VU Language and Cognition chair group talk: Dr. José Manuel Ureña Gómez-Moreno
The Language Use and Cognition chair group in the VU Faculty of Humanities is pleased to host the following talk by the visiting scholar Dr. José Manuel Ureña Gómez-Moreno (University of Castilla-La Mancha, Ciudad Real, Spain) on Tuesday, March 24, from 16:00-17:00 in room 12A-44 of the VU main building:
Refining the understanding of novel metaphor in specialised language discourse
José Manuel Ureña Gómez-Moreno
Abstract
Novel metaphorical expressions have been understudied in traditional approaches to terminology, assumed to be sporadic units devoid of specialised meaning and incapable of structuring whole discourse events. However, a case study of novel bioeconomics metaphors in an academic marine biology research article (Landa 1999) suggests that that assumption is wrong. The novel metaphors were analysed following two paradigms: (i) the text-linguistic approach to term description (Collet 2004), which suggests a set of criteria for term definition that challenges the prescriptive tenets of monolithic terminology models; and (ii) the Career of Metaphor Theory (Bowdle and Gentner 2005), a solid framework for the description of novel metaphor in usage. Based on both approaches, the analysis of unexpected metaphors (and similes) identified in the text suggests that these units should be regarded as proto-terms experienced as deliberate rhetorical and conceptual devices. On a pragmatic level, the metaphors are shown to be part and parcel of the writer’s discursive strategy to explain and communicate specialised knowledge to her peers. On a conceptual level, the metaphors are found to be essential building blocks and structuring elements of the mental model of the article.
Anyone interested is warmly invited to attend.