How Basic Is“UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING” When Reasoning About Knowledge? Asymmetric Uses of Sight Metaphors in Office Hours Consultations in English as Academic Lingua Franca

Abstract

Twenty-seven semi-guided conversations between lecturers and Spanish-speaking undergraduate students were recorded at five different universities in Europe where English is the medium of instruction. Examination of the metaphorical language used in these conversations revealed that SIGHT plays an important role in academic mentoring in English. Lecturers often frame their advice to undergraduate students in terms of what has been called "UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING," on the face of it a somewhat unsurprising finding. If one takes it that the correlation between mental and visual activity is somehow "primary" (Grady, 1997;Lakoff & Johnson, 1999;Sweetser, 1991) then this way of reasoning about learning and knowledge should be common ground in conversations between English-and Spanish-speaking interlocutors. However, we found no such alignment between the two groups of participants in an academic setting. The Spanish speakers not only used words and terms associated with vision significantly less frequently than their English-speaking interlocutors, but also with different meanings. We explore these quantitative and qualitative differences in metaphorical uses of three of the terms used by all participants to talk about learning-see, look and focus-and conclude that, although the "UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING" mapping might be available as a way of reasoning about learning and knowledge to people from different cultures, discourse practices influences how salient it is for different groups of speakers. In this regard, it appears to be culturally salient for English-speaking academics, but not necessarily so for speakers of other languages.

Metaphors set in motion in the context of L2 academic spoken discourse

“…As previously studied (Özçalışkan, 2005), typological differences persist in MMEs and, therefore, metaphorical motion can vary greatly across different languages and genres (Caballero, 2017). However, despite the abundant literature on MEs and the demonstrated impact of figurative language in contexts of English as Lingua Franca (EFL) (MacArthur & Littlemore, 2011;MacArthur et al, 2015;MacArthur, 2016bor Alejo-González, 2021 or English as a Foreign Language contexts (see MacArthur, 2010, or Nacey, 2017, for a review), in the particular case of EMI, to our knowledge, this phenomenon has not received much attention.…”

“…There is a need to describe the metaphors used by L2 learners when talking about the learning experience in academic discourse, with special attention to frequently constructed source domains resulting in varied conventional expressions (Kövecses, 2002;Semino, 2005). To the best of our knowledge, visual perception (understanding is seeing) has been a source domain explored in relation to metaphor use in spoken academic discourse (see MacArthur et al, 2015). For the pedagogical purposes of EMI instruction, the exploration of how some key source domains are constructed in academic discourse may contribute not only to a broader characterization of the use of metaphor in the talk about different topics and in different academic activities but also to facilitate students' achievement in their academic work (Boers, 2000).…”

¡Ahora sí que me has tocado las narices! and other tactile perception metaphors : a cognitive and contrastive analysis

“…Ibarretxe-Antuñano (1999) supports this mapping of tactile perception onto the domain of emotions by citing Buck (1949), who contends that the etymology of verbs meaning 'feel' in West-Germanic languages referred to emotional and physical perception. Although research has primarily focused on senses connected to the intellect, such as sight (Ibarretxe-Antuñano, 2008;MacArthur, Krennmayr, & Littlemore, 2015), Kurath (1921) already claimed nearly a century ago that "the kinesthetic, the visceral, 4. The cognitive models of emotion are both metaphorically and metonymically much richer, for they are motivated by an array of metaphors and metonymies that go beyond those with a sensory domain as source.…”

Researching political metaphor cross-culturally: English, Hungarian, Greek and Turkish L1-based interpretations of the Nation as Body metaphor

“…One case concerns English as lingua franca use in educational contexts where learners lack similarly salient metaphor 'matches' in their L1s (Littlemore 2001;Cogo & House 2017;Littlemore and Low 2006;MacArthur et al 2012). The 'reverse' case is exemplified by literally intended explanations of worldview concepts by speakers of minority cultures that are interpreted as metaphors by cultural outsiders, e.g., in encounters between members of indigenous cultures and Western scientists and administrators (MacArthur et al 2015;Sharifian 2010Sharifian , 2014. Such variation in metaphor understanding in the contexts of language acquisition, multilingualism and intercultural communication puts the traditional cognitive 'automaticity/unconsciousness' assumptions about metaphor reception in question, especially when they are applied to more meaning aspects than mere target referent identification under experimental conditions.…”