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Metaphorical navigation across troubles: cultural conceptualizations and the way we rely on them
Simon Gábor
Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary
The talk explores how metaphors influence our understanding of problematic situations and help individuals negotiate solutions within shared socio-cultural contexts. Even though the category of metaphor gained some prominence in investigating mental health issues and in therapeutic discourse, cognitive and corpus linguistic approaches to metaphor still have the potential to make a valuable contribution to qualitative research in psychology. The primary goal of the talk is to explain the concept of metaphor as a crucial element of distributed and emergent cultural cognition, as introduced by Sharifian. In this framework, the representation of the world is continually (re)negotiated among members of cultural groups.
Metaphor, as a conceptual mapping process, systematically highlights aspects of our experiences. Beyond its mere representational function, it also conveys an evaluative attitude and grounds subjective experience in intersubjectively shareable frames of reference. Therefore, metaphors play an important role in creating and sustaining a shared understanding of what is going on with us. This intricate function of metaphors in addressing and resolving troubles is illustrated in the analysis of metaphorical expressions found in online posts about suicidal thoughts and intentions.
