Abstract
Do different methodologies or experimental protocols used to investigate one semantic frame reveal the same conceptualization processes? Or better, can results of empirical linguistic analyses be compared to understand the conceptual grounding of a specific linguistic frame in a given language? This chapter proposes a re-analysis of two different experimental protocols used to verify the linguistic construal of seeing/color in English. A total of eight different implicit association tests were elaborated to understand the entrenchment of the color categories: black, white, yellow, blue, red, green, brown and grey; dark and light. Here I juxtapose the results of a previous analysis I had conducted using a different methodology. The previous investigation used a polar association of positive/negative assessment of metonymic and metaphoric linguistic expressions, using the same basic color categories, with reaction time latencies as a marker of the degree of facility of processing. Resulting from the comparison of these two different approaches the aim is to understand: (1) the complementary aspects, such as conscious processing and implicit attitudes; (2) the degree of interdependence of analyses levels in linguistic understanding of a given semantic frame; and (3) the cultural linguistic construal a group of informants employ to draw meaning from the linguistic terms in given settings. I argue that similar underlying image schemas such as space: verticality (up-down) and distance (near-far); scale: quantity (more-less); container: in-out; force: strong-weak; identity: matching interact with metaphoric/metonymic conceptualization for light, seeing, and color, e.g. seeing is light, knowing is seeing , seeing is color; and for good: good is light, good is seeing, good is color, and good is up, which emerge from these experimental results.
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Notes
- 1.
I follow the convention of using small caps for concepts and conceptual domains. I also differentiate between the two experimental protocols by using capital letters for the categories of the IAT tests, and only the first letter capitalized for the categories of the RT tests.
- 2.
Interestingly, this hypothesis emerged because Whorf was initially interested in relating language evolution to Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
- 3.
Differently, there were 31 participants only for the BROWN-GREY IAT, and 18 for the LIGHT-DARK NEAR-FAR IAT.
- 4.
The following is a summary of D measure for IAT scoring procedures recommended by Greenwald et al. (2003). The first steps are for data reduction: 1. Delete trials with latencies greater than 10,000 ms. 2. Delete participant results for whom more than 10% of trials have latency less than 300 ms. Then there are 7 further steps to calculate D: 3. Calculate the means of all the ‘correct’ trials for each Block: B3, B4, B6, and B7. 4. Calculate the standard deviation (SD) of all the trials in (B3 + B6) and for all trials in (B4 + B7). 5. Replace all the ‘error’ latencies with mean compatible (B3 + 600 ms) and mean compatible (B4 + 600 ms), and mean incompatible (B6 + 600 ms) and mean incompatible (B7 + 600 ms). 6. Calculate the mean latency for responses for each critical block with corrections: B3, B4, B6, B7. 7. Compute the two mean differences (Mean B6–Mean B3) and (Mean B7–Mean B4). 8. Divide each difference score by its associated standard deviation (Step 4). 9. D = the equal-weight average of the two resulting ratios (D = M/SD). [Adapted from Greenwald et al. (2003, Table 4) and Lane et al. (2007, Table 3.3).]
- 5.
In this case, even though brown and grey may be considered hues, they represent secondary basic color categories and desaturated colors, hence I have used them as examples of the saturation dimension. None of the other color categories are referred to in relation to a low intensity color category.
- 6.
The raw IAT latencies resulted as follows: Incompatible RED-Pleasant 1190, Compatible BLUE-Pleasant 960, IAT +230 BLUE; Incompatible GREEN-Pleasant 911, Compatible BLUE-Pleasant 798, IAT +113 BLUE; Incompatible YELLOW-Pleasant 966, Compatible BLUE-Pleasant 1140, IAT −174 YELLOW; Incompatible GREEN-Pleasant 1064, Compatible YELLOW-Pleasant 1015, IAT +49 YELLOW; Incompatible GREEN-Pleasant 1168, Compatible RED-Pleasant 1452, IAT −284 GREEN; Incompatible RED-Pleasant 1159, Compatible YELLOW-Pleasant 1085, IAT +104 YELLOW; Incompatible BLACK-Pleasant 1348, Compatible WHITE-Pleasant 892, IAT +456 WHITE; Incompatible GREY-Pleasant 1061, Compatible BROWN-Pleasant 898; IAT +163 BROWN.
- 7.
- 8.
Some of the results were presented at the European Conference on Visual Perception that took place in Arezzo (2007) with the title of Visual perception, cognition, and language, embodied motivation of color conceptual metaphor/ metonymy; cf. Sandford et al. (2007); and other aspects regarding conceptualization and embodiment of the warm/cool divide, and the afterimage effect were published in Sandford (2011a); for a complete report in Italian see Sandford (2012).
- 9.
The latencies per se are comparable between each IAT couple since they are the results of the same group of participants. The IAT scores (the difference between the incompatible and compatible scores) are comparable at all times. Furthermore, the final results, the implicit associative strengths, are reinforced by the D scores. Table 1 shows that the results do not change between the basic RAW IAT scores and the D scores. So though the numbers may not be relevant in themselves, the mean relations do give clear indication of the tendencies.
- 10.
In conceptual metaphor theory a is b is the syntax for a conceptual metaphor, where the target domain A is most often the abstract domain that is understood in terms of domain B, which is most often the more concrete domain, i.e. target domain is source domain, abstract is concrete. For example the conceptual metaphor life is a journey would be exemplified by the linguistic expression “It’s time to get on with your life” (from Lakoff 1990: 439; see also Lakoff and Johnson 1999, 2003; Croft and Cruse 2004; Ungerer and Schmid 2006; Kövecses 2010).
- 11.
All of the example utterances have been accessed in the Corpus of Contemporary American English, though I have not specified each hit source for lack of space. See https://corpus.byu.edu/coca/. Last accessed 16 January, 2018.
- 12.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my M.A. students Simone Aggravi (YELLOW-GREEN, YELLOW-BLUE, YELLOW-RED, RED-GREEN), Daniela Battimelli (BLUE-GREEN), Laura Cacini (RED-BLUE), Danila Diotallevi (BROWN-GREY), Marta Tosti (BLACK-WHITE), and Marco Bagli (IN-OUT), for their cooperation in administering the Implicit Association Tests and gathering the participant information, without their input and hard work this conclusive chapter would not have been possible. Thank you to Annalisa Baicchi for her encouragement and helpful comments, to the organizers of the 2nd International Symposium on Figurative Thought and Language held at the University of Pavia, where the idea for this publication developed, and also to Rémi Digonnet for his careful input and assistance.
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Sandford, J.L. (2018). Methodological Approaches and Semantic Construal of the Seeing Domain in English. In: Baicchi, A., Digonnet, R., Sandford, J. (eds) Sensory Perceptions in Language, Embodiment and Epistemology. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 42. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91277-6_7
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