Links
   Metaphor, Metonymy, and Cognitive Science

(07 October 1999)

This is my initial attempt to compile a comprehensive list of hyperlinks to sites and pages that address metaphor, metonymy, and cognitive science. Please keep in mind that this is a work in progress. If you have comments, suggestions, or if you want your site listed, please send e-mail to hall@morticia.cnns.unt.edu. Happy surfing!

• The Online Center for the Cognitive Science of Metaphor
  http://metaphor.uoregon.edu/metaphor.htm   mirror site: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rohrer/metaphor.htm
  
  Description:
  This site, also known as Tim Rohrer's Metaphor Center at the University of Oregon, contains numerous html formatted papers by Tim Rohrer, Mark Turner, Gilles Fauconnier, and others. The list of papers is broken into two sections, one devoted to metaphor and the other, to conceptual blending. The links section is organized according to the linked site's relevance to the Lakoff-Johnson metaphor theory or the Fauconnier-Turner style of conceptual blending. Links farther down the list come from differing theoretical perspectives or are less theoretical in nature than those higher up the list. In addition to the numerous links, this site also contains an annotated bibliography of work on metaphor as it pertains to the Lakoff-Johnson theory of conceptual metaphor. If this site is slow or down, the contents may be viewed at the metaphor mirror site on darkwing.uoregon.edu.

• Tony Veale's Metaphor Home Page
  http://www.compapp.dcu.ie/~tonyv/metaphor.html
  
  Description:
  This site is one of my favorites. Tony does a great job summarizing much of the metaphor literature on the net. He has also started an on-line encyclopedia of metaphor—a moderately sized collection of articles that pertain to metaphor research. In addition, his site contains numerous on-line publications; downloadable software tools; Tony’s thesis: Metaphor, Memory, and Meaning: Symbolic and Connectionist Issues in Metaphor Interpretation; and information about his computational model of metaphor, called "Sapper."

• Metaphor and Metonymy Group
  http://www.le.ac.uk/psychology/metaphor/   mirror site: http://www.psyc.nott.ac.uk/met/metaphor.html
  
  Description:
  This is the homepage for the Metaphor and Metonymy Group, based at the Universities of Leicester and Nottingham in England. Both of the URLs I've listed seem to point to the same place. With reference to their site, the group says: "We hope people interested in metaphor and metonymy (from a developmental, diachronic, cognitive, rhetorical etc. perspective) can use our web site to exchange news and views. We are especially keen to hear from people interested in metonymy, until recently rather neglected compared with metaphor. " The site maintains a collection of abstracts of papers concerning metaphor and metonymy. They also have information regarding metaphor and metonymy conferences (page last updated in 1997), an e-mail distribution list for the discussion of topics concerning figurative language (the Figurative Language Network), links to other sites, and pre-1992 literature on the topics of semantic change, semantic development and cognitive semantics.

• Mark Turner's Homepage
  http://www.wam.umd.edu/~mturn/
  
  Description:
  This is the homepage of Mark Turner, author of such books as Death is the Mother of Beauty and Reading Minds, co-author of More Than Cool Reason. Mark's homepage is broken into roughly seven sections:
  1. Section 1 consists of links to each of the headings in Mark's page in addition to links to conferences, Mark's public lecture biography, and links to the University of Maryland.
  2. Section 2 contains a picture and a short biography of Mark.
  3. Section 3 lists Mark's research affiliations.
  4. Section 4 lists the books Mark has written or co-authored. This section has links to select reviews and excerpts of his books. One of his books, Death is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, and Criticism, is available on-line in its entirety.
  5. Section 5 contains a bibliography of Mark's select articles over metaphor, cognitive science, and conceptual blending. Many of these entries have links to the full articles in html format.
  6. Section 6 contains two manuscripts, one in html and the other in rtf.
  7. Section 7 is Mark's "other links" section, with links to sites on semantics, metaphor, and cognitive science.

• ATT-Meta Project Databank, Examples of Usage of Metaphors of Mind
  http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~jab/ATT-Meta/Databank/
  
  Description:
  This databank contains real-discourse examples of metaphorical descriptions of mental states and processes (1070 text examples and 65 speech examples). The databank also contains some examples of metonymical descriptions. For the purpose of this site, "a metaphor is taken to be a conceptual view of some type of thing as some other type of thing." The examples in the databank are categorized according to the metaphors they manifest. In addition, the databank points to related research papers on metaphors of mind and to an implemented system for metaphor-based reasoning about beliefs.

• The Conceptual Metaphor Homepage at Berkeley
  http://cogsci.berkeley.edu/
  
  Description:
  George Lakoff's page at UC Berkeley. This site lists thousands of conceptual metaphors.

• Applied Language Research at the University of York
  http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/ltc/apling/info.htm
  
  Description:
  This site includes abstracts from conference on Researching and Applying Metaphor held in January 96.

• Metaphor, Culture, and Cognition: The Danish Metaphor Network
  http://www.hum.ku.dk/fpr/philosophy/metafor/met_eng.html
  
  Description:
  This site was created as a forum for Danish-speaking researchers who have an interest in metaphor. It consists of a newsletter (in Danish), links to other metaphor sites, and proceedings from the first and second Danish seminar on metaphor. Only two of the seminar texts are in English. The first one, written by Kim Halskov Madsen, is titled: "A Guide to Metaphorical Design." The second one, written by Cynthia M. Grund, is titled: "Intentionality, Food and Music—A Fictionalist Approach."

• The Neural Theory of Language Project
  http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/NTL/
  
  Description:
  The NTL Project at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley. They have developed a computational model of metaphoric reasoning about events. Their basic hypothesis is as follows: "Embodied metaphors project features of spatial motion and manipulation onto abstract plans and processes. This allows event descriptions to exploit the highly compiled and real-time aspects of x-schema representations to express complex, uncertain, and evaluative knowledge about abstract domains such as international economic policies."

• Metaphoric Use in Sign Language by Dr. Mary Brennan
  http://www.ssc.mhie.ac.uk/docs/maryb.html#44
  
  Description:
  In her paper, "See what I mean? Exploiting BSL visual encoding in teaching and learning," Dr. Brennan addresses the way British Sign Language (BSL) encodes visual information and how this knowledge can be used to teach deaf children. Of particular interest to me is her examination of the use of metaphoric expression in BSL.

I lifted the following links directly from the pages I listed above. I apologize for the lack of order and the inconsistent formatting of these links. I hope to sift through them, organize them, and format them in the near future.

• The Online Center for the Cognitive Science of Metaphor

  Contains a number of interesting metaphor-related philosophy papers in HTML format, and pointers to other sites of an unexpectedly figurative flavour.

  http://metaphor.uoregon.edu/metaphor.htm

• The Conceptual Metaphor Homepage at Berkeley

• Metaphors of Mind Databank

  John Barnden, formally of the Computing Research Laboratory and Computer Science Department of New Mexico State University and now at the university of Birmingham in the UK, has developed a databank of real-discourse examples of metaphorical descriptions of mental states and processes. It also contains some examples of the use of metonymy in mental state descriptions. The databank points to related research papers on metaphors of mind and on an implemented system for metaphor-based reasoning about beliefs.

• The Metaphor and Metonymy Group in Nottingham

  Maintains a current list of metaphor-related conferences, abstracts and other information.

• The Danish Metaphor Network.

  Newsletters (in Danish), with English-language Texts also.

   

• Tim Rohrer's Metaphor Center at UOregon
  - with annotated bibliography and many useful links
• George Lakoff's page at UC Berkeley
  - with systematic listing of thousands of conceptual metaphors
• The Metaphor and Metonymy Group in Nottingham
  - a new site that still has to show its potential.

• The Metaphor Centre, University of Oregon
• Mark Turner's Homepage including the entire text of Death is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism (1987) Chicago: University of Chicago Press
• The Danish Network for Metaphor, Culture and Cognition
• The Conceptual Metaphor Homepage has a searchable index of metaphor systems
• Applied Language Research at the University of York, including abstracts from conference on Researching and Applying Metaphor held in January 96
• Mental Metaphor Databank. John Barnden at the Computing Research Laboratory and Computer Science Department of New Mexico State University has developed a databankof real-discourse examples of metaphorical descriptions of mental states and processes. It also contains some examples of the use of metonymy in mental state descriptions. The databank points to related research papers on metaphors of mind and on an implemented system for metaphor-based reasoning about beliefs.

• About the Center for the Cognitive Science of Metaphor
• Annotated Bibliography of work on Metaphor related to the Lakoff-Johnson theory of conceptual metaphor
• The International Cognitive Linguistics Association's next conference (ICLC '99) will be in Stockholm July 10-16, 1999. This is one of the primary venues for new work in metaphor.
• Master metaphor list (Zipped Postscript, also available in HTML from UC-Berkeley below)
• George Lakoff's E-text on Politics and Metaphor during the Gulf War
  Research stemming from Lakoff's paper:
  • The Metaphorical Logic of (Political) Rape: George Bush and the New Wor(l)d Order by Tim Rohrer
  • Prestige and Reputation in American Foreign Policy and American Realism by Jennifer Milliken (Postscript only)
• Metaphors We Ought Not Live By: Rush Limbaugh in the Age of Cognitive Science by Tim Adamson, Greg Johnson and Tim Rohrer
• Boundless Paradox: a discussion of Heraclitus, Anaximander and Gorgias by Tim Rohrer
• Embodied Perspective vs. Objective Measurement: Rationality in Plato's Protagoras by Tim Rohrer
  • From Protagoras to Metaphor: Mark Turner's Design for a Theory of Meaning
• Feelings Stuck in a GUI Web: metaphors, image-schemata and designing the human-computer interface by Tim Rohrer
• The Cognitive Science of Metaphor from Philosophy to Neuropsychology by Tim Rohrer
• Meaning Generation in Music Listening by Halljerd Aksnes
• Death is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism The complete text of this book by Mark Turner is now available on the web.

  Conceptual Blending: (see also the blending home page)

• Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression by Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier
• Conceptual Projection and Middle Spaces by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner UCSD Department of Cognitive Science Technical Report. Compressed (UNIX) postscript version.
• Ed Heil's thesis on Ovid and Space Blending is an example of applying The Turner-Fauconnier conceptual blending hypothesis to classical rhetoric.
• Conceptual Blending on the Information Highway: How Metaphorical Inferences Work by Tim Rohrer
• Book Review: As Imagination Bodies Forth the Forms of Things Unknown. Mark Turner's review of Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., The Poetics of Mind.
• Book Review: Discover magazine on Mark Turner's The Literary Mind..

• If the metaphor site is too slow or down, you may wish to use the metaphor mirror site now available on darkwing at the University of Oregon. Please bookmark the mirror site if you are frequent user. If you are on the mirror, here is the home machine.
• Mark Turner's home page at the University of Maryland details some recent books on metaphor and cognitive science. Check his excellent conceptual blending page for recent work on conceptual blending.
• The Conceptual Metaphor Home Page at the University of California at Berkeley Institute of Cognitive Studies has a version of the Master Metaphor List in HTML format. Also see UC-Berkeley's metaphor ftp site.
• The Neural Theory of Language Group at Berkeley has begun to do important work on developing computational models of embodied linguistic cognition. Check especially the research publications link, and be sure to hit David Bailey's Research Page and S. Narayanan's ICSI page for some of the real highlights of the NTL group's work.
• The philosophy department at Oregon co-sponsored the Body, Mind and Brain: The Collaboration of Philosophy and Cognitive Science Conference, Oct, 3-4, 1997
• CMA-squared, a conference on Computation for Metaphors, Analogy and Agents was held 6-10 April 1998 in Aizu-Wakamatsu City, Japan. Check their site for info.
• Joe Gradyhas put synopses of his papers on primary metaphor onto the web.
• Teenie Matlock is doing research on metaphors and image schemata within psychology. See especially her online paper on spatial metaphors and the web.
• The Metaphor Public Humanities Project's lecture series is a good place to hear recent work in metaphor theory.
• Highly recommended is the Journal of Metaphor and Symbolic Activity special issue on metaphor theory guest edited by Mark Johnson. This issue contains articles by Steven Winter, Michele Emanatian, Thomas Leddy, Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier. (Abstracts only are available online...) The index to the journal is also available online, together with abstracts from other issues.
• The International Cognitive Linguistics Association 1997 meetings were in Amsterdam. It is one of the primary venues for new work on metaphor. Here is the program. An abstract of Tim Rohrer's talk Recursive Metaphors in Naturalistic Explanation: Directionality and feedback loops between conceptual domains is available.
• John Barnden has developed a metaphors of mind databank which contains real-discourse examples of metaphorical descriptions of mental states and processes. It also contains some examples of the use of metonymy in mental state descriptions. The databank points to related research papers on metaphors of mind and on an implemented system for metaphor-based reasoning about beliefs.
• Metaphor and Metonymy pages Brigitte Nerlich, David Clarke, Zazie Todd have recently established an excellent site for research on metaphor and metonymy at the University of Nottingham.
• Tony Veale's Metaphor Home Page at the Dublin City University is one of the best sites summarizing some of the metaphor literature on the net. See also his call for papers for a conference entitled Computational Models of Creative Cognition
• The Hypertext Crito is an interactive analysis of Plato's famous text using the Lakoff-Johnson theory of metaphor.
• The Danish Metaphor network now has their own home page.
• From UCSD cognitive science community comes COGLING, a discussion list for the cognitive linguistics community. Covers much more than mere metaphor: conceptual blending, cognitive grammar, cognitive phonology, etc.
• The thought experiment home page has interesting commentary on a long tradition of philosophical inquiry.
• Ray Paton's group at Liverpool has produced some interesting work on biological metaphors for computing. Also has a good list of related links if you dig around.
• The MIT Artificial Intelligence laboratory has recently started to take the Lakoff-Johnson claims about metaphor and the embodiment of human reason very seriously. Lynn Andrea Stein and Rodney Brooks head a robot project designed to explore the argument that human-like intelligence requires human-like embodiment. Here is a link to the Human Cognition Project at MIT's AI lab. The nuts and bolts of the Stein and Brooks' proposal is found in Building Brains for Bodies [Postscript, compressed, 16 pages.] You might also want to look at the Knowbotic Interface site.
• New work on metaphor, politics and peacmeaking! Anthony Judge of the Union of International Associations has written a paper entitled Enhancing Sustainable Development Strategies through the Avoidance of Military Metaphors. It forms part of other work on governance through metaphor, of which a series of papers is accessible from this table of contents.
• Interested in law and metaphor? Bernie Hibbitt's has placed a brief version of his Making Sense of Metaphors: Visuality, Aurality and the Reconfiguration of American Legal Discourse online. I would also recommend that researchers on Law and metaphor also read work by Steven Winter (see annotated bibliography) if they are seeking work which is tightly connected to the Lakoff-Johnson theory.
• Mock Spanish: A site for the indexical reproduction of racism in American English is a fascinating paper on contemporary language use.
• Michael Buchholtz has an ftp site with various German papers on metaphorand psychotherapy. Click here for a brief English language summary of his latest book.
• A well-designed and graphically impressive page on metaphors of the self from outside academia is available from the MetaSelf page. Focused on the humanistic psychological and spiritual aspects of metaphor theory.
• Stephen Pepper, who wrote an interesting philosophical treatise called World Hypotheses, now has an email discussion list devoted to Pepper scholarship.
• The Digital Anatomist Project has a useful collection of pictures of the brain. Excellent illustrations.
• Metaphor: From Plato to the Postmoderns is an impressive and intriguing example of an argumentative hypertext site on metaphor.
• Dr. Ana Marjanovic-Shane has placed her paper Metaphor - a propositional comment and an invitation to intimacy online.
• Bill Benzon has placed a copy of a dated but interesting article on metaphor and neural processes from 1987. This article is an excellent illustration of the then current debate between the interaction view and the cognitivist (Lakoff and Johnson) view of metaphor. The neural processing revolves around Pribram's suggestion that the mind stores representations holographically.
• Interested in the relationship between the metaphor and the Internet? Here's the abstract of a presentation I gave on metaphor and the Internet in the summer of '95. Full text now available as well.
• One of the more polished episodes of the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation dealt with the issue of metaphor as fundamental to communication. Highly recommended is the synopsis of the script, from which I have excerpted the following quote:

  "Since I'm sure someone will ask "why didn't the translator work!", I'll answer it. This wasn't a translation problem--it was a conceptual, comprehension problem. All the translators in the world won't help you if you aren't thinking in even marginally similar ways."