#Covid-19

The past year has affected all of us in one way or another but have you ever thought about what effect it may have had on our language?  Philipp Wicke and Mariana Bolognesi did just that in their study of thousands of tweets posted during March and April 2020.

Due to social distancing measures, people were quick to use social media platforms like Twitter to connect with others and express their feelings, sending around 16,000 tweets an hour with hashtags like #coronavirus, #Covid-19 and #Covid. The researchers wanted to explore this online discourse and were particularly interested in how the pandemic was discussed using the metaphor of war. Discourse about disease has often been found to use this metaphor and cancer patients frequently complain that they are described as being in a 'battle' with the illness, which they find negative and unhelpful. With this in mind, Wicke and Bolognesi decided to also explore other figurative ways in which Covid was being described.

They collected 25,000 tweets a day that contained at least one of eight covid-related hashtags. Retweets were not included nor were more than one tweet per user in order to gain a balanced view of language use. 5.32% of the collected tweets mentioned war, the most common words being 'fight' (29.76% of these mentions) and 'war' (10.08%), whilst 'combat', 'threat' and 'battle' were also prevalent. The researchers noted that this could reflect this early stage of the pandemic: it was a global emergency and urgent action was needed to confront the situation. Most of these examples referred specifically to the treatment of the virus and the 'frontline' workers dealing with its effects in hospital.

When they concentrated on other figurative ways in which Covid was being described they found it referred to in terms of a storm, a monster and a tsunami.  For example, the idea of the virus as a storm arose in 1.49% of the tweets and contained words like 'thunderstorm', 'rain' and 'lightning'; 1.13% of the tweets referred to a tsunami, using words like 'earthquake', 'disaster' and 'tide' and references to a monster occurred in 0.68% of the tweets with 'freak', 'demon' and 'devil' being prime examples. These negative images mainly referred to the onset and spread of the virus. It is clear, however, that the war metaphor was used significantly more than these others.

Wicke and Bolognesi conclude that their results confirm previous findings that the war metaphor is common in public discourse of disease; however, they found that it was used very particularly during the first weeks of the pandemic to refer to the initial medical response to it. They also suggest that all of these metaphors are negative and unhelpful and propose the construction of a 'Metaphor Menu', previously suggested with regards to cancer, to give the public more positive and desirable ways to talk about Covid 19 as the pandemic evolves and changes.

------------------------------------

Wicke P., M. M. Bolognesi (2020) Framing COVID-19: How we conceptualize and discuss the pandemic on Twitter. PLoS ONE 15(9): e0240010. 

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240010

This summary was written by Gemma Stoyle

The shifting tipping point - one metaphor, many uses

To understand what a metaphor is, let’s start by considering a real world example. For tipping point, we might imagine an object that should be kept upright, such as a vase of flowers, at risk of falling when it loses its centre of gravity. As the tipping point is not the vase’s natural state, we assume something has caused the unbalance e.g. a curious cat, or an earthquake. We also realise that there will be consequences when this tipping point is reached, and we expect these will be negative. The glass is likely to smash, causing danger to bare feet, and destroying the vase. The contents will also spill onto the floor, possibly spreading water and causing further damage, or possibly partly retrievable if some of the flowers can be rescued. But we recognise that reaching the tipping point is very unlikely to have many positive outcomes, as it takes us from our pretty vase of flowers, to an undesirable mess on the floor.

The job of a metaphor is to map the knowledge we have from these real-world examples, onto something else. But whereas the source domain of a metaphor relates to concrete entities (such as the unlucky vase), the target domain will be a more abstract and complex phenomenon. Therefore, how the metaphor is used - the linguistic and discursive context - will help to shape how we conceptualise this target.

From the 1960s onwards, tipping point was regularly mapped onto moments of social change, most popularly in the early 2000s to describe the sudden spread of a new trend or idea in society. Conventionally, tipping point came to be used as an everyday expression meaning a time of important, often uncontrollable, things happening that lead to change. It was most often applied to an individual, reaching a personal tipping point and joining a wider group or process in society. Notably, the more negative interpretations were largely removed, and the metaphor was seen as more exciting than threatening. Over time, the metaphorical mapping had therefore become somewhat ‘bleached’ of its source domain.

But from 2004 scientists began to use this metaphor in relation to the world’s climate, and it is now common to hear and read about ecological tipping points in the media. Van der Hel, Hellsten & Steen (2018) examined 326 articles from major world newspapers, and 301 scientific articles, to see how this metaphor developed and was used from 2005-2014. They looked for both the discursive context of the metaphor (Who is using the phrase? What is it being used to refer to?) and the linguistic characteristics of its use (How is the phrase combined with different parts of speech and punctuation? Is the use of the phrase deliberately metaphorical?) From this study they tracked the changing use and meanings of tipping point in both the media and science.

The metaphor was first used by scientists as an attempt to explain to the media their complex research into abrupt changes in the climate system. Use of the phrase at this time drew attention to its metaphorical meaning, rather than the conventional one, by also expressing related ideas of falling, danger and irreversibility. By making explicit references to the source domain in this way, the metaphorical meaning is more ‘deliberate’, and actively encourages us to reflect more on the concrete meaning of the expression. Therefore the metaphor highlighted the serious and threatening nature of a tipping point and, by extension, the catastrophic issue of climate change.

Until this time tipping point in climate change news articles had mainly been used in the conventional sense, to refer to changes in individual social attitudes towards the environment. But from 2005-2007 the phrase began to appear more frequently in inverted commas, to note its increasing, and unfamiliar, use by scientists. The phrase also began to be used in reference to humanity as a whole, in contrast to the previous convention of usually referring to an individual in society. This use of punctuation and the new collocations again serve to focus attention on the metaphorical status of the phrase. In doing so, a reader may be encouraged to draw deeper on their source domain knowledge, and reconsider the metaphor’s meaning.

Within the scientific community, use of the metaphor continued to increase from 2008. But whereas it may have begun as a rhetorical device, it subsequently became a mainstream scientific concept, and a theoretical tool. The imagery of a tipping point largely replaced some earlier metaphors (e.g. thresholds), and studies explored what the causes and outcomes of different potential tipping points might mean in various climate contexts. This suggests an inspirational role for the metaphor, through capturing the imagination of scientists, and opening new directions for studies.In contrast, the media used the metaphor less after 2007, but it re-emerged from 2011 in news reports from political speeches at international climate conferences. In these reports, it was increasingly tied to specific locations (e.g. the Amazon) and events, and was often still expressed using inverted commas. However the phrase also began to be used for other, non-climate related changes, such as sudden policy shifts. This suggests that the tipping point metaphor in the media had become more flexible, again incorporating the conventional expression of a drastic change.

This study shows that in science and the media, a metaphor can help explain complex ideas, and encourage new ways of thinking about a phenomenon. It also demonstrates their versatility: tracing how a metaphor that had become an everyday expression was mapped onto a new target domain, leading to a restructured understanding. By examining the linguistic and discursive contexts of tipping point, Van der Hel, Hellsten & Steen (2018) highlight the numerous and changing roles that metaphors can play, and how they can help scientists and journalists in public debates on important topics.

------------------------------------------------------------

van der Hel, S., Hellsten, I. and Steen, G., 2018. Tipping points and climate change: Metaphor between science and the media. Environmental Communication, 12(5), pp.605-620.

This summary was written by Sarah Kirk-Browne

Learning the ropes with a metaphor

Every company or organisation has its own jargon and its own way of doing things as well as talking about them. If you are new to a company, it might take a while to get your head round work-related humour or the rules of engagement in small talk. Jay Woodhams’ research suggests that one of the best ways to socialize into a new work environment is to learn the figurative expressions used at workplace, also known as metaphors.

According to his hypothesis, a metaphor is a means of portraying norms of interaction, characteristic of certain community, it this case, work community. Learning metaphors helps a newbie to understand the ways of becoming an effective member of the team and to accelerate adaptation to the new workplace in general. To test his hypothesis, Woodhams analysed 4 hours of speech recordings, taken from conversations between a skilled  Chinese migrant, Isaac, doing an internship in an accountant team of a New Zealand government department, and Leo, his mentor in the department. Woodhams found that their conversations were teeming with work-specific metaphors.

But what exactly counts as a metaphor? To find out, Woodhams used an analytical tool called Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU). Don`t be terrified by the long name, though, the underlying principle is extremely simple: for any word, its basic sense is compared with its contextual sense. If those two don`t match, it`s a metaphor. Take, for instance,  deep understanding. The basic sense of deep is “extending far down from the surface” (Oxford English Dictionary), whereas the contextual sense is “profound understanding”. Mismatch. Therefore, deep understanding is a metaphor.

The researcher found several major themes in the metaphors, each conveying a valuable educational message. The first theme is related to HOSPITAL and provides Leo, the mentor, with useful analogies to explain to Isaac intern`s place in the organisation. “We`re like hospital”, says Leo, “we might be like nurses”.  The nurses usually do all the ‘mundane’, routine work, yet it is this kind of work that is absolutely crucial for the hospital to function. He explains that work is like a patient in need of treatment. Mistakes carry severe consequences, sometimes even death. Through these metaphors Isaac can learn where he belongs in the departmental hierarchy.

Another theme is MOTION. Leo used phrases like move on, keep moving forward, it`s holding you up, which emphasize the importance of learning new things quickly. The thought behind these metaphors is that motion means progress, and so new employees are expected to progress and learn quickly. Finally, Leo sheds light on the overall values of the department by saying “work drives it”, meaning that work is the driving force behind the organisation.

To sum up, a well-chosen metaphor can both capture the spirit of the organisation and the expectations placed upon the newcomers. This study has shown that, firstly, mentors or managers can use metaphors to communicate workplace norms in an effective way, and, secondly, that new employees, particularly non-native English speakers, might consider paying attention to colloquial speech to speed up their integration and socialization into the new environment.

-----------------------

Woodhams, Jay (2014) 'We're the nurses": metaphor in the discourse of workplace socialisation. Language and Communication 34 (1): 56-68.

doi. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2013.08.005

This summary was written by Maryna Myntsykovska

“You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only 55…”

Dance is a medium that is strongly associated with youth.  When we speak of professional ballet dancers we tend to think of young people with strong and supple bodies, whose movement makes them very watchable.  However, professional dancers often retire from the stage in their mid-30s and the process of ageing is commonly believed to make bodies ‘unwatchable’.  Age and dancing (unless it’s tea dances at the top of Blackpool Tower) just seem incongruous in our society.  We are constantly bombarded with young and agile bodies in popular culture and older bodies are considered ‘unsuitable’ for public viewing. 

Justine Coupland decided to explore this further in a very interesting and unique investigation in which she joined a contemporary dance class comprising fifteen females, aged between 42 and 74 (average age 55).  She was keen to find out whether dance could somehow help people to escape from socially imposed negative ideas about ageing and attempted to answer this through studying the language that they used to talk about their classes. During the series of lessons, Coupland collected data through interviews conducted with the class members and their teacher and ‘dance diaries’ that the participants wrote.

Coupland also participated herself, building up a relationship of trust with the women which enabled her to prompt certain discussions. One of these invited the class members to write diary entries about the use of the mirror in class.  During the first lesson, the teacher had closed the curtains over the mirror, causing much audible relief.  Coupland felt that this indicated that the students were accepting their own ‘unwatchability’.  On analysing their written language, she found that this seemed to be true.  For example, one participant, Sarah, disowned her own reflection by using definite articles (the) instead of possessive pronouns (my), writing All I see are the lines, the ageing face and it gets me down.  Another, Linda, objectified her age-stigmatizing hands: I find I am hiding my hands – they look so old! 

However, it seems that not all the participants feel this self-conscious.  Jude felt quite cross about not being able to see her body in the mirror.  She used the first person I many times in her writing and clearly shows a strong sense of self: When I was young I used to look at myself in windows and outside (I was gorgeous).  I hardly look at myself in shop windows anymore, not that I have a problem with the way I look, but I don’t feel the need to continually check.  I feel more secure in who I am…

Coupland then asked the dancers to sum up how they felt after a class.  One dancer, Nia, volunteered the adjective elevated and continued this metaphor explaining that dance builds you up and has an emotional and spiritual side.  Analysing this, Coupland surmises that the movement of dance somehow seems to ‘remove’ these women from their bodies and embue them with a sense of empowerment that they do not experience in other aspects of their lives.  This sense is also reflected in the metaphor and following adjective used here by Susan, when I’m dancing I feel I’m in my own little bubble, invincible.

Coupland concludes that whatever culture we’re part of, we live in and through our bodies.  Our society is prejudiced against the ageing body but, as Coupland found in her data, dance can be a way for women to reformulate how they think about themselves in the midst of such prejudice.   There is no denying that the women in her study still regret the passing of their youth and feel unwatchable at times.  However, they also seem to be able to contrast the ‘look’ of ageing with deeper feelings that dance gives them.  It is fascinating and enlightening to consider not only the fact that dance offers a way of escaping from the restrictive sense of ageing in an increasingly young society but also that it is the dancers’ language that reveals their true, often subconscious feelings.

Coupland, Justine (2013) Dance, ageing and the mirror: Negotiating watchability. Discourse and Communication 7(1): 3-24.

Doi. 10.1177/1750481312466477

This summary was written by Gemma Stoyle

Using metaphors to ‘bring it home’

How do you react to charity appeals?

In an earlier summary (Tay 2011: http://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/you-know-its-like-bomb-squad-right.html), we looked at how we can use metaphors to explain and deal with abstract concepts during therapy.  Taking another emotive context, Lynne Cameron and Irene Bruna Seu analysed how a focus group of 5 British women used metaphors to discuss the impact of charity appeals. 

The women, who all lived in London and were aged between 32 and 52, were presented with 3 visual and textual prompts (2 from Amnesty International and one article from the British newspaper The Guardian).  These all related to what they term the suffering Other, and provided information outlining cases of torture and abuse in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.  The idea of the suffering Other was used by Cameron and Seu to identify a being that is distinct from a person’s Self and someone with whom we may wish to empathise.  The analysis looked at how members of the focus group reacted to the suffering Other and what justifications they used for rejecting charitable appeals.

In order to conduct the analysis of metaphor use, they identified what they called metaphor vehicles.  For example, in the phrase “it’s a pressurised world”, pressurised is identified as a metaphor vehicle as, even though in context it means that life is busy and stressful, it has another meaning relating to actual physical pressure or force.  Once these metaphor vehicles were identified, they were grouped to reflect their basic meanings – for example, pressurised can be grouped with rammed (e.g. “rammed down your throat”) so as to reflect a wider group of Physical Force Vehicles. 

The results of the analysis highlighted how more than half of the metaphors used by the focus group (295 out of 538) related to spatiality. In other words, vehicle terms grouped as, for example, Location and Distance were used frequently (e.g. “it’s easy to think ‘oh, that’s over there’ ”).  It seemed that assessments of closeness or distance were frequently used as justifications for not wanting to respond to charity appeals.  Cameron and Seu noted how metaphors relating to House and Home were also prominent (e.g. “it’s brought home to you”, “I’d rather change something closer to home”) and when this personal domain was seen to be under threat, negative and physically aggressive metaphors were often used to describe reactions and emotions (e.g. “I don’t think it should be shoved down their throats”).

However, the analysis of the focus group discourse highlighted how empathy may be generated when the participants could identify directly with distant situations (for example, one woman had done voluntary work in Africa), and when close-up experiences (such as a beggar asking for money in the street) were deemed as non-threatening (a beggar sitting down was considered less threatening than a beggar directly approaching you).  As a result, they conclude that there is an optimal ‘distance’ for people to feel empathy and that the more threatening an appeal is to a person’s Self, the more in control they need to feel in order for empathy to be activated.

In conclusion, Cameron and Seu suggest that, by analysing and evaluating how people express their empathy or justifications for lack of empathy, charitable organisations can develop optimal ways of enhancing and promoting empathetic feelings towards the suffering Other.

____________________________________________________________

Cameron, L. and Seu, I. B. (2012) Landscapes of Empathy: Spatial scenarios, metaphors and metonyms in responses to distant suffering. Text and Talk 32: 281-305.

doi: 10.1515/text-2012-0014

This summary was written by Jenny Amos

You know, it’s like the bomb squad, right?

Metaphors can help us to explain ideas and feelings which are difficult to express.  This is particularly true in settings and contexts which are, by their very nature, emotive – such as therapy sessions between a patient and an analyst.

Dennis Tay, who analysed transcripts of conversation between therapists and patients, noted that metaphors (a term which for him includes similes) are often accompanied in our speech by *discourse markers* which signal their occurrence.  For example, like compares a situation with the subject of the metaphor, such as the cake in that cake is so luscious, it’s like eating velvet, while phrases such as sort of help soften the comparison being made, e.g. he gave me so many flowers, it was sort of like living in a florist’s.

In analysing the data, Tay identified metaphors by comparing their meaning in the context with their literal meaning and establishing the mismatch between the two.  On the whole, he found that therapists used metaphoric expressions to help define abstract concepts in more concrete terms (such as relating one patient’s problem of panic under pressure to that of bomb squad personnel faced with the decision of ‘which wire to cut’).  In contrast, patients tended to use metaphors when they were expressing and explaining thoughts, memories and emotions (for example, when a patient describes his personality as lacking a ‘light and fluffy mode’ and saying that instead he is more like ‘heavy cotton’). 

Building on this, Tay looked at how discourse markers such as you know, right and I mean signal how people use metaphors as they develop their discourse.  He noted that, while I mean (which signals some kind of self-adjustment or correction) was used less often by therapists (perhaps due to their greater self-assurance in speaking), in general discourse markers help when the expression of a concept is difficult, and can invite the other person to make inferences of their own, e.g. my life’s like some sort of Russian novel, you know?.

Taking the analysis of metaphor use and the placement of discourse markers together, Tay observed that many discourse markers were used to signal ‘key’ moments in the therapy discourse structure, such as the beginning of a metaphor and the continual linking of extended metaphors during speech.  Further research on these ‘junctions’ and how they are signalled (whether through discourse markers or other linguistic features), Tay suggested, will help therapists develop more effective strategies for patient communication.  In doing this, Tay added, metaphor research will become more applicable to real world concerns.

*discourse markers (which are sometimes termed ‘discourse-pragmatic particles’) are explained in a previous post (http://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.fr/2012/04/discourse-pragmatic-markers-take-centre.html)

______________________________________________________

Tay, Dennis (2011) Discourse Markers as Metaphor Signalling Devices and Psychotherapeutic Talk. Language and Communication 31: 310-317

doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2011.02.001

This summary was written by Jenny Amos

Buckle your seatbelts!

Believe it or not, this was the title of a recent journal article about the global financial crisis. Another article on the same topic had the title A Spike Through the Heart. While the content of the articles may not be obvious from their titles, Ana María Rojo López and María Ángeles Orts Llopis argue that metaphors such as these are powerful tools affecting the way that we conceptualise economic issues.

Lopez and Llopis analysed articles taken from two financial periodicals – the The Economist and the Spanish El Economista. The articles were written at two different periods. The first was between June and November 2007, when the idea of a global financial crisis was beginning to be mentioned internationally. The second period was between September and December 2008; by then the financial crisis was causing havoc worldwide. The researchers write that during the earlier period financial problems were initially belittled by the mass media in Spain, unlike other European countries. This, they say, was because the Spanish government was about to hold national elections. Politicians therefore refused to reveal the grim state of the national economy. Metaphors were used differently in the two periodicals, reflecting the different socio-political climates in which the articles were written.

Although similar metaphors were used in The Economist and El Economista, an important difference lay in whether they conceptualised the economic issues as having a positive outcome for the economy or a negative one.

In both periodicals the most frequent metaphors conceptualised financial events as ‘natural’ beings and events, such as humans, plants or storms. For example, a journalist in El Economista wrote that the credit drought was caused by a financial storm forcing banks to restrict their loans. The researchers categorised examples such as this as a negative use of metaphor, since the context gave a negative view of the economy. In articles written during the earlier period, before the crisis, the metaphors in El Economista were used less often in a negative sense than a positive sense; during the 2008 recession, however, negative uses were twice as frequent as positive ones. In The Economist, by contrast, metaphors referring to natural beings and events were used far more often in negative contexts during both periods.

Another frequent metaphor conceptualised economic events as a journey, which could be upward or downward, smooth or troubled. In The Economist these metaphors occurred in negative contexts more often in the earlier period, before the recession, whereas in El Economista the highest proportion of negative uses was in the second period. In the later period, metaphors portrayed the economy as a vehicle that had no clear destination, that had lost speed or suddenly braked, or that had punctures.

The third type of metaphor saw financial activities as events. In El Economista these included show business events, medieval tournaments and even a bullfight.  These metaphors were mostly used in a positive way, painting a light-hearted scene with images of races and playful rivalry. Unsurprisingly, this type of metaphor was less frequent during the second period, but even then the metaphors were still mainly used in positive contexts. By contrast, metaphors of this kind in The Economist mostly pointed to more sombre aspects of war or competition.

Overall, the Spanish articles written before the crisis contained more metaphors used in a positive context than those written later, when the financial crisis was underway. The English language articles used metaphors negatively during both periods, painting a sombre, gloomy picture of the global economy both at the beginning of the crisis and during the recession.

The researchers argue that the different uses of metaphor in the two journals reflect the fact that the international press was discussing the crisis long before the Spanish mass media acknowledged the economic disaster. They claim that metaphors not only affect the way that we conceptualise the world, but are also a powerful tool that can serve political interests.

__________________________________________________ 

López, Ana María Rojo and Llopis, María Ángeles Orts (2010) Metaphorical pattern analysis in financial texts: Framing the crisis in positive or negative metaphorical terms. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 3300-3313.

doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.06.001

This summary was written by Jenny Cheshire