Madeleine Frings, M.A.
Discourse Studies
Department of Linguistics
D-50937 Cologne
Luxemburger Str. 299
Room 4.06
D-50939 Cologne
Office hours:
by appointment
(please contact via e-mail)
Current Research
Coping with Grief: (Non-)Figurative Conceptualisations in Picturebooks
Human beings are naturally drawn to the usage of metaphorical constructions to verbalise their thoughts and feelings (Lakoff & Johnson (1989, 2003 [1980]). In picturebooks, this is realised by combining different modes/modalities such as text, image and colour (Kress 2010). As multimodally designed objects, picturebooks are particularly useful for an analysis: they convey meaning through each mode and across modes, in the present case to represent grief, the resulting behaviour and the overall process of grief, as well as coping with loss. However, picturebook research on grief so far only includes either literary approaches or focuses on content analyses, while metaphorical representations and metonymic components are disregarded. Therefore, my research attempts to fill this gap by contributing to linguistic as well as literary research with a multimodal cognitive focus.
The present study embraces the discursive and dynamic dimensions of the cognitive-emotional processes around someone’s death as stories unfold, by considering the multimodal representation of source domains for loss, grief, and coping on the textual level and on the pictorial level and their dynamic development in the storytelling process.
This dissertation applies a mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches. The annotation process involves attending to textual and pictorial cues by considering them as separate input frames that are blended and compressed (Dancygier & Sweetser 2014, Fauconnier & Turner 2002). The analysis also compares the level of metaphoricity in the textual parts and in their pictorial counterparts. Indeed, the verbal material usually shows a lesser degree of elaboration in both length and content, compared to the images. Further discrepancies may regard the verbally literal vs. pictorial figurative level of representation.
The results concern the extent to which expected source domains, such as Darkness, Descent or Force (McMullen & Conway 2002) change metaphorically and metonymically on the textual and on the pictorial level, and the extent to which the representation of mental states shows a higher metaphoricity with respect to the representation of bodily reactions.
References
Dancygier, Barbara & Eve Sweetser (2014). Figurative Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fauconnier, Gilles & Mark Turner (2002). The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Minds Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.
Kress, Gunther (2010). Multimodality. A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication, London/New York: Routledge.
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (2003[1980]). Metaphors we live by. Chicago/London: Chicago University Press.
Lakoff, George & Mark Turner (1989). More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago/London: Chicago University Press.
McMullen, Linda & John B. Conway (2002). Conventional Metaphors for Depression. In: Susan R. Fussell (ed.) The verbal communication of emotions. Interdisciplinary perspectives, p. 167–181.
Salisbury, Martin & Morag Styles (2020). Children’s Picturebooks. The art of visual storytelling, 2nd ed.. London: Lawrence King.