Stickles and Laparle awarded RaAM Building Bridges Grant
June 30th, 2023
At the General Assembly of RaAM 16, it was announced that Elise Stickles and Schuyler Laparle were awarded a Building Bridges Fund grant. This award will support an interdisciplinary hybrid conference on climate communication, to be held jointly at UBC and the University of Tilburg, in fall of 2024. Researchers, activists, and policy makers are moving away from a binary, “doomist vs. solutionist” model, towards one of climate justice. Simultaneously, linguists and other metaphor researchers are increasingly interested in the contributions metaphor analysis can make to developing more effective climate communications. Some models may inadvertently invoke feelings of doomism or guilt – neither of which are useful for motivating individuals to action. Cognitive linguistics, with its understanding of how metaphors and frames guide reasoning, can help. Our conference will bring together metaphor analysts and others in academia who focus on the language of climate change with journalists and activists.
Photos from RaAM 16
From left to right: Elise Stickles, Kim Grogan, Schuyler Laparle (in front), Inés Lozano, Eve Sweetser, Stéphanie Bonnefille, and Bryce Wallace
Schuyler Laparle
Bryce Wallace
Kim Grogan
Stéphanie Bonnefille
Elise Stickles, doing her best to channel Caitlin Johnstone
Inés Lozano
Cervantes gave a talk as well, but Sancho Panza was more interested in the conference dinner.
MetaNet at RaAM 16
We are pleased to announce that several MetaNet-related papers were accepted for presentation at the 16th meeting of Researching and Applying Metaphor in Alcalá de Henares, Spain, from June 28-30th, 2023.
Caitlin Johnstone, Celeste Browning, and Elise Stickles will present “Diffusing the time bomb – Differential impacts of metaphor on climate doomism”.
Elise Stickles, Ana Arrieta-Zamudio, Inés Lozano, Yorka Olavarría, and Rodolfo Ortiz will present “¿El virus del dragón o un pequeño covicho?: Variation and change in COVID-19 metaphors across varieties of Spanish”.
Stéphanie Bonnefille will present “How is “eco-anxiety” framed in the press (January 2018-January 2023)?”.
Schuyler Laparle will present “Metaphors for displacement in times of crisis”.
Bryce Wallace and Eve Sweetser will present “Anti-Vax framings and metaphors: What makes an Anti-Vaxxer?”.
Kim Grogan will present “Multimodal persuasion: Metaphor in climate change activism”.
RaAM 16 will also feature the following talks from MetaNet affiliates:
- Inés Lozano, “How hyperbole enhances ironic meaning: A cognitive-linguistic approach”
- Eve Sweetser, “Culturally based metaphors, frame metonymy, and ‘culturally primary’ associations”
Stickles and Schneider win Arts Undergraduate Research Award
March 6, 2023
Elise Stickles and Laura Schneider were awarded an Arts Undergraduate Research Award (AURA) to fund Laura’s work on Canadian and Hexagonal French metaphors for cancer in the summer of 2023. To the best of our knowledge, there has not been a systematic comparison of metaphors in any variety of French, although there have been a few case studies of individuals’ discourse describing their experience with cancer. Laura will work to collect, analyse, and translate metaphors from a variety of sources, including local news sites; resources for clinicians; resources for patients and their families/friends; and cancer patient forum support groups and blogs. Her work will contribute to the broader MetaNet project, “Waging metaphorical war: Cross-linguistic analysis of metaphors for cancer, COVID-19, and climate change.”
MetaNet at ICLC16
March 2, 2023
Sarah Moar, Stéphanie Bonnefille, Eve Sweetser and Elise Stickles will present “Building the French-language MetaNet Wiki: A collaborative online resource for metaphor and image schema analysis en français” at the 16th Meeting of the International Cognitive Linguistics Conference in Düsseldorf, Germany, from August 7-11, 2023.
ICLC16 will also feature these talks from MetaNet affiliates:
- Caitlin Johnstone, “The Future is Now: Blending theory and the reconfiguration of the climate crisis”
- Eve Sweetser, “Blending spaces to compose speech–and-gesture meaning”
- Kim Grogan, “Blending for persuasive shock value: Climate activism”
- Kim Grogan and Elise Stickles, “Climate change: a constructional approach”
- Sarah Moar and Elise Stickles, “‘it semed to be sumthing’: Constructing Salem’s Witnesses’ Seem-Construct-i-con”