CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.4 Summary
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specify the gestural content, (b) action schemata selected according to features of imagined or
real space, (c) on-line feedback from the Formulator through the Message Generator (Kita &
Öyzürek 2003: 28).
Kita and Öyzürek’s hypothesis suggests that the Action Generator influenced by
possibilities of linguistic formulation is a general process for generate gestures. Furthermore,
the spatio-motoric representation in the Action Generator is the “interface representation
between speaking and spatial thinking that makes use of action planning process” (Kita &
Öyzürek 2003: 29). In general, the Interface Hypothesis predicts that a gesture is shaped
concurrently by the linguistic formulation possibilities (which makes it unlike the Free
Imagery Hypothesis) and the spatio-motoric information that are not encoded in the
accompanying speech (which makes it unlike the Lexical Semantics Hypothesis).
2.4 Summary
Opposing the traditional view, Lakoff and Johnson advocated the following thoughts:
metaphor is conceptual; metaphor can be realized in our ordinary language; metaphor is
based on cross-domain correlations/structure similarities; and metaphor is grounded in our
body experience or social cultural values (Lakoff & Johnson 1980a, 1980b, 1980c, 2003;
Lakoff 1993). It was also suggested that an abstract concept can be understood in terms of
various metaphors. The metaphors of a single concept may profile different aspects of the
metaphorical concept (Lakoff & Johnson 1980b). Kövecses’s (2002) study on metaphors in
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English supported that source domain is more concrete and that target domain is more
abstract. His research also proved that the mapping direction between a source and a target is
asymmetrical. Also, several investigations on metaphoric expressions in Chinese support the
belief that an abstract concept can be understood in terms of various metaphors. Gesture is
thought to be another independent modality that can reflect our thinking of metaphors (Cienki
2008; Cienki & Müller 2008; Müller 2008; Gibbs 2008b). Gestural data provides visible
evidence for the presence of metaphors in mind (Calbris 2008; Müller 2008; Chui 2008). Yet,
metaphoric gestures do not just reduplicate what is realized in linguistic modality. There are
metaphoric expressions which might not occur in language but in gesture (Cienki 2008;
Cienki & Müller 2008). Moreover, gestural data enhance the psychological reality for the
embodied nature of conceptual metaphors (Calbris 2008; Núñez 2008; Chui 2011, 2013).
Insights about conceptual metaphor have been provided by previous studies on
linguistic and gestural data; nevertheless, many of them focus on qualitative data exclusively.
The present study then attempts to examine the metaphoric expressions from both the
qualitative and quantitative perspectives. The quantitative analysis can provide reliable
information about the habitual expressions metaphors. Additionally, most of the past studies
paid attention to metaphoric expressions in single modality, but the present study would take
both the linguistic and gestural representations into account. Based on the quantitative
analysis of conversational data, the present study compares the metaphors expressed in
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language and gesture with the metaphors expressed in gesture-only and discusses the
collaboration of speech and gesture in conveying metaphorical concepts.
In order to seek a general picture about the habitual expressions of metaphors in
face-to-face conversation, the present study categorizes the metaphoric expressions into
different types. Meanwhile, the present study examines the ordinary source domains and
target domains of the metaphoric expressions. The sources and targets involved in the
one-to-many/ many-to-one correspondences are investigated as well. Concerning the above
issues, the analysis of the cross-modal manifestations of metaphors is presented in Chapter 4.
Regarding the collaboration of language and gesture in conveying metaphors, the present
study surveys the temporal patterning of speech and gesture production. Findings about the
temporal synchronization between the two modalities are shown in Chapter 4 as well. The
collaboration of the two modalities may provide a way to look at the theoretical hypotheses
of speech and gesture production. Discussion about the collaboration of speech and gesture in
relation to the theoretical hypothesis is shown in Chapter 5.
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35
CHAPTER 3
DATA AND METHODOLOGY
This chapter presents the data and methodology utilized in the present study. Section
3.1 introduces the conversational data. Section 3.2 presents the selection criteria of the
metaphoric expressions examined in the present study. The metaphor types adopted to
categorize the metaphoric expressions are presented in Section 3.3. The source-domain and
target-domain concepts identified in the present study are shown in Section 3.4. The temporal
patterning of speech and gesture are introduced in Section 3.5. A summary is in Section 3.6.
3.1 Data
The linguistic data used in this study is taken from the NCCU Corpus of Spoken
Chinese (Chui & Lai 2008). The corpus contains spoken data of Mandarin, Southern Min,
and Hakka. The sub-corpus of spoken Mandarin includes daily face-to-face conversations.
Most of the conversations have been collected since 2006 and this portion of the data is
accessible online.3 The participants in the conversations were schoolmates, family members,
friends or colleagues familiar with each other. They were free to talk about any topics and
were filmed for about an hour. From each conversation, a stretch (about twenty to forty
minutes) was selected for transcription. In each selected stretch, the participants became
3 The website of the NCCU Corpus of Spoken Chinese is http://spokenchinesecorpus.nccu.edu.tw/
‧
accustomed to talk in front of a visible camera. The linguistic data used in this study come
from twenty-six face-to-face conversations in the sub-corpus of spoken Mandarin, and these
conversations totally take about nine hours and fifty seconds. The gestural data relevant for
this study are obtained from the gesture analysis of the twenty-six transcribed conversations.4
The gestural data are coded by another trained coder as well.
3.2 Selection Criteria of Metaphoric Expressions
Since this study explores how language and gesture collaborate to express metaphorical
concepts, metaphors occurring alone in speech were excluded. The present study focuses on
the metaphors concurrently manifested in speech and gesture (‘language-gesture’ or ‘L-G’),
as well as the metaphors merely realized in gesture (‘gesture-only’ or ‘G-only’, i.e., a concept
is metaphorically expressed in gesture but literally conveyed in speech). The distinction
between ‘language-gesture’ metaphors and ‘gesture-only’ metaphors can be demonstrated by
the occurrence of two common types of metaphors—Entity metaphor and Orientation
metaphor (see Table 5). Example 1 is an instance of the entity metaphor STATE OF
CONFUSION IS AN OBJECT in the language-gesture group, since the target-domain concept,
nàzhŏng shīkùng de zhuàngkuàng ‘that kind of situation of confusion’, is a nominal phrase in
the utterance. Meanwhile, the speaker’s right hand forms a cupped shape with slightly curled
fingers as if she were supporting a bounded object in her hand (Panel 2 in Figure 1). This
4 The gestural analysis was part of the language-gesture projects led by Prof. Kawai Chui; the projects were funded by the National Science Council.
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gesture metaphorically represents STATE as a physical object.
(1) F: 今年..如果要避免我剛剛講那種失控的狀況的話
Figure 1. STATE OF CONFUSION IS AN OBJECT in gesture
The gesture-only group involves metaphors like the entity metaphor HARDSHIP IS AN
OBJECT in Example 2. The speaker says that her parents work hard to earn money. The
concept of hardship is literally represented by the predicate
xīnkŭ ‘hard’ in the utterance. The
metaphorical idea is rather conveyed manually as an object with boundary while the
speaker’s left hand forms a cupped shape with curled fingers (Panel 2 in Figure 2).
(2) F: 就是...(1.2)就是覺得...爸爸媽媽很辛苦啊這樣子
Figure 2. HARDSHIP IS AN OBJECT in gesture
For orientation metaphors, the language-gesture group includes metaphors like the one
in Example 3. In this example, the orientation metaphor THE NEXT ACADEMIC YEAR IS
(1) (2)
(1) (2)
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DOWN belongs to the language-gesture group. The speaker says that one of her classmate is
junior to her. She utters xiàyíjiè ‘next academic year’ in speech. The sequence of the
academic year is linguistically represented by the spatial term xia ‘down’. Corresponding to
the linguistic terms is the speaker’s manual movement. The speaker’s right hand moves
downward from head level to shoulder level (Panel 3 in Figure 3). The gesture provides
visible spatial orientation for the abstract target-domain concept ‘next academic year’.
(3) F1: ...可是我們學校那個學妹...就是我的同學...然後他其實是我下一屆的
Figure 3. THE NEXT ACADEMIC YEAR IS DOWN in gesture
On the other hand, Example 4 presents an instance of orientation metaphors in the
gesture-only group. In this case, the metaphors THE FIRST CHOICE IS UP and THE THIRD
CHIOCE IS DOWN are conveyed in gesture exclusively. The speaker talks about the
examination and the choice of schools. She utters
dìyī zhìyuàn ‘the first choice’ and dìsān
zhìyuàn ‘the third choice’ without referring to any spatial terms in speech. However, the
speaker’s manual movement conveys the metaphorical ideas. Her right hand rises to a rather
high position to enact the metaphor THE FIRST CHOICE IS UP when she utters
dìyī zhìyuàn
(Panel 2 in Figure 4). Next, her right hand comes down to a rather low position to convey the
(1) (2) (3)
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metaphor THETHIRD CHOICE IS DOWN when she utters
dìsān zhìyuàn (Panel 3 in Figure 4).
The gestures metaphorically represent the abstract concept of the sequence of the choices by
upward and downward orientations.
(4) F1: ..然後你..你今天很細心你變第一志願...再粗心一點就第三志願
Figure 4. THE FIRST CHOICE IS UP and THETHIRD CHOICE IS DOWN in gesture
With regard to the metaphors in the language-gesture group, speech and gesture may
convey the same or different types of metaphors. Examples 1 and 3 shown above are
instances that the same kinds of metaphors are expressed across modalities. Example 5
presents an instance where the metaphor in language differs from the one in the gesture. The
speaker talks about the movies released during summer vacation. The body-part metaphor
THE END OF SUMMER VACATION IS A TAIL is conveyed in language. She utters
wĕiba de
shíhòu ‘tail of time’ (Line 2) to refer to the end of the vacation. The end of a period of time is
metaphorically conceptualized as the tail of an animal. On the other hand, the entity metaphor
THE END OF SUMMER VACATION IS AN OBJECT is expressed in gesture. The speaker’s hands
are placed vertically with palm facing to palm as if she were holding a bounded object in
hands (Figure 5). The end of summer vacation is then metaphorically represented as a
(1) (2) (3)
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discrete object.
(5) 1 F: 他們就是整個暑假...前面都是一些...就是比較那個...前面都是一些屬於比較熱門 2 影片啊...就這樣咚咚咚咚咚咚..好...到後面尾巴的時候..已經快要...開學了
Figure 5. THE END OF SUMMER VACATION IS AN OBJECT in gesture
There are 110 instances in which speech and gesture express the same metaphors and 7
instances where the two modalities show different metaphors. The present study would put
emphasis on the ones where language and gesture manifest the same types of metaphor.
Concerning the metaphors expressed in the gesture-only group, there are two instances in
which metaphoric gestures are produced during silence because the speakers have difficulty
retrieving the words in speech. Since the referents of this kind of metaphors are not definite
and such metaphors only account for a small portion, they are not included in the present
study. In addition, if there are repetitions of a metaphor (i.e., two or more metaphoric
expressions are conveyed with the same linguistic terms and the same gesture), the metaphor
is only counted once. In general, there are totally 247 metaphors examined in the present
study. These metaphors are divided into two main groups: the language-gesture group and the
gesture-only group. The language-gesture group contains 110 (44.5%) metaphoric
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expressions with the same types of metaphors across the two modalities; the gesture-only
group involves 137 (55.5%) metaphors.
3.3 Classification of Metaphor Types
To discuss people’s habitual expression of metaphor in daily conversation, the present
study sorts the metaphoric expressions by different metaphor types. Several metaphor types
have been proposed in the past studies. Lakoff and Johnson (1980c) stated there are three
main types of metaphors realized by linguistic expressions: structural metaphor, orientational
metaphor, and ontological metaphor. Nonetheless, Lakoff and Johnson (2003) later clarified
that all metaphors are structural in that they map the structure of one concept to another
concept; hence, the present paper does not adopt the category of structural metaphor.
Orientational metaphor is based on the spatial image schemas; it is identified as a type of
metaphor and called orientation metaphor in the present study. Ontological metaphor projects
physical status on things without inherent physical status. Ontological metaphor can be
further divided into container metaphor, entity metaphor, and personification (Lakoff &
Johnson 1980c). The present study uses the three specific types of metaphors rather than the
general ontological metaphor to sort the data. Since CAUSATION could be metaphorically
conceived as a forced movement (Lakoff & Johnson 1980c; Lakoff 1993), metaphor of
causation is treated as an independent type and called causation metaphor in this study. In
McNeill’s (1992) study on gesture in narratives, he classified metaphoric gestures into four
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types: spatial metaphor, metaphor of change, conduit metaphor, and metaphor based on beam
and aura. Spatial metaphor parallels Lakoff and Johnson’s “orientational metaphor”, and
metaphor of change overlaps with Lakoff and Johnson’s “metaphor of causation”. McNeill’s
conduit metaphor follows Reddy’s (1979) framework of conduit metaphor, and the present
study regards it as an independent type. Metaphor based on beam and aura illustrates vision
or mental state as lights (the substance); such a metaphor is seen as a kind of entity metaphor
in the present study.
Fictive motion refers to the static entity which is realized in terms of motion. Although
Lakoff and Johnson (1980c) did not consider it as an independent type of metaphor, Talmy
(1996) suggested the notion of fictive motion is associated with conceptual metaphor.
Because the mechanism of the metaphor based on fictive-motion is different from the
metaphors introduced above, the present study identifies such metaphor and calls it
fictive-motion metaphor. The metaphor using body-parts as source domain also functions
differently from other kinds of metaphors; thus, it is also considered as an independent type
and called a body-part metaphor. It should be noted that there are metaphors that do not
directly correlate with the image schemas (e.g., LOVE IS JOURNEY) and the grounding of
them depends on the primary metaphors (e.g., PURPOSE ARE DESTINATIONS and ACTIONS
ARE MOTIONS) that comprise them. Such a metaphor is called a “complex metaphor” or
“compound metaphor” (Lakoff & Johnson 1999; Gibbs 2005, 2006), and they are identified
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in the present study as well. Based on the studies mentioned above, the present study
recognizes nine kinds of metaphors which are utilized to analyze both the linguistic and
gesture data. The following shows the definitions of these metaphors.
The body-part metaphor refers to the metaphor in which its target domain is conceived
in terms of a body part (e.g., head, mouth, tail, and so on). This metaphor relates to the
OBJECT image schema. The body is a bounded object, and it is a unified whole consisting
various parts (Santibáñez 2002). An expression of the body-part metaphor THE FOCUS OF A
PROBLEM IS A HEART can be found in the expression ‘the heart of the problem’ (Kövecses
2002: 16). Problem is conceived as a unified object, and its focus is regarded as a heart, an
important body-part.
Causation is a basic human concept. The causation metaphor treats causes as forces
and causations/changes as movements (Lakoff 1993). This metaphor is based on the
COMPULSION image schema, a kind of FORCE schema. The prototype of causation is direct
manipulation, and infants first learn about causation through the realization that they can
directly manipulate objects around them (Lakoff & Johnson 1980c). They may throw their
toys and find some change of state in the toys. The inference that something moves if people
apply force to it is mapped onto the logic of causation. That is, the concept of causation is
metaphorically understood as a physical force resulting in motion or change of something.
The metaphor CAUSATION IS A FORCED MOVEMENT is indicated by the verb propel in the
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sentence ‘The news propelled the stock market to record heights’ (Lakoff & Johnson 1999:
184). The news is regarded as a FORCE leading to the movement of the stock market to
record heights.
The conduit metaphor conceptualizes human communication as a conduit which can
physically transfer our thoughts or feelings (Reddy 1979). The process of communication is
metaphorically conceived as sending the ideas which are seen as physical entities. The
conduit metaphor COMMUNICATING IS TRANSFERING OBJECTS is conveyed in the sentence
‘I gave you that idea’ (Lakoff & Johnson 1980c: 10). The verb gave shows that idea is
conceived as a discrete object that we can manipulate and that communication is
conceptualized in terms of sending the object. McNeill (1992: 149) describes the conduit
metaphor in gesture as “the hand creating a bounded, supportable object that represents an
abstract concept”. However, such description better fits the definition for an entity metaphor,
since it neglects an important feature of the conduit metaphor—the process of sending. In the
present study, a metaphoric gesture is identified as a conduit metaphor only when the gesture
involves the action of passing a visional object (the idea) to the listener. Namely, a speaker
not only presents an idea with palm-up-open hand but also sends the idea through moving the
hand to a listener.
The container metaphor is the metaphor in which its target domain is conceived in
terms of the containers with a bounded surface and in-out orientation. The metaphor is
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associated with the CONTAINER image schema. Our physical bodies are bounded by the
surface of our skins and we can experience things outside us. With this bodily basis, we map
the in-out orientation onto other things (Lakoff & Johnson 1980c). The container metaphor
THE WOODS IS A CONTAINER is expressed in the sentence ‘We are in the woods’ (Lakoff &
Johnson 1980c: 29). The forest (a bounded land area) is seen as a container and the
preposition in specifies that people are inside the container. The container metaphor allows us
to impose an artificial boundary on the physical phenomenon. Moreover, a metaphoric
gesture is recognized as the container metaphor when the relationship between the container
and the content is depicted. If the speaker just gestures a bounded object without specifying
the in-out orientation, the gesture is treated as an entity metaphor rather than a container
metaphor.
The entity metaphor conceptualizes a target domain in terms of discrete object or
substances. This metaphor is grounded in the OBJECT image schema. We see ourselves as an
independent entity separated from the other discrete entities in the world. Objects are
perceived as a unified whole with distinct boundaries, and we can manipulate objects in
different ways (Santibáñez 2002). The expression ‘It will take a lot of patience to finish this
book’ (Lakoff & Johnson 1980c: 26) shows the entity metaphor
PATIENCE IS THESUBSTANCE
.
Since the abstract PATIENCE is metaphorically realized as a physical substance, we can use the phrase a lot of to quantify the patience. According to Lakoff and Johnson‧ 國
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(1980c: 27), “merely viewing a nonphysical thing as an entity or substance does not allow us
to comprehend very much about it, [b]ut ontological metaphors may be further elaborated”.
An elaboration of the entity metaphor THE MIND IS AN ENTITY can be found in the sentence
‘My mind just isn't operating today’ (Lakoff & Johnson 1980c: 27). In this case, the metaphor
‘My mind just isn't operating today’ (Lakoff & Johnson 1980c: 27). In this case, the metaphor