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Gender stereotyping: The head and sexualized body parts as fruits and vegetables
Abstract
Across languages, the head and sexualized body parts (i.e., vagina, breasts, penis, testicles) are conceptualized in a number of ways, for example as fruits and vegetables: heads are conceptualized as cabbages, vaginas as figs, breasts as melons, penises as carrots, and testicles as olives, to only name a few. The present study draws on the theories of conceptual metaphor and metonymy by Lakoff & Johnson (1980) to analyze the conceptualizations of the five body parts as fruits and vegetables in English, Spanish and French. For this purpose, a slang dictionary-based database of 184 conceptualizations was compiled. Research on the head and sexualized body parts is particularly interesting as they represent the core of intellect and sexuality respectively, which makes them prone to being conceptualized in a variety of expressive and euphemistic ways. The results of the present study show that female body parts are primarily conceptualized as sweet fruits, while the penis as well as the head are mostly understood of as savory vegetables. This finding suggests a case of gender stereotyping, whereby sweet-natured women are denied intelligence as the head is stereotypically seen as a male body part (i.e., as a savory vegetable).
... Multimodal Cognitive Linguistics (Forceville, 2009;Forceville, & Urios-Aparisi, 2009;Yu, 2009;Yus, 2009;Villacañas & White, 2013;Pérez-Sobrino, 2017) offers the mechanisms to identify the formal realizations of visual metaphors and metonymies (the target and source domains) and the way in which they can be understood within a specific situational and cultural context. One of the concepts that has probably aroused most interest within Cognitive Linguistics is the theory of conceptual metaphor, initially proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in Metaphors we live by, and later developed by Lakoff (1987), Ruiz de Mendoza (2000) and Dziallas (2019), inter alia. Cognitive linguists assume that metaphors, in addition to metonymies, are conceptual mechanisms which may be used to represent abstract phenomena in terms of concrete elements (Lakoff, 1987;Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 39). ...
... Thus, the point of view that women are weak and helpless has psychologically affected both women and men. Men feel stronger and more powerful so they can easily act harshly on women, while women feel weak and helpless so that they are unable to refuse men's orders because refusing means choosing to be tortured (Dziallas, 2019). They will obey men's order, whether conscious or not, happy or otherwise, as shown in the following quotes: ...
This study aimed to reveal the Egyptian community culture portrayed in Nawal El-Sa’dawi’s Perempuan di Titik Nol novel. The method used in this study was descriptive qualitative with a literary anthropological approach. The data in this study were taken from the Perempuan di Titik Nol novel, while the data were the events experienced by Firdaus as the main character in the novel. This paper found out some of the customs of Egyptian community in the PdTN novel as a cultural representation of Egyptian society. The results of this study showed four cultures of the Egyptian community, including: 1) matchmaking culture, as an effort to obtain material benefits from the matchmaking; 2) patriarchal culture that considers men as subjects who have power while women as objects whose roles are marginalized; 3) materialist culture, seeing things based on world treasures; and finally, 4) bribery culture, both by using either money or women’s bodies.
... Both male and female speakers used metaphors to compare an idea to another. This is in line with several previous studies (Balam & Couto, 2019;Dziallas, 2019). In "for them, I was aware" or "my life was a war, was a tragedy", the speakers tried to juxtapose a concept with another concept which established a heartbreaking atmosphere. ...
Gender basically gives distinction to males and females, where our public domain is inseparable from this social construction. This study aimed to identify the language use of the Middle Eastern freedom activists’ speeches based on gender perspective. The data source was from male and female Middle Eastern freedom activists’ speech videos. A number of participants were also involved to measure the powerful voice in the speech. The results showed that male and female speakers produced a set of spoken language differences, which differed by form, topic, content, and purpose. In using the language for speech, both male and female speakers produced some elements in random frequency. To conclude, one gender could not be considered more potential than the other to influence the audience when delivering the speech. Other factors, particularly non-verbal ones, exist to give impacts on the speech performance so that it has a certain degree to influence the audience.
... Multimodal Cognitive Linguistics (Forceville, 2009;Forceville, & Urios-Aparisi, 2009;Yu, 2009;Yus, 2009;Villacañas & White, 2013;Pérez-Sobrino, 2017) offers the mechanisms to identify the formal realizations of visual metaphors and metonymies (the target and source domains) and the way in which they can be understood within a specific situational and cultural context. One of the concepts that has probably aroused most interest within Cognitive Linguistics is the theory of conceptual metaphor, initially proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in Metaphors we live by, and later developed by Lakoff (1987), Ruiz de Mendoza (2000) and Dziallas (2019), inter alia. Cognitive linguists assume that metaphors, in addition to metonymies, are conceptual mechanisms which may be used to represent abstract phenomena in terms of concrete elements (Lakoff, 1987;Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 39). ...
... Multimodal Cognitive Linguistics (Forceville, 2009;Forceville, & Urios-Aparisi, 2009;Yu, 2009;Yus, 2009;Villacañas & White, 2013;Pérez-Sobrino, 2017) offers the mechanisms to identify the formal realizations of visual metaphors and metonymies (the target and source domains) and the way in which they can be understood within a specific situational and cultural context. One of the concepts that has probably aroused most interest within Cognitive Linguistics is the theory of conceptual metaphor, initially proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in Metaphors we live by, and later developed by Lakoff (1987), Ruiz de Mendoza (2000) and Dziallas (2019), inter alia. Cognitive linguists assume that metaphors, in addition to metonymies, are conceptual mechanisms which may be used to represent abstract phenomena in terms of concrete elements (Lakoff, 1987;Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 39). ...
... Multimodal Cognitive Linguistics (Forceville, 2009;Forceville, & Urios-Aparisi, 2009;Yu, 2009;Yus, 2009;Villacañas & White, 2013;Pérez-Sobrino, 2017) offers the mechanisms to identify the formal realizations of visual metaphors and metonymies (the target and source domains) and the way in which they can be understood within a specific situational and cultural context. One of the concepts that has probably aroused most interest within Cognitive Linguistics is the theory of conceptual metaphor, initially proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in Metaphors we live by, and later developed by Lakoff (1987), Ruiz de Mendoza (2000) and Dziallas (2019), inter alia. Cognitive linguists assume that metaphors, in addition to metonymies, are conceptual mechanisms which may be used to represent abstract phenomena in terms of concrete elements (Lakoff, 1987;Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 39). ...
Verbal metaphor and also metonymy have been theorized from a conceptual perspective since Lakoff and Johnson published Metaphors we live by in the 1980s. However, the final years of the twentieth century saw a new approach into non-verbal monomodal or multimodal tropes ( Forceville & Urios-Aparisi, 2009 ). In an attempt to expand upon the theorization and communicative functions of visual metonymies, this study aims to explore the meaning potential of metonymic representations of characters in a sample of six picture books which portray same-sex-parent families. A multimodal cognitive approach has been adopted to find out whether, and if so how, metonymic representations of characters contribute to the positive portrayal and acceptance of same-sex-parent families in children’s picture books. The results reveal that monomodal visual metonymies are essentially used to introduce new characters in the story and highlight important aspects of the plot which boost the acceptance of non-traditional families.
... Multimodal Cognitive Linguistics (Forceville, 2009;Forceville, & Urios-Aparisi, 2009;Yu, 2009;Yus, 2009;Villacañas & White, 2013;Pérez-Sobrino, 2017) offers the mechanisms to identify the formal realizations of visual metaphors and metonymies (the target and source domains) and the way in which they can be understood within a specific situational and cultural context. One of the concepts that has probably aroused most interest within Cognitive Linguistics is the theory of conceptual metaphor, initially proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in Metaphors we live by, and later developed by Lakoff (1987), Ruiz de Mendoza (2000) and Dziallas (2019), inter alia. Cognitive linguists assume that metaphors, in addition to metonymies, are conceptual mechanisms which may be used to represent abstract phenomena in terms of concrete elements (Lakoff, 1987;Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 39). ...
This article aims to examine how visual metonymies, in combination with verbal language, contribute to the representation of characters in a sample of six picture books written and illustrated by Anthony Browne and intended for children in two different age groups: 0–6 year-olds (also known as early readers) and children over six years of age. Social semiotic (Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 2006 [1996]. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge; Painter, Clare, James Martin, and Len Unsworth. 2013. Reading visual narratives: Image analysis of children’s picture books. London: Equinox), and multimodal cognitive approaches (Forceville, Charles. 2009. Metonymy in visual and audiovisual discourse. In Eija Ventola and Arsenio J. Moya-Guijarro (eds.), The world told and the world shown: Multisemiotic Issues, 57–74. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan; Forceville, Charles, and Eduardo Urios-Aparisi. (eds.). 2009. Multimodal metaphor. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter) have been adopted to carry out this research. The results reveal that the proportions of metonymies and complete representations are significantly different across the tales intended for 0–6 and 7–9 year-old children. In addition, the analysis shows that source-in-target metonymic depictions (Ruiz de Mendoza, Ibáñez, F. J., and Velasco O. I. Díez. 2002. Patterns of conceptual interaction. In René Dirven and Ralf Pörings (eds.), Metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast, 489–532. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter) are essentially used by illustrators to highlight some essential aspects of the characters and the plots.
... Multimodal Cognitive Linguistics (Forceville, 2009;Forceville, & Urios-Aparisi, 2009;Yu, 2009;Yus, 2009;Villacañas & White, 2013;Pérez-Sobrino, 2017) offers the mechanisms to identify the formal realizations of visual metaphors and metonymies (the target and source domains) and the way in which they can be understood within a specific situational and cultural context. One of the concepts that has probably aroused most interest within Cognitive Linguistics is the theory of conceptual metaphor, initially proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in Metaphors we live by, and later developed by Lakoff (1987), Ruiz de Mendoza (2000) and Dziallas (2019), inter alia. Cognitive linguists assume that metaphors, in addition to metonymies, are conceptual mechanisms which may be used to represent abstract phenomena in terms of concrete elements (Lakoff, 1987;Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 39). ...
... Multimodal Cognitive Linguistics (Forceville, 2009;Forceville, & Urios-Aparisi, 2009;Yu, 2009;Yus, 2009;Villacañas & White, 2013;Pérez-Sobrino, 2017) offers the mechanisms to identify the formal realizations of visual metaphors and metonymies (the target and source domains) and the way in which they can be understood within a specific situational and cultural context. One of the concepts that has probably aroused most interest within Cognitive Linguistics is the theory of conceptual metaphor, initially proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in Metaphors we live by, and later developed by Lakoff (1987), Ruiz de Mendoza (2000) and Dziallas (2019), inter alia. Cognitive linguists assume that metaphors, in addition to metonymies, are conceptual mechanisms which may be used to represent abstract phenomena in terms of concrete elements (Lakoff, 1987;Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 39). ...
... Multimodal Cognitive Linguistics (Forceville, 2009;Forceville, & Urios-Aparisi, 2009;Yu, 2009;Yus, 2009;Villacañas & White, 2013;Pérez-Sobrino, 2017) offers the mechanisms to identify the formal realizations of visual metaphors and metonymies (the target and source domains) and the way in which they can be understood within a specific situational and cultural context. One of the concepts that has probably aroused most interest within Cognitive Linguistics is the theory of conceptual metaphor, initially proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in Metaphors we live by, and later developed by Lakoff (1987), Ruiz de Mendoza (2000) and Dziallas (2019), inter alia. Cognitive linguists assume that metaphors, in addition to metonymies, are conceptual mechanisms which may be used to represent abstract phenomena in terms of concrete elements (Lakoff, 1987;Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 39). ...
... Multimodal Cognitive Linguistics (Forceville, 2009;Forceville, & Urios-Aparisi, 2009;Yu, 2009;Yus, 2009;Villacañas & White, 2013;Pérez-Sobrino, 2017) offers the mechanisms to identify the formal realizations of visual metaphors and metonymies (the target and source domains) and the way in which they can be understood within a specific situational and cultural context. One of the concepts that has probably aroused most interest within Cognitive Linguistics is the theory of conceptual metaphor, initially proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in Metaphors we live by, and later developed by Lakoff (1987), Ruiz de Mendoza (2000) and Dziallas (2019), inter alia. Cognitive linguists assume that metaphors, in addition to metonymies, are conceptual mechanisms which may be used to represent abstract phenomena in terms of concrete elements (Lakoff, 1987;Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 39). ...
This article aims to explore how the use of visual metonymies in picture books contributes to children’s understanding of stories and, in turn, attracts their attention towards relevant aspects of the plot. The two picture books selected for analysis are Gorilla, by Browne and The Tale of Peter Rabbit, by Potter, intended for children under 9 years of age. A multimodal and cognitive perspective is adopted here to apply the non-verbal trope of visual metonymy to the two picture books that form the sample texts (Forceville, 2009, 2010; Forceville & Urios-Aparisi, 2009). The results of the analysis show that visual metonymies are essentially used in children’s tales to create narrative tension in certain stages of the plot and, in turn, to establish a bond between the represented participants and the child-viewer.
This article examines the persisting obstacles American women face in the workforce, for example, gender bias and gender stereotyping. These microaggressive behaviors create obstacles for women in the workplace environment as with the glass ceiling and the broken rung. A historical timeline of impactful events affecting women’s rights and milestones is provided. Moreover, the glass ceiling and broken rung are compared. In addition, the microaggressive behaviors of gender bias and gender stereotyping are examined. Lastly, remedies to alleviate microaggressive behaviors and negative obstacles for American women in the workplace have been provided. Examples of these remedies include companies creating gender-diverse organizational cultures, being committed to hiring and promoting women for managerial leadership positions, challenging existing corporate identities, implementing positive discrimination practices, and being held to diversity transparency.
The history of mankind has been characterized by attempts to understand the universe and the human being itself. Humans are so uniquely able to understand because they have a "mind" that distinguishes them from lower species. As the centre of some or all of the faculties of feeling, thinking, and knowing, the mind has traditionally been the defining feature of the "animal rationale", i.e., "reason-possessing or rational animal" that a human being is. Not the least striking of it all is that the understanding of the mind is crucial to the understanding of the human body, the self, and particularly human cognition. Looking back and around, however, we find apparently divergent inroads to the understanding of the mind over history and across cultures, as may become more evident in the studies in this volume about the synchronic variation and the diachronic development of "heart" conceptions in various languages. The central aim of this volume is to contribute to the knowledge about various cultures' conceptualizations of the heart and other internal body organs, and in particular about how feeling, thinking and knowing are related to internal body organs in different cultures, as they are reflected in the respective languages. © 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin. All Rights Reserved.
Theories of natural language and concepts have been unable to model the flexibility, creativity, context-dependence, and emergence, exhibited by words, concepts and their combinations. The mathematical formalism of quantum theory has instead been successful in capturing these phenomena such as graded membership, situational meaning, composition of categories, and also more complex decision making situations, which cannot be modeled in traditional probabilistic approaches. We show how a formal quantum approach to concepts and their combinations can provide a powerful extension of prototype theory. We explain how prototypes can interfere in conceptual combinations as a consequence of their contextual interactions, and provide an illustration of this using an intuitive wave-like diagram. This quantum-conceptual approach gives new life to original prototype theory, without however making it a privileged concept theory, as we explain at the end of our paper.
In the traditional view, metonymy is a matter of words (language); the metonymic process involves a transfer of the meaning of words which have reference; metonymy is a “stand-for” relationship between names; it is a relationship between two entities, where the nature of the relationship is generally assumed to be one of “contiguity” or “proximity”. By contrast, we argue for a comprehensive and integrated cognitivist view which involves the following: (1) identifying the ontological realms in which metonymy can occur; (2) specifying the types of conceptual relationships that obtain between elements in a metonymic relationship; (3) establishing those cognitive and communicative principles that select the most “natural” vehicle-to-target routes; (4) discovering the conditions under which “non-default routes” can be selected.
Taboo is deeply woven into every culture and society, which is obviously reflected in vocabulary. Indeed, taboo keeps language users from avoiding the forbidden concept and compels them to preserve or violate it, which leads to endless series of cross varietal synonyms for forbidden concepts. In this process, though metaphor stands out as a potent source for euphemistic and dysphemistic reference, the analysis of conceptual metaphor in the Lakoffian tradition as a X-phemistic device has not been dealt with in depth so far. In this regard, the main aim of this paper is twofold: to gain an insight into the process of metaphorical X-phemistic lexical replacements triggered by taboo and explore the role the process of lexicalization of metaphorical units plays in sex and death-related X-phemistic vocabulary. The analysis undertaken demonstrates that whereas lexicalized metaphorical units are deprived of their capacity to conceptualize the taboo in particular terms, both semi-lexicalized and creative metaphors suit the purpose of euphemism and dysphemism by conceptualizing a taboo topic within a conceptual network, which accounts for the X-phemistic function of metaphorical items.
The debate between narrativists and ludologists has long enlivened discussions among game theorists. Should videogames be seen as an offshoot of (film) stories, and thus be studied primarily from the perspective of narratology? Or do they represent a truly different phenomenon, and thus require an analytic approach that has nothing to gain from narratology? In this paper we intend not so much to solve this conundrum as suggest how it has arisen in the first place, by showing what journey stories and videogames that involve the movement of the player’s avatar have in common. Our central claim is that both journey stories and such games involve physical movement and quests, and moreover are based on some sort of ‘story’, but that only the stories allow for rich mappings of the conceptual metaphor PURPOSIVE ACTIVITY IS MOVEMENT TOWARD A DESTINATION. If our explanations make sense, they can contribute both to the classification and theorization of videogames and to the expansion of conceptual metaphor theory into the realm of videogames.
Conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) has over the past 25 years amply sought to underpin the claim that humans’ pervasive use of verbal metaphor reflects the fact that they think largely metaphorically. If this tenet of CMT is correct, metaphor should manifest itself not just in language but also via other modes of communication, such as pictures, music, sounds, and gestures. However, non-verbal and multimodal metaphor have been far less extensively studied than their verbal sisters. The present article provides a review of work done in this area, focusing on a number of issues that require further research. These issues include the proposal to distinguish between monomodal and multimodal metaphor; reflections on the difference between structural and creative metaphor; the question of how verbalizations of non-verbal or conceptual metaphors may affect their possible interpretation; thoughts as to how similarity between target and source is created; and suggestions about the importance of genre for the construal and interpretation of metaphor.
Two questionnaire studies on female genital slang (FGTs) are presented. Study One explored semantic categories in 317 different FGTs (and 351 different male genital terms [MGTs]) collected from 156 females and 125 males. Data were coded into 17 categories, and tested for sex differences. More FGTs were coded standard slang, euphemism, space, receptacle, abjection, hair, animal, or money. More MGTs were coded personification, gender identity, edibility, danger, or nonsense. Study Two used 49 FGTs to investigate the extent to which slang provides a consistent specific vocabulary for female genitals. The 251 respondents commented on 5 terms each. Respondents absolutely agreed on meaning for only 4% of terms. The implications of both findings for women's genital experiences and sexuality are discussed.
According to the theory of internal organs in traditional Chinese medicine, the gallbladder has the function of making judgments and decisions in mental processes and activities, and it also determines one's degree of courage. This culturally constructed medical characterization of the gallbladder forms the base of the cultural model for the concept of courage. In the core of this cultural model is a pair of conceptual metaphors: (a) "GALLBLADDER IS CONTAINTER OF COURAGE," and (b) "COURAGE IS QI (GASEOUS VITAL ENERGY) IN GALLBLADDER," which partly constitutive of the understanding of the gallbladder and courage in Chinese culture. A description and analysis of the data from the Chinese language show that numerous conventional expressions are systematically tied to each other and contributive to the underlying conceptual metaphors. The study presents a case in which an abstract concept (courage) is understood in part via a conceptual metaphor grounded in the body, but shaped by a culture-specific metaphorical understanding of an internal organ (gallbladder) inside the body. Although the human body is a potentially universal source domain for metaphors structuring abstract concepts, cultural models set up specific perspectives from which certain aspects of bodily experience or certain parts of the body are viewed as especially salient and meaningful in the understanding of those abstract concepts.
This article presents an explicit method that can be reliably employed to identify metaphorically used words in discourse. Our aim is to provide metaphor scholars with a tool that may be flexibly applied to many research contexts. We present the “metaphor identification procedure” (MIP), followed by an example of how the procedure can be applied to identifying metaphorically used words in 1 text. We then suggest a format for reporting the results of MIP, and present the data from our case study describing the empirical reliability of the procedure, discuss several complications associated with using the procedure in practice, and then briefly compare MIP to other proposals on metaphor identification. The final section of the paper suggests ways that MIP may be employed in disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies of metaphor.
In this article we propose a cognitive model which results of metaphorical expressions gathered from dictionaries and thesauri and their later examination and classification. We begin with basic conceptual operations, such as reification and personification, to arrive at more complex metaphors which constitute the "Idealized Cognitive Model".
Fruit and vegetable consumption is a focus of research and nutrition education; yet, there is no universal agreement on the meaning of 'fruits' and 'vegetables'. Our objective was to describe survey respondent perceptions about a set of foods with regard to whether the food is a fruit, vegetable or something else.
Three cross-sectional studies.
Two small studies involving cognitive interviewing sessions; and one large self-administered population survey.
US adults in two small studies (n 55 and 80) and one large survey (n 3312), all with multiple race/ethnicities.
Perceptions varied. In the survey, rice was considered a vegetable by about 20 % of respondents. In one small study, Spanish speakers were more likely to consider rice a vegetable, and Chinese speakers less likely, than were English speakers. Black beans were frequently classified as something other than vegetable or fruit. Among Hispanics, Spanish speakers were less likely than English speakers to consider beans a vegetable. Overall, tomatoes were classified as both fruit and vegetable, and these perceptions varied by race/ethnicity.
Substantial disagreement among the fruit, vegetable and other food domains highlights the importance of clearly defining the desired constructs. Foods that require specific instruction include rice, dried beans, potatoes, tomatoes and fruits and vegetables in mixtures and condiments. For measurement, additional questions or explanations may be needed to clarify which foods are of interest. For communication, the global message to increase consumption of fruit and vegetables should be reinforced with specific guidance.
It is my purpose in this paper to draw attention to the euphemistic and dysphemistic figurative language used to designate the taboo of sex in the frame of the well-known Conceptual Metaphor Theory initiated by Lakoff and Johnson. From this standpoint, I claim that conceptualization plays a crucial role in both the use and interpretation of sexual metaphorical euphemisms and dysphemisms. In this regard, I consider the implications and effects of the process of lexicalization in conceptual categorization, particularly concerning the directionality of metaphorical projections. I also analyse the function of conceptual metaphors in euphemistic and dysphemistic use, seeking to study the way in which a particular experiential domain is more likely to give rise to verbal mitigation or offence, and I finally trace how a given conceptualization accounts for the interpretation of sex-related euphemistic and dysphemistic metaphors. The analysis undertaken shows that metaphorical terms and phrases referring to sexual taboos can be insightfully described in terms of Lakoff and Johnson�s cognitive view of metaphor.
People believe that women are the more emotional sex. This belief stems less from what men and women actually do than from the explanations given for their behaviors. In 2 studies, participants who were given situational information about the causes of emotional expression in target faces nonetheless more frequently judged feminine targets depicting emotions as "emotional" (i.e., a dispositional attribution for the emotional behavior), whereas they more frequently judged masculine targets as "having a bad day" (i.e., a situational attribution for the emotional behavior). These findings help explain the pervasive belief that women are more emotional when compared with men, even when the scientific veracity of this belief is questionable.
We examined the content and dimensional structure of a large and representative sample of gender types. In Study 1, using an open-ended procedure, participants generated 306 different labels for female types (e.g. housewife, feminist, femme fatale, secretary, slob) and 310 for male types (e.g. workaholic, family man, sissy, womanizer, labourer). In Study 2A, a multidimensional configuration of 229 of these male and female types was derived from a free sorting task among a new set of participants. In Study 2B, a subset of types was judged on several dimensions of meaning, which were then fitted into the configuration of types. The most important dimensions in describing the structure of gender types were: young-old, masculine-feminine and traditional-modern. The masculine-feminine dimension showed that the male and female types were largely separated from each other; within each gender category, the types were ordered by their position on the masculine-feminine dimension. Several other aspects of current thinking about men and women are discussed.
The authors examined participants' estimates of own and parental psychometric intelligence (IQ) and emotional intelligence (EI). The authors asked 224 participants (82 men, 138 women, 4 people who did not report their gender) to estimate their own and their parents' IQ and EI scores on a normal distribution ranging from 55 to 145 points. The authors hypothesized that men would give higher IQ but lower EI self-estimates than women and that participants, regardless of gender, would rate their fathers as higher on IQ but lower on EI than their mothers. The results confirmed the hypotheses, supporting the view that people perceive psychometric intelligence as a primarily masculine attribute in contrast with emotional intelligence, which they perceive as a primarily feminine attribute. The results also showed that the intensity of the stereotypical perception of EI as a feminine attribute diminished when the authors asked participants to estimate their scores on a range of specific EI facets instead of providing a direct overall self-estimate.
The idea that the language we speak influences the way we think has evoked perennial fascination and intense controversy. According to the strong version of this hypothesis, called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis after the American linguists who propounded it, languages vary in their semantic partitioning of the world, and the structure of one's language influences how one understands the world. Thus speakers of different languages perceive the world differently.
Although the last two decades have been marked by extreme skepticism concerning the possible effects of language on thought, recent theoretical and methodological advances in cognitive science have given the question new life. Research in linguistics and linguistic anthropology has revealed striking differences in cross-linguistic semantic patterns, and cognitive psychology has developed subtle techniques for studying how people represent and remember experience. It is now possible to test predictions about how a given language influences the thinking of its speakers.
Language in Mind includes contributions from both skeptics and believers and from a range of fields. It contains work in cognitive psychology, cognitive development, linguistics, anthropology, and animal cognition. The topics discussed include space, number, motion, gender, theory of mind, thematic roles, and the ontological distinction between objects and substances.
ContributorsMelissa Bowerman, Eve Clark, Jill de Villiers, Peter de Villiers, Giyoo Hatano, Stan Kuczaj, Barbara Landau, Stephen Levinson, John Lucy, Barbara Malt, Dan Slobin, Steven Sloman, Elizabeth Spelke, and Michael Tomasello
Bradford Books imprint
Talk is crucial to the way our identities are constructed, altered, and defended. Feminist scholars in particular have only begun to investigate how deeply language reflects and shapes who we think we are. This volume of previously unpublished essays, the first in the new series Studies in Language and Gender, advances that effort by bringing together leading feminist scholars in the area of language and gender, including Deborah Tannen, Jennifer Coates, and Marcyliena Morgan, as well as rising younger scholars. Topics explored include African-American drag queens, gender and class on the shopping channel, and talk in the workplace.
This contribution aims at exploring two body part conceptualizations as they show up in English. It will explore linguistic expressions and image schemata concerning the body parts head and heart and relate them to their underlying cultural models (cf. Quinn 1987; Quinn and Holland 1987; and Quinn 1991) and ethnomedical traditions and motivations. The aim of this discussion is to show that these conceptualizations are far from arbitrary, and that they in fact reflect the concepts that are or were at a certain historical stage present in the culture in question. Even if today's advanced medical knowledge no longer agrees with these traditional concepts, linguistic expressions that are so deeply entrenched that they have come to belong to unconscious knowledge far outlive such a change in conscious knowledge and still function as a basic demarcation line in allocating the locus of emotions and intellect. The most salient cultural model in this respect is the dualism between the body and the mind/reason propagated by Descartes and his successors. As the analysis shows, this distinction is still to be found in present-day English and comes to the fore in non-literal, mainly metaphorical language usage. However, once we trace the metaphors back to their origins, we will find that they are indeed metonymically motivated and are firmly linked to (equally largely unconscious) historical beliefs and traditions. In present-day understanding what seems like a metaphor may have developed over time out of a metonymy. © 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin. All Rights Reserved.
Studies on Nigerian English (NE) have largely focused on the variation of NE from Standard English. Few of these have investigated metaphors in NE and none, to the best of my knowledge, has worked on ideology and metaphor. This paper fills this gap by concentrating only on body part metaphors. Metaphors related to sexual organs were sourced from Nigerian university students through oral and written interviews. Insights for analysis were drawn centrally from the theory of embodiment and critical discourse analysis. Fourteen sexual organ metaphors, which relate to two major ideological issues: the institutionalisation of gender issues and religious, social and cultural allegiances, are identified. The former relate to gender-based cultural disapproval, gender dignification and gender valuation, while the latter is tied to morality/ decency constraints, and personality/social group constraints. Metaphors have great cognitive values in Nigeria, and their understanding requires knowledge of the social and cultural context.
A comprehensive collection of essays in multidisciplinary metaphor scholarship that has been written in response to the growing interest among scholars and students from a variety of disciplines such as linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, music and psychology. 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 non-verbal expression. Contributors come from a variety of academic disciplines, including psychology, linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, literature, education, music, and law.
This clear and lucid primer fills an important need by providing a comprehensive account of the many new developments in the study of metaphor over the last twenty years and their impact on our understanding of language, culture, and the mind. Beginning with Lakoff and Johnson's seminal work in Metaphors We Live By, Kövecses outlines the development of “the cognitive linguistic theory of metaphor” by explaining key ideas on metaphor. He also explores primary metaphor, metaphor systems, the “invariance principle,” mental-imagery experiments, the many-space blending theory, and the role of image schemas in metaphorical thought. He examines the applicability of these ideas to numerous related fields.
In this contribution an exploration is offered of the ways in which metaphor and metonymy interact in conventionalized expressions where linguistic action is the target domain. Working from a contemporary British data base, expressions from three donor domains are investigated, (i) violent action (ii) sound (iii) body parts. It appears that two types of interaction predominate: what I call metaphor from metonymy and metonymy within metaphor. Metaphor from metonymy was found to be rare and metonymy from metaphor, though not impossible in principle, was absent in my data. The paper ends with suggestions as to why this asymmetrical distribution should exist, a tentative classification into two basic types, and an invitation to further investigation.
"The authors restore metaphor to our lives by showing us that it's never gone away. We've merely been taught to talk as if it had: as though weather maps were more 'real' than the breath of autumn; as though, for that matter, Reason was really 'cool.' What we're saying whenever we say is a theme this book illumines for anyone attentive." -- Hugh Kenner, Johns Hopkins University "In this bold and powerful book, Lakoff and Turner continue their use of metaphor to show how our minds get hold of the world. They have achieved nothing less than a postmodern Understanding Poetry, a new way of reading and teaching that makes poetry again important." -- Norman Holland, University of Florida
Do not go gentle into that good night.
– Dylan Thomas
Death is the mother of beauty.
– Wallace Stevens, “Sunday Morning”
Introduction
These famous lines by Thomas and Stevens are examples of what classical theorists, at least since Aristotle, have referred to as metaphor: instances of novel poetic language in which words like “mother,” “go,” and “night” are not used in their normal everyday sense. In classical theories of language, metaphor was seen as a matter of language, not thought. Metaphorical expressions were assumed to be mutually exclusive with the realm of ordinary everday language: everyday language had no metaphor, and metaphor used mechanisms outside the realm of everyday conventional language.
The classical theory was taken so much for granted over the centuries that many people didn't realize that it was just a theory. The theory was not merely taken to be true, but came to be taken as definitional. The word “metaphor” was defined as a novel or poetic linguistic expression where one or more words for a concept are used outside of their normal conventional meaning to express a “similar” concept.
But such issues are not matters for definitions; they are empirical questions. As a cognitive scientist and a linguist, one asks: what are the generalizations governing the linguistic expressions referred to classically as “poetic metaphors?” When this question is answered rigorously, the classical theory turns out to be false.
Geschlechterstereotype sind kognitive Strukturen, die sozial geteiltes Wissen über die charakteristischen Merkmale von Frauen und Männern enthalten (Ashmore/Del Boca 1979, Eckes 1997). Nach dieser Definition gehören Geschlechterstereotype (wie andere Stereotype auch, z. B. nationale Stereotype oder Altersstereotype) einerseits zum individuellen Wissensbesitz, andererseits bilden sie den Kern eines konsensuellen, kulturell geteilten Verständnisses von den je typischen Merkmalen der Geschlechter. Hierin liegt die duale Natur von Geschlechterstereotypen. Eine umfassende Analyse muss daher sowohl die individuellen als auch die konsensuellen Stereotypanteile und ihre jeweiligen Wirkungen berücksichtigen (Schneider 2004).
ABSTRACT A dictionary search indicated that fruit and vegetable metaphors for human characteristics were relatively infrequent When used, they were more likely to describe physical than personality attributes, often with euphemistic overtones, and fruit metaphors reflected more favorable characteristics than did vegetable metaphors These findings were confirmed in a semantic analysis of fruit, vegetable, and animal terms
What role do people’s embodied experiences have in their use and understanding of metaphor? Contrary to the traditional belief that metaphor transcends human experience and best reflects metaphysical truths, there is substantial evidence from cognitive science that demonstrates how metaphor is fundamentally grounded in embodiment. We review this empirical evidence and discuss the methodological strategies employed by linguists and psychologists seeking connections between embodiment and metaphor. A case study of how people think and speak of desire in terms of hunger, specifically shows how systematic patterns of bodily experience serve as the source domains for many cross-linguistic metaphorical mappings. These data provide strong evidence in favor of the idea that metaphorical thought and language arises from, and is grounded in, embodiment.
This study examines the structure of self-estimates of intelligence (SEI) across 12 nations (Australia, Austria, Brazil, France, Iran, Israel, Malaysia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, UK and US). Participants rated themselves on general and specific abilities from three popular models of intelligence: Gardner's multiple intelligences, Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence, and Goleman's emotional intelligence. The results showed that (a) laypeople across nations have similar and invariant concepts of intelligence, (b) concepts of intelligence are cross-culturally closely related to academic notions of intellectual ability and (c) sex differences in general and specific SEI favouring men are consistent across countries. Male hubris and female humility in SEI seem independent of sex differences in actual cognitive ability and national levels of masculinity-femininity. Furthermore, international mean differences in general SEI could not be attributed to discrepancies in national intelligence quotient (IQ) levels or to cultural variations.
Creating a world of dichotomy: Categorizing sex and gendering cultural messages
- Crawley
The cognitive view of metaphor: Conceptual metaphor theory
- Deignan
Comparing sexist expressions in English and Spanish: (De)-constructing sexism through language
- Fernández Martín
Der ‘Kopf’ in der Romania und Anderswo: Ein metaphorisches (und metonymisches) Expansions- und Attraktionszentrum
- Blank
Definitions and classifications for fruit and vegetables
- Vainio
Bitches and skankly hobags: The place of women in contemporary slang
- Sutton