Project Overview

The MetaNet project seeks to systematically identify and analyze the metaphors that people use to discuss and reason about a broad range of topics and domains. To accomplish these aims, we have developed a system that makes use of a repository of formalized frames and metaphors to automatically detect, categorize, and analyze expressions of metaphor in large-scale text corpora. The publicly accessible metaphor data repositories in English, French, and Spanish are available here. The MetaNet system is currently housed at the University of British Columbia and headed by Dr. Elise Stickles in the Department of English Language and Literatures.

Project History

The originating phase (2012-2016) of the MetaNet project involved a large team of researchers from International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley, California, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, University of Southern California, Stanford, and UC Merced, and was funded through the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) agency under its Metaphor Program. The primary objective of the original project was to build a computer system capable of detecting and classifying metaphors used in American English, Persian, Russian, and Mexican Spanish. In addition, a group of cognitive linguists and neuroscientists performed research to test how metaphor affects thinking and emotion, and to evaluate the methodologies and results produced by the computational metaphor system.

The Understanding of Metaphor in MetaNet

As analyzed in Conceptual Metaphor Theory, metaphors allow language users to exploit their rich and complex knowledge of one domain, such as the physical world, to understand and reason about another, often less structured and/or more abstract domain. Building on the foundation of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, MetaNet has developed formal representations of metaphors as mappings from one domain (the Source domain) to another (the Target domain) , and has built a structured repository containing systematic network of searchable and interrelated metaphors, as well as a network of semantic frames that act as source and target domains of metaphors. In the MetaNet metaphor repository we have compiled a very large compendium of attested metaphors, including time metaphors, mind metaphors, event structure metaphors, emotion metaphors, and morality metaphors. It also includes novel metaphors pertaining to target domains of interest to the project, which have centred on social problems such as issues of poverty, taxation, bureaucracy, governance, gun violence, and cancer.