Friday, July 03, 2015

Metaphor map charts the images that structure our thinking

Huge project by Glasgow University researchers plots thirteen centuries of startling cognitive connections

a girl holds a globe in her hands.
Can you comprehend it? ... a girl holds a globe in her hands. Photograph: Alamy
Metaphor is not the sole preserve of Shakespearean scholarship or high literary endeavour but has governed how we think about and describe our daily lives for centuries, according to researchers at Glasgow University.

Experts have now created the world’s first online Metaphor Map, which contains more than 14,000 metaphorical connections sourced from 4m pieces of lexical data, some of which date back to 700AD.

While it is impossible to pinpoint the oldest use of metaphor in English, because some may have been adopted from earlier languages such as Germanic, the map reveals that the still popular link between sheep and timidity dates back to Old English. Likewise, we do not always recognise modern use of metaphor: for example, the word “comprehend” comes from Latin, where it meant to physically grasp an object.
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