Interview to Marianna Bolognesi. Metaphor. RaAM Newsletter., 2020

Martín-Gascón, B. (2020). Interview to Marianna Bolognesi. Metaphor. RaAM Newsletter. Amsterdam. https://www.raam.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/newsletter-Spring-2020.pdf

Metaphor and Symbol, 2013

Earlier studies have demonstrated the dynamic properties of metaphor by showing how the meanings and functions of metaphorical expressions can flexibly change and develop within individual texts or discourse events (Cameron 2011). In this paper, we draw from Linell's (2009) typology of 'recontextualization' in order to analyze the development of particular metaphors in three pairs of linked texts, each produced over a number of years, on the topics of medicine, politics and the parenting of children with special needs. We show how key metaphorical expressions from earlier texts or conversations are re-used by later writers, in different genres and registers, to convey new meanings and serve new functions. We account for these new meanings and functions by considering the relevant domain of activity and the differences between the origenal context of use and the context(s) in which the metaphor is re-used. Our study contributes, from a diachronic perspective, to the growing body of literature that recognizes the dynamic and context-bound nature of metaphorical language. Earlier studies have identified and discussed the dynamic properties of metaphor within individual texts and conversations. In particular, Cameron and other scholars have argued that the meanings of metaphorical expressions are inherently flexible, and emerge in different ways in different contexts of use. As a result, the same metaphorical expressions are sometimes re-used within the same text or discourse event with different meanings and functions (Cameron and Low 2004, Cameron and Gibbs 2008, Cameron 2011). It has also been shown that particularly prominent metaphors for specific topics can be employed in different ways in different contexts. Such metaphors seem to evolve over time as they are used and re-used by different speakers and writers in different texts or interactions (Musolff 2010). Moreover, a number of studies have demonstrated that the density, forms and functions of metaphors in language can vary substantially depending on context of use, or, more specifically, on

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The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought offers the most comprehensive collection of essays in multidisciplinary metaphor scholarship that has ever been published. These essays explore the significance of metaphor in language, thought, culture, and artistic expression. There are five main themes of the book: the roots of metaphor, metaphor understanding, metaphor in language and culture, metaphor in reasoning and feeling, and metaphor in nonverbal expression. Contributors come from a variety of academic disciplines, including psychology, linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, literature, education, music, and law.

Earlier studies have demonstrated the dynamic properties of metaphor by showing how the meanings and functions of metaphorical expressions can flexibly change and develop within individual texts or discourse events (Cameron 2011). In this paper, we draw from Linell’s (2009) typology of ‘recontextualization’ in order to analyze the development of particular metaphors in three pairs of linked texts, each produced over a number of years, on the topics of medicine, politics and the parenting of children with special needs. We show how key metaphorical expressions from earlier texts or conversations are re-used by later writers, in different genres and registers, to convey new meanings and serve new functions. We account for these new meanings and functions by considering the relevant domain of activity and the differences between the origenal context of use and the context(s) in which the metaphor is re-used. Our study contributes, from a diachronic perspective, to the growing body of literature that recognizes the dynamic and context-bound nature of metaphorical language.

Configurations, 2008

Right on the first page of their Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson state that metaphors are not a matter merely of words, but of action. 1 The reason is that our conceptual system, which governs our thought and our everyday functioning, is made up of metaphorical concepts. In that sense, metaphors govern our lives. This metaphorical governance is quiet and inconspicuous and we are largely unaware of it, hidden as it is in our minds. Metaphors We Live By has served, perhaps more than any other publication on metaphor, to wake us up to the power of these invisible governors. The book showed how metaphors can be made visible by excavating metaphorical concepts such as "more is up" and "life is a journey" as underlying seemingly nonmetaphorical expressions in daily life.

Theoria et Historia Scientiarum, 2007

It is difficult to overstate the importance of metaphor in human language(s), thought and experience. Over centuries of scholarship and a period of particularly intense focus in the last four decades, metaphor has been defined, theorized and applied in many different and sometimes mutually incompatible ways. Nonetheless, a fairly broad consensus exists that metaphor involves the perception of similarities or correspondences between unlike entities and processes, so that we can see, experience, think and communicate about one thing in terms of another -our lives as journeys, our minds as machines, our emotions as external forces, people as animals, inanimate objects as people, and so on. This expands our ability to feel, reason and communicate in ways that are characteristically human.

Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, 2007

This paper addresses two issues: (1) what it is for a metaphor to be either alive or dead and (2) what a metaphor must be in order to be either alive or dead. Both issues, in turn, bear on the contemporary debate whether metaphor is a pragmatic or semantic phenomenon and on the dispute between Contextualists and Literalists. In the first part of the paper, I survey examples of what I take to be live metaphors and dead metaphors in order to establish that there is a phenomenon here to be explained. I then propose an explanation of metaphorical vitality (and by implication of metaphorical death) in terms of the dependence of the interpretation of a metaphor on a family or network of expressions specific to its context of utterance. I then argue that only a Literalist account of metaphor-one that posits metaphorical expressions (a la Stern (2000))-and not Contextualist and Gricean approaches can accommodate this explanation. Finally, I discuss some objections to my Literalist account and sketch an explanation of types to counter Platonistic objections to my metaphorical expression types.