to non-ironic conditions. Reading times for subsequent pronominal reference indicated that for ironic materials, both the ironic and literal interpretations of the text were equally accessible during on-line language comprehension. This finding is most in line with predictions of the graded salience hypothesis, which, in conjunction with the retention hypothesis, states that readers represent both the literal and ironic interpretation of an ironic utterance.

The 1991 movie Thelma and Louise and its protagonists continue to be cultural icons for many women of all ages. With quotes, song lyrics, the metaphor of living on the edge from the film and collected wisdom from pedagogy, two religious educators reflect on their vocation and leadership in a dialogue that draws implications for the teaching ministry. The themes highlighted address friendship, the journey, risk-taking, awakening, turning points, and the choice to keep going no matter what. The authors believe that their friendship and co-creating dialogue offer their students hopeful models of leadership through their conversations about their vocations in ministry and higher education. Further, the way that they share ideas and experiences are good for their students and themselves.

To cite this article: Natalia Banasik-Jemielniak (2021): "Unicorn humour isn't very subtle." Graphic novels and comics as a potential didactic tool for teaching irony to children: the example of Dana Simpson's Phoebe and her unicorn, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics,

The theme of life and death in several poems of an American influential poet, Sylvia Plath, offer the readers insight into her psychological conditions. During her lifetime, Plath was a manic depressive (Cooper 296). She often uses a powerful figurative devices and emotional confessional approach in her poems to express her depression. One of her most well-known poems, “Tulips”, which originally published in Ariel (1965), uses a lot of figurative languages, such as personification, metaphor, simile and symbol to bear the idea of her own battle with psychiatric illness and treatments. Upon reading this poem and formulating my interpretation, I wonder how this poem might leave an impact on others thought through its interchanging emotions of calm and anger.

This article aims to study language use in modern Thai songs about disappointing love sung by male singers. Data from the top ten most viewed in YouTube were collected. The analysis focused on 3 methods which were lexical choices, idiomatic expressions and figures of speech. About the lexical ones, foreign loanwords, slangs, colloquialisms, address terms and punning words were used. About idiomatic expressions, there were only 6 idioms. While 8 types of figures of speech were found, namely simile, metaphor, personification, symbol, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, paradox and rhetorical questions.

Unique characteristics of children's literature bring along specific challenges to translation process. This field, just as other fields of translation, requires creativity of translator for the solution of such challenges. One of the most remarkable characteristics of children's books is that they are mostly written to be read aloud. Therefore, a translator needs to focus on sound effects being a part of figurative language in this genre. English poet and author Rudyard Kipling's renowned work Just So Stories is a good example for this feature of children's literature. Repercussions of the author's poetic style on this work, which is the collection of the stories written and read aloud by Kipling himself for his children, make read-aloud characteristics the most outstanding leitmotiv of the book. In addition, Turkish translations of the book offer a good deal of chances to analyze translation challenges. The book was translated into Turkish by Begüm Kovulmaz with title İşte Öyle Hikayeler in 2007 and Rojda Yıldırım with title Kipling'den Çocuklar için Öyküler in 2012. This study aims to analyze and compare these two Turkish translations with a specific focus on the sound effects divided under five categories; being repetition, alliteration, rhyme, onomatopoeic words and other sounds. The translation strategies offered by Newmark (1988) in specific to sound effects laid ground for the analysis and comparison of the strategies applied in the translations in question. The strategies were investigated to reveal whether the aesthetic or expressive purpose of the source text was preserved in the translations. According to the analysis conducted on the selected parts of the translations, substitution was found to be the most commonly applied strategy and it was found that Kovulmaz has more focus on the aesthetic function of the source text while the translation of Yıldırım had more focus on the expressive function. This study is believed to bring contribution to the discussions regarding the translation of sound effects in specific and figurative language in general.
Keywords: children’s literature, read-aloud, sound effects, figure of speech

ÖZET

Çocuk yazının kendine has özellikleri, bu alandaki çeviri sürecinde karşılaşılacak belirli zorlukları da beraberinde getirmektedir. Çevirinin diğer alanlarında olduğu gibi, bu alandaki sorunların çözümü için de çevirmenin yaratıcılığına gerek duyulmaktadır. Çocuk kitaplarının en önde gelen özelliklerinden biri de pek çoğunun sesli okunmak üzere kaleme alınmış olmasıdır. Bu bağlamda, söz konusu edebi türde çevirmenin değişmeceli dilin bir parçası olan ses etkilerine yoğunlaşması beklenmektedir. İngiliz şair ve yazar Rudyard Kipling’in ünlü eseri Just So Stories, çocuk yazının bu özelliği için başarılı bir örnek oluşturmakta olup, eserin Türkçe çevirileri de, çeviride karşılaşılan zorlukların analiz edilmesi bakımından pek çok imkan sunmaktadır. Yazarın şairane edebi tarzının, Kipling’in bizzat kendi çocukları için yazdığı ve onlara okuduğu hikayelerin derlemesinden oluşan bu eser üzerindeki yansımaları, “sesli-okuma” özelliklerini, söz konusu eserin ana motifi haline getirmektedir. Eser, Türkçe’ye Begüm Kovulmaz tarafından 2007 yılında İşte Öyle Hikayeler ve Rojda Yıldırım tarafından 2012 yılında Kipling’den Çocuklar için Öyküler isimleriyle kazandırılmıştır. Bu çalışma, söz konusu iki farklı Türkçe çevirinin ses etkileri bakımının analiz edilmesini ve karşılaştırılmasını hedeflemektedir. Ses etkileri tekrarlama, aliterasyon, kafiye, yankı-sözcükler ve diğer seslerden oluşan beş farklı başlık altında incelenmiştir. Newmark (1988) tarafından ses etkilerinin çevirisine özel olarak önerilen çeviri stratejileri, mevcut çalışmadaki çevirmenler tarafından uygulanan stratejilerin incelenmesi ve karşılaştırılmasında temel oluşturmuştur. Çevirilerde kullanılan söz konusu stratejiler, kaynak metnin estetik mi yoksa anlatımsal amacının mı korunduğunu belirlemek amacıyla incelenmiştir. Seçilen çeviri bölümleri üzerinde gerçekleştirilen incelemeye göre, yerine koyma stratejisinin en çok uygulanan çeviri yöntemi olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Buna göre, Kovulmaz’ın çevirisi kaynak metnin estetik işlevi üzerinde dururken, Yıldırım’ın çevirisi daha çok kaynak metnin anlatımsal işlevi odaklıdır. Bu çalışmanın, özelde ses etkilerinin çevirisi, genelde ise değişmeceli dil özelikleri gösteren eserlerin çevirisine ilişkin tartışmalara katkı sunacağına inanılmaktadır.
Anahtar sözcükler:  Çocuk yazını, sesli okuma, ses etkileri, söz sanatları