1,720,956 research outputs found
A cognitive linguistic exploration of metaphors within the WATER frame in Swami Vivekananda’s Complete Works: A corpus-driven study in light of conceptual metaphor theory
Full text linkThis article investigates the use of metaphorical language in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda1. Vivekananda is one of the most important modern-day Hindu scholars, and his interpretation of the ancient Hindu scriptural lore has been very influential. Vivekananda’s influence was part of the motivation for choosing his Complete Works as the empirical domain for the current study. AntConc was used to mine Vivekananda’s Complete Works for water-related terms, which seemed to have a predilection for metaphoricity. Which terms to search for specifically was determined after a manual reading of a sample from the Complete Works. The data were then tagged using a convention inspired by the well-known Metaphor Identification Procedure – Vrije University (MIPVU). Thereafter, a representative sample of the data was chosen, and the metaphors were mapped and analysed thematically. Four of these are expounded upon in this article. This study’s main aim was to investigate whether Hindu religious discourse uses metaphors to explain abstract religious concepts, and, if so, whether this happens in the same way as in Judaeo-Christian traditions. One of the key findings in this article is that neo-Hindu thought, as reconceptualised by Vivekananda, relies very little on the FAMILY frame when conceptualising abstract philosophical ideals, and instead draws on the domain of WATER more often.Keywords: Vedanta, conceptual metaphor theory, cognitive linguistic
An analysis of metaphorical idioms in South African Indian English
Full text linkThis study looks at a selected number of expressions used in the variety of English known as “South African Indian English†(SAIE). Mesthrie (1992, 2010a) compiled a dictionary of expressions used within this language variety, which is the primary source of data for this study. Mesthrie has also published numerous scholarly works documenting various aspects of SAIE (cf. Mesthrie 1991, 1992a). A selection of five metaphorical idioms have been chosen for analysis, and the meanings as put forth by Mesthrie (1992, 2010a) have been cross-checked with 10 native speakers of SAIE, as well as the author’s native-speaker intuitions. The informants were all middle-class, professional, educated persons of Indian origin, who speak English as a first language; they were all between 30 and 60 years of age, and reside either in Johannesburg as internal economic migrants from Durban, or currently reside in Durban. As this analysis is undertaken through the lens of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the various metaphorical idioms are analysed as expressions of underlying conceptual metaphors, which confirms the idea that many entrenched idiomatic expressions are surface manifestations of underlying conceptual metaphors, and therefore part and parcel of the same human conceptual system. The analysis follows an adapted format used by Kövecses (2010), whereby the metaphorical idiom is stated, followed by the meaning, then the underlying conceptual metaphor. A table illustrating how the idiom is typically mapped in context, followed by a brief discussion of the import, is also in line with Kövecses (2010). One of the key findings is that this is indeed a viable approach to the study of idioms in general, and a more comprehensive study should be made of more expressions like these to see whether or not all entrenched expressions can be viewed as emanating from underlying conceptual metaphors.Â
A cognitive linguistic analysis of conceptual metaphors in Hindu religious discourse with reference to Swami Vivekananda’s complete works
Full text linkThis thesis investigates the use of metaphorical language in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda is one of the most influential modern-day Hindu scholars, and his interpretation of the ancient Hindu scriptural lore is very significant. Vivekananda’s influence was part of the motivation for choosing his Complete Works as the empirical
domain for the current study. Vivekananda’s Complete Works were mined using AntConc, for water-related terms which seemed to have a predilection for metaphoricity. Which terms to search for specifically was determined after a manual reading of a sample from the Complete Works. The data was then tagged, using a convention inspired by the well-known
MIPVU procedure for metaphor identification. Thereafter, a representative sample of the data was chosen, and the metaphors were mapped and analysed thematically.
This study had as its main aim to investigate whether Hindu religious discourse uses metaphors to explain abstract religious concepts, and if so, whether this happens in the same way as in Judaeo-Christian traditions. Furthermore, following Jäkel (2002), a set of sub-hypotheses pertaining to ubiquity, domains, models, unidirectionality, invariance,
necessity, creativity and focussing is assessed.
Key findings in this study include a general confirmation of the above-mentioned hypotheses, with the exception of ‘invariance’, which proved to be somewhat contentious. The data allowed for the postulation of underlying conceptual metaphors, which differed somewhat from the metaphors used in traditional Judaeo-Christian philosophy.D. Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)Linguistics and Modern Language
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Reflections on Decoloniality from a South African Indian Perspective: Conceptual Metaphors in Vivekananda’s Poem “My Play Is Done”
No full textSwami Vivekananda was an influential Indian saint, poet, philosopher and political revolutionary. His work can be seen as a conduit for South African Hindus who are part of the Indian diaspora, allowing them to connect with their historical, cultural and spiritual roots in the religious and conceptual world of India. The first step to decolonising those who have been subjected to colonial hegemony is to (re)connect them with their intellectual and spiritual roots, and it is argued here that this is precisely the zeitgeist behind Vivekananda’s life and mission in general. His poetry is particularly valuable because he wrote in English, instead of his native Bengali, and was thereby able to reach English-speaking Hindus all over the world. In 1936 Indians in South Africa decided to adopt English as a lingua franca, both as a language of teaching and learning, and as a home language. This article focuses on one of these poems, “My Play Is Done”, which Vivekananda composed in 1895 in New York. The poem presents the human condition from a Hindu perspective, which differs substantially from the Western way of thinking. This article explores these concepts within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory. With reference to metaphors used in the poem, various aspects of Hindu philosophical thought will be explored, showing how Oriental conceptual reality differs from Western thought. This provides a link to an ancient precolonial way of thinking, accessible to diasporas around the world.
- …
