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General Vocabulary and Pre-Lab Questions:

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1. What scientific topic is this lab about?

   • Doing research in the field of cognitive science.

     • Cognitive science: the study of thought, learning, and mental organization, which draws on aspects of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and computer modeling.

     • Source domain: conceptual domain from which we draw metaphorical expressions in order to understand another conceptual domain.

     • Target domain: the conceptual domain that is understood through the metaphorical expressions drawn from another conceptual domain.

   • In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor (also called cognitive metaphor) refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another.

     • A conceptual domain is any coherent organization of human experience.

   • There are three overlapping categories of conceptual metaphors: orientational, ontological, and structural metaphors.

 

=> "Understanding one domain in terms of another involves a set of fixed correspondences (technically called mappings) between a source and a target domain. This set of mappings obtains between basic constituent elements of the target. To know a conceptual metaphor is to know the set of mappings that applies to a given source-target pairing. It is these mappings that provide much of the meaning of the metaphorical linguistic expressions (or linguistic metaphors) that make a particular conceptual metaphor manifest" (Lakoff and Johnson).

 

• Orientational metaphors: a type of metaphor (or figurative comparison) that involves spatial relationships. These metaphors organize entire conceptual systems with respect to one another.

  • Ex: up-down, in-out, on-off, and front-back.

• Ontological metaphors: a type of metaphor (or figurative comparison) in which something concrete is projected onto something abstract. These metaphors allow us to view events, activities, emotions, and ideas (i.e. intangible concepts) as having actual substance and physical bodies. Ontological metaphors are some of the most basic comprehensive devices we use to make sense of our physical experiences - they are so inherent and naturally-used that we don’t even realize to what extent we use them, to what extent they impact our cognitive processes.

• Structural metaphors: a metaphorical system in which one complex concept (typically abstract) is presented in terms of some other (usually more concrete) concept

 

=> In Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson describe this commonly-used metaphor:

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TIME IS MONEY:

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• You're wasting my time.

• This gadget will save you hours.

• I don't have the time to give you.

• How do you spend your time these days?

• That flat tire cost me an hour.

• I've invested a lot of time in her.

• You're running out of time.

• Is that worth your while?

• He's living on borrowed time.

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What is the overall purpose of this lab?

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The purpose of the lab is to explore the importance of language and metaphor in thought and decision-making. 

 

Procedure (How will this lab be done?):

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• In addition to metaphor, I will be investigating whether age influences learning ability and decision making.

• The metaphor experiment will be conducted over three age groups: elementary school (5-10), high school(15-19), and post-college education (20-50).

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Hypothesis and reasoning:

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• If a trial group is given a case study that has a "crime is a beast" metaphor, then they will pick solutions related to forceful responses (i.e increase size of police force).  

• If a trial group is given a case study that has a "crime is a virus" metaphor, then they will pick solutions related to social reform (i.e better education and decreased poverty). 

• If a trial group is given a case study that has no metaphor for describing crime, then they will produce inconclusive results.

 

SOURCES

George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More Than Cool Reason. University of Chicago Press, 1989

 

Thibodeau PH, Boroditsky L (2011) Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning. PLoS ONE 6(2): e16782. doi:10.1371/journal. pone.0016782