LING 33Q: Metaphors We Talk By

A Sophomore Seminar held Fall, 1998

Classes: Bldg. 460, 127D or on terrace, TTh 3:15- 4:45 pm. Office Hours: Fr 10:00-12:00, or by appointment, Bldg. 460, rm. 117.

 3 units; CR/NC option

David Beaver, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University
 email: dib@stanford.edu, tel. (650) 723-9017 
 
Course Description Schedule
Literature Participants
 

From the Course Catalogue:

Metaphor, ubiquitous in both literature and in everyday conversation, is an extraordinarily challenging subject for psychologists, philosophers, and linguists. People's choices of metaphors illuminate the way they organize their thoughts about the world, hence the title of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's book Metaphors We Live By. The existence of metaphors is problematic for philosophers of language, since it forces us to consider a notion of nonliteral meaning. But what is it for a sentence to mean something other than what it says? Linguists, meanwhile, find that metaphors not only act as a stumbling block in theories of meaning, they also frequently underlie historical processes of meaning change. 

We will study use and meaning of metaphors from linguistic, philosophical, cognitive, and artificial-intelligence perspectives. Topics covered (depending on students' interests) will include influence of metaphors on language change, whether metaphors can be true or false, distinctions between literal and conveyed meaning, and more general issues of whether metaphors reflect or determine our conceptualizations
Participants
Anne Berry aberry@leland.stanford.edu
Colin Ritter critter@leland.stanford.edu
Steve Chew schew56@leland.stanford.edu
Uri Leron uriler@leland.stanford.edu
Brian Gilbart skydiver@stanford.edu
Mike Milne  mmilne@leland.stanford.edu
Kristen Slesar kslesar@leland.stanford.edu
Will Barkis  wbarkis@leland.stanford.edu

Students with documented disabilities:

Students who have a disability which may necessitate an academic accommodation or the use of auxiliary aids and services in a class must initiate the request with the Disability Resource Center (DRC).   The DRC will evaluate the request with required documentation, recommend appropriate accommodations, and prepare a verification letter dated in the current academic term in which the request is being made.  Please contact the DRC as soon as possible; timely notice is needed to arrange for appropriate accommodations.  The DRC is located at 123 Meyer Library (phone 723-1066; TDD 725-1067).