Alcohol and creative writing.

A repeated-measures design was used to test for the effects of alcohol on creative writing as measured by use of novel figurative language. 11 male social drinkers participated in a creative writing task under two conditions, alcohol (high dose: 1.1 ml. ethanol/kilogram body weight) and placebo. In the alcohol condition, within-subject comparisons indicated significantly greater quantity of creative writing while intoxicated. These results were interpreted as supporting the belief that alcohol can reduce "writer's block," at least amongst nonalcoholic subjects.     

Contingency management in writing and the appearance of creative ideas: Implications for the treatment of writing blocks

Data for 3 groups of 9 ‘blocked’ writers who sought treatment to increase their output as writers are presented. Academicians who charted both their writing output and their generation of creative ideas for writing over 10 weeks of treatment showed the highest level of creativity under contingency management conditions that essentially forced them to write habitually. Subjects who wrote spontaneously reported modest levels of creativity, once writing was practiced with some regularity. Subjects who voluntarily abstained from professional writing generated minimal numbers of creative ideas. Conclusions:(1) External contingencies that ‘produce’ writing seem to facilitate, not impede, creativity.(2) Spontaneity in writing is relatively ineffective, compared to contingency management, for producing written copy or novel and useful ideas.     

Metaphor priming in sentence production: Concrete pictures affect abstract language production

People speak metaphorically about abstract concepts—for instance, a person can be “full of love” or “have a lot of love to give.” Over the past decade, research has begun to focus on how metaphors are processed during language comprehension. Much of this work suggests that understanding a metaphorical expression involves activating brain and body systems involved in perception and motor control. However, no research to date has asked whether the same is true while speakers produce language. We address this gap using a sentence production task. Its results demonstrate that visually activating a concrete source domain can trigger the use of metaphorical language drawn from that same concrete domain, even in sentences that are thematically unrelated to the primes, a metaphorical priming effect. This effect suggests that conceptual metaphors play a part in language production. It also shows that activation in the perceptual system that is not part of an intended message can nevertheless influence sentence formulation.     

Creative cognition, conceptual combination, and the creative writing of Stephen R. Donaldson

This article explores the reported use of conceptual combination in Stephen R. Donaldson's development of the idea for his award-winning fantasy series. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Donaldson's (1991) own account is used to illustrate the general principles of a creative cognition approach to understanding creativity as well as the more specific role of the basic process of conceptual combination. The links between Donaldson's and others' anecdotal accounts of creativity and laboratory investigations are assessed. The article concludes with an argument for a "convergence" approach in which information from anecdotal accounts and laboratory studies is combined to provide a more complete picture of creative functioning than either approach alone can offer.     

Defining Islamic modernity through creative writing: a case study of Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong

Indonesian domestic workers (IDWs) have been frequently stereotyped as uneducated and submissive women with little or no bargaining power in transnational labour migration. This article examines why and how literacy practices help foster the activism of IDWs in Hong Kong. In particular, I seek to understand the significance of IDWs’ writing in relation to Islamic modernities. Using the framework of alternative modernities, I argue that the creative process of IDWs’ writing sheds light to their attempts to exercise individual and collective agency. Specifically, the article looks at the role of Forum Lingkar Pena (Pen Circle Forum, FLP) Hong Kong, an IDW writing community, to reveal how its collective literacy practices help affirm Islamic values as part of a modernisation process on IDWs’ own terms.     

Novel associative processing and aging: effect on creative production

ABSTRACT

Creative production has been reported to decline with age. This study investigated age-related differences in creative verbal production. Participants were 30 younger and 30 older adults. Study testing included language and cognitive assessments and the experimental task wherein participants created short stories incorporating words that are not commonly related, semantically or associatively. The resulting stories were rated by independent blinded judges for originality, cohesion, appropriateness, and organization. Younger adults' stories were rated as being significantly more original and more appropriate. Integrating unrelated words to create original stories requires activating widely distributed lexical-semantic networks to develop novel associations. Potential decreased neural network connectivity due to white matter degradation, commonly seen in normal aging, as well as decrements in front-executive disengagement may have affected older adults' performance on this story creation task. Future research using neuroimaging may elucidate possible neuroanatomic correlates of age-related changes in associative creative production..     

The effects of creative,expressive, and reflective writing on career learning: An explorative study

This study investigates whether creative, expressive, and reflective writing contributes to the formation of a work-life narrative that offers both meaning and direction among students in higher education. The content of writing done by students who participated in a two-day writing course at the start (or in preparation) of their work placements and of a control group who did not take part in the course were compared. Writing samples were analysed using the Linguistic Index Word Count program (Pennebaker, Booth, & Francis, 2007) and an instrument based on Dialogical Self Theory (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010). Results show writing promotes the development of career narratives.     

The effects of creative,expressive, and reflective writing on career learning: An explorative study

This study investigates whether creative, expressive, and reflective writing contributes to the formation of a work-life narrative that offers both meaning and direction among students in higher education. The content of writing done by students who participated in a two-day writing course at the start (or in preparation) of their work placements and of a control group who did not take part in the course were compared. Writing samples were analysed using the Linguistic Index Word Count program (Pennebaker, Booth, & Francis, 2007) and an instrument based on Dialogical Self Theory (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010). Results show writing promotes the development of career narratives.     

Effect of alcohol on quantity of creative production using the Purdue tests

An experiment was performed to test whether a moderate dose of alcohol (1 ml of 100% alcohol/kg body weight) facilitates the production of creative solutions as measured with a standard creativity test and whether a creative attitude interacts with alcohol in this respect. The 60 subjects were randomly assigned to either an alcohol, a placebo, or a control group, with 10 women and 10 men in each group. Two different personality tests measuring the creative attitude were administered a priori. Analysis indicated that both the placebo and alcohol groups produced significantly less creative solutions to the ten stimulus pictures. The a priori attitude scores significantly predicted the creativity scores for the placebo and alcohol subjects but not for the control subjects. Results were discussed in terms of disinhibition and cognitive changes under alcohol.     

Metaphor in pictures

Pictures can be literal or metaphoric. Metaphoric pictures involve intended violations of standard modes of depiction that are universally recognizable. The types of metaphoric pictures correspond to major groups of verbal metaphors, with the addition of a class of pictorial runes. Often the correspondence between verbal and pictorial metaphors depends on individual features of objects and such physical parameters as change of scale. A more sophisticated analysis is required for some pictorial metaphors, involving juxtapositions of well-known objects and indirect reference.     

隐喻

隐喻在当代哲学各个领域引起了不同程度的关注。对于语言哲学来说，它不仅本身是一种值得分析和解释的语言现象，同时对语言哲学家们持续关注的领域—非比喻的字面语言提出了深层次的问题。本文考察了当代语言哲学刻画隐喻用法与其他语言用法（例如熟语、歧义词、语义扩展）之间的差异与联系的种种尝试，特别是戴维森等人的理论及其引起的争论。进而，本文探讨了比喻性语言既依赖于、又不同于字面语言的方式，以及这样的语义理论或语用理论对整体上的语言哲学有何助益。     

The aesthetics of textual production: reading and writing with Umberto Eco

In The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco essentially presents an educative vision of some basic semiotic principles that infuse the textual form of a popular fictional genre—the detective story. In effect, it characterizes the postmodernization of the traditional “whodunnit” moving the genre from the realm of “the real” or the plausible into the realm of “the metaphysical” or the unthinkable. The Name of the Rose is a practical application in semiotics. Or, how the aesthetics of textual production as generated through the lexical signs and codes manifest the discursive text of a novel work. The semiotic twists and turns of the detective story facilitate this educational function and the purposeful transformation of the reader into an individual capable of appreciating and grasping the conflicting ideological viewpoints expressed through its dialogical structure. The detective genre enables the Umberto Eco to produce an educational narrative via the intricacies of plot in the detective story while teaching main aspects of semiotic theory.     

Metaphor in computer science

The language of computer science is laced with metaphor. We argue that computer science metaphors provide a conceptual framework in which to situate constantly emerging new ontologies in computational environments. But how computer science metaphors work does not fit neatly into prevailing general theories of metaphor. We borrow from these general theories while also considering the unique role of computer science metaphors in learning, design, and scientific analysis. We find that computer science metaphors trade on both preexisting and emerging similarities between computational and traditional domains, but owing to computer science's peculiar status as a discipline that creates its own subject matter, the role of similarity in metaphorical attribution is multifaceted.     

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.