This bonus segment with Dr. Vicky Lai looks at metaphors in second language learning and cultural differences in using figurative language. We also look at whether the use of metaphors is declining and how emojis interact with language processing.
This bonus segment with Dr. Vicky Lai looks at metaphors in second language learning and cultural differences in using figurative language. We also look at whether the use of metaphors is declining and how emojis interact with language processing.
Dr. Vicky Lai - https://psychology.arizona.edu/person/vicky-lai
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[Computer-generated transcript]
Mignon
Greetings Grammarpaloozians! Thank you so much for your support. And this is your bonus segment with Dr. Vicky Lai from the University of Arizona, a cognitive scientist doing just fascinating research on metaphors, idioms, and figurative language.
In the main episode, we talked about cancer and metaphors. We talked about what's going on in your brain with metaphors, what they can see in scans, what actually is happening up there. But now we're going to talk about bilingualism and some other really interesting things. Dr. Vicky Lai, welcome to the Grammarpalooza bonus segment of the podcast.
Dr. Lai
Hi.
Mignon
Hi. So, you've done some really interesting work on metaphors with people who are bilingual. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Dr. Lai
Yeah. In our series of studies where we study the effect of metaphor in science learning, we just recently went to Italy and we conducted a study using metaphorical learning on second language learners. We found, based on our preliminary analysis, we found that in fact, literal learning works better for second language learners in comparison to metaphorical learning. However, if you have a high imagery score, that just means that if you are good at visual imagery, then you also, you can benefit from metaphoric learning as a second language learner.Â
Mignon
Fascinating. And you, you have done work. You know, you're familiar with metaphors in different languages. Have you found that different, different people in different countries or that speak different languages use metaphors differently or are we all kind of the same in the way we use them?
Dr. Lai
Well, yes and no. So we all use metaphors. This is, at that level, it's universal. Every language has metaphors. But the way we use them obviously have differences due to the cultures. So an example I talked about in the main episode was stir-frying the stock market, which is a metaphor that exists in Chinese language. And there is also, I would say, moving away from metaphor in terms of irony, which is also a form of figurative language. We found that in Mexico, because of where we are at the University of Arizona, we're very close to Mexico. So we study Spanish-English bilinguals on irony comprehension. And what we found there was that it's less of a linguistic thing, but more of a cultural thing when it comes to irony. So what we call collectivism. So there's individualistic culture and collectivism. So that there influences the use of irony, but less so of a linguistic factor.Â
Mignon
How so? Do Spanish speakers use more or less irony because they're more collective thinking?
Dr. Lai
Yeah, so it's not about what language you speak anymore. So even if you are within the US or within the same culture, if you're more of an individualistic as opposed to a collectivism, you're more likely to use irony.
Mignon
Hmm. And I would imagine that as a — speaking any second language, so, you know, if you're an American in Germany or a Spanish-speaking person in the United States, that it would be harder to understand irony or metaphor in a second language. Is that right?
Dr. Lai
That is correct. That is correct. It is a higher-level semantic learning, yes.Â
Mignon
So if you're speaking to people who are…if you're speaking to a diverse group of people, then, you know, one piece of advice would be to actually use less irony or fewer metaphors to be more easily understood, correct?Â
Dr. Lai
At a certain proficiency level, yes. Once we pass a certain proficiency level, we definitely want to use all kinds of figurative expressions which could only increase your language proficiency.
Mignon
Yeah. And this is the line of thinking that actually led me to you in the first place. I was having a conversation online with some people about metaphors, and they said that they, it was an older person, and they said younger people, they've noticed people are using fewer metaphors these days, and they thought it was sad that all the metaphors were disappearing from the language. And other people were speculating, “Well, maybe it's just your metaphors that you aren't hearing because there are generational differences. You know, so the things that you hear as metaphors, maybe you aren't hearing those anymore.” Or, but other people said, "Well, no, people are using fewer metaphors because we're, you know, we're being more polite to people who don't speak our language," or things like that. I mean, is there any research or even you as someone who thinks about metaphors a lot, have you noticed that people are using fewer metaphors or is that just a misconception?
Dr. Lai
In the second language learners?Â
Mignon
Just in general.Â
Dr. Lai
Oh, I would say that it's probably a misconception based on the research that I brought up in the main episode that the researchers actually go in, collect the text, and count, go into count metaphors. So in order to answer your question scientifically, you will need to count every year. But it's rare that people would do that counting every year. Yeah.
Mignon
So people have a lot of misconceptions about language. So it doesn't surprise me that they would have misconceptions about, you know, you hear a word you don't like or something and then you start hearing it all the time. You think you're hearing it everywhere, but it actually hasn't increased in use. You're just more aware of it.
Dr. Lai
So... I would say there's actually, my observation, maybe I just see metaphors everywhere, given that I'm a metaphor researcher. Every day I pull up the news, and I see metaphors in all the headlines, you know.Â
Mignon
Are there generational differences in the way people use metaphors?Â
Dr. Lai
There has got to be because if you think about the definition of conceptual metaphors where you use concrete and experience-based concepts to reason about abstract concepts, then, for example, “life is a journey.” Journey, people travel in different ways in comparison to the past. So there are different metaphors that we can use now for life as opposed to, you know, say 50 years ago or 100 years ago. Think about the times when travel is more about the train and not about flights, and now it's all almost all about flights. So there's got to be a generational difference. We did not study this, but that would be my guess.
Mignon
Yeah. And the last thing I wonder is if sort of with modern communication, you know, would something like an emoji be like a metaphor or, you know, especially with your brain research, I'm wondering if seeing an emoji of someone laughing, would that make the parts of your brain light up that happen when you see a live person laugh, for example? Like, is there any connection that you know of between these sort of modern language elements and metaphors?Â
Dr. Lai
We have done studies on emojis, and in that study we looked at smiley faces and sad negative emojis, what those effects are on the words that appear together with the emojis. And we found that if it's positive emojis like smiley faces and the language adjacent to it is being processed as usual, like nothing special. But if it's a negative emoji, then people really process the next word deeply to try to understand what you know. So in the positive emojis are more like a conversation holder indicating that oh, you know, "I'm listening," like whereas negative emojis do have an impact on the content in which you're expressing. As for the relationship between emojis and metaphors, we have not done any study that address that part. However emojis are not just facial emojis. I can imagine that there are many icons, you know, different pictures. And anything that is concrete, we could potentially use in adjacent to an abstract concept to help people clarify and understand that concept a little more metaphorically. So I can see a future prospect, a future study on that.Â
Mignon
Fascinating. All right. Well, Dr. Vicky Lai, thank you again for being here with us. How can people find you?Â
Dr. Lai
You can find my research page by searching for Vicky Lai at University at Arizona.Â
Mignon
And that's L-A-I. Great. Thank you so much for being here.
Dr. Lai
Thank you.