TY - JOUR
T1 - Bringing metaphors back to the streets
T2 - A corpus-based study for the identification and interpretation of rhetorical figures in street art
AU - Stampoulidis, Georgios
AU - Bolognesi, Marianna
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Research on (verbo-) pictorial metaphors and other rhetorical figures is primarily focused on the genre of advertising, leaving other genres under-investigated. In this study, we focus on street art, a visually perceived cross-cultural medium used to address sociopolitical issues. This genre typically combines two interacting semiotic systems – language and depiction – and is thus a form of polysemiotic communication. Our analysis is based on a corpus of 50 street artworks addressing the financial, sociopolitical, and migrant/refugee crisis in the city of Athens (2015-2017). We present a data-driven procedure for the identification and interpretation of metaphors and other rhetorical figures in street art, informed by cognitive linguistic and semiotic models.Quantitative analyses show that our model can be reliably applied to street art and can enable us to distinguish metaphors from other rhetorical figures within these images. At the same time, qualitative analyses show that this genre usually requires the integration of conceptual, contextual, socio-cultural, and linguistic knowledge in order to achieve successful interpretation of these images.We discuss our findings within the theoretical framework of Cognitive Semiotics.
AB - Research on (verbo-) pictorial metaphors and other rhetorical figures is primarily focused on the genre of advertising, leaving other genres under-investigated. In this study, we focus on street art, a visually perceived cross-cultural medium used to address sociopolitical issues. This genre typically combines two interacting semiotic systems – language and depiction – and is thus a form of polysemiotic communication. Our analysis is based on a corpus of 50 street artworks addressing the financial, sociopolitical, and migrant/refugee crisis in the city of Athens (2015-2017). We present a data-driven procedure for the identification and interpretation of metaphors and other rhetorical figures in street art, informed by cognitive linguistic and semiotic models.Quantitative analyses show that our model can be reliably applied to street art and can enable us to distinguish metaphors from other rhetorical figures within these images. At the same time, qualitative analyses show that this genre usually requires the integration of conceptual, contextual, socio-cultural, and linguistic knowledge in order to achieve successful interpretation of these images.We discuss our findings within the theoretical framework of Cognitive Semiotics.
KW - (verbo-) pictorial metaphor
KW - cognitive Semiotics
KW - street art
KW - rhetorical figures
KW - metaphor identification
KW - metaphor interpretation
U2 - 10.1177/1470357219877538
DO - 10.1177/1470357219877538
M3 - Article
SN - 1470-3572
VL - 22
SP - 243
EP - 277
JO - Visual Communication
JF - Visual Communication
IS - 2
ER -