revisiting the meaning of the word “empirical” in our society’s name: what would goethe have...
TRANSCRIPT
Revisiting the meaning of the word “empirical” in our society’s name:
What would Goethe have to say about it?
Gerald C. Cupchik
University of Toronto
Lecture available at: www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchik
THE CHALLENGE OF METAPHOR
Metaphors in Print Ads
Metaphors in Television Commercials
MP4
VOB
Metaphors on Film
Metaphors in Design
Merging Form and Function…
Synaesthetic Metaphor
Heterogeneous pairs:
New Brain (visual, auditory)
+
Old Brain (tactile, olfactory, taste)
Heterogeneous pairs were more energizing than homogeneous pairs.
Roaring Chill
Bright Perfume
Aching Darkness
Pictorial Metaphors
Baseline image Literal pairingMetaphorical pairing
“Learning-oriented problem solving seemed to be intrinsically motivated and meaning focused – participants were driven to think because they
wanted to understand. The effort towards discovery was therefore satisfying in and of itself.”
Metaphor as Problem Solving
COMPLEMENTARY PROCESSES IN COGNITIVE POETICS
Writing and Poetic Performance
“On one particular night I looked out the front window and it must have been dusk, but the sky was so big and there was this tangerine glow because the sun was setting. I went and got my notebook and then sat with this view of the sky and hand-wrote the poem. I just started to describe what I saw and the poem just fell out. I could hardly write fast enough to keep up with the ideas coming to mind. Emotionally I put the isolation I was feeling right into the poem…”
Writing
Performance
“The experience was filled with many different emotions – anxiety and excitement. I was feeling uptight, but not scared because I knew I’d practiced the poem before. Once I began speaking I was thinking about how I was expressing the words – questioning myself…. But the audience was so warm and open that I relaxed and went beyond what I’d practiced, tried out new ways of expressing certain parts of the poem.”
Spontaneous Writing
Described actions of writing .96
Writing was meaningful .87
Writing was spontaneous .66
Conscious and Intentional Writing
Reported writing strategies .94
Writing not spontaneous -.50
Spontaneity and Intention when Performing Poetry
Described actions of performing .95
Performance was spontaneous .94
Performance was intentional .94
Described positive emotions .87
Performance was meaningful .82
Oriented to the poem .59
Poetry Reception
Skating
“I reminisced for
days etched in a time
before my own
as we skated
on ice laid bare
yesterday…”
“… cedars, blunted with age
rounded our movements
as we circled – laying blades in their honor…”
Global Absorption
Imagined actions of main character .92
Emotional intensity .76
Imagined bodily sensations .76
Absorbed in poem .74
Imagined main character .67
Liked the poem .59
Fresh emotions in response to poem .57
Identified with the poet .50
Digressions into the Self
“My brother got this for me – I’m from Oslo in Norway – and it was a small watch-maker who was very old-fashioned – the shop the same place I bought my first wrist watch when I was 6 or 7 years old and he’s been sort of the family watch-maker.”
“The design of the building gives it splendour. I could go there everyday. There are stories in there you know... you see all the different aspects of that building - it is sort of like humanity through the ages.”