Concepts and language
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Browse background material on metaphor, language and related ideas. Metaphor Categories describes linguistic types of metaphor; Subject index organises this library by subject.
Reading aids
- Metaphor in Context: Annotated Examples: five worked passages with evidence and open questions.
- Glossary of Metaphor and Meaning: definitions and examples linked to fuller articles.
- Reading Guide: Routes Through the Wiki: six suggested routes connecting existing pages.
- Video Library: the wiki's embedded recordings, grouped by subject with channels and running times.
Starting points
- About Metaphors of Movement
- Metaphor Categories
- Situational Relational Positioning
- Embodied Cognition
- Idiomatic, Literal and Figurative Communication
- Metaphor Across Languages and Cultures - wording, imagery, translation and context
- Metaphors of Emotion
- Beyond Simple Metaphor
- Metaphors of Movement
Language and ideas
- Linguistic References
- Semiotics
- Archetypes
- The Hero's Journey
- Steganography
- The Golden Bough
- Common Idioms that Originate from the Bible
- Biblical Idioms
- Onomatopoeia
- Palindromes
- Characteristica Universalis
- Word Play
- Metaphor and Humour - comic comparisons, puns and contextual interpretation
- Parental Threats
- The Ontological Argument
- Gottfried Leibniz Ontological Proof
The illustrated Comparative Metaphor Library connects these background ideas with sourced expressions and literary examples.
- Being Stuck: Barriers, Loops and Waiting - obstruction, repetition, effort and arrival
- Agency and Motion: Moving and Being Moved - propulsion, direction and control
- Inside and Outside: Shelter, Confinement and Belonging - boundaries, access and membership
- Scale and Proportion: Shrinking, Looming and Being Dwarfed - relative size, fit and viewpoint
- Distance and Proximity: Closeness, Separation and Reach - nearness, boundaries and access
- Speed, Pace and Momentum - rate, effort, direction and control
- Crossroads, Detours and Dead Ends - choice, changed routes and limits to progress
- Food, Hunger and Nourishment - appetite, provision, access and consumption
- Light, Darkness and Visibility - understanding, disclosure and exposure
- Music, Rhythm and Harmony - patterns, different contributions and control
Reading alongside presentations
Presentation Companion Library connects the Metaphor Society programme with background articles and questions for comparing sources.
Research and free reading
- Metaphor Research Library - a curated guide to books, papers, dissertations, historical texts and official recordings
- Metaphor and Reasoning - framing experiments, a critical follow-up and questions for evaluating evidence
- Metaphor in Literature and Creativity - sensory language, context, creative extensions and reader studies
- Metaphor in Therapeutic Conversation - patient accounts, therapist perspectives and the study of dialogue
- Joseph Campbell - comparative mythology, functions of myth and official listening and reading
Further research topics
- Metaphor Identification and Corpus Research - finding expressions, reading context and recording judgements
- Sensory Metaphor - perception, cross-sensory descriptions and creativity
- Metaphor in Economics - financial reporting, framing and corpus evidence
- Narrative and Interpretation - who tells a story, for whom and with what effects invited by the text
Foundations and theories
- Mark Johnson - embodied meaning, image schemas and metaphor
- Leonard Talmy - figure and ground, force dynamics and fictive motion
- Conceptual Metaphor Theory
- Image Schemas: Containment, Paths, Balance and Connection
- Conceptual Blending and Mental Spaces
- Metaphor, Metonymy, Simile, Analogy and Symbol
- Metaphor and Polysemy: How Words Acquire Related Meanings
- A History of Metaphor Theory
- Interaction Theories of Metaphor
- Metaphor, Context and Speaker Meaning
Body, time, gesture and images
- Fictive Motion: When Stationary Things Move - describing stationary extent through motion
- Time as Space and Movement
- Force Dynamics: Pressure, Resistance and Release
- Metaphor and Gesture
- Visual and Multimodal Metaphor
Science, learning and the brain
- Metaphor in Science and Scientific Models
- Metaphor in Education and Learning
- Learning Metaphor in a Second Language
- How Children Learn to Understand Metaphor
- The Neuroscience of Metaphor Comprehension
Public language and ethics
Personal meaning
Everyday language, communication and interpretation
- Personification and Agency - human roles, intention and responsibility in nonhuman descriptions
- Primary and Complex Metaphors - simple associations, elaborated scenes and the evidence for their development
- Mixed Metaphors and Coherence - why multiple images can cooperate, conflict or create humour
- The Conduit Metaphor of Communication - ideas as objects, words as containers and the role of interpretation
- Metaphor and Idioms: Motivation, Meaning and Use - conventional meaning, imagery, context and translation
- Susan Sontag and Illness Metaphors - stigma, blame and the uses of disease imagery in personal and public language
Myth, direction and participation
The Joseph Campbell: Reading and Listening Guide connects these topics with stories, interviews and lectures.
- Follow Your Bliss: Meaning, Direction and Responsibility
- Living a Personal Myth
- The Return Journey: Bringing Experience Back into Everyday Life
- Sacred Places and Symbolic Centres
- Ritual as Enacted Metaphor
- The Shaman and the Priest in Campbell's Comparative Mythology
- The Artist as Mythmaker
- Planetary Mythology: Earth as a Shared Home
- Myth and the Body
- Kundalini as a Symbolic Journey in Campbell's Lectures
- Mythology, War and Peace
- Campbell's Comparisons of Eastern and Western Traditions