The paper examines the possibilities of using metaphor as an ontological tool for sensitizing EFL students to the role of mother tongue use in the foreign language classroom. Data for the study were collected through a structured questionnaire providing an insight into the subjects’ mental images of the L1 and L2 in terms of basic characteristics, functions and relationships. Metaphoric reasoning turned out to enhance the students’ understanding of the role played by the mother tongue in SLA and enable them to realize that it should be by no means banned from the foreign language learning environment.

Artykuł prezentuje sposoby konstruowania wypowiedzi dziennikarskich w telewizyjnych audycjach informacyjnych na temat kampanii wyborczej. Nacisk został położony na metaforyczny charakter wypowiedzi. Uwaga została skupiona na trzech typach metafor: sportu, wojny i widowiska. Celem analizy było zaprezentowanie z jednej strony ilościowego wymiaru badanego zagadnienia, ale również jakościowej analizy wybranych wypowiedzi. Istotne było przedstawienie znaczeń, jakie wyłaniają się z prezentowanych przekazów, aby w konsekwencji ukazać, że sposób przedstawiania polityki w mediach może mieć wpływ na jej postrzeganie przez wyborców.

The aim of the paper is to discuss the cognitive approach to metaphor launched by Lakoff and Johnson, which turns out to be also the key question to the problem of intersubjective communicability of literary work. Based on this approach, the literature can simply be considered a kind of language using spatial metaphors with additional emotional content.

Przedmiotem rozważań tekstu są przysłowia, aforyzmy, związki frazeologiczne, wyrażenia przysłowiowe i porzekadła wykorzystujące motyw psa w opisie jakiejś cechy ludzkiej lub zjawiska świata rzeczywistego, występujące w języku polskim oraz w językach należących do irańskiej grupy językowej: perskim, tadżyckim i szugnońskim. W badaniach nad przysłowiami i frazeologią zastosowano metodę etnolingwistyczną. Wykazano istnienie znacznych podobieństw z metaforami polskimi. Z perspektywy koncepcji ucieleśnionego i osadzonego w kulturze umysłu (EEM), traktującego metafory jako reprezentacje umysłowe, świadczy to o znacznym podobieństwie tak odległych kultur, jakimi są polska i irańska. Podobieństwa te wskazują na istnienie w jakiejś głębszej warstwie faktycznej jedności doświadczenia człowieka niezależnie od różnic dzielących ludzi żyjących w różnych kulturach.

Pedagogy as a metaphor for constitution-making

In the doctrine of constitutional law, metaphors appear in many analytic works. Pedagogy can be used as a metaphor for constitution-making because of many similarities between the teaching process and the formation of constitutional law. One should recognize the great role of learning in the process of creating legal regulations. The pedagogical impact of law includes influencing the behaviour of individuals and of the society.

Metaphors are vital for medical practice and experience of illness. They enable negotiation of shared semantic space between physician’s and patient’s thought and language. For patients metaphors brighten difficult and abstract medical terminology regarding diagnosis, course of illness and therapy. They help attach shared meanings to body, health and illness. Metaphors also enable construction of the idea of what illness actually is, and thus they help in dealing with illness’ experience. It is due to the fact that metaphors enable expression of thoughts and feeling that are difficult to articulate: pain, suffering and fear of death. On the other hand, making use of metaphors may lead to misunderstanding and misinterpretation of reality. They may be a source of confusion, stereotypes and social exclusion. All in all, medical education should stress that medicine is not only a technē but also an art of interpretation in which metaphors are of key importance. Thus, this paper aims to describe main metaphors present in medical discourse: military metaphor, detective, terror, mechanic, (bio) informative, (bio)chemist, puzzle and riddle, economic, sport, ecologic, automobile, journey and dirt. I also describe some of metaphors present in genetic discourse: DNA as a text, code, information just as sacral and cartographic metaphors. My main thesis suggests, in opposition to Susan Sontag, that metaphors are vital to our understanding of illness and are essential for doctor - patient communication.

Pragmatic functions of the stylistic devices in dialogues in the novel “Death of a hero” by Richrad Aldington

This article deals the role and place of stylistic devices in a work of art in the literary pragmatics context. Operating on the level «author – work – reader», literary pragmatics offers an interpretation of the text together in the light of hidden information. The paper focuses on the stylistic analysis of the dialogues of the characters in Richard Aldington’s novel “Death of a Hero” and defining the pragmatic functions of the given stylistic devices as source of implicit information. In addition to direct descriptions, Richard Aldington characterizes his characters through their speech. Stylistic figures in the dialogues help to assess the situation and understand the way of thinking of characters and their personal features. Phonetic and graphic stylistic devices often indicate the social background of the speaker, his emotional state and situations in which dialogues take palce. Syntactic stylistic means in dialogues are usually broken sentences, they do not add much aesthetic beauty or understanding of ideas, but they allow the author to make characters more believable so that readers feel for them. Syntactic stylistic devices in the dialogues of the novel provide readers with an opportunity to complete the thought of the character, to understand the course of their thoughts. The most frequently used stylistic devices in the dialogues of the novel Richard Aldington are of a lexical stratum; they not only enrich the language of a character, but also allow to evaluate their intelligence, depth of knowledge, imagination level, social background, age group, era. It is thanks to the stylistic devices that the author implicitly manages to explain that there has always been an abyss of misunderstanding between the protagonist and his surrounding, regardless of where he was at a certain stage of life. The contrast of the use of tropes in the speech of the protagonist before and after he became a soldier, demonstrating the fundamental changes in his outlook, shows a particularly important pragmatic function of the stylistic devices usage.

The article addresses the issue of usefulness of pyramid and boat epistemological metaphors in the process of cognition in security sciences, with the aim of creating a coherent epistemological theory of subject security. This usefulness was examined for the sake of the basic components of epistemology: the truth and its sources, the scope of cognition, and the specificity of the subject of cognition – subject security. A deductive method with syllogistic drawing of conclusions leading to the solution of the general problem and the probability of the working hypothesis was used. As a result, it was established that understanding the truth and its sources, methods of finding the truth, and determining the scope of cognition of subject security are supported by an epistemology subordinated to the boat metaphor. This metaphor allows for a less fundamental, but more systemic, look at the subject security. The holistic nature of the boat metaphor results from the overlapping of concepts (parts of the planking) built on the skeleton, the core of which is formed by the axiology of the security of the subject (keel), and the shape is given by ontology, epistemology, and methodology of the security of the subject (frames) and paradigms (stringers).