Aptness is an umbrella term that covers a multitude of issues in the interpretation and generation of creative metaphor. In this paper we concentrate on one of these issues — the notion of lexical systematicity — and explore its role in ascertaining the coherence of creative metaphor relative to the structure of the target concept being described. We argue that all else being equal, the most ap...

Guilt is an important social and moral emotion. In addition to feeling unpleasant, guilt is metaphorically described as a "weight on one's conscience." Evidence from the field of embodied cognition suggests that abstract metaphors may be grounded in bodily experiences, but no prior research has examined the embodiment of guilt. Across four studies we examine whether i) unethical acts increase s...

This essay explores Kahakauwila’s short story is Paradise from the angle of post- and decolonial studies environmental humanities, presents it as an ecofeminist counterhegemonic Oceanian identitarian narrative. With special references to autochthonous antinuclear protests claims sovereignty (Trask, Teaiwa, Walker), argues that female author characters all Occupy Waikīkī, colonials, resistants, ...

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the time-course of meaning activation of different types of ambiguous words. Unbalanced homonymous ("pen"), balanced homonymous ("panel"), metaphorically polysemous ("lip"), and metonymically polysemous words ("rabbit") were used in a visual single-word priming delayed lexical decision task. The theoretical distinction between homonymy an...

Cultural and anthropological data suggest that experiences of extreme, traumatic events usually elicit some reactions (symptoms) that may be considered universal. In other words, most people, belonging to different cultures and subcultures, experiencing such vexing situations develop, in the short and sometimes in the long run, approximately the same reactions: intense fear, helplessness, horro...

Replication efforts involving large samples are recommended in helping to determine the reliability of an effect. This approach was taken for a study from Meier, Robinson, and Clore (2004), one of the first papers in social cognition guided by conceptual metaphor theory, which reported that evaluations were faster when word valence metaphorically matched (e.g., a word with a negative meaning in...

This survey is devoted to a new algebraic structure called qualgebra. Our topologicalmotivation is the study of knotted 3-valent graphs and closely related branched braids via combinatorially defined coloring invariants. From an algebraic viewpoint, our structure a part of an alternative axiomatization of groups, describing the properties of conjugation operation and its interactions with the g...

It may be that semantic representations of both literally and metaphorically used words extend to neural regions related to their modality. Additionally, it is unclear whether underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms in metaphor and literal sentence processing are distinct, a confusion due to a lack of control over numerous confounding factors in previous research (Schmidt et al., 2010). We p...

Research shows that in the aftermath of conflict, forgiveness improves victims’ well-being and the victim–offender relationship. Building on the research on embodied perception and economy of action, we demonstrate that forgiveness also has implications for victims’ perceptions and behavior in the physical domain. Metaphorically, unforgiveness is a burden that can be lightened by forgiveness; w...

We should not admit categorial restrictions on the significance of syntactically well formed strings. Syntactically well formed but semantically absurd strings, such as ‘Life’s but a walking shadow’ and ‘Caesar is a prime number’, can express thoughts; and competent thinkers both are able to grasp these and ought to be able to. Gareth Evans’ generality constraint, though Evans himself restricte...