Language, Cognition and Communication: The Case of Metaphor

label Diverse autorenew 2025-09-29, 17:01 history_edu Maria Dumitru
When you examine the way we speak and write, you will find that we need metaphors in every sentence: we attack our opponents in a debate, organizations can grow or be pruned, and theories are intricate fabrics that are elegant and strong but also need stitching.Why is this? Are these insignificant dead metaphors that are based in the history of (every!) language? Or are they alive in our unconscious knowledge and used to structurehow we talk, think and communicate about all kinds of abstract but essential issues in our lives? Researchers across the Humanities and Social Sciences have recently shown that we need metaphors for handling emotions, the mind, our relations with other people, our organization of politics, business, etcetera. They are moreover suggesting that these metaphors are alive and kicking, influencing our ways of reasoning, imagining, and acting.We have vibrant metaphorical models for cancer (as a war in your body), the mind (as a computer%97whereas it used to be a steam machine), and immigration (as a flood or even tsunami of foreign people). In this course we will use metaphor as an exciting tool to probehow language, cognition and communicationreally interact and work.

Period
30-06-2014 - 11-07-2014 (2 weeks)

Target group
For students in the disciplines of Modern Language and Linguistics, or other disciplines with a substantial component of linguistic analysis of discourse and/or communication.

Course aim
This course will teach you how to analyze the workings of discourse by looking at the interaction between metaphorical and non-metaphorical language, thought and communication. You will learn how to distinguish metaphorical from non-metaphorical language use, analyze its basis in the conceptual structures of our thought,and interpret its functions in communication. This will serve as a model of how you should do discourse analysis in general, demonstrating how linguists act as specialists who can show how text and talk work in concrete situations of communication in all kinds of professional and societal domains.



Credits
3.0 ECTS creditsECTS is the standard European credit system, each ECTS credit is equivalent to 28 study hours. All courses are worth 3 ECTS. Because some education systems (such as the American universities) base their credits on contact hours, we have included the contact hours in the course description on the website.

Course fee
EUR 1200[Convert to USD]The tuition fee of thiscourse is 1200,- and includes furnished accommodation and the orientation programme. If you select two consecutive courses and study with us for four weeks, you will receive a 10% discount on the second course fee. Some courses will include excursions. We will also organize trips and excursions as part of our social programme, which is a great way to get to know your fellow students and learn more about Amsterdam and the Netherlands. The social programme is not included in the tuition fee.

Course leader
Prof. Gerard Steen

VU University Amsterdam Study Abroad in Amsterdam
Address: De Boelelaan 1105 Amsterdam
Postal code: 1081 HV
City: Amsterdam
Country: Netherlands
Website: http://www.studyabroadinamsterdam.nl/en/summerschool/index.asp
E-mail: amsterdamsummerschool@vu.nl
Phone: +31 20 5986506