隐喻在文章语境中的理解--概念隐喻理论探讨

概念隐喻理论认为,语言系统中存在着广泛的隐喻一致性,人们对于隐喻的理解是通过将其匹配到基本的概念隐喻来进行的。但有研究者指出,除了一些新颖的隐喻,惯用隐喻的理解并不需要概念匹配。本研究认为,概念隐喻已经储存在长时记忆中,在文章语境中,无论惯用隐喻还是新颖隐喻的理解都可能产生概念匹配。三个实验支持了这一假设。实验一通过目标句的阅读反应时探讨不同文章版本下目标句的理解情况;实验二和实验三从事后与即时两方面对各种文章版本下的概念匹配情况进行比较。研究结果支持了概念隐喻理论。     

感觉运动模拟隐喻理论的形成与发展

感觉运动模拟理论属于概念隐喻理论范畴,是经典概念隐喻理论的最新发展。感觉运动模拟隐喻理论认为概念隐喻的具身效应并不一定要建立在以往的经验之上,与感觉运动信息无关的抽象概念通过快速学习建立的隐喻也具有了具身效应,没有以往经验为基础的抽象概念也能引起感觉运动的模拟。除了感觉运动模拟隐喻理论的主要观点之外,文章还介绍了该理论的形成与发展的过程。并通过与经典概念隐喻理论的对比,提出感觉运动模拟隐喻理论存在的优势与局限性     

Towards a literary account of mental health from James' Principles of Psychology

The field of mental health tends to treat its literary metaphors as literal realities with the concomitant loss of vague “feelings of tendency” in “unusual experiences”. I develop this argument through the prism of William James’ (1890) “The Principles of Psychology”. In the first part of the paper, I reflect upon the relevance of James' “The Psychologist's Fallacy” to a literary account of mental health. In the second part of the paper, I develop the argument that “connotations” and “feelings of tendency” are central to resolving some of the more difficult challenges of this fallacy. I proceed to do this in James' spirit of generating imaginative metaphors to understand experience. Curiously, however, mental health presents a strange paradox in William James’ (1890) Principles of Psychology. He constructs an elaborate conception of the “empirical self” and “stream of thought” but chooses not to use these to understand unusual experiences – largely relying instead on the concept of a “secondary self.” In this article, I attempt to make more use of James' central division between the “stream of thought” and the “empirical self” to understand unusual experiences. I suggest that they can be usefully understood using the loose metaphor of a “binary star” where the “secondary self” can be seen as an “accretion disk” around one of the stars. Understood as literary rather the literal, this metaphor is quite different to more unitary models of self-breakdown in mental health, particularly in its separation of “self” from “the stream of thought” and I suggest it has the potential to start a re-imagination of the academic discourse around mental health.     

Kierkegaard's Mirrors: The Immediacy of Moral Vision

This paper explores Kierkegaard's recurrent use of mirrors as a metaphor for various aspects of moral imagination and vision. While a writer centrally concerned with issues of self‐examination, selfhood and passionate subjectivity might well be expected to be attracted to such metaphors, there are deeper reasons why Kierkegaard is drawn to this analogy. The specifically visual aspects of the mirror metaphor reveal certain crucial features of Kierkegaard's model of moral cognition. In particular, the felicity of the metaphors of the “mirror of possibility” in Sickness Unto Death and the “mirror of the Word” in For Self‐Examination depend upon a normative phenomenology of moral vision, one in which the success of moral agency depends upon an immediate, non‐reflective self‐referentiality built into vision itself. To “see oneself in the mirror” rather than simply seeing the mirror itself is to see the moral content of the world as immediately “about” oneself in a sense that goes beyond the conceptual content of what is perceived. These metaphors gesture towards a model of perfected moral agency where vision becomes co‐extensive with volition. I conclude by suggesting directions in which explication of this model may contribute to discussions in contemporary moral psychology.     

重中之“重”——具身视角下重的体验与表征

关于重要性的隐喻存在于多种文化之中。近年来的实证研究表明, 重要性的隐喻建立在重量的身体体验之上。重量的身体经验会影响对目标对象重要性的评估, 重要性的概念表征也会影响身体的重量感知。重量的身体体验与重要性的概念可能存在着共同的神经基础, 并构成一种相互作用的关系。具身视角下的概念表征理论和隐喻理论为解释这一现象提供了理论依据。未来的研究需要进一步探索重量隐喻涉及的范围, 以及重量隐喻形成的语言文化差异。     

《周易》对探索潜意识启示

隐喻是一种语言现象,也是一种认知方式。《周易》是一套复杂的隐喻认知系统,“象”与“理”都是认识事物的思维方式。潜意识通过心理表征以隐喻的方式呈现,精神分析师借助隐喻方法来分析潜意识。将潜意识的呈现形式(如梦、口误等)理解为某种“象”,把“象”作为表征潜意识的符号与工具,通过“观象、取象、辨象、立象、尽意”这个认知过程,实现对“理”(潜意识)的理解。通过“象思维”来探索潜意识对中国人来说具有文化上亲和性,克服精神分析中的“无结构性”与“语言的限制”。     

THE EXPLORATORY AND REFLECTIVE DOMAIN OF METAPHOR IN THE COMPARISON OF RELIGIONS

There has been a longstanding interest in discovering or uncovering resemblances among what are ostensibly diverse religious schemas by employing a range of methodological approaches and tools. However, it is generally considered a problematic undertaking. Jonathan Z. Smith has produced a large body of work aimed at explicating this and has tacitly based his model of comparison on metaphor, which is traditionally understood to connote similarity between two or more things, as based on a linguistic or pragmatic assessment. However, another possible approach is cognitive. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have championed the view of “conceptual metaphor,” which regards metaphor as being pervasive not only in language, but also in thought and action. Indeed, according to them, it basically structures our conceptual operations and hence views of the world through partially mapping knowledge across ontological domains, generally from the concrete to the abstract. I shall argue that a similar mechanism can fruitfully be applied to comparing religious schemas, as based on the postulated relationship between the domains of human and divine, physical and abstract, and as realized through expressions of journeying and reflection.     

Beethoven’s last piano sonata and those who follow crocodiles: Cross-domain mappings of auditory pitch in a musical context

Though auditory pitch is customarily mapped in Western cultures onto spatial verticality (high–low), both anthropological reports and cognitive studies suggest that pitch may be mapped onto a wide variety of other domains. We collected a total number of 35 pitch mappings and investigated in four experiments how these mappings are used and structured. In particular, we inquired (1) how Western subjects apply Western and non-Western metaphors to “high” and “low” pitches, (2) whether mappings applied in an abstract conceptual task are similarly applied by listeners to actual music, (3) how mappings of spatial height relate to these pitch mappings, and (4) how mappings of “high” and “low” pitch associate with other dimensions, in particular quantity, size, intensity and valence. The results show strong agreement among Western participants in applying familiar and unfamiliar metaphors for pitch, in both an abstract, conceptual task (Exp. 1) and in a music listening task (Exp. 2), indicating that diverse cross-domain mappings for pitch exist latently besides the common verticality metaphor. Furthermore, limited overlap between mappings of spatial height and pitch height was found, suggesting that, the ubiquity of the verticality metaphor in Western usage notwithstanding, cross-domain pitch mappings are largely independent of that metaphor, and seem to be based upon other underlying dimensions. Part of the discrepancy between spatial height and pitch height is that, for pitch, “up” is not necessarily “more,” nor is it necessarily “good.” High pitch is only “more” for height, intensity and brightness. It is “less” for mass, size and quantity. We discuss implications of these findings for music and speech prosody, and their relevance to notions of embodied cognition and of cross-domain magnitude representation.     

心理治疗中隐喻的使用、疗效检验及作用机制

隐喻是用一种具体、熟悉的概念去表达和理解一种抽象、不熟悉的概念的语言形式和认知方式,因其在心理治疗中可以有效传递治疗信息而被治疗师们广泛使用。早期的隐喻理论阐述了隐喻具有高创造性和增强长时记忆的认知加工优势,虽然不同心理治疗流派在治疗过程中对使用来访者还是治疗师产生的隐喻各有侧重,但它们都认为隐喻可以通过高创造性的内容、形成更优的长时记忆以及带来高度的认知卷入来帮助咨访双方有效加工、传递和保存治疗信息。精神分析流派强调治疗性隐喻在无意识水平上的意义交换产生的顿悟过程,认知行为疗法既强调隐喻可以促进认知图式的重构,也强调其组块性和形象性产生的记忆功能,接纳与承诺疗法认为隐喻传递信息时具有非评判、非分析、直觉经验的方式有利于促进个体发生改变,后现代疗法中强调让来访者重新叙述自己的人生故事或者发展出一种形象性或象征性表达,让来访者产生更具有功能的观点和看法。因此治疗性隐喻具备了跨越不同心理治疗理论取向的广泛认同基础。在实证研究上,大多数研究聚焦于探索在某种治疗方法中加入隐喻是否会有更佳的治疗效果,其中使用CBT作为框架的研究最为集中,有些研究发现隐喻干预在缓解心理症状方面优于常规干预,也有研究发现隐喻干预和非隐喻干预都可以有效缓解被试的心理痛苦,因此虽然没有获得十分一致的结论,但这些研究总体上证明了在心理治疗中使用隐喻是有效的。随着研究的深入,对治疗性隐喻起效的心理神经机制进行探索的实证研究也有效观测到了隐喻理论中提出的认知加工优势,包括隐喻的高创造性可以诱发顿悟（并伴随杏仁核、海马、梭状回等特异性神经网络的显著激活）、带来更佳的治疗效果,隐喻内容更容易被记住、有助于治疗持续发挥作用,以及隐喻可以增加来访者的认知卷入程度进而带来更大程度的认知改变。综上,无论从理论构建还是实证证据上,治疗性隐喻都是一种具有独特认知加工优势的认知工具和治疗信息传递途径。未来研究可以从更加科学的设置对照组、增加隐喻特异性的效果衡量指标以及探索其他可能的心理机制三个方面来进一步观察在治疗性隐喻的独特优势。最后,对在心理治疗实践中更好的使用隐喻以及研发嵌入隐喻的低成本高效益的社会心理健康服务方案提供了建议。     

Metaphor in intergroup relations

Belonging to groups and relating to other groups are central parts of our lives, but they confront us with abstract ideas (e.g., identity and power) and nebulous feelings. To make sense of it all, people rely on conceptual metaphors: cognitive tools that ground abstractions in dissimilar, more concrete ideas that are easier to grasp. We review some common metaphors that people use in intergroup contexts—metaphors that draw on knowledge of such familiar experiences as physical cleansing and warmth sensations. We review evidence that these metaphors are not mere figures of speech, but have a systematic and practically important influence on intergroup attitudes and behavior. Most of this work shows that reliance on metaphor contributes to prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination, sometimes without the person's awareness. Yet we consider the hopeful possibility that citizens, politicians, and researchers can harness the power of metaphor to promote intergroup harmony and peace.     

Child As Metaphor: Colonialism,Psy-Governance,and Epistemicide

This paper mobilizes transdisciplinary inquiry to explore and deconstruct the often-used comparison of racialized/colonized people, intellectually disabled people and mad people as being like children. To be childlike is a metaphor that is used to denigrate, to classify as irrational and incompetent, to dismiss as not being knowledge holders, to justify governance and action on others’ behalf, to deem as being animistic, as undeveloped, underdeveloped or wrongly developed, and, hence, to subjugate. We explore the political work done by the metaphorical appeal to childhood, and particularly the centrality of the metaphor of childhood to legitimizing colonialism and white supremacy. The article attends to the ways in which this metaphor contributes to the shaping of the material and discursive realities of racialized and colonized others, as well as those who have been psychiatrized and deemed “intellectually disabled”. Further, we explore specific metaphors of child-colony, and child-mad-“crip”. We then detail the developmental logic underlying the historical and continued use of the metaphorics of childhood, and explore how this makes possible an infantilization of colonized peoples and the global South more widely. The material and discursive impact of this metaphor on children’s lives, and particularly children who are racialized, colonized, and/or deemed mad or “crip”, is then considered. We argue that complex adult-child relations, sane-mad relations and Western-majority world relations within global psychiatry, are situated firmly within pejorative notions of what it means to be childlike, and reproduce multi-systemic forms of oppression that, ostensibly in their “best interests”, govern children and all those deemed childlike.     

Metaphors and creativity: Direct,moderating, and mediating effects

Through five experiments, this research advances knowledge about the influence of metaphors on creative cognition by showing that perceiving images that carry metaphoric meaning can alter consumers' creativity. While the results of Experiment 1 reveal that positive metaphors representing ideas like “Thinking outside the box” increase creative output, Experiment 2 uncovers that a negative metaphor conveying “I am burnt out” decreases it. Experiment 3 shows that the metaphor–creativity link is moderated by analogical reasoning skills, and Experiments 4a and 4b reveal the mediating role of creative intent. In addition to implying that marketers can use metaphors to enhance consumers' creative feedback in areas like new product development, this research also makes important theoretical contributions by showing (1) that metaphors that are visually conveyed (in addition to tangible objects or physical exercises) can not only raise but also lower creative output, (2) that a unique cognitive skill alters the metaphor–creativity link, and (3) that consumers' creative intent contributes to that relationship.     

隐喻的具身性与文化性

自从Lakoff和Johnson在《Philosophy in the Flesh —The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought》一书中将认知科学划分为第一代认知科学与第二代认知科学以来,隐喻成为了心理学家、语言学家和哲学家研究的热点领域之一。隐喻的构造基于我们的具身体验,基于我们的文化背景。隐喻的具身性与文化性是相互融合、不可分割的。     

Gendered Reason: Sex Metaphor and Conceptions of Reason

Reason has regularly been portrayed and understood in terms of images and metaphors that involve the exclusion or denigration of some element—body, passion, nature, instinct—that is cast as “feminine.” Drawing upon philosophical insight into metaphor, I examine the impact of this gendering of reason. I argue that our conceptions of mind, reason, unreason, female, and male have been distorted. The politics of “rational” discourse has been set up in ways that still subtly but powerfully inhibit the voice and agency of women.     

Exploring metaphor's epistemic function: Uncertainty moderates metaphor-consistent priming effects on social perceptions

Consistent with conceptual metaphor theory's claim that metaphors operate at a conceptual, and not just linguistic, level, prior research shows that priming perceptions related to concrete concepts influences perceptions related to dissimilar, more abstract concepts in metaphor-consistent ways. However, the theory's claim that metaphors function to reduce uncertainty about abstract concepts has yet to be experimentally assessed. Two studies tested whether situational variation in uncertainty moderates metaphor-consistent priming effects. Study 1 focused on the metaphor life is a path and showed that priming path perceptions (vs. literal representations) increased perceived autobiographical continuity only if uncertainty about personal identity was salient. Study 2 focused on verticality metaphors and showed that vertical orientation primes influenced satisfaction with the decision to attend one's current university in both directions (up is good, bad is down) only if uncertainty about the value of the college experience was salient.     

JUMPING TOGETHER: A WAY FROM SOCIOBIOLOGY TO BIO‐SOCIO‐HUMANITIES

Sociobiology is a grand narrative of evolutionary biology on which to build unified knowledge. Consilience is a metaphorical representation of that narrative. I take up the same metaphor but apply it differently. I evoke the image of jumping together, not on solid ground but on the strong, flexible canvas sheet of a trampoline, on which natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities jump together. This image overlaps with the traditional East Asian way of understanding—that is, the “Heaven‐Earth‐Person Triad.” Using recent insights from cognitive science—metaphor, embodiment, and conceptual blending—I propose the alternative way of “bio‐socio‐humanities” to understand and experience the world.     

A “Primer” in Conceptual Metaphor for Counselors

Conceptual metaphor provides a potentially powerful counseling framework, generalizable across theoretical orientations. According to the conceptual perspective, metaphor is not merely a matter of language, but is an indispensable dimension of human understanding and experience whereby more abstract ideas (like relationships) are understood in terms of more concrete experiences (like journeys). Consequently, when a couple in counseling says, “we're just spinning our wheels,” they are not only using a common colloquial expression, but also giving information about how they conceptualize their relationship. This article provides a theoretical foundation for use of conceptual metaphor and offers examples of its potential for counseling.     

Are Metaphors Elliptical Similes?

What is the relation between metaphors and similes? Aristotle's “comparison theory” holds that metaphors are elliptical similes: “Sam is a pig” is simply a short form of “Sam is like a pig.” In contrast, it has been suggested that metaphors cannot be elliptical similes because metaphors are “stronger” than similes. We know metaphors are stronger, it is argued, because of examples involving corrections, such as “Peter is not just like a rock, he is a rock.” The argument from corrections can be challenged on logical and empirical grounds. The ability to correct a simile with a metaphor does not entail that metaphors are stronger than similes when used on their own, which is likely to be the most frequent case. Although four experiments indicate that when corrections are involved, metaphors are indeed stronger than similes in several respects, alas a further four experiments indicate that these differences are largely eliminated when metaphors and similes are used on their own. We note that this pattern of results is consistent with the comparison theory, and we offer an explanation of the effects of corrections.