The Metaphorical New Synthesis: Toward an Eco-Evolutionary Theory of Metaphors

Abstract

Metaphors are a genuinely human construction. They are used to improve communication and they are a very powerful tool that might have an influence in human evolution. In this article I argue that metaphors, transformed in powerful memes, adapt to a new communicative niche and contribute to transform it. In order to prove this hypothesis, I study 319 cartoons published in the wake of the Germanwings air crash, where I inventory 144 metaphors. The study shows the conceptual metaphor evolution for a period of 2 weeks, and how the metaphors changed as a result of the variations in the communicative niche, becoming much more efficient communicatively.

Worlds apart, drawn together: Bears, penguins and biodiversity in climate change cartoons

“…However, cartoons are a very effective and useful tool to analyse the public perception of any current topic, whether we are talking about a social, political or even scientific issue and can both reflect and shape the cultural politics of CC (Bakker, 1999;Bouvier, 2001;Caswell, 2004;Giarelli, 2006;Manzo, 2012;O'Neill and Smith, 2014). In general, they tend to capture the general opinion of the country more veraciously than other opinion genres, such as opeds (Domínguez andMateu, 2013, 2014), showing that historians are paying more and more attention to visual resources as a research tool (Hansen and Machin, 2008;Sanchidrián Blanco, 2011).…”

“…Likewise, the perception of a news story can evolve as it develops, and a change of attitude over time can be perceived in the cartoonists with regard to the same problem (Domínguez, 2016; Domínguez et al, 2014). On the contrary, humour is a very efficient mechanism to bring an issue closer to a large number of potential readers (Anderson and Becker, 2018; Boykoff, 2019; Boykoff and Osnes, 2019), who in turn can spread the cartoonist’s message to their close friends and relatives (Shurkin, 2015).…”

Review of The Routledge Handbook of Metaphor and Language

“…Thirdly, the book fails to explore metaphor in an evolutional process view, emergent in recent metaphor research. For example, the eco-evolutional theory of metaphor by Domínguez (2016) explains how metaphors change as a result of the variations in the communicative niche so as to become more efficiently communicative. newcomers who are interested in exploring the theories, methodologies and application of metaphor and language from multi-dimensions.…”