Three experiments explored whether conceptual mappings in conventional metaphors are productive, by testing whether the comprehension of novel metaphors was facilitated by first reading conceptually related conventional metaphors. The first experiment, a replication and extension of Keysar et al. [Keysar, B., Shen, Y., Glucksberg, S., Horton, W.…

Economic activity in its different manifestations--production, exchange, consumption and, particularly, information on quantities and prices--generates and transfers energy. As a result, we can apply to it the basic laws of thermodynamics. These laws are applicable within a system, i.e., in a country or between systems and countries. To these…

An empirical study is presented that tests a novel prediction generated by the Metaphor-by-Pattern-Completion (MPC) connectionist model of metaphor comprehension (Thomas & Mareschal, 2001). The MPC model predicts a developmental progression in the way that children process metaphors, from a preference for basic-level metaphors to a preference for…

The ambiguity in the first half of the paper's title--"Engaging music and media"--is intentional. Music is engaging in the sense that it implicates our hearts and minds. Music can also be engaged by and with media. And, of course, engagement is core to effective learning. The role of music education is always in flux. Aesthetic aims sometimes take…

Publics are not simply a product of common attention to texts, but are also animated by an economy of tropes and affects that relies on processes of metonymic connection, metaphorical condensation, and affective investment. Drawing on Jacques Lacan's theory of enjoyment and his treatments of metaphor and metonymy as rhetorical forms, this essay…

The author shares a story told to him by a colleague more than thirty years ago. The dean of a midsized American university was explaining the path to tenure to a roomful of newly appointed assistant professors. "We know you boys can all "field"," he declared. "Now we want to see if you can hit." A lot has changed over the intervening decades. If…

Vocabulary instruction is addressed on two levels in this article: 1) the importance of direct teaching and 2) using the books of a popular children's series as examples to support these vocabulary lessons. Also addressed are specific methods of turning classrooms into places where vocabulary instruction is effective and enjoyable. Elements of…

This study aimed to explore metaphorical images of pre-service and in-service teachers as windows into their schemata for thinking about "teachers". Data were gathered from three groups: 58 junior year students studying in a pre-service English teaching programme, 92 senior year students registered in the same pre-service programme, and…

Bees are a vital part of the ecology. People of conscience are a vital part of society. In Nina Frenkel's "One World" poster, the bee is also a metaphor for the role of the individual in a diverse society. This article presents a lesson that uses Frenkel's poster to help early-grades students connect these ideas and explore both the importance of…

Alison Cook-Sather begins this review essay with a discussion of David Tyack and Larry Cuban's generative phrase "the grammar of schooling" to provide context for her examination of three texts that address the challenges of school reform: John Sylvester Lofty's "Quiet Wisdom: Teachers in the United States and England Talk About…

In this article we argue that conceptual competence should be seen as a component of second language (L2) communicative competence. Abstract concepts are highly expressed by means of metaphors, metonymies, idioms and other types of figurative language. In literature it is suggested that knowledge and appropriate use of these lexical segments are…

Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability of an individual to make inferences about what others may be thinking or feeling and to predict what they may do in a given situation based on those inferences. Discussions of ToM focus almost exclusively on inferred cognitive structures and processes and shed little light on the actual behaviors…

This study describes how one teacher educator used metaphor as a self-study tool over an eight-year period. Several methods of eliciting metaphors are discussed and the effects of multiple metaphors on the educator's perspectives on practice are highlighted. The interplay among the metaphors and their meaning is described and used to provide…

How the perceptions of novel figurative phrases change over the course of numerous presentations were addressed in three studies using rating tasks (Studies 1 and 3) and recall tasks (Study 2). The present set of studies replicated much of Schweigert et al.'s (J Psychol Res 32:455-475, 2003) findings of changes in correlations among figurative…

In a recent series of publications (Traxler et al. J Mem Lang 39:558-592, 1998; Van Gompel et al. J Mem Lang 52:284-307, 2005; see also Van Gompel et al. (In: Kennedy, et al.(eds) Reading as a perceptual process, Oxford, Elsevier pp 621-648, 2000); Van Gompel et al. J Mem Lang 45:225-258, 2001) eye tracking data are reported showing that globally…