Complementary perspectives on metaphor: Cognitive linguistics and relevance theory

Abstract

Contemporary theories of metaphor differ in many dimensions, including the discipline they originate from (e.g., linguistics, psychology, philosophy), and whether they are developed primarily within a cognitive or pragmatic theoretical framework. This article evaluates two directions of metaphor research within linguistics, cognitive linguistics and relevance theory, which both aim to capture essential aspects of the reason for metaphor, and how people ordinarily use and understand metaphor in daily life. We argue, contrary to most received opinion, that cognitive linguistics and relevance theory provide complementary perspectives on metaphor. Both theories offer important insights into the role of metaphor in cognition and language use, and suggest detailed hypotheses on metaphor understanding that surely are part of a comprehensive theory of metaphor. #

Is sadness blue? The problem of using figurative language for emotions on psychological tests

“…In India, fewer participants indicated that the target emotions were associated with the intended descriptors. This led us to divide the metonymies and conceptual metaphors into those that might be universal (and so might be safe to use on psychological tests) and those that appear to be culture-specific, providing interesting insights for the field of cognitive linguistics (Tendahl & Gibbs, 2008).…”

A Complementary Perspective of Conceptual Blending Theory and Relevance Theory on Metaphor Interpretation

“…Cognitive effects are achieved when a speaker's utterance strengthens, revises or contradicts an available assumption in combination with in-hand context assumptions or by combining an in-hand context assumption with the new information to produce some new cognitive implications. Cognitive effort refers to the effort made in the mental representation of the input or the access to contextual information (Tendahl & Gibbs, 2008). Every utterance goes with itself a presumption of the best balance of cognitive effort against cognitive effect.…”

“…Relevance theoretic account of metaphor holds that metaphors are examples of "loose talk" (Sperber & Wilson, 1985/1986) instead of "an extraordinary phenomenon of language" (Wilson & Carston, 2006) and that speaking loosely is the best way to achieve optimal relevance (Tendahl & Gibbs, 2008). Metaphor interpretation requires the listener to make cognitive efforts to seek out the optimal relevance between the source and the target, or seek out similarities between the source and the target.…”

“…Ever since the time of Aristotle, researchers from many fields have endeavored to define metaphor and interpret metaphorical language. The past few decades has seen an explosion in the study of metaphor within cognitive science, where scholars from linguistic, philosophical and psychological disciplines have put forward diverse theories on metaphorical thought and language (Tendahl & Gibbs, 2008). Many of these theories hold that metaphor is pervasive in life, not only in ordinary language but also in our thoughts and experience (Lackoff & Johnson, 1980).…”

The study of metaphor as part of critical discourse analysis

“…This general question of an integration of cognitive and communicative aspects in metaphor theory has recently become the subject of intensive theoretical and methodological discussions which focus on the relationship between CMT and specifically Relevance-theoretically (RT) oriented analyses (Carston & Wearing, 2011;Gibbs & Tendahl, 2006Sperber & Wilson, 1995Tendahl, 2009;Tendahl & Gibbs, 2008;Wilson, 2011;Wilson & Carston, 2006). This discussion can serve as a platform to sketch future perspectives in which metaphor research can contribute to CDA.…”