tour saint ferjeux langres

Tour St-Ferjeux

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52200 Langres

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• Capitale de la vannerie

Un savoir-faire haut-marnais

Un artisanat ancestral, la vannerie est une fête.

Un savoir-faire traditionnel et créatif

Fayl-Billot, capitale de la vannerie française

Savoir-faire

Ecole nationale

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• La vannerie de Fayl- Billot

Autour de Fayl-Billot pousse un osier d’une extrême qualité. Des savoir-faire, une culture et une histoire se sont développés autour de la vannerie .

L’École Nationale de Vannerie et d'Osiériculture française transmet aujourd’hui les gestes et techniques pour travailler l’osier. À la Maison de la Vannerie , découvrez cet art ancestral à travers une collection de 200 articles et créations novatrices.

Initiez-vous auprès d’artisans talentueux et créez votre panier ou dénichez le vôtre dans les nombreux ateliers-boutique de la ville.

Capitale de l'Osiériculture et de la Vannerie française

Depuis plus de trois siècles , à Fayl-Billot, on cultive et travaille l’osier réputé pour ses qualités de robustesse et d’élasticité. Des 800 ha d’oseraies à la fin du XIXème, mises à mal par les deux guerres mondiales et l’émergence de la plasturgie, il reste une cinquantaine d’hectares aujourd’hui.

L’École Nationale d'Osiériculture et de Vannerie

L’École Nationale d'Osiériculture et de Vannerie forme chaque année plus de 300 personnes. Elles produiront d’authentiques chef-d’œuvres décoratifs ou utilitaires, utilisés dans la construction, l’habillement, la décoration, le transport et la conservation de la nourriture.

La Maison de la Vannerie

À la Maison de la Vannerie , découvrez le savoir-faire, la culture et l’histoire de la vannerie à Fayl-Billot à travers une collection de 200 articles et créations novatrices émanant de l'École de Vannerie.  De la récolte jusqu’au tressage, des artisans passionnés vous initient à cet art ancestral qui rythme la vie économique de la région. Vous pourrez participer à des ateliers de quelques heures et repartir avec votre création.

Lieu de transmission, l'École Nationale d'Osiériculture et de Vannerie propose quant à elle des formations courtes ou longues, qualifiantes ou diplômantes. Architecture végétale, cannage de sièges, osiériculture…

• Suivez le guide ! Lors des visites apéros , des visites thématiques ou en liberté avec l'application Idvizit .

Made in Pays de Langres

Aujourd’hui, une trentaine de professionnels, vanniers et producteurs d’osier , vivent de la vannerie sur la région de Fayl-Billot . Chaque vannier possède son identité. N’hésitez pas à pousser les portes de leur boutique en centre-ville.  Née de la réunion d’un collectif de 13 vanniers, Crocane présente des créations traditionnelles (paniers) et contemporaines (sacs à main, objets design, vannerie vivante…). Sur demande, la pièce peut être fabriquée sur mesure. Vous pourrez découvrir la fabrication des produits lors de démonstrations et échanger sur son métier avec le vannier présent.

Découvrir nos artisans vanniers

• À la Saint-Antoine , patron des vanniers, une fête est organisée à tour de rôle dans les communes de Fayl-Billot, Bussières-lès-Belmont et Grenant le samedi le plus proche du 17 janvier. L’église est parée d’articles de vannerie et la "Confrérie des Façonneurs du Noble Osier" défile dans les rues. Réchauffez-vous autour du traditionnel vin chaud.
• Le troisième week-end de mai , c’est au festi’VAN que les acteurs du secteur exposent leur savoir-faire. Ateliers de vannerie, animations en tout genre, exposants vanniers… La journée se clôture par un concert suivi d'un feu d'artifice

A vos agendas !

Découvrez la carte du territoire

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La coutellerie de Nogent, un métier de pointe

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• Tour Saint-Ferjeux
• Que faire en France
• Que faire en Champagne Ardenne
• Que faire à Langres

1 expérience sur Tour Saint-Ferjeux

La ville de langres (située dans le ....

La ville de Langres (située dans le département de la Haute-Marne) est classée parmi les plus détours de France, en effet elle est connu pour ses fortifications qui l’entoure. La ville compte de nombreuses tours dont la grande tour Saint-Ferjeux. Celle-ci est très belle à regarder et est d’ailleurs classée parmi les monuments historiques. Sa construction remonte au règne de Louis 14,vers l’année 1470 et son rôle consistait de protéger la ville. Depuis 1989,un sculpture assez contemporaine crée par un artiste Néerlandais a été installé sur sa terrasse.

listes et lieux en rapport avec Tour Saint-Ferjeux

Information tour saint-ferjeux.

En ce Moment à Langres

TOUR SAINT FERJEUX, Et Office de Tourisme du Pays de Langres Square Olivier Lahalle rue Denfert-Rochereau, Langres. Une oeuvre par département : la Terre dans la Marne, l'Eau dans l'Aube, le Feu dans les Ardennes et l'Air en Haute-Marne.

Trouver une idée de sortie ou une visite dans une autre ville :

Tour saint ferjeux.

Construite vers 1469, c'est la première des « tours royales » de Langres, utilisant des dispositions architecturales et un parti défensif encore inconnus jusqu'alors dans la région. Spécialement adaptée à l'artillerie, elle est constituée de 2 salles voûtées abritant 8 casemates et d'une terrasse qui accueille depuis 1989 une oeuvre d'art contemporaine. Cette sculpture est un hommage au philosophe champenois Gaston Bachelard. Elle représente L'Air et les Songes et a été réalisée en 1988, par un artiste néerlandais, Eugène van Lamsweerde. Elle fait partie d'un ensemble de 4 oeuvres représentant les 4 éléments, commandées par la région Champagne-Ardenne à l'occasion du Centenaire de la naissance de Gaston Bachelard. Une oeuvre par département : la Terre dans la Marne, l'Eau dans l'Aube, le Feu dans les Ardennes et l'Air en Haute-Marne.

Ces informations ont été mises à jour le 13/02/2024

TOUR SAINT FERJEUX, coordonnées :

• Adresse : Et Office de Tourisme du Pays de Langres Square Olivier Lahalle rue Denfert-Rochereau
• Code Postal : 52200
• Commune : Langres

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Spectacles à Voir en ce Moment Autour de Langres.

La liste des spectacles actuellement proposés à Langres. Cirque, Show, Théâtre, Musique, il y en a pour tous les goûts et tous les âges.

Lieux Où Prendre l'air Autour de Langres

Notre sélection des plus beaux sites naturels à découvrir autour de Langres. Pour une balade, un pique-nique ou juste pour prendre l'air.

Nos Idées de Sorties et de Visites par Ville à Proximité de Langres :

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Tour Saint Ferjeux

Construite vers 1469, c’est la première des « tours royales » de Langres, utilisant des dispositions architecturales et un parti défensif encore inconnus jusqu’alors dans la région. Spécialement adaptée à l’artillerie, elle est constituée de 2 salles voûtées abritant 8 casemates et d’une terrasse qui accueille depuis 1989 une œuvre d’art contemporaine. Cette sculpture est un hommage au philosophe champenois Gaston Bachelard. Elle représente "L'Air et les Songes" et a été réalisée en 1988, par un artiste néerlandais, Eugène van Lamsweerde. Elle fait partie d'un ensemble de 4 œuvres représentant les 4 éléments, commandées par la région Champagne-Ardenne à l'occasion du Centenaire de la naissance de Gaston Bachelard. Une œuvre par département : la Terre dans la Marne, l'Eau dans l'Aube, le Feu dans les Ardennes et l'Air en Haute-Marne.

Populaire pour manger un bout

La Pataterie Langres Restaurant

Restaurant diderot, la frite du nord ( friterie chez mel ), brasserie le noisetier, l'auberge du lac, café du stade, logis hôtel les voiliers, quelques idées pour sortir cette semaine.

Rpl 2024 - Conference D’ouverture

Autour Des Rencontres Philosophiques De Langres

Club lecture.

Rpl 2024 - Premier Cri

Rpl 2024 - Le Plaisir De Faire

Journées Européennes Du Patrimoine A Chalindrey - Exposition "du Bombardement À La Libération"

Rpl 2024 - Table Ronde : Creer L'information A L'heure Des Fake News : Une Gageure

13e Rassemblement De Véhicules Anciens

Rpl 2024 - Pourquoi Un Arbre Est Une Poule ?

En mode stéphane bern 🏛️.

Le jardin de Silière

Cathedrale Saint-mammes

Les Remparts De Langres

Tour D'orval

Tour De Navarre

Musee D'art Et D'histoire De Langres

Hopital De La Charite

Fontaine De La Grenouille

Eglise Des Saints-jumeaux De Saints-geosmes

Découvre les expériences à proximité de "tour saint ferjeux", tour saint-ferjeux, tour rouge et porte des auges, mur de soutenement gallo-romain, ancien seminaire, ancienne eglise saint-amatre, ancienne chapelle des oratoriens, petit eveche, la villa vauban.

Festival "lumieres En Musiques" : Entre Rires Et Pleurs, Musique A L’aube Des Lumieres – Le Concert Des Planetes

Rpl 2024 - C'est Pas Cousu D'avance

Festival "lumieres En Musiques" : Apero Baroque

Festival "lumieres En Musiques" : Master Class

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Site et monument historique

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• Appeler le numéro : 0325876767

Cette tour est à la jonction entre l'enceinte urbaine et celle du faubourg de Sous-Murs. Construite – ou largement remaniée – durant la décennie 1470, elle protégeait la porte Henri-IV, qui assure la communication entre la ville et le faubourg. Contrairement à la tour Saint-Ferjeux contemporaine, sa conception ne semble pas avoir bénéficié d'apports techniques extérieurs à Langres. Ainsi, ses ouvertures de feu ont été maladroitement exécutées et son rayon d'action était limité. A l'origine, une toiture recouverte de pierres plates – des laves – protégeait sa terrasse. Pour la petite histoire : Ces ouvrages étaient originellement pourvus d'une iconographie soignée et clairement référentielle : armes du roi, de la ville, de l'évêque ou du gouverneur de la province. La tour Virot ne faisait pas exception : en novembre 1481, 193 feuilles d'or, une demi-once (environ 15 grammes) de poudre d'azur fin sont achetées pour décorer les écussons du roi et de la ville ainsi que les deux bannières placés sur cet ouvrage. Ces fournitures spécifiques sont demandées à Jehan Thibault, « prètre chappellin en l'église de Langres » qui exécuta lui-même ces travaux de décoration. Hormis quelques ouvrages importants (tour de Navarre, tour Saint-Ferjeux), et en l'absence de dénomination officielle, la plupart des tours avaient plusieurs noms. L'actuelle tour Virot s'est ainsi appelée : tour neuve de Sous-Murs, tour de Baudricourt en de Tour de la Dizaine.

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Date et horaires

Du 01/01/24 au 31/12/24.

Extérieur en accès libre toute l'année.

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Tour Saint Ferjeux - La France des Châteaux forts

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• Point of interest
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• champagne-ardenne
• haute-marne

TOUR SAINT FERJEUX

Description

Built in 1469, this is the first of Langres’ "royal towers", and it uses architectural designs and a defensive section that had not been seen in the region until then. Specially adapted for artillery, it consists of two vaulted rooms, eight casemates and a terrace, which since 1989 has housed a work of contemporary art.

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Altimetric profile, data author.

Ratings and reviews

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Saint-Ferjeux, la première des tours d’artillerie

22 janvier 2023 icons8-update_left_rotation 21 janvier 2023 à 21h37

Les Murs ont la parole. Ce dimanche, empruntons le rempart avec vue sur la vallée de la Marne pour rejoindre la première tour d’artillerie bâtie à Langres. Cap sur la Tour Saint Ferjeux !

Nous voici sur le chemin de ronde qui ceinture la vielle ville, avec au loin, l’étendue bleutée du Lac de la Liez. En suivant le rempart du regard, on l’aperçoit : belle et ronde, avec à son sommet une drôle d’œuvre d’art… La Tour Saint-Ferjeux fut construite à la fin du XV e siècle et porte le nom d’un prieuré démoli au XVIIe siècle qui se trouvait sur l’actuelle place Saint-Ferjeux. Installée à l’angle sud-est des remparts, elle dominait les anciennes frontières Est du royaume, en direction des Vosges et du Jura. Pendant des siècles, ces panoramas ont été synonymes de menace. Durant le XVe siècle, plusieurs innovations rendent l’artillerie à feu plus redoutable face aux fortifications. 

Afin de mieux résister aux sièges, le pouvoir royal dote les villes frontières d’ouvrages défensifs spécialement adaptés. Les murs de cette tour ont ainsi jusqu’à 5 m d’épaisseur afin d’augmenter leur solidité face aux boulets. La terrasse accueillait autrefois des canons de gros calibre. Depuis les ouvertures percées dans le parapet, les défenseurs pouvaient contrôler le plateau sur une distance de 400 à 600 m. Depuis 1988, elle accueille une œuvre d’art en acier poli réalisée par le Néerlandais Eugène Van Lamsweerde. Intitulée « L’air et les songes », elle illustre l’œuvre de Gaston Bachelard, philosophe contemporain et fait partie d’un ensemble de quatre œuvres sur les différents éléments traités dans les livres de cet auteur.

De notre correspondante Angélique Roze

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TOUR SAINT-FERJEUX Langres Sortie Culturelle

TOUR SAINT-FERJEUX à Langres. Cette tour porte le nom d'un prieuré situé sur l'actuelle place Saint-Ferjeux et démoli. Consultez les Horaires

TOUR SAINT-FERJEUX à Langres, Localisation et Coordonnées de cette Idée de Sortie Culturelle

• Tourisme et Visite, Idées d'Activités et de Sorties

TOUR SAINT-FERJEUX

• Suggérer une modification pour cette page

5bis Rue Denfert Rochereau, adresse non vérifiée Langres

Elle a remplacé une première tour édifiée au milieu du XIVe siècle, carrée et aux dimensions modestes, elle se révéla inadaptée aux progrès grandissants de l'artillerie. A la fin du XVe siècle, cet ouvrage fut arasé afin de laisser place à une nouvelle tour d'artillerie cylindrique. Première de ce type à avoir été construite à Langres, son parti est radicalement différent. Les murs sont très épais (jusqu'à six mètres), les deux salles voûtées sont équipées de huit casemates de tir et la terrasse sommitale accueillait des canons de gros calibre destinés à protéger le flanc sud des fortifications. Cette tour fut restaurée en 1844 par le Génie militaire qui reconstruisit le parapet et modifia le parement en remplaçant les bossages défectueux. Depuis 1989, la terrasse accueille une oeuvre du sculpteur néerlandais Eugène Van Lamsweerde, intitulée « L'air et les songes », en hommage au philosophe champenois Gaston Bachelard. Pour la petite histoire : En 1580, cette tour était équipée de 4 fauconneaux, 3 mousquets sur chevalets, 1 double fauconneau sur roue, 2 petites pièces de campagne sur affût et 1 mortier de cuivre. Le 29 juillet 1641, des soldats franc-comtois vinrent piller les faubourgs de Auges et des Franchises : on dut faire tirer les canons de Saint-Ferjeux pour les disperser. En 1856, le Génie construisit des murs de raccordement entre la citadelle et la ville. Une porte (la porte des Auges) fut construite et équipée d'un pont-levis (dispositif encore partiellement visible). Une dame (tourelle pleine placée sur le faîte d'un mur) interdisait le cheminement sur l'enceinte. A l'ouest de la tour Saint-Ferjeux se trouve la plus ancienne tour de Langres : la tour Rouge. Carrée et d'allure modeste, elle est maintenant rattachée à l'ancienne demi-lune « des Moulins ».Sa dénomination vient probablement de la couleur ocre de ses pierres. Elle date du milieu du XIVe siècle et comportait deux salles équipées d'embrasures (XVe siècle ?) encore partiellement visibles. L'AIR ET LES SONGES L'Air et les Songes est la troisième sculpture réalisée dans le cadre de la commande publique passée par I'Etat et la Région Champagne-Ardenne, en hommage au philosophe Gaston Bachelard. L'artiste Eugéne van Lamsweerde l'a située sur une des tours de Langres, la tour Saint-Ferjeux. C'est la seule sculpture de ce projet implantée sur un monument historique. Proposé par : ADT de la Haute Marne. Ces informations ont été mises à jour le : 04/06/2024.

Adresse pour TOUR SAINT-FERJEUX

5bis Rue Denfert Rochereau, adresse non vérifiée

52200 Langres

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• Published: 09 December 2023

Research on metaphor processing during the past five decades: a bibliometric analysis

• Zhibin Peng 1 &
• Omid Khatin-Zadeh 2 , 3  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  928 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Language and linguistics

Metaphor processing has been the subject of extensive research over the past five decades. A systematic review of metaphor processing publications through bibliometric tools can provide a clear overview of research on metaphor processing. In this study, we used the CiteSpace bibliometric tool to conduct a systematic review of publications related to metaphor processing. A total of 3271 works published and indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) were gathered. These works had been published between 1970 and 2022. We analyzed the co-citations of these works by CiteSpace to identify the most influential publications in metaphor processing research. A co-occurrence term analysis was done to identify dominant topics in this area of research. The results of this analysis showed that Language, comprehension, metaphor, figurative language , and context were the most frequent keywords. The most prominent clusters were students, figurative language, right hemisphere, embodied cognition, comprehension, N400 , and anger . Based on the results of this analysis, we suggest that task properties such as response format and linguistic features should be carefully taken into account in future studies on metaphor processing.

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Introduction.

How people understand and produce metaphors has long aroused the interest of scholars from various disciplines such as philosophy, linguistics, and psychology. From the 1970s, scholars began to study the processing of metaphors through experiments. Throughout the past five decades, a large body of experimental and theoretical works on metaphor have been produced, and many journals have started to publish papers related to metaphor. During this period, many researchers in neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics published their works on metaphor. These works have fundamentally changed the ways that researchers have been studying metaphors. This is particularly the case with research on metaphor processing. According to a study conducted by Han et al. ( 2022 ), research on metaphor processing has been the most active area of research on metaphor.

Metaphor processing research is an interdisciplinary area of study on metaphor that involves linguistics, psychology, and neuroscience. A large number of works on metaphor processing have been published in recent years, including reviews directed at selected subtopics. For instance, Rai and Chakraverty ( 2020 ) provided a systematic review of computational models and approaches to metaphor comprehension. This systemic review presented a concise yet representative picture of computational metaphor processing. In a related work, Kertész, Rákosi, and Csatár ( 2012 ) presented a review that was focused on the data, problems, heuristics, and results in cognitive research on metaphor. Some works have presented comprehensive reviews of studies conducted on metaphor comprehension in non-typical populations. For example, Morsanyi et al. ( 2020 ) conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of metaphor processing in autism. Kalandadze et al. ( 2019 ) also presented a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies on metaphor comprehension in individuals suffering from autism. This review specifically focused on task properties. However, among these works, except for a review paper published by Holyoak and Stamenković ( 2018 ), no other publication has specifically focused on theories and evidence related to metaphor processing. Furthermore, the past review papers have been primarily based on subjective judgment rather than bibliometric tools. Therefore, a systematic review conducted by bibliometric tools can shed new light on our understanding of metaphor processing research. In the literature of the field, we found just two works on bibliometrics of conceptual metaphor research (Han et al., 2022 ; Zhao et al., 2023 ). These two works have presented bibliometric assessments of published works on conceptual metaphor theory. However, they are only about conceptual metaphors in general. To fill this gap in the literature of the field, we used CiteSpace to present a systematic review of studies on metaphor processing.

CiteSpace is a bibliometric analysis tool that can provide an exhaustive account of research in any area over a certain period of time. In this way, it can suggest some directions for future research. Compared to those reviews relying on subjective judgment, a review conducted by CiteSpace can help us navigate through the key documents, research fields, and dominant topics in metaphor processing. Importantly, the results of such analysis can be presented in the form of easily understandable diagrams. We intended to identify the most productive and influential journals, authors, and institutions in the field of metaphor processing. Also, we intended to identify the most influential documents, active research areas, and dominant topics in metaphor processing research. Specifically, by analyzing the co-occurrence of keywords associated with metaphor processing, we aimed to depict a cluster picture of related keywords and dominant topics in this area of research. In this way, we intended to answer the following research questions:

Q1: What are the active research areas and dominant topics in metaphor processing research?

Q2: Is it possible to use a cluster picture of related keywords and research topics to identify research features that play a critical role in studies on metaphor processing?

We hypothesized that a cluster picture of related keywords and research topics in metaphor processing can be used to identify critical research properties that can be taken into account in future studies on metaphor processing.

Methodology

Data collection.

As the study was focused on metaphor processing, we collected and analyzed the published documents by conducting an advanced search in the Web of Science (WoS), Thomson Reuters Core Collection. This search incorporated Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A and HCI), Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), and Conference Proceedings Citation Index-Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH). We chose WoS as the data source for two reasons. Firstly, WoS has established an independent and comprehensive editing process to ensure the excellent quality of the journals and has formed an unparalleled data structure based on more than 50 years of consistent, accurate, and complete indexing. The indexed journals in the Web of Science Core Collection have been carefully selected. Therefore, the articles indexed in WoS are of high quality. Secondly, WoS is CiteSpace’s primary data source. CiteSpace has been designed to work with WoS data. Datasets from other sources have to be transformed before they can be visualized in CiteSpace.

The following fields were used to retrieve the data:

TS = (metaphor*) AND (process* OR comprehen*)), which means that only articles with both “metaphor” and “process” or comprehen(sion) in the title or abstract, or keywords are retrieved.

Time span=1970–2022

Document Type=article OR review

(“*”is a wildcard in WoS that represents any group of characters, including no character. For example, metaphor*=metaphor, metaphors, and metaphorical, etc. In addition, the review articles in this research do not contain book reviews.)

Totally, 8358 papers were collected from 123 WoS categories, including experimental psychology, neurosciences, business, linguistics, management, music, nursing, and law. In our study, we specifically focused on metaphor-processing research in the fields of linguistics, psychology, and neurosciences. Therefore, we chose the WoS categories related to linguistics, psychology, neurosciences, literature, communication, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, religion, history, and law (i.e. “Linguistics” or “Language Linguistics” or “Psychology Experimental” or “Education Educational Research” or “Neurosciences” or “Psychology Multidisciplinary” or “Psychology Clinical” or “Psychology” or “Psychology Psychoanalysis” or “Psychology Educational” or “Psychology Applied” or “Psychology Social” or “Psychology Developmental” or “literature” or “communication” or “sociology” or “philosophy” or “anthropology” or “religion” or “history” and “law”). After excluding those works that were unrelated to metaphor processing, 3271 publications remained for further analysis.

Descriptive analysis

Before visualization by CiteSpace, we conducted a descriptive analysis of yearly publication trends. Our aim was to identify the most productive journals, authors, and institutions. These descriptive analyses were directly done on the data obtained from the WoS website. The number of works published each year has been given on the WoS website. We used SPSS software to obtain the annual trend of publications (see Fig. 1 ). The numbers of publications for each journal, author, and institution have also been given on the WoS website. We selected the top ten for analysis.

The diagram reveals the publication number for each year and the general trend.

CiteSpace analysis

The descriptive analysis of WoS provides only a basic overview of the research field. It cannot provide an exhaustive account of the research projects over previous decades and directions for future research. Previous reviews without bibliometric tools mainly relied on prior knowledge and subjective judgment. To address this problem, we used CiteSpace to examine the structures of the knowledge of metaphor processing that have been developed over the past years.

In this study, we used CiteSpace, a bibliometric analysis program developed by Chen ( 2004 , 2006 , 2017 ; also see Chen et al., 2010 ; Chen and Song, 2019 ). Bibliometric analysis offers an objective and quantitative method for examining published works in a certain area of research (Mou et al., 2019 , p. 221; Chen, 2020 ). CiteSpace is a Java application for analyzing co-citations and presenting them in the form of visual co-citation networks (Chen, 2004 ). CiteSpace is one of the most well-known bibliometric tools. It offers a variety of analyses, such as keyword analysis and reference analysis, to help academics identify current and upcoming research trends in a field (Mou et al., 2019 ). The bibliographic data files we collected from WoS were in the field-tagged Institute for Scientific Information Export Format. The “full record and cited references” was selected as the content. In this way, CiteSpace could easily identify the files. Once the files were loaded into the CiteSpace, the following procedural operations were performed on them: time slicing, thresholding, modeling, pruning, merging, and mapping (Chen, 2004 ).

In this study, we conducted two separate visualizing analyses of the data. One was a document co-citation analysis, which helped us to identify the important documents in metaphor processing research. A co-cited reference was called a node, and when several nodes were strongly related to one another, they formed a cluster. The other was a keyword co-occurrence analysis. The purpose of this analysis was to identify the most-discussed areas in research on metaphor processing.

Publication years, journals, productive authors, and institutions on metaphor processing

In the Web of Science core collection, the first article about metaphor processing we obtained was published in 1971 by Laurette ( 1971 ). There was no publication on metaphor processing in the years 1972, 1973, and 1974. From 1995 to 2022, more than 50 works were done each year. The maximum number of annual publications belongs to 2021 with 198 published works. Figure 1 presents the annual publications on metaphor processing. Overall, the results show a steady increase in publications on metaphor processing. Therefore, it can clearly be seen that metaphor processing has caught the attention of more and more researchers worldwide.

The 3271 articles or reviews that were examined in this study were published in a number of journals. Table 1 lists the 10 journals that published the highest number of papers in this area of research. With 116 publications on metaphor processing, Metaphor and Symbol , the only SSCI-indexed journal publishing works on metaphor research, was in first place among journals in terms of the number of publications. Frontiers in Psychology and Journal of Pragmatics were in second and third places, with 98 and 71 publications, respectively. The majority of the top 10 journals, as seen in Table 1 , are in the fields of psychology or neuroscience. When considering a submission, metaphor-processing researchers might use Table 1 to select appropriate journals for their papers.

The 10 authors having the highest number of publications in metaphor processing are listed in Table 2 . The author with the most papers published on metaphor processing was Mashal (36), followed by Faust (28) and Gibbs (26).

Table 3 lists the 10 institutions having the highest number of published works in metaphor processing. The University of California is at the top of this list with 131 publications in total, followed by the University of London with 76 articles and Bar Ilan University with 64 articles (Table 3 ).

Document co-citation analysis

A fundamental measure used by academic communities to assess the impact of a publication is the frequency of citations. The value of a published work and its impact on the field is at least partly dependent on the number of works that have been cited. We can identify the important documents in a knowledge domain by analyzing document co-citations. CiteSpace is an efficient tool that can conduct such analysis.

We analyzed document co-citations of 3271 publications collected from the WoS. We used CiteSpace to visualize the 3271 bibliographic recordings from 1970 to 2022. The top 50 papers having the highest number of citations in each 3-year were chosen using a time slice of three years. In order to include all the references cited in those documents regardless of when they were published, we set the Look Back Years (LBY) parameter to −1. Cutting off long-range citation linkages had a positive impact on the clarity of the results; it could increase the clarity of the network structure because long-distance links frequently go hand in hand with a spaghetti-like network. The results are shown in Fig. 2 . The cited publications and co-citation relationships across the entire data set were represented by 1055 distinct nodes and 5928 linkages, respectively. The top 10 articles in the area of metaphor processing research are shown in Table 4 .

The diagram of document co-citations reveals the top 10 most cited articles among the 3271 publications collected from the WoS.

Totally, between 1970 and 2022, 39 documents were cited more than 50 times. The top three most-cited publications in the world’s publications related to metaphor processing are classic books about Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) in general, not about metaphor processing. The work that has received the most citations is “ Metaphors we Live by ” authored by Lakoff and Johnson ( 1980 ). This frequently cited book was a landmark that revolutionized research on metaphor processing. It contends that metaphor is a way of thinking, not just a rhetorical instrument. To put it simply, our conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical. In contrast to earlier works that looked at metaphor as a purely linguistic figure of speech, this book emphasizes the conceptual nature of metaphor. It defines metaphor as a conceptual process in which a source domain is mapped into a target domain. For example, the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR, in which “argument” is the target and “war” is the source, can be used to explain a statement like “I defended my argument.” Since its introduction in 1980, Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) has gained popularity across various disciplines. The second-most quoted work is also written by Lakoff and Johnson ( 1999 ). This book challenged the Western traditional philosophy by proposing Embodied Philosophy based on the premise that our actions and our languages are based on our bodily experiences. Embodied Philosophy contends that abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. Embodied Philosophy is thus considered as the philosophical basis of Cognitive Linguistics. The third most cited document is a monograph by Gibbs ( 1994 ). Gibbs illustrates that human cognition is inherently poetic and that figurative imagination is central to how we comprehend ourselves and our surroundings. It challenges the traditional understanding of the mind by demonstrating how figurative characteristics of language reflect the poetic structure of the mind. Psychology, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, and literary theory ideas and research are utilized to demonstrate fundamental ties between the poetic structure of the mind and daily language use. This monograph discusses methods and findings of psycholinguistic and cognitive psychology research to assess current philosophical, linguistic, and literary theories of figurative language. CMT aroused the interest of scholars from different disciplines such as linguistics, cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology. Scholars in neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics are particularly interested in the cognitive processing of metaphors.

The other publications in Table 4 are not about metaphor in general but about metaphor processing in particular. In an article entitled “An fMRI investigation of the neural correlates underlying the processing of novel metaphoric expressions”, Mashal et al. ( 2007 ) used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural networks involved in the processing of related pairs of words that formed literal, novel, and conventional metaphorical expressions. Four different kinds of linguistic expressions were read by the participants, who then determined the relation between the two words (metaphoric, literal, or unrelated). The results showed that the degree of meaning salience of a linguistic expression, rather than literality or nonliterality, modulated the degree of left hemisphere (LH) and right hemisphere (RH) processing of metaphors. This supported the Graded Salience Hypothesis (GSH, Giora, 1997 , 2003 ), which predicts a selective RH involvement in the processing of novel and nonsalient meanings. In this study, the salient interpretations were represented by conventional metaphors and literal expressions, whereas the nonsalient interpretations were represented by novel metaphorical expressions. Right posterior superior temporal sulcus, right inferior frontal gyrus, and left middle frontal gyrus showed considerably stronger activity when the novel metaphors were directly compared to the conventional metaphors. These findings back up the GSH and point to a unique function of the RH in the processing of novel metaphors. Additionally, verbal creativity may be selectively influenced by the right PSTS.

In order to look into the neural substrates underlying the processing of three different sentence types, Stringarisa et al. ( 2007 ) combined a novel cognitive paradigm with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (ER-fMRI). Participants were required to read sentences that were either metaphorical, literal, or meaningless before deciding whether or not they made sense. The results of this experiment showed that various types of sentences were processed by various neural mechanisms. Both meaningless and metaphorical sentences activated the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG), but not literal sentences. Furthermore, despite the lack of difference between reaction times of literal and metaphoric sentences, the left thalamus is activated only in deriving meaning from metaphoric utterances. The authors attribute this to metaphoric interpretation’s flexibility and ad hoc concept formation. Their findings do not support the idea that the right hemisphere is primarily involved in metaphor comprehension, in contrast to earlier studies.

The two publications mentioned above used new research methods, such as fMRI and ER-fMRI. Additional research methods, such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) by Pobric et al. ( 2008 ) and positron emission tomography (PET) by Bohrn et al. ( 2012 ), were also used in other highly cited papers.

Co-occurring terms analysis

Keywords of any paper present its theme and some kind of summary of the subject that is going to be discussed in it. The occurrence of two keywords in a piece of writing indicates that these words are closely related to one another in the content of the work. The prevailing view is that if two or more terms appear together more frequently, they are more closely related. Betweenness Centrality is one of the functions of CiteSpace that specifies the strength of the relation between two or more terms. This gives us the ability to predict the occurrence of a given term with other terms even in other related topics. If a keyword displays a high Betweenness Centrality value, the keyword may be very significant. In this study, the research areas and dominant topics can be determined utilizing keyword co-occurrence analysis.

We analyzed the keywords to identify the terms and phrases that had co-occurred in at least two separate publications. Highly-frequent terms can show hotspots in a specific field of research (Chen, 2004 ). In this study, we chose the slice length of 3 years, and we set the LBY to 5 years. The results showed language, comprehension, metaphor, figurative language and context were the top 5 key terms having the highest frequencies. The network of related keywords is shown in Fig. 3 , and the terms with a frequency of more than 40 are listed in Table 5 .

The keyword co-occurrence network diagram reveals the most popular keywords of metaphor processing research.

Cluster interpretations

We used CiteSpace to perform a cluster analysis on the basis of keyword co-occurrences. Totally, 528 nodes in the co-citation network with a 3-year time slice were obtained from the analysis. The seven greatest clusters in the research area of metaphor processing are displayed in Fig. 4 . Warmer colors represent more current research subjects, whereas cooler colors represent older research topics in the clusters.

The network diagram of the keyword co-occurrence cluster reveals the most significant clusters of metaphor processing research.

Table 6 shows the top 7 clusters of keywords in metaphor processing research. It is obtained by using index terms as labels for clusters. Also, the clusters were shown by log-likelihood ratio (LLR). The top 7 clusters are named students, figurative language, right hemisphere, embodied cognition, comprehension, N400 , and anger .

Cluster #0, as the largest cluster, is labeled as ‘students’. For native speakers, using and understanding metaphors is simple. However, understanding figurative statements might be challenging for non-native speakers. Littlemore et al. ( 2011 ) found that at a British university, second-language learners had trouble understanding 40% of metaphorical terms that were easily understood by native speakers. Results of another study showed that second-language learners tended to use metaphors incorrectly and in the wrong contexts (Kathpalia and Carmel, 2011 ). It may be challenging for second-language speakers to comprehend and generate metaphors since the metaphorical meaning of a term is developed in the social and cultural context of native speakers. Metaphorical expressions that are easily and automatically understandable for native speakers of a certain language may not be easily interpretable for second-language speakers of that language due to not having enough exposure to that language and culture (Kecskes, 2006 ). Therefore, one of the main concerns for second-language teachers is to enhance second-language learners’ ability in understanding metaphoric language and to use it efficiently in the cultural context of the second language. As a result, there is a lot of discussion in metaphor research about how to improve students’ ability in using metaphors. For instance, Hu et al. ( 2022 ) performed a randomized controlled trial to assess how metaphors affected the symptoms of anxiety in Chinese graduate students.

Cluster #1 is labeled as ‘figurative language’. This cluster shows that two key components of executive functions (working memory and inhibition) could play significant roles in figurative language processing. Since working memory holds information for a short period of time, it plays an active role in discourse comprehension. Therefore, this component of executive functions helps the individual use discourse clues and contextual information in the process of metaphor interpretation. Contextually relevant information and metaphorically relevant information are put together (Wilson and Sperber, 2012 ), enabling the individual to extract the intended metaphorical meaning from an expression. This is done by the active involvement of working memory. Also, the role of inhibition, as another component of executive functions, has been documented in many studies (e.g., Glucksberg et al., 2001 ). These two components can be in close interaction with one another in the process of metaphor comprehension.

Cluster #2 is labeled as ‘right hemisphere’ by LSI test (Chen et al., 2010 ). This cluster shows that functional magnetic resonance imaging has been a common technique in research on the role of the right hemisphere in metaphor processing. Over the past 20 years, researchers in the fields of neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics have intensively studied the role of hemispheres in metaphor processing. Some scholars have hypothesized that the right hemisphere (RH) may have a special role in the processing of metaphorical language. However, many behavioral studies (e.g., Bohrn et al., 2012 ; Faust and Mashal, 2007 ; Mashal et al., 2007 ; Mashal and Faust, 2008 ) have evidence suggesting that the processing of familiar or conventional metaphors requires more left-lateralized processing, compared to the processing of unfamiliar metaphors. Additionally, bilateral processing of traditional metaphors was also supported by the findings of several studies (e.g., Bambini et al., 2011 ; Diaz et al., 2011 ). These results lend credence to the Graded Salience Hypothesis (GSH), according to which semantic salience plays a key role in metaphor processing (Giora, 1997 , 2003 ). According to this hypothesis, conventional, frequent, recognizable, and prototypical meanings are simpler to process than less-prominent meanings. Therefore, the meaning of a conventional metaphor is more salient and more accessible than its literal counterpart. On the other hand, in a novel metaphor, the literal meaning is more evident and the figurative meaning is disclosed later with the support of contextual clues. The GSH claims that unlike novel metaphors, whose meanings are acquired through integration and inferential processes, conventional metaphors’ prominent meanings are stored in the mental lexicon. The GSH also predicts that the left hemisphere (LH) is more active in comprehending conventional and salient metaphorical meanings, while the right hemisphere (RH) is more active in comprehending innovative and non-salient metaphorical meanings (Giora, 2003 ).

Cluster #3 is labeled as ‘embodied cognition’. Theories of embodied cognition challenge the traditional theories of cognition that are based on amodal symbols. These theories offer new perspectives on human cognitive processes. These theories hold that simulation, situated action, and bodily states play a crucial role in cognitive processes. Cognitive linguistics gave rise to some of the first set of theories that supported grounded cognition. Theories of embodied language processing emphasized the role of body, situation, and simulation in language as opposed to the amodal theories of grammar that emerged in the Cognitive Revolution (e.g., Chomsky, 1957 ). The study of embodiment has caught the interest of researchers working in traditional cognitive science, who have started to incorporate the ideas of embodiment in their works. The role of embodiment in language processing was developed and promoted by George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Mark Turner, and Rafael Núñez based on advancements in the field of cognitive science (Lakoff, 1987 ; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980 ; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999 ; Lakoff and Turner, 1989 ; Lakoff and Núñez, 2000 ). In their studies, they have found evidence suggesting that people draw on their knowledge of everyday physical phenomena to comprehend concepts. According to theories of embodiment and embodied language processing, cognition and cognitive processes are based on the knowledge that comes from the body. There has been an increase in interest in studying the relationship between embodied cognition and language over the last four decades. According to theories of embodied cognition, when people understand words, their sensorimotor systems are engaged in simulating the concepts the words refer to (Jirak et al., 2010 ). Lakoff and Johnson’s ( 1980 , 1999 ) conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) is one of the most prominent theories of embodied cognition. This theory holds that situated and embodied knowledge serves as the metaphorical foundation for abstract concepts. Specifically, Lakoff and Johnson ( 1980 ) argued that abstract concepts are metaphorically understood in terms of concrete concepts with the support of sensorimotor systems. Many studies in various languages have demonstrated how individuals frequently use physical metaphors to discuss abstract concepts. Literature also uses a lot of these metaphors (e.g., Turner, 1996 ). A crucial question is whether these metaphors only reflect linguistic convention or whether they genuinely represent how we think (e.g., Murphy, 1997 ). There is mounting evidence that these metaphors are essential to our thought (e.g., Boroditsky and Ramscar, 2002 ; Gibbs, 2006 ).

Cluster #4 is labeled as ‘comprehension’. One of the keywords in this cluster is the term context . This supports the key role of context in the process of metaphor comprehension. Context of a conversation can provide some information that contributes to metaphor processing (e.g., Steen et al., 2010 ). It helps the individual disregard non-relevant literal meanings and keeps the metaphorically relevant information to derive the intended metaphorical meaning.

Cluster #5 is labeled as ‘N400’. The N400 is a part of time-locked EEG signals called event-related potentials (ERP). It is a negative-going deflection that normally peaks over centro-parietal electrode sites and occurs 400 ms after the stimulus begins, though it can also last between 250 and 500 ms. The N400 is a typical brain response to words and other meaningful (or potentially meaningful) stimuli, such as visual and auditory words, sign language signs, images, faces, environmental sounds, and odors (Kutas and Federmeier, 2000 , 2011 ). During the past 4 decades, ERP has been one of the techniques most frequently employed in cognitive neuroscience research to examine the physiological correlates of sensory, perceptual, and cognitive activities associated with information processing (Handy, 2005 ). ERP is also widely employed in metaphor processing studies, along with other imaging techniques such as fMRI, PET, and MEG.

Cluster #6 is labeled as ‘anger’. This cluster includes the key terms figurative language and eye tracking . This suggests that the metaphoric conceptualization of some emotional states and emotional terms such as anger can be reflected in eye movements. Interestingly, some works have suggested that this can happen not only for emotion-related concepts but also for other categories of abstract concepts that are metaphorically described in terms of movement (e.g., Singh and Mishra, 2010 ).

This clustering of keywords offers an organized and clear picture of key concepts that have been involved in various lines of research on metaphor processing. This clustering shows which lines of investigation have had a strong relationship with one another in research on metaphor processing. Therefore, the suggested clustering of keywords in metaphor comprehension offers a map for research on metaphor processing. This can be a guiding tool for researchers to have a clearer idea and organized map of how various lines of research on metaphor processing intersect with one another.

Discussion and implication for future studies

Over the past 50 years, metaphor processing has been a widely discussed topic among scholars in various disciplines, particularly researchers in neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics. Through the aforementioned document co-citation analysis, co-occurring word analysis, and cluster visualization which were done by CiteSpace, this study showed that research on metaphor processing has mainly focused on hemispheric processing of metaphors, metaphor comprehension, the embodied cognition basis of metaphor processing, behavioral-experiments study, ERP method and other techniques (fMRI, PET, and MEG, etc.), and the comparision of metaphor processing of adults with children.

Results of this study showed that research projects on metaphor processing are mainly conducted by experiments, including behavioral experiments, ERPs, and other imaging techniques such as fMRI, PET, and MEG. However, there is some conflicting evidence in the research findings. For instance, many studies have shown no statistically significant difference between ASD and TD groups in the understanding of metaphors and figurative language (Hermann et al., 2013 ; Kasirer and Mashal, 2014 ; Mashal and Kasirer, 2011 ; Norbury, 2005 ). These results suggest that factors other than disease-specific traits may account for the differences in results between studies. In the past, it has been discovered that group matching strategy and general language proficiency can account for part of the between-study variability in figurative language comprehension (Kalandadze, et al., 2018 ). However, further pertinent variables need to be examined in order to fully explain the observed variabilities. One reason for these different results may be due to the different theories the researchers adhere to. Another reason for mixed results may be due to the task properties of those experiments.

As for the theories on metaphor processing, there are two models that are widely used to study the processing of metaphors, namely, the Direct Access View (Gibbs, 1984 , 1994 ; Gibbs and Gerrig, 1989 ) and the Graded Salience Hypothesis (Giora, 1997 , 2003 ). According to the Direct Access View, in metaphor processing, the non-literal meaning of the metaphor can be directly processed, without inferring and discarding the literal meaning in an initial stage. Based on the Direct Access View, the Parallel Hypothesis was proposed, which holds that understanding figurative language is not different from that of literal language. Therefore, it is not necessary to assume any special cognitive mechanisms to process figurative language such as metaphors (Glucksberg et al., 1982 ). However, the Parallel Hypothesis can only hold if the literal and figurative meanings are fully understood. When the literal and figurative meanings are inconsistent, the coexistence of literal and figurative meanings cannot be explained by the Parallel Hypothesis. This does not mean that the literal meaning is abandoned before it is processed. Rather, the context facilitates the understanding of the inconsistent literal meanings. Therefore, the Direct Access View also supports the Context-dependent Hypothesis, which holds that we have a direct understanding of the figurative meanings with the help of sufficient contextual information.

Another theory on metaphor processing that is widely used to support metaphor research findings is the GSH (Giora, 1997 , 2003 ). As mentioned, the GSH holds that metaphor processing is influenced by the degree of semantic prominence. That is, conventional, frequent, recognizable, and prototypical meanings are easier to assimilate than less-salient meanings. One prediction of GSH is that the right hemisphere (RH) is more active in perceiving creative and non-salient metaphorical meanings, while the left hemisphere (LH) is more active in comprehending conventional and salient metaphorical meanings (Giora, 2003 ).

While the Direct Access View holds that metaphorical meaning is directly accessible, the Graded Salience Hypothesis assumes that metaphorical meaning is activated after the activation of the salient literal meaning. Depending on which theoretical framework is taken for certain research, different and conflicting results may be obtained. However, it should be noted that metaphor processing is a complex phenomenon and a large number of factors may be involved in it. Therefore, a single theory may not be able to describe all aspects of metaphor processing for all types of metaphors. The Direct Access View can describe the processing of highly conventional metaphors and idiomatic expressions. In daily conversations, people can easily produce and understand conventional metaphors and idiomatic expressions automatically. But, in some cases, this theory fails to describe the processing of novel metaphors. On the other hand, the Graded Salience Hypothesis may provide a better picture of how novel metaphors are processed. Therefore, in order to explain the discrepancies in research findings, we may need to take broader frameworks. When a single theoretical framework cannot explain discrepancies, two complementary frameworks can be taken and combined to explain and reconcile the conflicting results. Furthermore, a given theoretical framework may be more applicable to certain groups of people. For example, the GSH may be more applicable to ASD than the AD group, while the Direct Access View may be more applicable to TD than the ASD group. In other words, types of metaphors (e.g., conventional vs. novel metaphor), features of comprehenders (ASD vs. TD group), and possibly many other factors determine which theory of metaphor processing is most applicable. Putting various theoretical frameworks together and trying to make broader theoretical frameworks is a potential solution for responding to some questions that have not been answered yet.

Another reason for the differences in results between studies on metaphor processing may be the task properties of those experiments. There is a consensus in the literature of behavioral and neuroimaging studies that factors such as clinical populations, task characteristics, response format (i.e., multiple-choice vs. verbal explanation task), and lack of linguistic context can affect participants’ capacity to interpret metaphors (Pouscoulous, 2011 , 2014 , Rossetti et al., 2018 ). For instance, when assessed with an act-out rather than a verbal explanation task, children with TD demonstrate earlier proficiency in metaphor understanding. This may be because verbal and other types of tasks place different demands on a child’s linguistic and cognitive abilities (Pouscoulous, 2011 ). A similar explanation for how people with ASD perform metaphor tasks is based on response format. For instance, people with ASD may grasp metaphors similarly to people with TD, but they may have more trouble conveying them orally because of problems with expressive language (Kwok et al., 2015 ). Other aspects of the metaphors may also play a role, such as the amount and type of contextual information that is available to interpret the expression, or the degree of familiarity with the expression (Pouscoulous, 2011 , 2014 ). By combining the preceding studies utilizing the techniques of systematic review and a meta-analysis, Kalandadze et al. ( 2019 ) collated the knowledge that is currently available concerning task properties. Their aim was to find out how task properties affect metaphor comprehension ability in people with ASD compared to people with TD. They discovered that previous studies had used various kinds of materials and tasks that were either created by the researchers who designed the studies or were adapted from earlier research. The possible impact of the task properties was rarely taken into account in the previous studies, despite the fact that the task properties varied widely. Degree of individual’s familiarity with the metaphor (conventionality/novelty), degree of complexity of syntactic structure, linguistic and non-linguistic context (physical context) of the metaphoric expression, modality of stimulus (e.g., audio, visual), response format (verbal or non-verbal), and timing of the task are important task properties that can affect results of studies and their interpretations. Therefore, in order to obtain more accurate results, these factors need to be taken into account.

Implication for future studies

Based on the discussion in the section “Discussion”, we suggest that two issues deserve more consideration in future studies on metaphor processing. The first one is the theories that are employed to support the findings of metaphor processing studies. As different theories on metaphor processing may generate different conclusions, it is suggested that researchers discuss the results from different theoretical perspectives, rather than a single theory.

The second issue that merits more consideration is task properties. Task properties are important but have been neglected. The existing research on metaphor processing has paid little attention to the relevance of task properties in performance on metaphor comprehension tasks. Therefore, we contend that task properties including response format and linguistic features (i.e., metaphor familiarity, the syntactic structure of the metaphor, linguistic context, and stimulus modality) should be carefully considered in future investigations on metaphor processing. The systematic review and meta-analysis by Kalandadze et al. ( 2019 ) revealed that some task properties, including metaphor familiarity, are more frequently taken into account than others when determining the impact of a task. The least studied property in previous research is syntactic structure. Also, research on metaphor processing has not done a good job to examine the influence of contextual information on different groups of people. In future metaphor processing studies, these task properties merit additional consideration. When creating and reporting task properties in metaphor studies, researchers need to be extremely careful.

It should be noted that metaphor processing is a complex and multidimensional process. Therefore, in order to obtain a clear picture of various aspects of metaphor processing, researchers of various fields need to collaborate in interdisciplinary research projects. Neuroimaging data collected by neurolinguistics experts, behavioral data collected by researchers in psycholinguistics and cognitive science, and even corpus-based data can be combined to offer a broader picture of metaphor processing. Various types of evidence can complement each other and fill the gaps. This is a crucial point that should be considered in future research on metaphor processing.

As noted by Han et al. ( 2022 ), metaphor processing has been the most studied research area in metaphor research. Since the 1970s, how metaphors are processed in the brain has been extensively investigated by scholars in linguistics, neurolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. However, up to now, bibliometric tools like CiteSpace have not been used to systematically review literature on metaphor processing. In our study, a total of 3271 bibliometric recordings were collected from the Web of Science Core Collection. These documents had been published between 1970 and 2022. The descriptive analysis revealed a yearly increase in the number of publications, indicating that metaphor processing has caught the interest of academics from a variety of disciplines. Metaphor and Symbol , the sole SSCI-indexed journal devoted to metaphor research, took the first position among journals in terms of publishing yield with 116 publications on metaphor processing. Mashal, Faust, and Gibbs are the three most prolific authors in terms of publications on metaphor processing.

These bibliometric analyses through the CiteSpace software showed that language, comprehension, metaphor, figurative language , and context were the five most frequent keywords. Also, the most prominent clusters were students, figurative language, right hemisphere, embodied cognition, comprehension, N400 , and anger . These findings showed that research on metaphor processing has largely focused on the hemispheric processing of metaphors, metaphor comprehension, and embodiment in metaphor processing. Behavioral experiments, ERP and other techniques, such as fMRI, PET, and MEG were the common techniques in metaphor processing research. The current review through CiteSpace indicates that putting various theoretical frameworks together and trying to make broader theoretical frameworks is a potential solution for responding to some questions that have not been answered yet. This review also suggests that in future studies on metaphor processing, task properties such as response format and linguistic features should be carefully taken into account.

Although the current study aimed to be comprehensive within its defined scope, it was subject to some inevitable limitations. Firstly, being limited to WoS documents was one of the limitations of this study. Other databases such as Scopus, Google Scholar, Index Medicus, and Microsoft Academic Search were not included in this study. Secondly, publishers’ labeling of document types was not always correct. Some articles presented as reviews by WoS, for example, were not review papers at all (Yeung, 2021 ). Thirdly, we used only one scientometric instrument. Fourthly, while several prospective papers have recently been published, these studies were not acknowledged. Furthermore, because of obliteration, the citation count for some earlier published works was low.

Nonetheless, this study comprises a ground-breaking bibliometric assessment of global research on metaphor processing and provides a clear overview of global publications related to metaphor processing. Hence, it can be a helpful source for researchers interested in metaphor and metaphor processing. The results of this review have both theoretical and practical implications for the study of metaphor processing and metaphor in general.

Data availability

All data analyzed during this study can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/JFRP5W .

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The authors extend their appreciation to the Humanities and Social Science Research Projects of the Chinese Ministry of Education [Grant Number: 19YJA740044].

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Peng, Z., Khatin-Zadeh, O. Research on metaphor processing during the past five decades: a bibliometric analysis. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10 , 928 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02465-5

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Metaphor Analysis

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This chapter describes the metaphor analysis approach. Metaphorical language, as a form of interpretation of meaning, entails the use of figures of speech, like metaphors, analogy, simile, or synecdoche, to make implicit comparisons where a word or phrase that is ordinarily used in one domain is applied in another domain. By analyzing metaphorical language, researchers can search for metaphors in a variety of texts and derive meaning from them. This chapter outlines the brief history, purpose, and components of metaphor analysis, provides an outline of its process, strengths and limitations, and application, and offers further readings, resources, and suggestions for student engagement activities.

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The Analysis of Metaphor: To What Extent Can the Theory of Lexical Priming Help Our Understanding of Metaphor Usage and Comprehension?

Understanding metaphorical understanding (literally)

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Additional Reading

Armstrong, S. L., Davis, H. S., & Paulson, E. J. (2011). The subjectivity problem: Improving triangulation approaches in metaphor analysis studies. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 10 (2), 151–163.

Cameron, L., & Maslen, R. (2010). Metaphor analysis: Research practice in applied linguistics, social sciences and the humanities. Equinox.

Fábián, G. (2013). The application of improved metaphor analysis in education research. Procedia — Social and Behavioral Sciences, 93 (2013), 1025–1029. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.09.323

Jensen, D. (2006). Metaphors as a bridge to understanding educational and social contexts. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 5 (1), 36–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690600500104

Kimmel, M. (2012). Optimizing the analysis of metaphor in discourse: How to make the most of qualitative software and find a good research design. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 10 (1), 1–48. https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.10.1.01kim

Miller, S. I., & Fredericks, M. (1988). Uses of metaphor: A qualitative case study. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 1 (3), 263–272. https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839900040104c

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Online Resources

The art of a metaphor—Jane Hirshfield (5 ½ minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0edKgL9EgM

Metaphors we live by: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (12 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYcQcwUfo8c&t=8s

Qualitative data analysis—Closet metaphor (14 ½ minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1wj_BbK5Ec

200 short and sweet metaphor examples https://literarydevices.net/a-huge-list-of-short-metaphor-examples/

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Kutsyuruba, B., Basch, J. (2023). Metaphor Analysis. In: Okoko, J.M., Tunison, S., Walker, K.D. (eds) Varieties of Qualitative Research Methods. Springer Texts in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04394-9_50

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Metaphors in qualitative research: shedding light or casting shadows?

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• 1 University of Kansas School of Nursing, 3901 Rainbow Blvd., Kansas City, KS 66160, USA.
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• DOI: 10.1002/nur.20253

The use of metaphors in qualitative research provides an opportunity to examine phenomena from a unique and creative perspective. Metaphors can be used to provide structure to the data; to understand a familiar process in a new light; to identify situation-specific interventions; and to evoke emotion. Misuse of metaphors may detract from the intended research message. Mixing metaphors, failing to follow through with metaphors, and using metaphors that do not fit the data can misrepresent the data. The choice to use metaphors should not become a self-serving attempt at creativity that supersedes subject and substance. At their best, metaphors illuminate the meanings of experiences; at their worst, metaphors distort or obscure the essences of them.

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Metaphor Studies: Theories, Methods, Approaches, and Future Perspectives

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Metaphor has been studied as a linguistic, conceptual, and communicative phenomenon in a wide range of disciplines, including linguistics, literary studies, philosophy, education, political science, media studies, communication science, psychology, and neurosciences. While the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor has ...

Keywords : Metaphor, figurative language, metaphorical thought, abstract conceptualization, embodied metaphors, metaphor in discourse, metaphor variation

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Global bibliometric analysis of conceptual metaphor research over the recent two decades

1 School of Foreign Languages, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, China

Xincheng Zhao

2 Center for Applied English Studies, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

Associated Data

The original contributions presented in this study are included in this article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Conceptual Metaphor has been a prevalent theme in the linguistic field for the recent twenty years. Numerous scholars worldwide have shown interest in it and published many academic papers from various stances on this topic. However, so far, there have been few rigorous scientific mapping investigations. With the help of bibliometric analysis tool, we selected 1,257 articles on Conceptual Metaphors published from 2002 to 2022, as collected in the Web of Sciences Core Collection database, from unique cognitive perspectives. The global annual scientific output of Conceptual Metaphor, including the cited articles, sources, keywords, and research trends, will be examined in this study. The most notable findings of this study are the following. First, there has been an upward trend in Conceptual Metaphor research over the last two decades. Second, the five most prominent research groups on Conceptual Metaphors are in Spain, the United States of America, China, Great Britain, and Russia. Third, future research on Conceptual Metaphors may focus on corpus linguistics, neurolinguistics, psychology, and critical discourse analysis. The interdisciplinary study may enhance the growth of Conceptual Metaphors.

Introduction

There is an enormous amount of literature in numerous research areas in the times of big data (e.g., Faust et al., 2018 ; Alnajem et al., 2021 ; Bashir et al., 2021 ; Abdul et al., 2022 ). Much research, however, is dispersed and difficult to compile in an orderly and visible manner. Therefore, finding specific literature quickly and accurately relevant to the research issue has always been challenging. For example, since Lakoff and Johnson proposed conceptual metaphors (CM) ( Lakoff and Johnson, 1980 ), academic papers on the growth of CM have undoubtedly increased over the past decades, and they have helped to advance numerous facets of CM study. However, keeping up with everything published instantaneously becomes more problematic. In terms of CM research, there are increasing studies on linked subjects, and various reviews have been conducted (e.g., Allahmoradi, 2018 ; Holyoak and Stamenkovic, 2018 ; Bundgaard, 2019 ; Gandolfo, 2019 ; Tohidian and Rahimian, 2019 ; Kövecses, 2020 ; Bearman et al., 2021 ; Jensen et al., 2021 ; Abdul et al., 2022 ). However, these studies mainly focused on qualitative analysis. So far, little research has been done on a general picture of CM research. Therefore, this study uses Bibliometrix metrology software, a statistical package called R (Biblioshiny), to visually analyze academic articles on CM over the recent two decades. The prevalent topics in different areas on the present research status, research themes, and future research directions in CM will provide references for scholars to research CM and predict its future direction.

This study is a valuable resource for academics and researchers working in the CM field. Beginners interested in CM can be offered the information required to start their research. Experienced CM researchers can familiarize themselves with the advances in the field and promote collaboration and networking between institutions and authors.

CM research (2002–2022): A bibliometric analysis

Bibliometric tool.

Bibliometrics is an open-source tool for quantitative research in scientometrics 1 . It is a unique tool using the R programming language for statistical computation and graphics following a logical bibliometric process. The bibliometric tool is controlled by Bibliometrix and its web-based graphical interface based on Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, and Dimensions data ( Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ). The interface is spontaneous and well-systematized, and the main menu is separated consistently with the Science Mapping Analysis system. The set menu performs analysis from eight categories: data sets, sources, authors, documents, clustering, intellectual structures, conceptual structures, and social structures in Biblioshiny. Several document formats can be transmitted, maps can be transferred to Html or Pajek, and tables can be saved as pdf, excel, or printed. The R bibliometrics package was used to analyze data, which gives more objective and dependable assessments than other methods. By providing a structured analysis of a large body of knowledge, bibliometrics becomes helpful when there is an excellent volume of new information, conceptual developments, and data to process.

Today, the bibliometric tool is increasingly utilized in numerous fields. An amount of research has been conducted ( Ellegaard and Wallin, 2015 ; Donthu et al., 2021 ; Efron et al., 2021 ), including tsunami research ( Chiu and Ho, 2007 ; Jain et al., 2021 ), the circular economy ( Geissdoerfer et al., 2017 ; Bui et al., 2020 ; Luis and Celma, 2020 ; Alnajem et al., 2021 ), green supply chain management ( Fahimnia et al., 2015 ; Amirbagheri et al., 2019 ), deep learning for healthcare applications ( Faust et al., 2018 ; Saheb et al., 2021 ; Zhu et al., 2021 ), environmental hypothesis ( Sarkodie and Strezov, 2019 ; Bashir et al., 2021 ; Hashemi et al., 2022 ), and COVID-19 research ( Verma and Gustafsson, 2020 ; Yan et al., 2021 ). Waltman et al. (2010) assert that scholars frequently mix mapping and clustering techniques when analyzing bibliometric networks. They employ bibliographic data from publishing databases to build structural pictures of scientific domains ( Zupic and Čater, 2015 ). The growing number of papers using bibliometric analysis across all disciplines suggests that it meets the desire of researchers who want proper research based on a wealth of literature.

Attributable to its reliable and scalable statistics, the bibliometric tool has compelling features and is becoming increasingly important in research. In contrast to other methods, it can introduce a systematic, transparent, and repetitious review procedure based on statistical assessments of science, or scientific activity. It adapts when the focus on empirical inputs results in extensive, dispersed, and contentious research streams, making it a particularly effective tool for science mapping ( Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ). This tool allows us to infer CM research trends and various themes researched, identify shifts in the boundaries of disciplines, find the most prolific scholars and institutions, and provide the large picture of prevailing research. Popular and thorough bibliometric analysis allow us to sift through and make sense of massive amounts of scientific data ( Donthu et al., 2021 , p. 285). This study aided us in analyzing the nuances of the CM research field’s evolutionary process and sheds light on its developing regions.

Conceptual metaphor research

In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor (CM) refers to comprehending one thought or abstract concept in terms of another. Since 1980, theoretical clarification of CM has been the topic of extensive studies and lengthy introductions by many researchers (e.g., Lakoff, 1987 ; Lakoff and Turner, 1989 ). They showed great interest in CM research. According to Lakoff and Johnson, the mechanism of CM is as the following. “In a metaphor, there are two domains: the target domain and the source domain; in addition, metaphoric mapping is multiple. Two or more elements are mapped to two or more other elements. Image-schema structure is preserved in the mapping.” ( Lakoff and Johnson, 2003 , p. 266). They argue that metaphor is internally structured, and its meaning is derived from transferring specific characteristics from the original to the new field. As the surface manifestation of this mapping, the metaphorical expressions might be words, phrases, or whole sentences. The source domain is a somewhat tangible or, at the very least, strongly organized realm that often derives from our everyday experience. However, the target domain is where the metaphor is applicable and originates, a somewhat more abstract or unorganized field using unknown notions. Metaphor is the process of understanding one idea in a target domain via the other in a source domain. For instance, in the frequent metaphorical expression LOVE IS A JOURNEY ( Lakoff and Johnson, 2003 , p. 45), the target domain “LOVE” is abstract and difficult to construe. “JOURNEY” is the realm of the source. “LOVE” somewhat maps the “JOURNEY” structure in the following procedure: departure, on the way or lost way, and destination. As the conceptual metaphor is a mental construct, it is only meaningful when represented in more tangible elements. Therefore, this sentence consists of many metaphorical analogies that form a unified inner structure. “LOVE” and “JOURNEY” are strongly connected in this sense. The idea of “love as a journey” shapes the conceptualization of love itself. Even though “love” might be understood in ways other than a journey, we use this comparison to impact our understanding and attitude toward LOVE. This approach is how we may see, experience, participate in, and refer to LOVE IS A JOURNEY. Metaphor infuses our language, daily lives, and actions. Because the mind is experienced, our cognition is experiential. Remarkably, human cognition derives from our personal experience of the external world, shaping our perspective on the outer world.

Undeniably, the growth of academic papers on CM has contributed to the advancement of CM research. Numerous scholars have conducted a significant amount of research into CM from various perspectives, such as psycholinguistic metaphor research ( Murphy, 1996 ; Gibbs, 2013 ; Qiu et al., 2022 ); deliberate metaphors and embodied simulation research ( Gibbs, 2006 ; Cuccio and Steen, 2019 ; Cuccio et al., 2022 ); conceptual conflicts in metaphors and translation ( Prandi, 2017 ; Rizzato, 2021 , 2022 ); corpus-based metaphor research ( Sinclair, 1991 ; Charteris-Black, 2000 , 2004 ; Semino, 2002 ; Deignan and Potter, 2004 ; Allen, 2006 ; Fabiszak, 2007 ; Tissari, 2010 ; Shutova et al., 2013 ; Burgers and Ahrens, 2018 ; Zhao and Zhou, 2019 ; Zhao et al., 2019 , 2020 ; Silvestre-López, 2020 ; Bosman and Taljard, 2021 ; Kazemian and Hatamzadeh, 2022 ), critical metaphors in discourse analysis ( Charteris-Black, 2004 ; Ferrari, 2007 ; Musolff, 2012 ) and metaphors in classroom teaching ( Thomas and McRobbie, 2001 ; Andreou and Galantomos, 2008 ). There is also increasing research on various reviews of CM research (e.g., Allahmoradi, 2018 ; Holyoak and Stamenkovic, 2018 ; Bundgaard, 2019 ; Gandolfo, 2019 ; Tohidian and Rahimian, 2019 ; Kövecses, 2020 ; Bearman et al., 2021 ; Jensen et al., 2021 ; Abdul et al., 2022 ).

However, researchers need help to pinpoint the research status and anticipate research trends rapidly and correctly. Keeping up with articles published instantly also becomes increasingly challenging. By using a bibliometric analysis, this knowledge map will be an invaluable resource for beginning researchers to learn more about information and study results to start their investigation as soon as possible. Additionally, this study will identify future research gaps and find potential cooperators for seasoned scholars. In addition, this study will provide some rating agencies with a trustworthy benchmark to assess the effectiveness of authors, institutions’ sources, and nations in CM research. Nevertheless, there has not been a thorough visual of CM studies so far. The bibliometric analysis of Bib text provides extra data statistics, including author, affiliation, and keyword ( Fahimnia et al., 2015 ). Therefore, this study will fill the gap by analyzing the state of CM’s research over the past 20 years, its current focus areas, and future research directions.

Research questions.

With the bibliometric tool, this study aims to provide an overall picture of CM research over the recent two decades and address the following three questions:

• (1) What was the basic information about the development of international CM research in the past two decades?
• (2) What is the present situation, including yearly scientific advancements, subject orientations, most renowned authors, and the most pressing issues in CM research?
• (3) What predictions may be made regarding its future development based on a bibliometric study?

Data source

All the data in this study were obtained from WoS Core Collection. It is the platform’s flagship resource, covering over 21,000 peer-reviewed, high-grade scientific articles (containing Open Access journals), more than 205,000 conference proceedings, and more than 104,000 editorially selected book 2 .

It offers more reliable journal coverage of scholarly published articles ( Birkle et al., 2020 ) than any other databases like Scopus and Google.

Data collection

This study discerningly chose the WoS that confined the data from 2002 to 2022. The literature data gained comprised the whole archives, such as the author’s name, source year, abstract, keywords, citation frequency, DOI number, and references in the article. Data collection consisted of three stages. The first was data reclamation. We prudently chose the papers and early access collected in the arts and humanities citation index (AHCI) and the SSCI to evaluate research questioning. We scrutinized the principal articles consistent with the research topic. The second step was data scrubbing. We sifted papers discreetly to avert data duplication. In the third step, documents were downloaded and compacted. We downloaded 1,000 files the first time and 257 the second time. Subsequently, the two files were compacted using bibliometric instruments. Currently, diverse instruments are accessible to present visual studies, such as CitNetExplorer, CiteSpace, and VOSviewer. This study selected a Biblioshiny program to obtain an overall visual picture of CM study in the past two decades because it has unique features. The set menu in Biblioshiny presents analysis from source, author, and document dimensions. Additionally, this menu offers conceptual, intellectual, and social knowledge structures. Maps can be exported to HTML or Pajek, tables can be copied to the clipboard or saved as Excel or PDF files, and maps can be printed. We analyzed the data using the Rstudio software and the bibliometric R-package version 4.2.0. The bibliometric analysis was first enabled in the R environment using the following command code:

• install. Packages (“bibliometrix,” dependencies = TRUE)
• library (bibliometrix)
• biblioshiny()

The Biblioshiny web interface was presented once the Google Chrome browser started with the above code. Raw WoS data were imported and analyzed using the Biblioshiny. We then went on to describe and evaluate the critical results of the study, which were shown with the statistics and pictures. This study employed pertinent authors, institutions, countries, articles, top highly cited publications, keyword co-occurrence, word clouds, thematic maps, trend topics, and conceptual framework to answer the above three research questions of the study.

Results and discussion

Position of cm research in the past two decades.

Table 1 presents the key findings of the entire CM research from January 1, 2002, to July 10, 2022. In total, 1,257 documents were present. There were 317 sources for the CM research, including books, journals, and other materials. The average number, like years from publication, citations per document, and citations per year per document, were 7.49, 8.228, and 0.7505. The number of references cited in the studies reached 33,265, demonstrating the popularity of CM research over the previous two decades. The 956 papers represented the most significant categories of published documents. The author’s keywords and the plus were 3,130 and 846, respectively, in terms of the document contents. It demonstrates the variety of topics covered by CM research and 1,544 contributors to CM studies from 2002 to 2022. There were 613 authors of single-authored documents and 931 authors of multi-authored documents. The single-authored documents are 776, showing that the scholars are highly interested in this area. The documents per author were 0.814, while authors per document, co-authors per document, and collaboration index were 1.23, 1.59, and 1.94. It indicates that more scholars concentrate on CM research, and the direction conducted by multiple authors was the most important means for CM research in the past two decades (see Table 1 ).

Main information about data.

Annual scientific production

A highly intriguing phenomenon has been discovered in annual scientific production. Figure 1 depicts the dynamics of document creation. The number of papers published annually was balanced from 2004 to 2006 and steadily rose from 2002 to 2022. The most productive year for the output was 2020, with 119 publications, including Gender, Ideology, and Conceptual Metaphors: Women and the Source Domain of the Hunt ( Maestre, 2020 ) and Conceptual Metaphors Leading to Some Names of Anger in the Indo-European Languages (With Focus on the Romance Languages) ( Georgescu, 2020 ). Notably, this number has steadily increased, with a yearly growth rate of 2.05 percent. The number of studies on CM and the total number of articles published has expanded significantly over the past 5 years. The yearly variation in literature production may represent the shift in the research subject, research interest, depth, and future development direction. CM has been a prevalent topic in the linguistic field over the past two decades, and it may continue to be a future topic in this field. In other words, the CM in Cognitive Linguistics has garnered great academic interest over the past two decades.

Annual scientific production.

Analysis of cited documents

Average annual citations.

In Figure 2 , we can see the typical annual number of article citations. The most significant number of citations was 2,796 in 2006, while the least was 0.546 in 2019. Typically, the yearly average citation rate of recent articles is low. There is a surprising phenomenon: the citation rate of CM articles in 2006 reached a peak, but the publications in 2006 were low. Therefore, the citation rate may be more relevant to the articles’ quality and themes rather than their quantity. The top four average annual citations articles in 2006 are the following, Metaphor Interpretation as Embodied Simulation ( Gibbs, 2006 ), The Emergence of Metaphor in Discourse ( Cameron and Deignan, 2006 ), Does Understanding Negation Entail Affirmation: An Examination of Negated Metaphors ( Hasson and Glucksberg, 2006 ), Metaphoric competence, Second Language Learning, and Communicative Language Ability ( Littlemore and Low, 2006 ). The constant average citation per year after 2014 in Figure 2 shows that CM research has lately had a stable development.

Average article citations per year.

Most global citated articles

Figure 3 shows CM’s top 20 most globally cited documents from 2002 to 2022. According to Figure 3 , Gibbs’s article Metaphor Interpretation as Embodied Simulation ( Gibbs, 2006 ) was most passionately cited with 198 citations, hierarchical first among all other documents. In this study, Gibbs (2006) claims that part of our ability to make sense of metaphorical language, both individual utterances and extended narratives, resides in the automatic construction of a simulation whereby we imagine performing the bodily actions referred to in the language. As Time Goes by: Evidence for Two Systems in Processing Space → Time Metaphors ( Gentner et al., 2002 ) has 189 total citations and demonstrates that individuals employ spatial metaphors in temporal thinking. The metaphoric systems’ status implications are examined in it. With 169 citations, Gibbs et al. (2004) review the empirical evidence and discuss the methodological strategies employed by linguists and psychologists seeking connections between embodiment and CM. Subsequently, The Emergence of Metaphor in Discourse ( Cameron and Deignan, 2006 ), Literal vs. figurative language: Different or Equal ? ( Giora, 2002 ). Other significant subjects of CM research are the relationship between CM and metonymy, studying psychology and politics of metaphors, and CM based on language theory. Most of the literature that generates the most citations has been published for more than ten years, indicating that the topic and authority of the publication may be the reason for the number of citations. Figure 3 also shows that the years of highly cited literature on CM were 2006, 2002, and 2004, representing that CM has made a breakthrough in development during these years. Besides, Figure 3 suggests that a longitudinal study of how CM works over time is crucial to scrutiny. In general, the more citations an article has, the more influential it will be in the CM field. Moreover, Figure 3 proves that Gibbs’ article published in 2006 was the most relevant document contributing to the CM research. The research of CM is closely related to human psychology and cognition, and it may be more concerning and exciting to scholars when they conduct empirical research.

Most global cited documents.

Source growth

Figure 4 depicts the source dynamics of the top five journals from 2002 to 2022. Regarding the number of articles, Figure 4 shows a significant increase trend, with the peak in 2022 and the lowest in 2002. The corresponding maxima are the following: Review of Cognitive Linguistics, Metaphor and Symbol, Cognitive Linguistics, Journal of Pragmatics , and Journal of Literary Semantics . The increase in sources illustrates the main application areas of CM research over the past two decades and its multidisciplinary development trend. As indicated in Figure 4 , Journal of Review of Cognitive Linguistics has published CM articles in recent years with the highest growth rate, particularly between 2012 and 2022. This Journal’s quick expansion indicates that several experts enthusiastically pursue the debate and research on CM. Despite being among the top five, as shown in Figure 4 , Journal of Literary Semantics had a steadily increasing number of CM papers published from 2002 to 2022. Only 21 articles were published in this journal in 2022, but there were 110 articles in Reviews of Cognitive Linguistics . The number indicated that the Journal’s discussion subject might diverge from the study category of CM. From 2002 to 2022, we judged from the growth trend of article sources that CM’s research showed a sound momentum of rapid progress over the last two decades.

Source dynamics.

Authors, affiliations and countries

Prolific authors.

Gibbs was the most significant researcher, who published 17 articles and ranked first in document number on CM, concentrating on the embodied metaphor and mapping in cognitive linguistics in terms of the author’s output from 2004 to 2022. Gibbs’s articles On the Psycholinguistics of Sarcasm and How to kick the Bucket and not Decompose: Analyzability and Idiom Processing , with more than 200 references to Spilling the Beans on Understanding and Memory for Idioms in Conversation . Gibbs is committed to studying embodied metaphors and mapping in cognitive linguistics and makes significant contributions to the CM research. Following Gibbs, Yu published nine documents mainly scrutinizing the spatial subsystem of moral metaphors in English. De Mendoza Ibanez represents Spanish research on CM with nine articles. He explores metaphors concerning cognitive prominence and conceptual interaction issues.

Moreover, he deals with the problems of constraints on metaphor and proposes three complementary kinds of constraints. Over the past two decades, these three authors were the most productive and essential in the CM research field. They are vital scholars, and their views may provide a theoretical and practical framework for further research.

Most relevant affiliations and countries

Most relevant affiliations can present the top most relevant affiliations according to the number of articles about CM. The University of La Rioja, the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Birmingham, Castile La Mancha University, and Guangdong University of Foreign Studies were the five most relevant affiliations by producing 68, 30, 28, 28, and 25 articles in the past two decades, respectively. They are also the bases for linguistic research. The result derived from the cooperative efforts of various institutions and was focused on CM subjects.

Figure 5 shows the countries of the top 20 corresponding authors. The collaboration of authors of the same nationality was far more than that between nations. According to Figure 5 , the top 20 countries contributed a lot to the research of CM during the past two decades. Among them, Spain contributed the most to it, with 171 publications, followed by the United States (138), China (131), the United Kingdom (87), and Russia (83). These countries occupied the top five in the WoS Core collection. The result showed that CM research attracted the attention of researchers in these countries in the past two decades. To some extent, the publications of these authors will benefit CM’s future development.

Corresponding author’s country. Multiple country publications (MCP), the number of papers co-authored with authors from other countries; SCP, the number of papers co-authored by authors of the same nationality. The MCP ratio represents the ratio of international cooperation.

Table 2 lists countries, average article citations, and total citations for the top 20 relevant nations. Table 2 shows that the United States made the most considerable contribution to CM research, with 3,203 total citations and an average article citation rate of 23.210. The United Kingdom and Spain came next with 1,378 and 1,112 total citations, respectively. It implies that scholars from the top three nations show great interest in CM research. A particular topic of study was directly tied to the context of the nation. Therefore, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain contribute to CM research development and associated linguistic issues with more attention. The fact that more nations, including the Netherlands, China, and Italy, are paying attention to CM research shows how prevalent it has become over the past two decades.

Most cited countries.

We can also see from Table 2 that although the corresponding authors of CM research in the United States ranked second, their citation rate ranked first. Similarly, the corresponding authors in the UK rank fourth, while the citation rate of their authors ranks second. Therefore, the number of correspondents does not have a one-to-one proportional correspondence with their citation rate. From this, we can infer that the citation rate may relate to the article’s quality and themes.

Conceptual structure

Figure 6 presents the current status of thematic groups in CM research. Thematic maps illustrate a particular topic and help reveal geospatial patterns and relations ( Schaab et al., 2022 ). A thematic map is separated into four quadrants grounded on the degree and density of centrality. High density and centrality in the upper right quadrant represent well-developed Motor Themes in the CM research area. In this quadrant, many themes comprised the emphasis and center of CM research, such as “comprehension,” “conceptual integration,” “words,” “metaphors,” “English,” “space,” and “language.” These themes had outstanding growth in the past two decades. The second quadrant’s high density and low centrality imply niche themes with good development prospects but a limited influence on the research field. Although scholars have created a “mechanisms” research group, its prospects are unsure. Subject clusters have poor centrality and density in the lower-left quadrant. It implies that different types of “semantics,” “vocabulary,” “metaphor,” “discourse,” “conceptual metaphor,” and “metonymy” are marginalized. It suggests they are new or waning themes. The fourth quadrant’s high centrality and low density indicate that “mind,” “children,” “deficits,” “idioms,” and “memory” are the primary topics in CM. Their theoretical systems are more thorough and mature, and these core topics may provide the theoretical foundation, reasoning, and technique for CM research.

Thematic map.

Figures 7 , ​ ,8 8 graphically depict the development of the CM study subjects. 2016 was the dividing line and the two time periods were 2002–2016 and 2017–2022. The topics from 2002 to 2016 may be summed up as “context,” “conceptual integration,” “language,” and “time,” with researchers focusing on conceptual integration. According to the CM hypothesis, metaphor incorporates two cognitive domains, while abstract blending theory theoretically converts two cognitive parts into four mental spaces ( Fauconnier and Turner, 1998 ). It may more precisely characterize people’s psychological processes while using metaphor. In Conceptual Blending Theory, the creation and functioning of conceptual blending are creative. This theory may thus explain not just established mental metaphors but also novel metaphors. Individuals’ daily communication and understanding process is an innovative online mapping and integration process. The relationship between online mapping and fixed mapping is tight. The idea of conceptual blending is comprised of four cognitive domains. According to the theory, the human thinking mode is not a direct, unidirectional, and absolute mapping of the source domain to the target domain but rather a dynamic integration process in which the shared mental schema is a generic space. The two input spaces of the source domain and target domain are bidirectionally mapped to the blending space. Mental space, not the cognitive part, is the fundamental unit of cognitive structure in conceptual blending. Mental space is an abstract area created when individuals think, act, and communicate, intending to achieve local comprehension and action. It is only a transient framework comprised of conceptual aspects like time, belief, desire, possibility, virtuality, place, and reality and depends on the cognitive field, a broader and more fixed knowledge structure associated with a particular cognitive area. It reflects the specific mental schema generated by the cognitive domain and it is dynamic, adaptable, and active throughout the thought process.

Time slice 1: thematic evolution during 2002–2016.

Time slice 2: thematic evolution during 2017–2022.

From 2017 to 2022, the nature of the mental processes involved in metaphor comprehension was the focus of debate ( Stamenković et al., 2019 ), with dispute focusing on the relative function of common analogical reasoning versus language-specific conceptual blending. The accompanying research indicated that the blending theory framework had explanatory power and practical use.

Figure 9 shows that the three fields plot can comprehensively analyze the relationship between measurement indicators of different literature and build a comprehensive network map. According to the statistics, among the periodicals published from 2012 to 2022, Metaphors We Live By ( Lakoff and Johnson, 2008 ) was cited first, followed by Women, Fire and Dangerous Things : What Categories Reveal about the Mind ( Lakoff, 1987 ). The middle part of the Three-fields Plot is the Citation Source. Cognitive Linguistics ranks first in this field, followed by Metaphor and Symbol and Metaphors We Live By . Cognitive Linguistics is the first citation source, and its corresponding citations are mainly George Lakoff’s books, which shows the authority of George Lakoff, the founder of CM theory, in this field. On the right is the authors’ keyword part. We can see that “metaphor” ranks first on the pyramid, and “metonymy” ranks second. which is consistent with the following Co-occurrence Network (see Figure 11 ).

Three-field plot. The middle field is cited sources, the left refers to references, and the right refers to the author’s keywords.

Conceptual structure map. The map is split in half. Clusters are indicated by color, proximity between keywords mean their relationship, the vertex is an illustration of the term in question, and the node’s size is proportional to the frequency with which it appears.

Research topics in CM

Research in the recent two decades.

Content analysis was employed to illustrate the CM research issues. Word Cloud, a thematic map of word growth, a conceptual structure map, and the co-occurrence of the author’s keywords were utilized to show study subjects in CM research during the recent two decades.

Word clouds are a valuable tool for providing overviews of texts and visualizing relevant words ( Herold et al., 2019 ). Word Cloud was based on the author’s keywords for CM research between 2002 and 2022. With a visual depiction of the Biblioshiny, words with greater volume and keyword density were shown in a bigger and clearer typeface. Word Cloud was used to evaluate commonly used terms in CM research to reveal study subjects. To be more precise, the frequency of usage of a term increased according to its centrality. Based on the author’s keywords, we selected the top 20. First, Figure 10 shows that “metaphor” was the most frequently used term in the authors’ publications, with 143 times in the extracted database, followed by “language (129),” and “comprehension (61).” The number indicates that CM was a vital study issue in cognitive science over the last two decades. The other terms “discourse,” “mind,” and “metonymy” were also used extensively as keywords by writers. It demonstrates that these were essential subjects in the CM field.

Word cloud. Different words were colored differently, and the size and placement of the phrase denoted their frequency. The size of the colored words depicts the frequency of their occurrence.

Conceptual structure map

Researchers may utilize Biblioshiny for Bibliometrix’s Conceptual Structure Map for multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), which aids in sketching a conceptual structure of the area and locating groupings of texts that express similar concepts. Using MCA, one may do a mathematical and graphical analysis of seemingly multivariate data ( Greenacre and Blasius, 2006 ). Figure 11 displays the results of MCA’s clustering on the keywords. The terms “metaphor,” “conception,” and “conceptual integration” often occur in the red set. “Frames,” “future,” and “construal” were added to the blue grouping. Figure 11 shows progress has been made toward developing a significant study subject of CM, and specific research issues around CM have been advanced a fair amount. Metaphors in “time,” “space,” “context,” “emotion,” “anger,” and “expressions” have been analyzed. Multiple fields, such as “pragmatics,” “semantics,” and “memory,” have been thoroughly researched in terms of CM. In addition, the CM research was related to “cognition,” among other things, and not only “discourse,” “metonymy,” “corpus,” and “mind.” Many scholars have conducted studies on metaphor from the perspective of psycholinguistics. Cuccio and Steen (2019) emphasize that attention is a crucial notion in defining deliberateness in metaphor processing because it is the attention we pay to the source domain of a metaphor in working memory that makes a metaphor a deliberately processed metaphor. Gibbs (2013) describes a few complications in psycholinguistic investigations of metaphor and explains the variability of study results. It is common knowledge that engaging in insightful metaphor analysis can be helpful in better comprehending how psychological trauma is conceived. As [ Cuccio et al. (2022) , p. 1] go, “we need to explain how we use symbols and how we make meanings out of them.” Increasingly, scholars talk about the construal of CM, such as the role of context in the interpretation of CM ( Zhao, 2008 ; Zhao et al., 2020 ).

Co-occurrence of keywords plus

Figure 12 presents four distinct clusters: blue, green, red, and purple. The blue cluster focuses on “language,” “representation,” and “communication;” the green cluster emphasizes “comprehension,” “mind,” “idioms,” and “words,” and the red cluster emphasizes “metaphor” and “discourse.” Clustering in purple mostly depends on “time,” “space,” and “perspective.” Consequently, Conceptual Metaphor research emphasizes linguistic theory study, corpus empirical research, and discourse analysis. Critical Metaphor Analysis, also known as CMA, is a method that is typically applied to the process of analyzing metaphors in various critical discourses to reveal the feelings, attitudes, and thoughts that lie behind metaphors. Charteris-Black (2004) proposed “Critical Metaphor Analysis,” which combined pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, and critical discourse analysis. He argued that while cognitive semantics provided a suitable description of how humans comprehended metaphors, the social effect of ideology, culture, and history might give a more persuasive explanation for why specific metaphors were selected in contexts. “Discursive-pragmatic factors, as well as sociolinguistic variation, have to be taken into account to make cognitive analyses more empirically and socially relevant” ( Musolff, 2012 , p. 301). When it comes to addressing persuasion in text, CM, as it relates to emotion, is a crucial tool because it helps identify the ideological root and persuasive strategy of a given discourse ( Ferrari, 2007 ).

Co-occurrence of keywords plus. The four distinct clusters are blue, green, red, and purple.

Co-occurrence network development relies heavily on correlation inference. The co-occurrence network has several study and application disciplines, and each color refers to a field. Language is a cognitive tool and a product of human intellect. With the rise of multidisciplinary study, cognitive explanations for grammar creation, semantics, discourse, and metaphor have become widespread, founded on empiricism and cognitive science research. It attempts to explain that language phenomena conform to the human understanding of the brain and thinking, i.e., human language is the product of the human brain, and its construction principle is identical to that of other cognitive domains. Therefore, Figure 12 shows the most significant community, the blue “language.” The closer to the central district, the closer to the “Conceptual Metaphor.” The figure presents that the closest to “language” takes “metaphor” and “comprehension” as the keywords.

The co-occurrence of keywords analysis is a valuable method for constructing a comprehensive framework for comprehending the significant areas of CM study during the past two decades. Figure 12 illustrates a network of co-occurrence between keywords in different types of publications that were established. When two or more of an author’s keywords appeared together, it might indicate how often those terms appeared together in the same publication. Each period was represented as a node, and the greater the node’s size, the more times that the keyword was cited. The greater the thickness of the line that connected two nodes, the more often those terms appeared together.

In the same way, Figure 12 also displays five distinct groups, each representing a different hue. In particular, the terms “discourse” and “metaphor” often co-occurred and were distributed heavily in the red cluster. This suggests that “discourse,” “expressions,” and “English” were prioritized in the CM study, and CM research was practically inseparable from “mind” research. In the center of the purple circle stood the word “time,” but it was disconnected from the surrounding words. However, the connections to “space” and “perspective” were weak. In addition, this analysis discovered that “comprehension” and “metaphor” were often investigated together and that “words” and “idioms” research were linked based on the frequency with which these terms occurred in green nodes. The small size of the nodes and the scarcity of connecting lines suggested that these concerns had not been well-explored.

In conclusion, several terms were used in the investigation of CM. The terms “metaphor,” “language,” “comprehension,” and “English” featured prominently and were among the most often co-occurring in the text. This demonstrated that these issues were central to the CM study. Words like “brain,” “discourse,” and “deficits” also occurred together at the network’s edges, which demonstrated that a wider variety of issues were investigated in CM studies. Despite these variations, it is safe to say that “metaphor,” “language,” and “comprehension” were essential and fundamental study issues, while “knowledge,” “mind,” and “discourse” had an impact on the development of CM and were also widely studied.

CM research trend

The bibliometric tool of Thematic Evolution and Thematic Trends is employed to predict the directions of potential future CM studies.

Thematic evolution

Examining Thematic Evolution and Trend Topics may reveal interesting research subjects and possible future orientations. Figure 13 demonstrates the dynamic nature of the metaphor study and the several research topics included. As time went by, “time,” “language,” and “mind” were maintained to be prominent academic areas. Metaphors may offer a practical and memorable method of structuring newly learned terminology. A lexical set is a concept that is well-known to most instructors. A linguistic set groups vocabulary according to a theme, such as “food” or “transportation.” By combining the words and sentences with a metaphorical meaning rather than a literal one, teachers may expand this concept to form “metaphorical sets.” Many scholars have shown their interest in this area. For example, Thomas and McRobbie (2001) emphasize how metaphors may help teachers and students establish a common language of learning. Andreou and Galantomos (2008) investigate the possibility of developing a conceptual curriculum for the instruction of metaphors and idioms in a foreign language setting.

Thematic evolution. Each hue represents a distinct subject, and the size of the rectangle means the depth of study.

However, throughout 2017–2022, “language” became the primary area of research interest, shifting attention away from “context” and other growing topics like “mind,” “comprehension,” “metaphor,” “discourse,” and “corpus” of CM. Some scholars conducted research into combining critical discourse analysis with self-constructed corpora of diverse genres to determine the underlying ideology metaphor ( Semino, 2008 ; Silvestre-López, 2020 ). Some academics concentrated on political speech and its associated discourse tactics. For instance, Pilyarchuk and Onysko (2018) found that Trump relied nearly entirely on conventional conceptual metaphors in his talks. Musolff (2011) studied the literary design of the dialog system in Shakespeare’s play and emphasized the general feature of metaphor’s dialogic role, which was further explored concerning the current use of body-based metaphor in political discourse. Koller (2004) explored metaphor and gender in electronic text corpora in the context of the commercial conversation. As for economic discourse, Chen (2018) utilized Wmatrix as a retrieval tool in conjunction with the “MIPVU” to identify and summarize the most prominent conceptual metaphors in economic speech and investigated the significance of metaphors.

Regarding discourse analysis, several efforts emphasized CM used in literary discourse ( Zhao and Zhou, 2019 ). Using the corpus tool Antconc3.2.4w, Zhao et al. (2020) conducted a study on Pearl S. Buck’s novel Dragon Seed and pointed out CMT and CBT were concerned with interpreting higher-order concepts such as meaning, language, sign, and representation and their interrelations. They complemented each other and contributed to discourse analysis. CM in literary works might be related to the writer’s cognitive and social contexts. Pearl Buck’s metaphorical thinking was closely related to her experiences in China. It may be extrapolated that these themes have a significant potential for CM research to continue to flourish.

Trend topics

Figure 14 indicates that, from 2002 to 2013, research subjects were relatively few, but their diversity increased after 2013. The wider the circle in the image, the greater the topic’s popularity among researchers was. Figure 14 shows that 2016 was a banner year for research on “metaphor,” “comprehension,” “discourse,” “mind,” and “metonymy,” as evidenced by the magnitude of the blue node. Between 2002 and 2022, “metaphor” was the most popular subject, appearing 143 times, followed by “language” (129), “comprehension” (61), “synthesis” (61), “metaphors” (43), “English” (38), “discovery” (33), “mind” (33), “meteorology” (28), “idioms” (26), and “space” (25). In 2016, research subjects were the most prevalent and featured the most often. They have been shown, once again, to be central and essential to CM research in recent years, and they may get even more emphasis in the years to come. It happened simultaneously as the Thematic Evolution, which ran from 2017 to 2022. In addition, critical new areas of study, including “metaphor,” “comprehension,” “discourse,” “corpus,” “brain,” “language,” and “mind,” maintained their popularity. The “corpus” of CM studies peaked in 2018 and predictions for its continual fruitfulness in the future were promising. Based on broad corpora, the first kind of investigation establishes the systematicity of conceptual metaphors or summarizes grammatical aspects that conventional metaphor studies cannot notice, compensating for CMT’s deficiencies ( Skorczynska and Deignan, 2006 ). Using CMT as an example, Charteris-Black (2004) proposed a novel research technique that integrated corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis, and metaphor study to initiate a corpus-based metaphor study and develop new tools for identifying metaphors. Therefore, it is safe to say that “simile,” “adults,” “cancer,” “metaphors,” “words,” “brain,” “corpus,” and “perception” all have promising futures as research areas of CM.

Trend topics by keywords plus. The size of the nodes in Trend Topics represents the total number of publications for a particular topic and the peak popularity of that topic over time.

Conclusion and implication

This study employed a bibliometric technique to investigate 1,257 papers on CM research over the past two decades. The following are significant findings with productivity, content, and citation analysis. First, CM is a cognitive concept and has a widespread academic interest. “Metaphors,” “place,” “discourse,” and “corpus” were the central issues among the various study subjects. “Conceptual integration,” “comprehension,” “language,” and “mind” are also active and popular study topics in CM research. Second, in the past two decades, CM has been a research focus that has included many aspects, including authors, institutions, countries, and sources. Most of the cooperation survey was done with writers and institutions from many nations. The top five countries are Spain, the United States of America, China, Great Britain, and Russia. A rise in the number of academics studying CM suggests that CM research in cognitive linguistics applies to several facets of human cognition. Great Britain and China contributed the most to the growth of CM research, and substantial cooperation and networks were developed among them. These components of CM research are intertwined since the most cited individual contributes to establishing nations, institutions, and papers that significantly impact CM research.

Third, based on an examination of the Thematic Evolution and Trend Topic, we can infer the essential themes in CM research, such as “metaphors,” “discourse,” “space,” and “corpus,” may get greater attention in the future, which aligns with the Thematic Evolution between 2017 and 2022. In addition, “simile,” “adults,” “cancer,” “metaphors,” “words,” “brain,” “corpus,” “perception,” “conceptual integration,” “mind,” and “comprehension” will remain popular themes. The “interdisciplinarity” of CM demonstrates the effect of cognitive context, social context, and other cultural aspects on the framework of CM. The growing number of papers using bibliometric analysis across all disciplines suggests that it meets the desire of researchers who want proper research based on a wealth of literature.

This study will be helpful for beginners in the CM field, allowing them to classify information and find research results of CM quickly so that they may start their research projects. In addition, it may serve as a reference for seasoned researchers to comprehend the progress of CM research over the last two decades, find a suitable collaborator for their present research, and identify research gaps that they may block up in the future.

This study emphasizes the presentation of images and statistics because it is a quantitative study using a bibliometric tool based on data gathered from a database. However, it needs to go more in-depth to complete an evaluation of any specific theme of CM. We urge future research to broaden the study to use a range of more data gathering to examine concerns in CM to create a more thorough comprehension of CM.

Data availability statement

Author contributions.

XZ initiated the research idea, instructed YZ to analyze the data using bibliometric software, and co-wrote the article. Under the direction of XZ, YZ gathered and extracted the data and co-wrote the article’s analysis. XCZ contributed to the manuscript’s design, drafting the first part, introduction. All authors participated in revising and approving the version that was submitted.

Acknowledgments

We appreciate the reviewers for their insightful comments and ideas regarding the previous manuscript of this article. We also thank them for their excellent assistance in revising this article. Their insightful and thought-provoking remarks have at times, been difficult to respond to but have been vital to achieving the final form of this article.

1 https://www.bibliometrix.org/home

2 https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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The Metaphor Compass: Directions for Metaphor Research in Language, Cognition, Communication, and Creativity provides a roadmap to navigate the recent findings and cutting-edge research conducted around the world on metaphor, focusing on the following four themes: Metaphor and Linguistic Diversity, Metaphor and Cognition, Metaphor and Communication, and Metaphor and Creativity.

The research presented in this book employs a variety of empirical methods, ranging from neuroimaging to corpus analyses and from behavioral experimentation to computational modeling. Divided into four parts, it offers an array of pedagogical material including activities at the ends of the chapters to help the reader to consolidate the notions discussed in the chapter.

This is a useful resource for students, researchers, and scholars of linguistics, communication, anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science looking to learn about figurative language and creativity.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter | 3  pages, introduction, part i | 50  pages, metaphor and linguistic diversity, chapter 1 | 25  pages, metaphoric expressions around the world, chapter 2 | 23  pages, conceptual metaphors around the world, part ii | 44  pages, metaphor and cognition, chapter 3 | 23  pages, meaning variability, chapter 4 | 19  pages, speakers' variability, part iii | 48  pages, metaphor and communication, chapter 5 | 24  pages, metaphor variability in monomodal and multimodal communication, chapter 6 | 22  pages, metaphor in verbal vs. visual communication, part iv | 41  pages, metaphor and creativity, chapter 7 | 16  pages, creativity and metaphorical thinking and talking, chapter 8 | 21  pages, different ways to be creative with metaphors in language, chapter | 2  pages.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Metaphor

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Metaphor by Mark Johnson LAST REVIEWED: 27 April 2023 LAST MODIFIED: 27 September 2017 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0167

For nearly 2,500 years, since the time of Aristotle, scholars assumed that metaphor was simply a matter of language—cases in which a word with a literal meaning could have a second meaning, which Aristotle claimed was “similar” to the first. According to this comparison theory, any cognitive content a metaphor might have would supposedly be reducible to a set of literal similarity statements. Consequently, while metaphors were seen as powerful rhetorical and poetic devices of language, they were deemed nonessential for stating fundamental truth claims, which could supposedly be reduced to literal concepts and propositions. During the last half of the 20th century, however, this dominant Aristotelian perspective was shown to be wrong. A growing body of cognitive-science research on meaning, conceptualization, reasoning, knowledge, and language called for a radical rethinking of the nature and operations of metaphor. This empirical research was the basis for what came to be known as conceptual metaphor theory. It was discovered that metaphor is conceptual rather than linguistic in nature, that we think by using metaphor—not rarely or obscurely—but constantly, and that most metaphorical thought is not based on perceived similarities in the world. Instead, conceptual metaphors are frame-to-frame mappings, where frames are basic structures of everyday thought. Conceptual metaphors thus consist of “source domain” frames that are mapped onto “target domain” frames, with most of the inference structure found in the source domain carried over to the corresponding target-domain structure. This process gives rise to metaphorical reasoning. Linguistic, psychological, and neuroscientific methods of inquiry and explanation continue to shed new light on how metaphors are learned, how they structure conceptual systems, and how they shape our reasoning in all aspects of our lives. Scholars are now investigating the working of metaphor in languages and cultural systems across the world and throughout history. In addition to this cross-linguistic research, metaphor has been explored in other modes of symbolic interaction besides language, such as art, music, architecture, dance, theater, and ritual. In a few short decades, metaphor has moved from the margins to the center of the study of mind, thought, and language. First regarded as a peripheral linguistic phenomenon to be studied only in literary theory and aesthetics, metaphor is now recognized as a fundamental process of human conceptualization and reasoning.

Since metaphor did not become a focal topic of research until the 1960s, all the collections of work on metaphor have been published since then. Shibles 1972 is an early collection of essays from multiple perspectives, and Johnson 1981 provides most of the important philosophical writings on metaphor that defined the field at that time. Miall 1982 includes essays covering metaphor both in literary and scientific texts. Ortony 1993 and Gibbs 2008 are cross-disciplinary, and Raymond Gibbs’s book is especially useful to get a sense of current directions of research in the field. Komendzinski 2002 offers essays by a number of prominent scholars, many of whom adopt a conceptual metaphor theory orientation. Forceville and Urios-Aparisi 2009 is the only volume dealing with the new topic of multimodal or cross-modal metaphor, in which the source and target domains come from two different modalities (e.g., visual, verbal, tactile).

Forceville, Charles J., and Eduardo Urios-Aparisi, eds. 2009. Multimodal metaphor . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

DOI: 10.1515/9783110215366

The only introduction to the new field of metaphors in which the source and target domains are from two different experiential types, such as visual metaphors or metaphors combining the verbal and the visual modes.

Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr., ed. 2008. The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511816802

A very impressive anthology of the most recent empirical research coming from cognitive science, neuroscience, linguistics, psychology, philosophy, literary theory, and cultural theory. This is the best source from which to get a sense of the most-current directions of research.

Johnson, Mark. ed. 1981. Philosophical perspectives on metaphor . Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.

The first and only anthology devoted exclusively to philosophical treatments. See the introductory essay for a brief survey of metaphor theory from Plato to 1980. Annotated bibliography.

Komendzinski, Tomasz, ed. 2002. Metaphor: A multidisciplinary approach . Theoria et Historum Scientiarum: An International Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies 6. 1. Toruń, Poland: Nicolas Copérnicus Univ. Press.

An interesting diverse collection of essays by important contemporary researchers covering work from psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, neuroscience, and computer science.

Miall, David S., ed. 1982. Metaphor: Problems and perspectives . Brighton, UK: Harvester.

An early, small anthology on metaphor in literature and science, with chapters by scholars who later gained some prominence in the field.

Ortony, Andrew. 1993. Metaphor and thought . 2d ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139173865

Contains some seminal essays that still define many of the competing points of view in the field. Together with Gibbs 2008 , this lays out the landscape, and both these anthologies are excellent for a course at any level.

Shibles, Warren. 1972. Essays on metaphor . Whitewater, WI: Language Press.

A short, eclectic selection of essays relating metaphor to philosophy, psychology, religion, art, and literature.

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• What Is a Metaphor? | Definition & Examples

What Is a Metaphor? | Definition & Examples

Published on August 11, 2023 by Eoghan Ryan . Revised on November 6, 2023.

A metaphor is a figure of speech that implicitly compares two unrelated things, typically by stating that one thing is another (e.g., “that chef is a magician”).

Metaphors can be used to create vivid imagery, exaggerate a characteristic or action, or express a complex idea.

Metaphors are commonly used in literature, advertising, and everyday speech.

The exam was a piece of cake.

This town is a desert .

Table of contents

What is a metaphor, types of metaphor, metaphor vs. simile, metaphor vs. analogy, allegory vs. metaphor, worksheet: metaphor vs. simile, frequently asked questions.

A metaphor is a rhetorical device that makes a non-literal comparison between two unlike things. Metaphors are used to describe an object or action by stating (or implying) that it is something else (e.g., “knowledge is a butterfly”).

Metaphors typically have two parts:

• A tenor is the thing or idea that the metaphor describes (e.g., “knowledge”).
• A vehicle is the thing or idea used to describe the tenor (e.g., “a butterfly”).

Sophia was a loose cannon .

There are several different types of metaphor.

Direct metaphor

A direct metaphor compares two unrelated things by explicitly stating that one thing is another. Direct metaphors typically use a form of the verb “be” to connect two things.

Ami and Vera are two peas in a pod.

Implied metaphor

An implied metaphor compares two unlike things without explicitly naming one of them. Instead, a comparison is typically made using a non-literal verb. For example, the statement “the man erupted in anger” uses the verb “erupted” to compare a man to a volcano.

The captain barked orders at the soldiers. [i.e., the captain was like an angry dog]

Extended metaphor

An extended metaphor (also called a sustained metaphor) occurs when an initial comparison is developed or sustained over several lines or paragraphs (or stanzas, in the case of a poem).

Extended metaphors are commonly used in literature and advertising, but they’re rarely used in everyday speech.

And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

Mixed metaphor

A mixed metaphor is a figure of speech that combines two or more metaphors, resulting in a confusing or nonsensical statement.

Mixed metaphors are usually accidental and are often perceived as unintentionally humorous. Mixing metaphors can confuse your readers and make your writing seem to lack coherence.

She’s a rising star, and with the right guidance, she’ll spread her wings.

Dead metaphor

A dead metaphor is a figure of speech that has become so familiar due to repeated use that people no longer recognize it as a metaphor. Instead, it’s understood as having a straightforward meaning.

The guest of honor sat at the head of the table .

Metaphors and similes are both rhetorical devices used for comparison. However, they have different functions:

• A metaphor makes an implicit comparison between two unlike things, usually by saying that one thing is another thing (e.g., “my body is a temple”).
• A simile makes an explicit comparison between two unlike things, typically using the words “like,” “as,” or “than” (e.g., “you’re as stubborn as a mule”).

The old man’s beard was as white as snow .

There are two main types of analogy:

• Identical relationship analogies indicate the logical relationship between two things (e.g., “‘Up’ is to ‘down’ as ‘on’ is to ‘off’”).
• Shared abstraction analogies compare two unlike things to illustrate a point.

Metaphors are sometimes confused with shared abstraction analogies, but they serve different purposes. While metaphors are primarily used to make a comparison (e.g., “John is a caveman”), shared abstraction analogies are used to make an argument or explain something.

Metaphors are sometimes confused with allegories, but they have different functions:

• A metaphor makes an implied comparison between two unlike things, typically by stating that one thing is another (e.g., “time is money”).
• An allegory illustrates abstract concepts, moral principles, or complex ideas through symbolic representation.

Allegories are typically longer than metaphors and usually take the form of a story.

You can test your knowledge of the difference between metaphors and similes with the worksheet below. Choose whether each sentence contains a metaphor or a simile.

• Practice questions
• Answers and explanations
• You sing like an angel.
• The boxer is as strong as an ox.
• Hannah is a warrior.
• Your eyes are deeper than the ocean.
• Most of the time, you’re an angel. But you’re like a demon when you’re tired.
• This sentence contains a simile because it makes a direct comparison using the word “like.”
• This sentence contains a simile because it makes a direct comparison using the word “as.”
• This sentence contains a metaphor because it makes an implicit comparison by saying that something is something else.
• This sentence contains a simile because it makes a direct comparison using the word “than.”
• This sentence contains both a metaphor (“you are an angel”) and a simile (“like a demon”).

An extended metaphor (also called a sustained metaphor ) is a metaphor that is developed over several lines or paragraphs.

The following is an example of an extended metaphor in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet :

“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

Who is already sick and pale with grief

That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.”

A metaphor is a figure of speech that makes a non-literal comparison between two unlike things (typically by saying that something is something else).

For example, the metaphor “you are a clown” is not literal but rather used to emphasize a specific, implied quality (in this case, “foolishness”).

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Tapping into the Power of Metaphors

Metaphorical language—which includes metaphors, similes, analogies, and other comparisons—is a powerful tool in social change communications.

Metaphors that rely on everyday objects or experiences can help us introduce unfamiliar issues or explain complex ones. This is especially helpful when we need to put a new issue on the public agenda or make sure that sound science informs policy decisions.

Metaphors can spark new associations and understandings, putting an issue in a new light and prompting people to rethink their opinions or assumptions. When we need to shift widely shared mindsets, the right metaphor can make the difference.

And because metaphors give us a new mental framework for thinking and talking about a topic, they can open up dead-end conversations and repetitive debates. Using metaphor can help us advance ideas and avoid wasting energy by rebutting talking points that halt progressive change.

Metaphors are powerful, and we can use them to build understanding and shape the conversation on social issues. But we need to use them wisely and carefully. Here are three principles for using metaphor as a tool for social change.

• 1. Rely on research.

Metaphors can powerfully affect understanding and opinions, but sometimes they work in ways we do not expect or foresee. A metaphor highlights things and hides others. Each comes with its own set of emphases and blind spots. We cannot reliably predict—based only on our own close-to-the-issue intuition—how large numbers of people will respond to a metaphor. The right comparison can advance our issues—but the wrong one can set us back.

We do not have to leave this to chance. The FrameWorks Institute has tested hundreds of metaphors on dozens of social issues over the years—with each freely available study typically involving multiple research methods and a sample of several thousand people. Therefore, in most cases, we can use metaphors that have been tested to make sure they faithfully represent important concepts, build understanding, and promote progressive policy preferences. On issues for which metaphors have not been tested, we can simulate their explanatory power with other techniques—like laying out cause-and-effect links or using well-crafted examples.

• 2. Introduce metaphors early—and explicitly.

Metaphors are more effective in social change communications than are other approaches. Explanatory metaphors help people make sense of a topic. If we introduce them early, they guide how people respond to the rest of the communication.

However, we should avoid introducing distracting metaphors. For example, if we start by naming the issue—as is common in political campaigning—that can bring up all the associations that people have with a topic, whether it is anti-Black stereotypes associated with “welfare” or the political polarization attached to “climate change.” Often, these are the very ideas we are trying to change. Reminding people of those beliefs makes changing mindsets and shifting thinking harder than they need to be.

If we begin by reciting the research on the topic, another common practice, it can cause people to tune out. This is especially true when we present people with lengthy lists of negative outcomes, leading people to conclude that the problem is too big to solve.

While avoiding the wrong metaphors and overwhelming research, we still often need to provide a context for our message. When we do not offer a frame of reference, people fall back on frames and mindsets they have picked up elsewhere. Metaphors can help us avoid this by proactively opening channels for people to think about new ideas.

For example, many communications about adolescent development start out by acknowledging the risks associated with adolescence and the need to protect young people from danger, or they cite statistics about the number of young people who experience mental health challenges.

Instead of using this approach, it can be more productive to lead with a metaphor of adolescence as a time of exploration, when young people need to test ideas, experiment with boundaries, and be able to take and learn from safe risks. Elaborating on the metaphor offers people a way to replace unproductive mental pictures of young people as reckless, and adolescence as a period of danger, with a more balanced understanding of the risks and opportunities, and a sense of the potential for powerful learning and development.

• 3. Extend metaphors over time, across contexts, and across networks.

For new ways of thinking to take root, we must continuously cultivate them. This involves repeating our ideas (without sounding repetitive) and engaging others in sharing and expressing those same ideas in their own way.

Metaphors lend themselves to both consistency and creativity, so many communications professionals can use them without sounding scripted or inauthentic. The basic comparison can and should remain stable—this is how a field taps into the power of repetition. But the emphasis, the style, and even the medium or messenger can vary significantly.

A good example comes from FrameWorks’ long-standing partnership with the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, which has led to the creation of several metaphors to translate key concepts in early childhood development. We have seen the metaphor of brain architecture used by a wide range of experts, including neuroscientists, policy advocates, and staff at child care centers. It has been used as an organizing theme for university lectures, tabletop games, media interviews, public-service announcements, and interactive museum exhibits.

Sometimes communications professionals highlight the importance of having a solid foundation; other times, they use the sequencing of a construction project to help illustrate a developmental concept. Through this varied set of expressions, the early childhood field has brought the same fundamental idea (early brain development matters) to life in fresh ways again and again, across a decade. As a result, public thinking and public policy have shifted in major and measurable ways.

Metaphors are not only literary devices but also devices for thinking. They can put a picture in the public’s mind where none existed before—and they can reshape and update our shared mental images of social issues. When we use them wisely in our social change communications, we can amplify our impact.

Explore the explanatory metaphors that FrameWorks has developed, through research, on a diverse set of issues, including the following:

• Human development: aging, early childhood, parenting
• Environment: climate change, ocean acidification, marine conservation
• Economic justice: housing access, residential segregation, human services.

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Related content, framing in the field: a case study.

Framing in the field: A case study CHILD AND YOUTH POLICY ADVOCATES are constantly called on to craft messages to support better policies for children and their families locally and nationally....

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Want to Be Persuasive? Find a Metaphor

Research reveals the monster power of metaphor..

Updated November 22, 2023 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

• When you communicate an idea with a metaphor, you light up people’s sensory and motor neurons.
• You also activate emotions, prompt aha moments, and reward your audience with a sense of social interaction.
• When you’re trying to persuade, you might first seek a good story, but you may do better to seek a metaphor.

What’s the most persuasive way to convey a message? Many writers say, “Tell a story!” Nothing hooks like narrative. I’ve said so myself . But research shows stories have a rival for hooking power: metaphors. Metaphors can muscle into readers' minds just as much as stories can.

An example: Say a Category 4 hurricane is about to hit your town. How do you express the danger convincingly enough to get people to evacuate? Do you chronicle the big storm’s likely landfall? Or do you use figures of speech to tell people a “monster” storm is “poised to strike” and they will soon feel its “fury”?

We know the answer. David Hauser and Megan Fleming at Queen’s University (Canada) had people read a forecast of a storm using either literal or metaphorical descriptions. When they were metaphorical—using phrases like “poised to strike” and “fury”—people said they were much more likely to evacuate. They also said they expected more lives lost, more homes destroyed, and more days without power. [i]

Foster Simulation

George Orwell, in his classic Politics and the English Language, suggested that the persuasive power of writing depended on answering four questions: “1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom [i.e., metaphor] will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?” [ii]

Based today on what we know from science, Orwell foresaw what psychologists have learned. There are at least four reasons metaphor has so much punch.

First, when you convey a concept with metaphor, which you normally construct with specifics, you fire up both the language circuits in the brain’s left hemisphere and sensory and motor circuits atop the brain. [iii] As an example, Simon Lacey and others at Emory University showed that texture metaphors—a “bubbly” personality versus a “lively” personality—activate sensory neurons. [iv] When people read specifics like that, they mentally reenact the experience in the part of the brain they would use in reality.

Similarly, Emilia Castaño and Gareth Carol at the University of Barcelona and the University of Birmingham (UK) had people read motion metaphors—for example, “stocks are tumbling.” People’s eyes rolled with the direction of motion the metaphor suggested. [v] In this case, the specifics spurred people’s reenactment of the motion by shifting their eyes downward.

Scientists call this reenactment “simulation.” What’s remarkable is that metaphors drive simulation not only in the brain’s neurons but also in the fibers of the muscles controlled by those neurons. The whole body gets in the act.

No surprise, then, that one recent study led by Yucheng Li at the University of Surrey (UK) found that a significant part of the impact of metaphors comes from specific language alone. [vi]

Elicit Emotion

Second, we know from research that metaphors and other figures of speech fire up the brain’s emotional circuits. Research in 2014 by Francesca Citron at the University of Lancaster (UK) and Adele Goldberg at Princeton shows that even the simplest metaphors—“She looked at him sweetly” versus “kindly”—aroused the amygdala.

Serena Mon at Princeton, along with Citron and others, later gauged emotional arousal and focused attention via a well-established surrogate, pupil dilation. Metaphors—“The matter was out of the editor’s hands”—consistently triggered more dilation than literal equivalents (i.e., "The matter was out of the editor’s control”). [vii]

Third, we know that many metaphors—"The speech he gave was poison”—require each of us, on the fly, to solve a mental riddle. How does poison relate to speech? The reader or listener solves that riddle to achieve comprehension. Research shows that people gain pleasure just from the small aha that comes from “getting” the riddle. [viii]

Fourth, when you construct a metaphor that’s new, you draw from the material in your unique mental library—your lifetime knowledge, experience, and imaginings. Readers infer from your metaphor what makes you tick—your goals , intentions, personality traits, and more. [ix] They do this by “mentalizing,” as scientists call it, which gives them a view of the real you behind the cerebral curtain. That, in turn, drives the neural reward that comes from their connecting with you socially. [x]

Cue a Narrative

Finally, metaphors often double as a story-like cue—when, for example, you say, “the situation was out of her hands.” That cue initiates firing in the brain across the swath of readers’ neurons activated by all stories. Your readers then become entrained neurologically. [xi] This so-called mental coupling, when your brain activity mirrors the reader's, gives stories power scientists are only beginning to grasp.

Taken together, the research on metaphor helps to explain why one meta-analysis in 2002 estimated that metaphorical language is about 6 percent more persuasive than literal language. [xii] Statistically, you’re often better off saying something with a metaphor than with literal words.

It also explains the findings of a 2021 study led by Vinodkumar Prabhakaran at Google Research. Prabhakaran and others used natural language processing to analyze 70,000 Facebook posts from 412 politicians. They found that even simple and conventional metaphorical language—“cure” crime , “tsunami” of immigrants—drove higher social media “participation,” “acceptance,” and “propagation.” [xiii]

The giants of writing like Orwell were right. When you next sit down to write, you should make it a priority to ask: How can I capture this idea in a metaphor? How can I elicit in my readers’ minds the vivid reenactment of the meaning of the metaphor—the sensations, “hot” and “cold” emotions, insightful aha moments, and the neural hook of narrative?

The use of metaphor comes with a warning, though. As Orwell said, don’t lean on tired, overused wordings, which are likely to numb the mind instead of activate it. [xiv] “Every such phrase,” he said, “anesthetizes a portion of one's brain.”

The right metaphor—recall Orwell’s “Big Brother” or “thought police”—lives long in the minds of your readers. It may cross the lips of not just people today, but of their children, and their children’s children.

[i] David Hauser and Megan Fleming, "Mother Nature’s Fury: Antagonist Metaphors for Natural Disasters Increase Forecasts of Their Severity and Encourage Evacuation," Science Communication 43, no. 5 (2021).

[ii] George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946.

[iii] Scientists refer to this as “embodied cognition” or, more simply, “simulation.” For a book rich in experiments documenting this point by a cognitive scientist, see Benjamin Bergen, Louder Than Words (New York: Basic Books, 2012).

[iv] Simon Lacey, Randall Stilla, and Krish Sathian, "Metaphorically Feeling: Comprehending Textural Metaphors Activates Somatosensory Cortex," Brain and Language 120, no. 3 (2012).

[v] Emilia Castaño and Gareth Carrol, "Mental Simulation in the Processing of Literal and Metaphorical Motion Language: An Eye Movement Study," Metaphor and Symbol 35, no. 3 (2020).

[vi] Yucheng Li, Frank Guerin, and Chenghua Lin, "The Secret of Metaphor on Expressing Stronger Emotion," arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.13042 (2023). The impact of the muscle in this case came from the emotion evoked by the metaphors.

[vii] They attributed the dilation broadly to “richer meaning” and “engagement.” Serena K Mon et al., "Conventional Metaphors Elicit Greater Real-Time Engagement Than Literal Paraphrases or Concrete Sentences," Journal of Memory and Language 121 (2021).

[viii] John Kounios and Mark Beeman, "The Cognitive Neuroscience of Insight," Annual review of psychology 65 (2014). For more more on the relation of aha’s to the reward circuit, see Jasmin M Kizilirmak et al., "Learning of Novel Semantic Relationships Via Sudden Comprehension Is Associated with a Hippocampus-Independent Network," Consciousness and Cognition 69 (2019).

[ix] Andrea Bowes and Albert Katz, "Metaphor Creates Intimacy and Temporarily Enhances Theory of Mind," Memory & Cognition 43, no. 6 (2015).

[x] Prabaha Gangopadhyay et al., "Prefrontal–Amygdala Circuits in Social Decision-Making," Nature Neuroscience 24, no. 1 (2020).

[xi] For example, see Yangwen Xu et al., "Brain Network Reconfiguration for Narrative and Argumentative Thought," Communications Biology 4, no. 1 (2021).

[xii] Pradeep Sopory and James Price Dillard, "The Persuasive Effects of Metaphor: A Meta‐Analysis," Human Communication Research 28, no. 3 (2002).

[xiii] Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, Marek Rei, and Ekaterina Shutova, "How Metaphors Impact Political Discourse: A Large-Scale Topic-Agnostic Study Using Neural Metaphor Detection," Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 15 (2021).

[xiv] Rutvik H Desai et al., "A Piece of the Action: Modulation of Sensory-Motor Regions by Action Idioms and Metaphors," NeuroImage 83 (2013).

Bill Birchard is a writer, writing coach, and book consultant. He writes about the neuroscience and psychology of writing. His most recent book is Writing for Impact: 8 Secrets from Science That Will Fire Up Your Reader’s Brains.

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In qualitative research, metaphors can help simplify complex and/or multidimensional concepts through connecting one familiar concept to another familiar one, resulting in the comparison between the two concepts opening up new possibilities and perspectives (Schmitt, 2005). Metaphors provide structure to data and aid understanding of a familiar ...

Metaphors have so far inspired many researchers to explain complex concepts or new theorizing. But there is no clear instruction for metaphor-based research and its validation principles. Here, we first locate metaphor research in social sciences and humanities (SSH) and classify different types of its use. Then we describe the basics of metaphor including its concept, types, components and ...

metaphor that have dominated psychological studies over the past four decades: analogy, categori-zation, and conceptual mapping. Simple metaphors are generally interpreted as category statements, but more complex metaphors are likely to be treated as analogies. Multiple mechanisms should be

Metaphor and Symbol, the sole SSCI-indexed journal devoted to metaphor research, took the first position among journals in terms of publishing yield with 116 publications on metaphor processing ...

The purpose of metaphor analysis for qualitative research is to develop a better understanding of complex structures and lexical units. "Systematic metaphor analysis attempts to reconstruct models of thought, language and action" (Schmitt, 2005, p. 386) to make language more accessible.Furthermore, metaphor analysis outlines metaphorical patterns and can shed light into the frame of ...

Metaphor analysis is a growing field of research and has particularly gained popularity in discourse and critical discourse studies over the last two decades. This has led to various analytical ...

The use of metaphors in qualitative research provides an opportunity to examine phenomena from a unique and creative perspective. Metaphors can be used to provide structure to the data; to understand a familiar process in a new light; to identify situation-specific interventions; and to evoke emotion. Misuse of metaphors may detract from the ...

According to the metaphors Kvale and Brinkman (Kvale, 2007; Kvale & Brinkman, 2014) devised to explain various roles that interviewers take, the researcher who digs out facts and feelings from research subjects is characterized as a miner.The traveler journeys with the participant to experience and explore the research phenomenon. I introduced the metaphor of the gardener to suggest a ...

Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), whose betweenness ranks second in the cluster, as the founding work of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), is an important publication that cannot be ignored by any contemporary metaphor research. Based on embodied philosophy, CMT proposes in the field of cognitive linguistics that metaphor is not ...

Metaphor Studies is thus a highly interdisciplinary field that encompasses a myriad of theories, approaches, and methods. In current metaphor research, each of these strands is facing new challenges and offering new venues of cutting-edge research using state-of-the-art technologies. Researchers tend to focus on their own research areas and ...

This study examines the status and development trends of metaphorical research published in core. journals in the WoS database from 2010 to 2020, and it is an exploratory study aided by a ...

Consequently, Conceptual Metaphor research emphasizes linguistic theory study, corpus empirical research, and discourse analysis. Critical Metaphor Analysis, also known as CMA, is a method that is typically applied to the process of analyzing metaphors in various critical discourses to reveal the feelings, attitudes, and thoughts that lie ...

ABSTRACT. The Metaphor Compass: Directions for Metaphor Research in Language, Cognition, Communication, and Creativity provides a roadmap to navigate the recent findings and cutting-edge research conducted around the world on metaphor, focusing on the following four themes: Metaphor and Linguistic Diversity, Metaphor and Cognition, Metaphor and ...

Metaphor is widely used in human communication. The cohort of scholars studying metaphor in various fields is continuously growing, but very few work has been done in bibliographical analysis of metaphor research. This paper examines the advancements in metaphor research from 2000 to 2017. Using data retrieved from Microsoft Academic Graph and Web of Science, this paper makes a macro analysis ...

management [54,39,13,2], and computer science [48,36,55,19]. Since metaphor research has been developing dramatically, it is necessary to review the current situation, the devel-opment and trends of metaphor research, as well as studying how metaphor research has evolved through time. This may make contributions to some novel and interesting ...

Metaphor is a linguistic way of conveying an idea in poetic language with words and phrases articulated as complete ideas with the use of unusual words that normally have different meanings. Metaphor has been used often in literary narratives and poetry to clarify meaning. Many authors offer ideas about what a metaphor is and how it should be ...

Since metaphor did not become a focal topic of research until the 1960s, all the collections of work on metaphor have been published since then. Shibles 1972 is an early collection of essays from multiple perspectives, and Johnson 1981 provides most of the important philosophical writings on metaphor that defined the field at that time.

A metaphor is a rhetorical device that makes a non-literal comparison between two unlike things. Metaphors are used to describe an object or action by stating (or implying) that it is something else (e.g., "knowledge is a butterfly"). Metaphors typically have two parts: A tenor is the thing or idea that the metaphor describes (e.g ...

The present article outlines some of the complexities in psycholinguistic studies on metaphor, and suggests ways to account for this diversity of research findings. Both linguists and psychologists should not assume that a single theoretical model will account for the complex empirical findings, because all metaphoric behaviors depend on the ...

Here are three principles for using metaphor as a tool for social change. 1. Rely on research. Metaphors can powerfully affect understanding and opinions, but sometimes they work in ways we do not expect or foresee. A metaphor highlights things and hides others. Each comes with its own set of emphases and blind spots.

Taken together, the research on metaphor helps to explain why one meta-analysis in 2002 estimated that metaphorical language is about 6 percent more persuasive than literal language.

Metaphor Research: This approach emphasizes a recognition o f . patterns and relationships. As sociology and technology changes, we need . new words to refer to the new concepts th at we .

The Metaphor Program will exploit the use of metaphors by different cultures to gain insight into their cultural norms. Metaphors have been known since Aristotle (Poetics) as poetic or rhetorical devices that are unique, creative instances of language artistry (e.g., The world is a stage). ... Research on metaphors has uncovered inferred ...

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Exposition de fin d'année 2024

Dernière mise à jour : 8 juil.

Depuis l'année 2023 nous avons remis d'actualité l'exposition de fin d'année, qui était le rendez-vous annuel incontournable de l'ancienne école municipale de dessin de Langres. C'est avec joie et fierté que l'exposition de fin d'année 2024 s'est tenue, les 29 & 30 Juin derniers à tour Saint-Ferjeux de Langres. Voici un retour en image.

Atelier Enfants

Niveau supérieur de la tour Saint-Ferjeux

C'est avec une grande fierté que les élèves de notre atelier Enfants ont pu voir leurs oeuvres exposées dans ce cadre impressionnant.

Atelier Adolescents

Aux côtés des travaux de l'atelier Enfants, les élèves de l'atelier Adolescents ont également pu voir le public et leurs proches admirer leurs productions.

Atelier Adultes

Niveau inférieur de la tour Saint-Ferjeux

Les élèves de l'atelier Adultes nous ont fourni une très belle sélection de leurs travaux, permettant donc d'habiller complètement le second niveau de la tour.

Atelier Modèle Vivant

Parsemées au milieu des oeuvres de l'atelier Adultes, les production des élèves de l'atelier Modèle Vivant ont trouvé leur place, achevant de sublimer cette salle à l'impressionnant voûte.

Un grand merci à tou.te.s les élèves de nos ateliers, Enfants, Adolescents, Adultes & Modèle Vivant pour avoir permis cette exposition 2024, qui surpasse nettement l'édition précédente.

Visit of the Tower of Navarre in Langres

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When you visit the fortified city of Langres, you'll be amazed by the Tour de Navarre, the most imposing of its artillery towers ...

20 m high, 28 m in diameter and 7 m thick walls: this is what characterizes the Tour de Navarre, the most monumental artillery tower in Langres. To be more precise, it is a double artillery tower. Built in a record time of 4 years (incredible, isn't it?) , this unique Renaissance defensive complex in France will not fail to impress you. Young and old alike will be dazzled by its interior architecture, in particular its two powerfully vaulted and casemated rooms, not to mention its magnificent oak framework illuminated in different colors!

There is no need to say that visiting this extraordinary structure is one of the must-do activities in Langres , whether you are alone, with a partner, with friends or with your family. Moreover, you will note that the Tourist Office of the Pays de Langres also offers two fun tours of this historical monument, especially for children. The first one is for 6 to 9 year olds, while the second one is for 9 to 12 year olds. The ideal way to learn while having fun .

• Languages spoken French, Dutch, English, German
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From 01.04.2022 to 30.09.2022

• Normal : 4 €/pers.
• Reduced : 3.50 €/pers. (students – job seekers)
• Free for children under 12 years old accompanied by a family
• Guided tour of the Navarre Tower

April, May, June and September: every day from 2pm to 6pm (ticket office closes at 5:30pm) July-August: every day from 10:30 am to 6:30 pm non stop (ticket office closes at 6 pm).

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• Discovery of the most monumental artillery tower of Langres
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Langres, an acropolis and protector of many treasures, is bathed in a magical, poetic atmosphere. Strolling along the ramparts of this fortified city is a journey for the mind and senses. As you caress the grain of the stone, you become a halberdier protecting the stronghold, while your eyes lose themselves in a distant, soothing horizon. From the earliest times to the Age of Enlightenment, the hilltop town has preserved its treasures to become a jewel that comes alive with tours, shows and concerts. At the foot of the plateau, the wooded expanses of the Parc National de Forêts open up to generous landscapes, bathed in fertile, healing waters. Breathe in, nature is king here! In the skilful hands of its basket makers, wicker strands bend and intertwine to create baskets and decorative masterpieces. A land of space and freedom, Pays de Langres knows how to arouse every passion...

The Pays de Langres Tourist Office is at your disposal to help you organize your stay.

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