This volume explores linguistic metaphor identification in a wide variety of languages and language families. The book is an essential read for anyone interested in researching language and metaphor, from students to experienced scholars. Its primary goals are to discuss the challenges involved in applying the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) to a range of languages across the globe, and to offer theoretically grounded advice and guidelines enabling researchers to identify metaphors in multiple languages in a valid and replicable way. The volume is intended as a practical guidebook that identifies and discusses procedural challenges of metaphor identification across languages, thus better enabling researchers to reliably identify metaphor in a multitude of languages. Although able to be read independently, this volume – written by metaphor researchers from around the world – is the ideal companion volume for the 2010 Benjamins book A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU.

This book presents a complete method for the identification of metaphor in language at the level of word use. It is based on extensive methodological and empirical corpus-linguistic research in two languages, English and Dutch. The method is formulated as an explicit manual of instructions covering one chapter, the method being a development and refinement of the popular MIP procedure presented by the Pragglejaz Group in 2007. The extended version is called MIPVU, as it was developed at VU University Amsterdam. Its application is demonstrated in five case studies addressing metaphor in English news texts, conversations, fiction, and academic texts, and Dutch news texts and conversations. Two methodological chapters follow reporting a series of successful reliability tests and a series of post hoc troubleshooting exercises. The final chapter presents a first empirical analysis of the findings, and shows what this type of methodological attention can mean for research and theory.

The study of metaphor is now firmly established as a central topic within cognitive science and the humanities. This book explores the critical role that conceptual metaphors play in language, thought, cultural and expressive actions. It evaluates the arguments and evidence for and against conceptual metaphors across academic disciplines.

The Routledge Handbook of Metaphor and Language provides a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art interdisciplinary research on metaphor and language. Featuring 35 chapters written by leading scholars from around the world, the volume takes a broad view of the field of metaphor and language, and brings together diverse and distinct theoretical and applied perspectives to cover six key areas: Theoretical approaches to metaphor and language, covering Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Relevance Theory, Blending Theory and Dynamical Systems Theory; Methodological approaches to metaphor and language, discussing ways of identifying metaphors in verbal texts, images and gestures, as well as the use of corpus linguistics; Formal variation in patterns of metaphor use across text types, historical periods and languages; Functional variation of metaphor, in contexts including educational, commercial, scientific and political discourse, as well as online trolling; The applications of metaphor for problem solving, in business, education, healthcare and conflict situations; Language, metaphor, and cognitive development, examining the processing and comprehension of metaphors. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Metaphor is a must-have survey of this key field, and is essential reading for those interested in language and metaphor.

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.

To what extent and in what ways is metaphorical thought relevant to an understanding of culture and society? More specifically: can the cognitive linguistic view of metaphor simultaneously explain both universality and diversity in metaphorical thought? Cognitive linguists have done important work on universal aspects of metaphor, but they have paid much less attention to why metaphors vary both interculturally and intraculturally as extensively as they do. In this book, Zoltán Kövecses proposes a new theory of metaphor variation. First, he identifies the major dimension of metaphor variation, that is, those social and cultural boundaries that signal discontinuities in human experience. Second, he describes which components, or aspects of conceptual metaphor are involved in metaphor variation, and how they are involved. Third, he isolates the main causes of metaphor variation. Fourth Professor Kövecses addresses the issue to the degree of cultural coherence in the interplay among conceptual metaphors, embodiment, and causes of metaphor variation.

Cognitive linguists have proposed that metaphor is not just a matter of language but of thought, and that metaphorical thought displays a high degree of conventionalization. In order to produce converging evidence for this theory of metaphor, a wide range of data is currently being studied with a large array of methods and techniques. Finding Metaphor in Grammar and Usage aims to map the field of this development in theory and research from a methodological perspective. It raises the question when exactly evidence for metaphor in language and thought can be said to count as converging. It also goes into the various stages of producing such evidence (conceptualization, operationalization, data collection and analysis, and interpretation). The book offers systematic discussion of eight distinct areas of metaphor research that emerge as a result of approaching metaphor as part of grammar or usage, language or thought, and symbolic structure or cognitive process.

This volume presents results from a corpus-based investigation into the metaphorical production of foreign language learners, comparing texts written by Norwegian (L2) learners of English with those written by British (L1) students. Three types of questions are addressed. The first has empirically measured answers: For example, do L2 English writers produce more metaphors than L1 novice writers? How frequent are novel metaphors in an L2, as compared with an L1? The second type has more subjective answers: How creatively do L2 English learners employ metaphor? Are they even expected to be able to produce metaphor at all? The third type combines theoretical and methodological perspectives: How is metaphorical creativity identified? What is the potential role of metaphoric competence? Most importantly, how are metaphors identified? To this end, the newly-developed ‘Metaphor Identification Procedure’ is tested and critiqued. This book is intended for metaphor researchers, corpus linguists, applied linguists and language educators.

The literary imagination may take flight on the wings of metaphor, but hard-headed scientists are just as likely as doe-eyed poets to reach for a metaphor when the descriptive need arises. Metaphor is a pervasive aspect of every genre of text and every register of speech, and is as useful for describing the inner workings of a "black hole" (itself a metaphor) as it is the affairs of the human heart. The ubiquity of metaphor in natural language thus poses a significant challenge for Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems and their builders, who cannot afford to wait until the problems of literal language have been solved before turning their attention to figurative phenomena. This book offers a comprehensive approach to the computational treatment of metaphor and its figurative brethren—including simile, analogy, and conceptual blending—that does not shy away from their important cognitive and philosophical dimensions. Veale, Shutova, and Beigman Klebanov approach metaphor from multiple computational perspectives, providing coverage of both symbolic and statistical approaches to interpretation and paraphrase generation, while also considering key contributions from philosophy on what constitutes the "meaning" of a metaphor. This book also surveys available metaphor corpora and discusses protocols for metaphor annotation. Any reader with an interest in metaphor, from beginning researchers to seasoned scholars, will find this book to be an invaluable guide to what is a fascinating linguistic phenomenon.

While the role of metaphor in economics and business has produced multiple research articles, no comprehensive book-length study has yet appeared. The present book is a timely attempt to fill this gap, giving a global coverage of the role of metaphor in business and economics. It spans time (from Classical Greece to the current business network meeting-room), space (from Europe through the Americas to Asia), cultures and languages (from continental European languages, Brazilian Portuguese to Chinese). The theoretical grounding of the book is the Conceptual Theory of Metaphor taken in a dynamic sense as evolving with on-going research. The theory is thus used, adapted and refined in accordance with the evidence provided. Metaphor is shown to be theory constitutive in the elaboration of economic thinking down through the ages while, at the same time, the emphasis on evidence open to historical, cross-cultural and cross-linguistic considerations align with the current notion of situatedness. The book is a rich source of information for researchers and students in the fields of Metaphor Studies, Economics, Discourse Analysis, and Communication Studies, among others.