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Susan Lee Nacey

Vice-Dean for Research

Email: susan.nacey@inn.no
Phone number: +47 62 51 76 28
Mobile number: +47 47 29 01 56

Faculty of education
Campus Hamar, Room 2A115

Short description

I am a professor of English as a second/foreign language, and currently work as the Vice Dean for Research at the Faculty of Education in Hamar/Lillehammer. I have worked in teacher education since 2001 and am a member of INN University's research group English Language in Use (ELiU). You will find more information on my website, Metaphor Matters, where I also write blog posts when inspiration strikes. You can meet me on Twitter @NaceySusan.

My main research interests are metaphor and learner language, with a focus on Norwegian L2 English. I published a monograph entitled Metaphors in Learner English in 2013, dealing with metaphors produced in the written English of Norwegian students, as well as methodological issues concerning the identification of metaphor in texts. I was also responsible for collecting the Norwegian version of the LINDSEI corpus of spoken learner English, and was also involved in compiling the TraWL corpus (Tracking Written Learner Language), a longitudinal corpus of English texts written by Norwegian pupils aged 10 – 19. In addition, I have conducted research in areas such as communication strategies of language learners, prepositions and phrasal verbs in learner language, and Norwegian as a second language.

I also research metaphors in discourses beyond the second language context. I am also interested in the ‘language of betrayal’, metaphors produced by survivors of relationship abuse when they discuss their experiences in an online discussion forum. I have also investigated metaphor production in career guidance videos, American church marquees, the New Year’s Eve speeches of the Norwegian king and Danish queen, doctoral dissertation acknowledgements, the use of the Norwegian term 'dugnad' as a metaphor during the pandemic, etc. Metaphor is all around us!

Further, methodological issues connected to metaphor research are a concern of mine, especially (linguistic) metaphor identification and valid statistical analysis. Together with A.G. Dorst, T. Krennmayr, and W.G. Reijnierse, I edited a 2019 volume entitled Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world.

I am an editor the scientific journal Metaphor and the Social World, together with A.G. Dorst and D. Tay. I am also an associate editor of Metaphor and Symbol, where H.L. Colston is the editor-in-chief. I am also a member of the editorial board of the Nordic Journal of English Studies. I currently also serve on the board of the Learner Corpus Association as conference officer.

Research groups

English Language in Use

Karlsen, Petter Hagen & Nacey, Susan Lee (2026). Pedagogical applications of learner corpora: A decade in review. In Farr, Fiona & Murray, Liam (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language learning and technology. Routledge. ISSN 9780415837873. p. 401–416. doi: 10.4324/9781003412212-32. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This chapter presents a systematic review of the pedagogical applications of learner corpora as reported in the learner corpus research (LCR) literature
Nacey, Susan Lee (2025). Metaphors of inclusive education: Conference reflections from the Global South. The European Journal of Inclusive Education. 4(1), p. 31–35. doi: 10.7146/ejie.v4i1.152381. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper examines metaphorical frameworks employed at the 2024 International Conference on Perspectives and Practices of Inclusive Education in Kathmandu, Nepal. Drawing on observations from keynote addresses, conference papers, panel discussions and informal conversations during the two-day conference, the paper reflects on the dominant metaphors present in the discourse of inclusive education in the Global South. Metaphors are fundamental tools through which humans make sense of complex realities, operating far beyond mere linguistic decoration to shape our understanding and potentially guide our actions. For those working in inclusive education, recognizing and analyzing these metaphorical frameworks is crucial because they may subtly influence how we conceptualize challenges, develop solutions, and implement policies. Various metaphorical frames emerged through the discussions, including BUILDING (emphasizing collaborative construction), ECONOMY (focusing on investment and costs), WAR (highlighting challenges), and SPORTS (illustrating fairness issues). On the whole, however, the JOURNEY metaphor dominated across all discourse types, consistently appearing in various forms when discussing policy implementation, educational progress, and/or change towards more inclusive and equitable education. Conference delegates thus triggered a rich image schema involving multifaceted networks of related images and concepts, which are unpacked and examined in the paper.
Nacey, Susan Lee & Turunen, Renata (2024). Comparing metaphor elicitation models: From online surveys to classroom intervention. Metaphor and the Social World. ISSN 2210-4070. 14(2), p. 258–281. doi: 10.1075/msw.24007.nac. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Metaphor has increasingly been recognized as an effective investigative tool, especially in educational research, because it allows for insight into implicit beliefs, values and assumptions about the world around us. This article discusses methodological issues involved in ‘getting at’ students’ metaphors, the first step in metaphor analysis in educational research. Our focus is on techniques of eliciting metaphor, where respondents are overtly prompted to produce a metaphor about a particular issue. We discuss different elicitation techniques in four studies: study 1 without any scaffolding, just a prompt for eliciting metaphor; study 2 with minimal scaffolding in the form of a definition of metaphor and illustrative examples; study 3 with a brief classroom intervention before elicitation; and study 4 with a longer intervention over an entire semester. We gained the most thorough results in study 4, which also arguably provided the most valuable learning experience for the respondents. This came at a price however — a great investment of time over the course of a semester. In the event that no classroom time may be set aside for work with metaphor, the non-interventional approach of study 2 offers an acceptable alternative. Even a few explanatory lines about metaphor prove helpful in eliciting metaphor.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2024). The Norwegian Dugnad in Times of COVID-19. Metaphor and Symbol. ISSN 1092-6488. 39(2), p. 79–95. doi: 10.1080/10926488.2024.2305203. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
On 12 March 2020, the Norwegian government instigated measures to limit the spread of COVID-19, the most drastic policies of any Norwegian government in peacetime. A particularly Norwegian metaphor used when introducing those measures concerned the “dugnad” tradition, a cultural practice of voluntary work carried out as a community. This article traces the trajectory of dugnad metaphors related to COVID-19 in Norwegian public discourse, to shed light on the aptness of their use. Aptness is measured in terms of “resonance,” the public reception to the metaphor. It follows a threefold categorization: imposition, endorsement, or resistance, all of which are divided into inductively developed subcategories. The data consists of all relevant concordances of the lexeme DUGNAD appearing from March 2020-June 2021 in one of the three largest Norwegian national online newspapers. Findings indicate that the imposition of the dugnad struck a chord with the Norwegian people; supportive statements far outweighed those of opposition and continued throughout the investigated period, even though national government officials mostly stopped using the dugnad metaphor after May 2020. Resistance was nevertheless also present from the outset, reaching a renewed peak around March 2021. Aptness thus varies over time, a finding with implications for future pandemic communication.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2022). Systematic Metaphors in Norwegian Doctoral Dissertation Acknowledgements. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. ISSN 0031-3831. p. 1–16. doi: 10.1080/00313831.2022.2042847. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This article investigates patterns of systematic metaphors used to characterize various aspects of the doctoral education period, based on analysis of dissertation acknowledgements (DAs) from doctoral dissertations across academic disciplines and written by researchers from four PhD programs offered by a Norwegian university. The primary research question addressed here asks which metaphors doctoral researchers in Norway use to describe their educational experience as a whole, as well as the assistance they received during their doctoral period. A discourse dynamics approach is applied to the data, allowing for the identification of metaphors employed about these topics followed by the categorization of the identified metaphors into broader categories. The resulting overview of the systematic metaphorical patterns in DAs provides empirical evidence concerning how doctoral researchers view their experiences, useful in mentoring situations as a starting point for addressing attitudes, beliefs and values about the various challenges and rewards involved in doctoral trajectories.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2022). Development of metaphorical production in learner language: A longitudinal perspective. Nordic Journal of Language Teaching and Learning (NJLTL). 10(2), p. 272–297. doi: 10.46364/njltl.v10i2.975. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This article details a longitudinal corpus-based exploration into the development of metaphorical production of L2 learners of English. The study tracks the progress of five secondary school pupils aged 13-17 in Norway, with the data consisting of texts written for end-of-semester exams: two texts per pupil over four consecutive academic years. The overall goal is to shed light on how metaphorical production changes as pupils progress through different semesters and grades in their school careers. To do so, three subordinate aims are addressed. First, the study investigates how metaphor density varies over time, both for the group of pupils and for the individuals. In this regard, patterns for open-class versus closed-class metaphors across grade levels are also compared, to identify whether there is any particular level at which the use of the former overtakes the latter, as has been uncovered in previous research. A second aim is to examine the distribution of metaphor clusters over time, since clusters have been found to serve important discoursal functions and might therefore be expected to increase with improved proficiency over time. The third aim is to focus more closely on the identified metaphor clusters to explore the functions they serve in the written discourse of these language learners.
Nacey, Susan & Skogmo, Siri Fürst (2021). Learner translation of metaphor: Smooth sailing? Metaphor and the Social World. ISSN 2210-4070. 11(2), p. 212–234. doi: 10.1075/msw.00016.nac. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This article explores metaphor translation strategies of novice translators: university students translating from L1 Norwegian to L2 English. We first describe the translation strategies they employ in their translated texts (TTs), thereby offering evidence of what translators do with metaphor based on multiple translations of the same metaphor-dense source text (ST). We then go beyond this descriptive analysis to discuss why these translators make their particular choices, analyzing the students’ in-class discussion and individual written reflections about their translations. We thus illuminate the challenges that the novice translators consciously perceive (that is, is metaphor a problem?), as well as their motivation for and evaluation of their translation solutions. In this way, we shed light on the concept of the ‘successful’ translation of metaphor.
Creed, Allison & Nacey, Susan Lee (2021). Qualitative and quantitative examination of metaphorical language use in career-life preparedness. In Murphy, Wendy & Tosti-Kharas, Jennifer (Ed.), Handbook of Research Methods in Careers. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISSN 9781788976718. p. 283–298. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Vocational theories, research, and intervention practices are embodied in, mediated by, and emergent from metaphorical language that is socio-culturally, historically, and intellectually situated in social-political-economic evolution. Although metaphors have been recognised as ubiquitous in communication and fundamental to meaning making in notions of career, workforce, and organisations, metaphor remains underexplored in naturalistic discourse within the field. This chapter introduces a reliable and replicable procedure for metaphor identification: The Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) for application to such discourse. We demonstrate MIPVU using transcribed student testimonials from higher education promotional online videos of an Australian and Norwegian university. MIPVU affords an integrated qualitative and quantitative approach to examine career-life preparedness. We showcase MIPVU as a methodological resource that can enhance understanding of how individuals prepare for, make meaning about, and manage their learning, work, and career development over their lifespan.
Creed, Allison & Nacey, Susan Lee (2020). Metaphor analysis in vocational counselling: Moving from intuitive to reliable metaphor identification. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling. ISSN 0306-9885. p. 1–12. doi: 10.1080/03069885.2020.1763915. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
In this article, we introduce a metaphor identification method that can be readily applied to vocational psychology research and practice, and contextualised to explore the phenomenon of career at a deeper level of experience. We demonstrate a practically oriented Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit on an illustrative sample of student testimonials from higher education promotional videos from Australia and Norway. Metaphors as understood through conceptual metaphor theory have been shown to influence the attitudes and behaviours of the individual and organisation and channel the mindset of their audiences. In this article we extend the scholarly work on career metaphors and offer a reliable method for investigating metaphor in language and communication.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2020). Figurative production in a computer-mediated discussion forum: Metaphorical analogies about relationship abuse, Producing Figurative Expression: Theoretical, experimental and practical perspectives. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027208033. p. 363–388. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
When people undergo traumatic events, they frequently turn to metaphor in an attempt to make what might initially seem indescribable into something comprehensible to others, and/or to help themselves reach a clearer understanding of what has happened to them. This investigation explores such metaphorical language produced in computer-mediated discourse by survivors of relationship abuse to communicate about various aspects of their experience, thus shedding light on a traditionally “taboo” subject that many people find difficult to broach. The analysis first explores the ways survivors “frame” their experience through a particular source domain, and then looks at the various source domain “scenarios” that are drawn upon to elaborate particular salient details of the abuse. The chapter thus builds upon established theories about metaphorical frames and scenarios to explore what we may learn about a particular group (i.e. relationship abuse survivors) through analyzing their production of metaphor. In this way, it demonstrates why the theory of metaphor and the field of figurative language production matter in the real world.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2020). Metaphors in high-stakes language exams. In Kulbrandstad, Lars Anders & Steien, Guri Bordal (Ed.), Språkreiser : festskrift til Anne Golden på 70-årsdagen 14. juli 2020. Novus Forlag. ISSN 9788283900422. p. 287–308. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Metaphor is often thought to be difficult for second language (L2) learners, especially because successful interpretation may be dependent upon a degree of cultural knowledge that L2 learners may not fully share. As Low pointed out already in 1988 (p. 137), however, “it would be helpful to know whether the ways in which learners learn to cope with metaphor are similar from person to person”. This chapter directly addresses this acknowledged need by reporting on the findings from a corpus-based exploration into manifestations of understanding of metaphor in texts produced by speakers of L2 Norwegian. The empirical data consists of written texts produced by 22 adults with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, where they respond to a task requiring them to interpret a literary metaphor and incorporate that metaphor in a text about their own lives: a task necessarily involving understanding of metaphor. Their texts were collected in the Norwegian Second Language Corpus, and originally produced as part of a high-stakes language examination primarily intended for immigrants to Norway. The learners were instructed to write a text incorporating their own opinions and experiences of friendship with the message(s) in the Kolbein Falkeid poem Det er langt mellom venner ‘It is far between friends’. At the poem’s core is metaphorical simile steeped in the background of culturally specific Norwegian traditions, suggesting that this task might prove particularly challenging for L2 learners.
Aas, Hege Larsson & Nacey, Susan Lee (2019). Methodological concerns for investigating pause behavior in spoken corpora. In Degand, Liesbeth; Gilquin, Gaëtanelle; Meurant, Laurence & Simon, Anne Catherine (Ed.), Fluency and Disfluency across Languages and Language Varieties. Presses universitaires de Louvain. ISSN 9782875587695. p. 41–64. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee & Graedler, Anne-Line (2019). Phrasal verbs in the spoken and written modes of Norwegian L2 learner English. In Wiegand, Viola & Mahlberg, Michaela (Ed.), Corpus Linguistics, Context and Culture. De Gruyter Mouton. ISSN 9783110486728. p. 409–435. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Corpus Linguistics, Context and Culture demonstrates the potential of corpus linguistic methods for investigating language patterns across a range of contexts. Organised in three sections, the chapters range from detailed case studies on lexico-grammatical patterns to fundamental discussions of meaning as part of the ‘discourse, contexts and cultures’ theme. The final part on ‘learner contexts’ specifically emphasises the need for mixed-method approaches and the consideration of pedagogical implications for real world contexts. Beyond its contribution to current debates in the field, this edited volume indicates new directions in cross-disciplinary work.
Nacey, Susan Lee; Krennmayr, Tina; Dorst, Aletta Gesina & Reijnierse, W. Gudrun (2019). What the MIPVU protocol doesn't tell you (even though it mostly does). In Nacey, Susan Lee; Dorst, Aletta Gesina; Krennmayr, Tina & Reijnierse, W. Gudrun (Ed.), Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027204721. p. 42–67. doi: 10.1075/celcr.22.03nac. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This volume explores linguistic metaphor identification in a wide variety of languages and language families. The book is an essential read for anyone interested in researching language and metaphor, from students to experienced scholars. Its primary goals are to discuss the challenges involved in applying the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) to a range of languages across the globe, and to offer theoretically grounded advice and guidelines enabling researchers to identify metaphors in multiple languages in a valid and replicable way. The volume is intended as a practical guidebook that identifies and discusses procedural challenges of metaphor identification across languages, thus better enabling researchers to reliably identify metaphor in a multitude of languages. Although able to be read independently, this volume – written by metaphor researchers from around the world – is the ideal companion volume for the 2010 Benjamins book "A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU".
Nacey, Susan Lee; Greve, Linda & Falck, Marlene Johansson (2019). Linguistic metaphor identification in Scandinavian. In Nacey, Susan Lee; Dorst, Aletta Gesina; Krennmayr, Tina & Reijnierse, W. Gudrun (Ed.), Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027204721. p. 138–158. doi: 10.1075/celcr.22.07nac. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This volume explores linguistic metaphor identification in a wide variety of languages and language families. The book is an essential read for anyone interested in researching language and metaphor, from students to experienced scholars. Its primary goals are to discuss the challenges involved in applying the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) to a range of languages across the globe, and to offer theoretically grounded advice and guidelines enabling researchers to identify metaphors in multiple languages in a valid and replicable way. The volume is intended as a practical guidebook that identifies and discusses procedural challenges of metaphor identification across languages, thus better enabling researchers to reliably identify metaphor in a multitude of languages. Although able to be read independently, this volume – written by metaphor researchers from around the world – is the ideal companion volume for the 2010 Benjamins book "A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU".
Nacey, Susan Lee; Dorst, Aletta Gesina; Krennmayr, Tina; Reijnierse, W. Gudrun & Steen, Gerard (2019). MIPVU in multiple languages. In Nacey, Susan Lee; Dorst, Aletta Gesina; Krennmayr, Tina & Reijnierse, W. Gudrun (Ed.), Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027204721. p. 2–21. doi: 10.1075/celcr.22.01nac. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This volume explores linguistic metaphor identification in a wide variety of languages and language families. The book is an essential read for anyone interested in researching language and metaphor, from students to experienced scholars. Its primary goals are to discuss the challenges involved in applying the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) to a range of languages across the globe, and to offer theoretically grounded advice and guidelines enabling researchers to identify metaphors in multiple languages in a valid and replicable way. The volume is intended as a practical guidebook that identifies and discusses procedural challenges of metaphor identification across languages, thus better enabling researchers to reliably identify metaphor in a multitude of languages. Although able to be read independently, this volume – written by metaphor researchers from around the world – is the ideal companion volume for the 2010 Benjamins book "A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU".
Nacey, Susan Lee (2019). Development of L2 metaphorical production. In Piquer-Píriz, Ana María & Alejo-González, Rafael (Ed.), Metaphor in Foreign Language Instruction. De Gruyter Mouton. ISSN 9783110630367. p. 173–198. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee & Jensen, Bård Uri (2017). Metaphoricity in English L2 learners’ prepositions, Metaphor in Communication, Science and Education. De Gruyter Mouton. ISSN 9783110549928. p. 283–304. doi: 10.1515/9783110549928-016. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2017). Metaphor in multiple learner corpus translations. In Haan, Pieter de; Vries, Rina De & Vuuren, Sanne Van (Ed.), Language, Learners and Levels: Progression and Variation.. Presses universitaires de Louvain. ISSN 9782875585950. p. 227–252. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2017). Metaphor comprehension and production in a second language. In Semino, Elena & Demjén, Zsófia (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaphor and Language. Routledge. ISSN 9781138775367. p. 503–515. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee & Graedler, Anne-Line (2015). Preposition use in oral and written learner language. In Gujord, Ann-Kristin Helland; Nacey, Susan Lee & Ragnhildstveit, Silje (Ed.), Learner Corpus Research: LCR2013 Conference Proceedings. Universitetet i Bergen. ISSN 9788299858779. p. 45–62. doi: 10.15845/bells.v6i0.808. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2015). Blurring Fiction with Reality: American Television and Consumerism in the 1950s. In Hulme, Alison (Eds.), Consumerism on TV: Popular Media from the 1950s to the Present. Ashgate. ISSN 9781472447562. p. 1–20. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee & Graedler, Anne-Line (2013). Communication strategies used by Norwegian students of English. Corpora and Language in Use. ISSN 2034-6417. p. 345–356. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper investigates the use of communication strategies by Norwegian learners of English, based on transcribed interviews recorded as part of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI) (Gilquin et al. 2010). The data consists of 380 instances of communication strategies which have been categorized according to a taxonomy compiled from various pre-existing taxonomies of such strategies. The study reveals that the learners resort to achievement strategies in 96% of the cases. Among the achievement strategies, L2-based strategies are the most common, which makes sense considering the learners’ fairly high competence level in English. A substantial number of instances of L1-based strategies, such as code switching, can be attributed to the fact that the interviewers understand Norwegian perfectly despite being native speakers of English. This strategy type thus contributes positively to fluency, rather than disrupts communication. Other aspects that are analyzed include the tendency for different strategy types to occur in clusters, and the success of different types of cooperation strategies, where the learner implicitly or explicitly appeals to the interviewer for assistance.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2012). Scare quotes in Norwegian L2 English and British English. Language and Computers (L&C). ISSN 0921-5034. p. 117–130. doi: 10.1163/9789401207478_009. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper presents the findings of a comparative investigation into the use of scare quotes in the English written production of Norwegian university students and the writing of British A-level students. The use of scare quotes usually signifies that the term in quotation marks is somehow inappropriate and that the writers want to distance themselves from it. Motivations for their use vary. They may, for example, allow the writer to express irony or disagreement with the chosen term, despite this expression being the generally accepted one. Alternatively, such quotes are sometimes used to indicate that the writer is uncertain whether the expressed term is indeed the correct one. In terms of pragmatics, the former use has been characterized as secure and the latter as insecure usage (Pullum 2005). Little research has been carried out on scare quotes even though they are a common occurrence in both native speaker and non-native speaker writing. Discussion of scare quotes seems to be primarily restricted to a small number of contributions by linguists in online language blogs or magazines (see e.g. Jacobs 2003, McWhorter 2005, Trask 2000), as well as a few prescriptive admonishments in various language style guides. Taking as its starting point previous research into learner compensation strategies (Poulisse 1993), this paper sets out a taxonomy intended to account for the various possible uses of the quotes. This framework is then utilized in the investigation of the occurrences of scare quotes in essays written by the two groups of students, to discover whether Norwegians and British novice writers employ scare quotes in similar ways. The overall goal is to shed some light on a previously overlooked feature of student writing. Data for the study comes from approximately 25,000 words of text found in argumentative essays written by Norwegian university and college students and collected in the Norwegian component of the International Corpus of Learner English. In this study, the Norwegian use of scare quotes is contrasted with British use in roughly 25,000 words of argumentative essays collected in the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (see Granger 2007).

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Nacey, Susan Lee; Dorst, Aletta Gesina; Krennmayr, Tina & Reijnierse, W. Gudrun (2019). Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 9789027204721. 330 p. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This volume explores linguistic metaphor identification in a wide variety of languages and language families. The book is an essential read for anyone interested in researching language and metaphor, from students to experienced scholars. Its primary goals are to discuss the challenges involved in applying the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) to a range of languages across the globe, and to offer theoretically grounded advice and guidelines enabling researchers to identify metaphors in multiple languages in a valid and replicable way. The volume is intended as a practical guidebook that identifies and discusses procedural challenges of metaphor identification across languages, thus better enabling researchers to reliably identify metaphor in a multitude of languages. Although able to be read independently, this volume – written by metaphor researchers from around the world – is the ideal companion volume for the 2010 Benjamins book "A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU".
Gujord, Ann-Kristin Helland; Nacey, Susan Lee & Ragnhildstveit, Silje (2015). Learner Corpus Research: LCR2013 Conference Proceedings. Universitetet i Bergen. ISBN 9788299858779. 167 p. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2013). Metaphors in Learner English. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 9789027202062. 279 p. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This volume presents results from a corpus-based investigation into the metaphorical production of foreign language learners, comparing texts written by Norwegian (L2) learners of English with those written by British (L1) students. Three types of questions are addressed. The first has empirically measured answers: For example, do L2 English writers produce more metaphors than L1 novice writers? How frequent are novel metaphors in an L2, as compared with an L1? The second type has more subjective answers: How creatively do L2 English learners employ metaphor? Are they even expected to be able to produce metaphor at all? The third type combines theoretical and methodological perspectives: How is metaphorical creativity identified? What is the potential role of metaphoric competence? Most importantly, how are metaphors identified? To this end, the newly-developed ‘Metaphor Identification Procedure’ is tested and critiqued. This book is intended for metaphor researchers, corpus linguists, applied linguists and language educators.

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Nacey, Susan Lee (2026). Learner corpus research and its pedagogical promise: From insight to action? Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This keynote lecture traces recent developments in learner corpus research, with particular attention to the last few years, and highlights emerging trends in its pedagogical applications. It uses these trends to reflect on the evolving relationship between learner corpus research and classroom practice, and to ask how far LCR has thus far delivered on its pedagogical promise. Learner corpus research has long been associated with pedagogical potential: it can deepen our understanding of learner language, support materials development and assessment practices, and inform classroom practice. Yet a persistent question remains about how far the field has moved from generating knowledge about learner language to making that knowledge meaningfully usable in educational contexts (see e.g. Callies, 2019; Chambers, 2015; Gilquin, 2023; Granger, 2009, 2015; Granger & Lefer, 2023; Götz, 2022; Götz & Granger, 2024; Meunier, 2002, 2016; Seidlhofer, 2002). This keynote builds on a recently completed systematic review of LCR publications, which covered the decade up to 31 July 2023 and was presented at the 2024 LCR conference in Tartu (Karlsen & Nacey, 2026). This work focused on the characteristics and trends of LCR over the last decade with respect to pedagogical applications. Extending that work, the talk asks what has happened since, updating the review with publications from August 2023 to December 2025 to revisit the relationship between learner corpus research and pedagogical applications. Pedagogical relevance is approached along a continuum running from 1) knowledge production to better understand learner language production and development, through 2) pedagogical implications extending theoretical contributions towards practical significance, to 3) indirect applications where learner corpora are used to create pedagogical resources, and finally to 4) direct applications of learner corpora in educational contexts, where teachers and/or learners interact hands-on with learner corpus data. In addition to application type, the analysis considers the types of learner corpora accessed, the L1s represented, the target languages involved, and the general availability of the corpora, making it possible to ask not only what learner corpora have been used for, but also how far work in the field has advanced along the path from research insight to pedagogical action.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2026). Exploring metaphor as a methodological and pedagogical tool in the English language classroom. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper investigates metaphor a both a methodological resource for accessing learners’ beliefs about English language learning, as well as a pedagogical tool whose actual classroom utility merits closer scrutiny. Grounded in Conceptual Metaphor Theory and in recent work on elicited metaphor in educational discourse (Wan & Low 2015), the study asks: (1) how do Norwegian upper secondary students metaphorically conceptualize their English language learning experience, and (2) what does a classroom-based metaphor intervention reveal about the pedagogical affordances of working explicitly with such metaphors? A four-session metaphor-led intervention was conducted in a Norwegian upper secondary English class over one semester, where the students’ own metaphors about English language learning were elicited at different points. To examine the effectiveness of metaphor as a pedagogical tool, the research design built upon and adapted protocols for metaphor training and collaborative metaphor-led learning (e.g. Wan 2012; Hart 2009, 2015). Through guided discussions and creative exercises, participants shared and explored different metaphors for learning English – both their own and those of others. This process was intended to raise their metacognitive awareness and encourage shifts in their perspectives about language learning, where beneficial. Drawing on pre- and post-intervention metaphor elicitations, recordings of group and plenary discussions, learner reflections, and teacher interviews, the analysis contrasts the use of metaphor as an analytical lens with its role as an instructional tool in an action-oriented classroom informed by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2020). Particular attention is paid to: (a) the challenges of attributing attitudinal change to the “transformative powers” of metaphor, (b) the kinds of communicative activities and mediation processes that metaphor-led tasks can realistically support, and (c) the types of evidence—textual, observational, and self-reporting—that can be used to assess student engagement and learning in this context. The paper argues that while metaphor-based activities can promote both interactional, meaning-focused classroom discussions and learner reflection, their pedagogical value depends on careful task design and realistic expectations about what changes such interventions may be expected to achieve. References: Council of Europe. (2020). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment – Companion volume, Council of Europe Publishing. www.coe.int/lang-cefr. Hart, G. (2009). Composing metaphors: Metaphors for writing in the composition classroom [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?accession=ohiou1240682599&disposition=inline Wan, W. (2012). Using metaphorical conceptualisation to construct and develop ESL students’ writing: An exploratory study [Doctoral dissertation, University of York]. https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/2746/ Wan, W., & Low, G. (Eds.). (2015). Elicited metaphor analysis in educational discourse. John Benjamins.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2026). Resistance to metaphor: A case study of JD Vance's skydiving analogy. doi: https:/www.inn.no/om-universitetet/fakultet-for-lererutdanning-og-pedagogikk/arrangementer-fra-lup/spinn/2026/index.html. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Metaphor is a pervasive tool in political discourse. Politicians, health communicators, and other public figures routinely deploy metaphors to persuade, explain, and reframe issues. When a metaphor is perceived as problematic, however, it can trigger resistance — explicit rejection, critique, or opposition from the target audience (Gibbs & Siman, 2021). Understanding the mechanisms of metaphor resistance matters both for producers of metaphors (to better preempt failure) and for audiences (to improve their critical tools). This paper examines a case of metaphor resistance that emerged in public discourse in April 2026, when U.S. Vice President JD Vance used a skydiving analogy to explain the U.S. position on Iran's claimed right to uranium enrichment for civilian nuclear purposes. Speaking to reporters in Budapest, Vance compared Iran's situation to that of his wife: she has the right to skydive, but they have an agreement that she will not, because he does not want her to. The analogy prompted widespread critical reaction on social media, offering a rich, unsolicited dataset for studying how the general public resists metaphor. The data consists of all direct replies to a tweet by journalist Aaron Rupar, who quoted Vance's analogy in full without editorial commentary. Replies were collected using TwCommentExport and supplemented by manual collection of GIFs and images. The data thus include both verbal and multimodal responses, and the analysis attends to both. The theoretical framework draws on two complementary strands of research. First, the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation (Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004; van Poppel, 2021) is used to reconstruct the argumentative function of the metaphor, treating the skydiving analogy as a deliberate metaphor (see Steen, 2023) embedded in an analogical argument. The reconstruction identifies explicit and implicit material premises and connection premises across source and target domains, making visible precisely what is being claimed — and what can therefore be resisted. Second, the typology of metaphor resistance developed by van Poppel and Pilgram (2023) is applied to categorize the critical reactions, distinguishing between the focus of resistance and the norms appealed to. Where responses themselves employ metaphor, the analysis draws on van Poppel and Pilgram’s (2024) framework for exploiting metaphor in disagreement, capturing cases of metaphor extension, recontextualization, and reframing. This is work in an early stage. Rather than reporting findings, the presentation will instead offer an overview of the research design, illustrated with selected examples from the data. Note: AI assistance was used in drafting the text of this abstract. The ideas, theoretical framework, and analytical approach are the author's own. Eemeren, F. H. v., & Grootendorst, R. (2004). A systematic theory of argumentation: the pragma-dialectical approach (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. Gibbs, R. W., & Siman, J. (2021). How We Resist Metaphors. Language and cognition, 13(4), 670–692. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2021.18 Steen, G. (2023). Slowing metaphor down: elaborating deliberate metaphor theory (First edition. ed.). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/celcr.26 van Poppel, L. (2021). The Study of Metaphor in Argumentation Theory. Argumentation, 35(1), 177–208. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-020-09523-1 van Poppel, L., & Pilgram, R. (2023). Types of resistance to metaphor. Metaphor & Symbol, 38(4), 311–328. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2023.2213737 van Poppel, L., & Pilgram, R. (2024). Exploiting metaphor in disagreement. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 12(1), 111–138. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00101.van
Mølstad, Christina Niemi; Løfblad, Åse Wedø; Brønstad, Odin Thune; Sønsthagen, Sigrun; Laski, Alona & Bergseth, Kristin Kathinka Due [Show all 50 contributors for this article] (2026). Skroting av lærernormen – basert på forskning? doi: https:/www.utdanningsnytt.no/barnehage-klasseledelse-laerernorm/skroting-av-laerernormen-basert-pa-forskning/469012?fbclid=IwY2xjawQ54sJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEe5-ESejbAANeW9iL_Yi5PFe-M92Cok76QgWJztVKEVMpy9_jpymhzgRro7ls_aem_NkB3gbl0zcVLQ8D6kE2ejQ. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Forslagene om å skrote lærernormen og fjerne øremerkede midler til toppbemanning i barnehage er på kollisjonskurs med profesjonsutøvernes fortellinger om knappe ressurser, og med forskningsbidrag i feltet.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2025). Språk i kampens hete: Har det noe å si hvordan du sier det? doi: https:/www.inn.no/forskning/forskningsarrangementer/vettug-viten/elverum-281125-vettug-viten.html. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Politiske debatter omtales som «krig» eller som slag mellom godt og ondt. I den lokale skoledebatten ble politikere anklaget for å «prostituere» seg. Slike metaforer – med aggressive overtoner – er blitt dagligdags, ikke bare i USA, men også her hjemme. Men metaforer brukes ikke bare til å angripe. Under koronapandemien ble hele befolkningen invitert til en «dugnad» – en felles innsats for å beskytte hverandre. Språket – og særlig metaforene – former ikke bare hvordan vi snakker, men også hvordan vi tenker, handler og forstår verden. Hva skjer når slike metaforer, fiendtlige eller ikke, preger den offentlige samtalen. Er ord bare ord, eller? Professor Susan Nacey er språkforsker og særlig opptatt av metaforer, hvordan vi bruker dem, hvorfor de er så effektive og hvordan de påvirker hvordan vi tenker og handler. I dette foredraget trekker hun linjer fra Innlandet til hennes fødeland USA.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2025). Språk i kampens hete: Har det noe å si hvordan du sier det? doi: https:/www.inn.no/forskning/forskningsarrangementer/vettug-viten/lillehammer-271125-vettug-viten.html. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Politiske debatter omtales som «krig» eller som slag mellom godt og ondt. I den lokale skoledebatten ble politikere anklaget for å «prostituere» seg. Slike metaforer – med aggressive overtoner – er blitt dagligdags, ikke bare i USA, men også her hjemme. Men metaforer brukes ikke bare til å angripe. Under koronapandemien ble hele befolkningen invitert til en «dugnad» – en felles innsats for å beskytte hverandre. Språket – og særlig metaforene – former ikke bare hvordan vi snakker, men også hvordan vi tenker, handler og forstår verden. Hva skjer når slike metaforer, fiendtlige eller ikke, preger den offentlige samtalen. Er ord bare ord, eller? Professor Susan Nacey er språkforsker og særlig opptatt av metaforer, hvordan vi bruker dem, hvorfor de er så effektive og hvordan de påvirker hvordan vi tenker og handler. I dette foredraget trekker hun linjer fra Innlandet til hennes fødeland USA.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2025). INNKU 2025: CLOSURE/AVSLUTNING. doi: https:/shows.acast.com/fts-podden/episodes/6978a1ec590ca8b771aba4b6. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Susan Nacey, Vice Dean FOU at LUP, sums up this year´s edition of INNKU.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2025). Demokratiske verdier under press: Rapport fra "frihetens høyborg", USA. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2024). Analyzing metaphor in real-world discourse. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) observation that metaphor is a central aspect of our daily lives, both in metaphor and thought, sparked off a ‘metaphormania’ in the fields of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and other disciplines. This growing interest in metaphor has - especially in recent years - led to a focus on increased methodological rigor when it comes to metaphor identification, in the goal of producing reliable, replicable and theoretically valid research. This talk introduces the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU), the protocol that currently offers the most thorough and well-tested guidelines for the manual identification of linguistic metaphor (see Steen et al., 2010; Nacey et al., 2019). After a brief introduction to the procedure, the talk moves on to discuss three recent projects involving various ways of applying the results of MIPVU analysis to different types of real-world discourse: 1) Metaphors about relationship abuse, investigating metaphorical analogies in an online discussion forum for abuse survivors (Nacey, 2020); 2) Metaphors for pandemic communication, analyzing reactions in Norway to a particularly Norwegian metaphor used during the COVID-19 pandemic (Nacey, 2024); 3) Metaphors about the doctoral education trajectory, analyzing linguistic metaphors in doctoral dissertation acknowledgments (Nacey, 2022). References Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press. Nacey, S. (2024). The Norwegian Dugnad in Times of COVID-19. Metaphor and Symbol, 39(2), 79.95. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2024.2305203 Nacey, S. (2022). Systematic Metaphors in Norwegian Doctoral Dissertation Acknowledgements. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2022.2042847 Nacey, S. (2020). Figurative production in a computer-mediated discussion forum: Metaphors about relationship abuse. In A. Gargett & J. Barnden (Eds.), Producing Figurative Expression: Theoretical, Experimental and Practical Perspectives (pp. 363-388). John Benjamins. Nacey, S., Dorst, A. G., Krennmayr, T., & Reijnierse, W. G. (Eds.). (2019). Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Steen, G. J., Dorst, A. G., Herrmann, J. B., Kaal, A. A., Krennmayr, T., & Pasma, T. (2010). A method for linguistic metaphor identification: From MIP to MIPVU. John Benjamins.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2024). Amerikanske tilstander i Innlandet? Full text in Research Archive
Skogmo, Siri Fürst & Nacey, Susan Lee (2024). Triangulation with learner translation corpora. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper discusses the utility of combining learner corpus data with other data types to gain a fuller picture of how L2 language learners novice translators handle translation challenges. Our learner corpus data consists of multiple translations of an especially metaphor-dense source text (horoscopes) from the learners' L1 Norwegian into L2 English. In addition, we collected individual student reflection notes about their translations, and observed their classroom discussion about the different translation solutions. We discuss the translation of one particularly culture-specific metaphor as an illustrative example to show which conclusions may be drawn on the basis of the three individual data sources. First, the corpus data allows us to analyze the learners’ translation strategies (i.e. what they did). Second, individual students’ retrospective reflections provide insight into their motivations for translation choices and perceived challenges (i.e. why they did what they did). Third, observation
Nacey, Susan Lee (2024). Metaforer i språket: Er "dugnad" bedre enn "krig"? Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Mens myndighetene i andre land omtalte kampen mot pandemien som en «krig», valgte vi i Norge å kalle det en «dugnad». Var pandemien som en storm, en tsunami, en maraton, en skogbrann eller en reise – eller kanskje noe helt annet? Metaforer er overalt. Vi bruker dem når vi snakker og skriver, og til og med i våre handlinger. Hva er egentlig en metafor? Hvordan finner vi dem? Og hvorfor er de så viktige og effektive når vi kommuniserer?
Karlsen, Petter Hagen & Nacey, Susan Lee (2024). Pedagogical applications of learner corpus research: How far have we come? Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper presents a systematic review of the pedagogical applications of learner corpora as reported in the learner corpus research (LCR) literature between 2014-2023 – roughly the last decade. Our research question is the following: “What are the characteristics and trends of LCR over the last decade with respect to pedagogical applications?” Since the inception of LCR in the late 1980s, the field has been held to have great potential for positive impact in the language classroom not only through affording a richer understanding of foreign language learning and development, but also through contributing towards both the enhancement of pedagogical materials and the creation of data-driven learning opportunities (see Meunier, 2016). Yet Granger (2015) found that “pedagogical ‘implications’ are much more numerous than ‘applications’” in the research literature (p.487), while Gilquin writes as late as 2023 that learner corpora “have not played a central role in learner teaching so far” (p. 283). Our paper reviews all relevant LCR publications identified though a targeted search of research databases, together with corpus linguistics journals. We identify 487 peer-reviewed publications reporting empirical LCR findings, using their abstracts to code them for factors including corpus type (written, spoken, multimodal, cross-sectional, longitudinal, translation) and application type. Our four application types lie along a continuum of learners’ and/or teachers’ interaction with learner data: publications detailing 1) theoretical contributions alone (knowledge production), 2) pedagogical implications of knowledge production, 3) indirect applications of learner corpora (e.g. dictionary development), and 4) direct applications of learner corpora (e.g. classroom activities). Our overall findings show a greater emphasis in LCR publications on knowledge production than on transfer of that knowledge into educational practice, similar to earlier observations. That said, we also find some exemplary pieces of research that represent intriguing avenues for classroom relevant LCR and future directions for the field. References: Gilquin, G. (2023). Written learner corpora to inform teaching. In The Routledge Handbook of Corpora and English Language Teaching and Learning (pp. 281-295). Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003002901-25 Granger, S. (2015). The contribution of learner corpora to reference and instructional materials design. In The Cambridge Handbook of Learner Corpus Research (pp. 485-510). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139649414.022 Meunier, F. (2016). Learner corpora and pedagogical applications. In The Routledge Handbook of Language Learning and Technology (pp. 376-387). Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315657899-41
Nacey, Susan Lee (2024). A metaphor intervention in VGS. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This study aims to explore understandings about second/foreign (L2) language learning held by young Norwegian L2 learners of English (aged 16-17). It employs metaphor as a methodological tool to gain insight into the learners' implicit and explicit attitudes, beliefs and values related to language learning, and also explores how metaphor can be employed as an interventional tool in the language classroom to promote reflection and enhance critical thinking. This study employs adapted versions of the protocol for metaphor training developed by (Wan, 2011, 2012), together with the protocols for elicitation of metaphor and for collaborative metaphor-led classroom learning developed by Hart, (2009, 2015). A metaphor ‘intervention’ in a Norwegian upper secondary English class was conducted, consisting of four sessions over the course of one semester. A total of 18 students participated in the study, after having given informed consent. In this talk, I will first discuss the motivation for the study. I will then show some of the material developed for the class sessions, as well as the wealth of data collected: Pre-intervention: • Metadata about the students and their language background, as well as how they use language (outside of school and homework). Data from session 1: • individual written elicited student texts (round 1) Data from session 2: • individual ratings for each class metaphor from each student; • transcribed audio recording of following plenum discussion; • categorization of class metaphor from 5 groups; • transcribed audio recording of following plenum discussion; • transcribed teacher interview Data from session 3: • written individual responses about ‘foreign’ elicited metaphors; • transcribed audio recording of plenum discussion from ‘four corners exercise’; • transcribed teacher interview Data after session 4: • individual written elicited student texts (round 2); • transcribed teacher interview As of September 2024, I have co-authored an article with PROFF doctoral candidate Renata Turunen about elicitation as a method in metaphor studies (Nacey & Turunen, forthcoming). The next step will be to dive into the data itself. References Hart, G. (2009). Composing metaphors: Metaphors for writing in the composition classroom [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. Hart, G. (2015). Beyond 'elicit and run' metaphor research: Why conversations within and between levels of participants matter. In Wan. W. & Low, G. (Eds.), Elicited metaphor analysis in educational discourse (pp. 265-288). John Benjamins Nacey, S., & Turunen, R. (forthcoming). Comparing metaphor elicitation models: From online surveys to classroom intervention. Metaphor and the Social World. Wan, W. (2011). An examination of the validity of metaphor analysis studies: Problems with metaphor elicitation techniques. Metaphor and the Social World, 1(2), 261-287. doi:10.1075/msw.1.2.07wan Wan, W. (2012). Using metaphorical conceptualisation to construct and develop ESL students' writing: An exploratory study. [Doctoral dissertation, University of York].
Turunen, Renata & Nacey, Susan Lee (2024). Comparing metaphor elicitation models: From online surveys to classroom intervention. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper discusses four small-scale metaphor elicitation studies, each with slightly varying methodological approaches. Metaphor has been used as an investigative tool in educational research to uncover implicit beliefs, values and assumptions about teaching and learning with the ultimate goal of informing and improving professional practice. As Cortazzi and Jin (2020, p. 488) explain, metaphors matter “because they frame understanding, guide or focus thinking, and mediate key concepts, so that overarching conceptual metaphors revealed in research are influentially claimed to have significant cognitive reality.” Our investigation focuses on issues involved in ‘getting at’ students’ metaphors (the first step in metaphor analysis in educational research), as previous research has identified the possibility of non-valid responses (no metaphor or justification) as a challenge (Wan & Low, 2015). Here we present our findings concerning different methods of eliciting students’ metaphors, i.e. when informants are overtly prompted to produce a metaphor about a particular issue and (often) explain the rationale for their choice. These four individual studies, when taken together, allow for comparing and contrasting four models of metaphor elicitation that vary mainly in the degree of informant preparation and guidance given before elicitation. Studies 1 and 2 investigated Finnish students’ metaphors of studying during the coronavirus pandemic. Study 1 offered no scaffolding for the informants (n=21), using only a prompt for eliciting metaphor via an online survey. Study 2 involved some minimal scaffolding in the form of explanation what a metaphor is with a few illustrative examples, followed by the online elicitation prompt (n=19). The prompts in Studies 3 and 4 concerned Norwegian students’ conceptualizations of learning English, and were both preceded by longer interventions. Study 3 included a brief classroom intervention with a 30-minute presentation about metaphor followed by group discussion and exercises (n=17). Study 4 included four sessions of metaphor training, taking place over one semester (n=15). Our results show that Studies 2-4 produced high valid metaphor rates, with justifications that only somewhat varied in richness (operationalized in terms of observations of explicitly stated figurative correspondences and extended analogies). Study 1 produced the highest non-valid metaphor with only weak justifications. We thus recommend the elicitation methods from Studies 2-4, albeit cautiously given the small number of informants involved. However, the three methods vary greatly with respect to time required for informants and researchers on the one hand, and the potential for positive washback to informants on the other. References: Cortazzi, M., & Jin, L. (2020). Elicited metaphor analysis: Researching teaching and learning. In M. R. M. Ward & S. Delamont (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research in education. (pp. 488-505). Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788977159.00054 Wan, W., & Low, G. (2015). Elicited metaphor analysis in educational discourse. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2023). The aptness of the Norwegian 'koronadugnad' metaphor. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
On 12 March 2020, the Norwegian government instigated measures to limit the spread of COVID-19, the most drastic policies of any Norwegian government in peacetime. As similar scenes were being played out around the world, governments, health authorities, the media, public institutions – indeed, everyone – required ways to communicate about such an unprecedented global emergency. Consequently, "from its very beginning, the global understanding of the pandemic was a metaphorical one" (Olza et al., 2021, p. 100): metaphors facilitate communication, especially with regards to explaining difficult concepts and persuading people to follow your lead. A particularly Norwegian metaphor used when introducing those measures concerned the ‘dugnad’ tradition, a cultural practice of voluntary work carried out collectively to benefit the common good, closely linked to Norwegian identity and values. This paper traces the trajectory of dugnad metaphors related to COVID-19 in Norwegian public discourse, to shed light on the aptness of their use. Aptness is here analyzed in terms of ‘resonance’ (the public reaction to the metaphor), and follows a threefold categorization: imposition, endorsement, or resistance. The data consists of all articles appearing in the three largest Norwegian online newspapers (Aftenposten, Dagbladet, VG) from March 2020-June 2021 that included the lexeme DUGNAD in connection with the pandemic. Findings indicate that the prime minister’s initial call to dugnad in March 2020 struck a chord with the Norwegian people, with public endorsement highlighting many features of prototypical dugnads. However, resistance, anchored in alternative dugnad characteristics, also appeared at the start of the pandemic and became more prominent over time. A metaphor that is successful at the start of an emergency may thus become less successful as time passes – an important lesson for the future. References: Olza, I., Koller, V., Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., Pérez-Sobrino, P., & Semino, E. (2021). The #ReframeCovid initiative: From Twitter to society via metaphor. Metaphor and the Social World, 11(1), 98-120. doi:https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.00013.olz
Nacey, Susan Lee (2023). The Norwegian 'dugnad' in public discourse during the coronavirus pandemic. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2023). Metaphor identification and its application to real-world discourse. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2023). The Norwegian dugnad in public discourse as a metaphor during the coronavirus pandemic. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2023). Metaphorical production in learner English. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2022). Development of metaphorical production in learner language: A longitudinal perspective. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper article details a longitudinal corpus-based exploration into the development of metaphorical production of L2 learners of English. The study tracks the progress of five secondary school pupils aged 13-17 in Norway, with the data consisting of texts written for end-of-semester exams: two texts per pupil over four consecutive academic years (40 texts; roughly 26,800 words in total). How metaphorical production develops as L2 proficiency increases is an especially under-researched area, with only a few published studies that have recently addressed this issue (e.g. Hoang, 2014; Littlemore et al., 2014; Nacey, 2019). Further, while all previous studies relied on pseudo-longitudinal data comprised of single observations (i.e. texts) produced by different learner groups, the present study is the first to investigate metaphor development from a longitudinal perspective, following the same informants over time. This paper thus adds a unique innovative perspective to L2 metaphor studies. The overall goal is to shed light on how metaphorical production changes as pupils progress through different semesters and grades in their school careers. To do so, three subordinate aims are addressed. First, the study investigates how metaphorical density varies over time, both for the group of pupils and for the individuals, and also for open-class versus closed-class metaphors. A second aim is to examine the distribution of metaphor clusters over time. A third aim is to focus more closely on the identified metaphor clusters to explore the functions they serve in written learner discourse. The paper thus adopts similar research goals to those in Littlemore et al. (2014) and Nacey (2019), as well as similar methods: first, all metaphors were identified following the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (Steen et al., 2010) and then metaphor clusters were located through a series of time analyses (one per text). Quantitative results indicate that metaphor density and the numbers of metaphor clusters increase as proficiency increases (measured in terms of chronological progress through semesters and grades). However, no significant differences in the rate of increase of metaphor density for open-class and closed-class words was uncovered. Qualitative results concerning the possible function of metaphor clusters indicate that while some metaphors arguably play a role related to either topic or to discourse management, many metaphor clusters had no clearly discernable motivation. Among other points, the paper questions whether a preponderance of seemingly random clusters may be a hallmark of novice texts, thus raising possible avenues for future research.
Krennmayr, Tina; MacArthur, Fiona & Nacey, Susan Lee (2022). UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING in business seminars. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
One of the most fundamental embodied connections is the link between visual perception and mental activity, a mapping often described as understanding is seeing. Most studies have substantiated their claims for the existence of this mapping with instantiations of the verb see (e.g. Deignan and Cameron, 2009; Ibarretxe-Antuñano, 2008). Yet SIGHT is considerably more complex than merely seeing and so are the metaphorical expressions that equate vision and intellection. MacArthur et al. (2015) found that lecturers using English as academic lingua franca during office hours’ consultations with Spanish Erasmus students employed various instantiations of UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING when advising the students on how to go about different academic tasks. The lecturers drew on a wider range of instantiations of the mapping and also used these much more frequently than the students did. As education is a powerful agent of change, it is important to understand the role of metaphor use in learning environments. The ubiquity of SIGHT metaphors in the lecturers’ talk about academic work in the particular environment of office hours raises the following questions: How common is this kind of talk in other academic settings? Is the underuse of SIGHT metaphors by the students due to their role in the conversations? Is there a difference between settings where English is being used as the medium of instruction (EMI) compared to where it is not? In order to answer these questions, we present a study of SIGHT metaphors in a corpus of business and marketing seminars (MetCLIL) recorded in EMI settings at six different European universities. We analyze linguistic realizations of the understanding is seeing metaphor (e.g. uses of see, focus, look, etc.) in MetCLIL to shed light on the situated context-driven nature of metaphorical language use in EMI situations. We compare our MetCLIL results with corpus data of university business seminars from the BASE and MICASE corpora, recorded in non-EMI settings, as well as with findings into the use of SIGHT metaphors in EMI office hours' consultations. Our quantitative analysis reveals that SIGHT terms are used significantly more often in EMI business seminars than in the non-EMI seminars, with a high proportion of these uses being metaphorical. Our qualitative analysis of transcript extracts illustrates how lecturers and students regularly employ a wide range of words from the
Nacey, Susan Lee (2022). The superpowers of metaphor researchers. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
That metaphor is all around us may be no secret to RaAM conference delegates, but may surprise others. In this plenary talk, I will show how our knowledge about and awareness of metaphor gives us 'superpowers' that enable us to contribute in different ways to a wide variety of disciplines as well as to communicate with different stakeholders. To do so, I will focus on the inspiration for some of the different metaphor projects and publications I have worked on in the past two decades: the backstory leading to publications ranging from blog posts related to current events to scientific publications about learner language and other topics. This talk is especially intended to give early career researchers an idea of what they have let themselves in for, together with what they may have in store in their futures. The talk may also provide motivation for more experienced metaphor researchers to contribute with their perspectives and reflections about the various research paths open to metaphor scholars.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2022). Systematic metaphors in Norwegian doctoral dissertation acknowledgements. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper investigates patterns of systematic metaphors used to characterize various aspects of the Norwegian doctoral education period, based on analysis of a corpus of dissertation acknowledgements (DAs). The primary research question addressed here asks which metaphors doctoral students in Norway use to describe their educational experience. The DAs were collected from all doctoral dissertations produced between 2014-2019 from four programs at a small Norwegian university. Between them, these programs cover widely varying academic disciplines. The corpus contains nearly 27,000 words in 49 dissertation acknowledgements, 24 written in English and 25 in Norwegian. Dissertation acknowledgements “act as a means of demonstrating academic credibility, recognizing debts, and achieving a sense of closure at the end of a long and demanding research process” (Hyland, 2003, p. 243). While their main purpose is ostensibly to express gratitude to individuals and institutions, acknowledgements also provide insight into the persona of the writers, allowing them space for reflection and expression of personal and professional identity. This study is grounded in the Conceptual Metaphor Theory. By this view, metaphor is a frequently used as a resource by which we discuss abstract, complex ideas in terms of more concrete entities, whereby certain real or perceived qualities from a (typically concrete) 'source' domain are mapped onto a (typically abstract) 'target' domain (see e.g. Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Put simply, metaphor represents a way in which we talk about one thing in terms of another. Cognitive linguists would add that metaphors also represent ways that we actually conceive of the world around us. Metaphors facilitate communication, as they "can be used to persuade, reason, evaluate, explain, theorize, offer new conceptualization of reality and so on" (Semino, 2008, p. 31). This study adheres to a discourse dynamics approach to metaphor identification and analysis, (Cameron, 2010; Cameron, Low, & Maslen, 2010; Cameron & Maslen, 2010a). This process involves a three-step procedure, consisting of 1) identifying linguistic metaphors (so-called 'metaphor vehicles', 2) sorting the identified vehicles into vehicle groups, and 2) linking the vehicle groups with their topics. As a whole, the discourse dynamics approach allows for the identification of sets of related linguistic metaphors employed by different people about the same topics (that is, "systematic metaphors"; see Cameron & Maslen, 2010b), as well as metaphors that are less commonly employed about these topics (e.g. 'one-shot' metaphors). Given the nature of the data in question, fairly equally divided between Norwegian and English discourse, the analysis has the potential for revealing cross-linguistic similarities and differences. An overview of the systematic metaphorical patterns in DAs is intended to provide empirical evidence concerning how such students view the doctoral education process in general, as well as the assistance they receive along the way. Furthermore, this investigation may also provide insight into alternative ways in which they could think about these issues —that is, the metaphors uncovered could be used as the starting point for discussing hitherto implicit attitudes, addressing and possibly reframing potentially problematic conceptualizations.
Skogmo, Siri Fürst & Nacey, Susan Lee (2022). Data triangulation in translation studies: a case study. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2022). Metaphors for the Norwegian doctoral trajectory. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2022). Conceptualizations of the doctoral trajectory. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2022). "Vi mobiliserer til dugnad": The Norwegian dugnad as a metaphor in times of COVID-19. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
On 12 March 2020, the Norwegian government instigated measures intended to limit the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the most drastic policies of any Norwegian government in times of peace. In her speech announcing the measures, Prime Minister Solberg appealed to a particularly Norwegian tradition to help persuade citizens to obey the new directives: I Norge står vi sammen når det gjelder. Vi mobiliserer til dugnad og samarbeid i små og store lokalsamfunn. Nå er dette viktigere enn noen gang. (Aftenposten, 12.03.22) This study will trace the trajectory of dugnad metaphors related to the coronavirus pandemic in Norwegian public discourse, both immediately prior to and following Solberg's March 12th speech. The term 'dugnad' - when used in a non-metaphorical sense - refers to the widespread Norwegian cultural practice of voluntary work carried out as a community, a tradition firmly grounded in Norwegian heritage and history. These voluntary activities differ from charity in that they benefit some aspect of the collective good, typically being held to support kindergartens and schools, neighborhoods, sports and other organizations, etc. (see e.g. Lorentzen & Dugstad, 2011; Simon & Mobekk, 2019). This research aims to shed light on the aptness of the dugnad metaphor when used about the pandemic, with 'aptness' defined here as ‘‘the extent to which a comparison captures important features of the topic’’ (Chiappe et al., 2003, p. 53). The primary data comes from the Norsk aviskorpus (bokmål), a monitor corpus of Norwegian newspaper articles freely available through the CLARINO online repository (https://clarino.uib.no/korpuskel/page). All occurrences of the lexeme DUGNAD during the period from March 2020 through June 2021 have been retrieved from articles published in the three largest Norwegian national newspapers: Aftenposten, VG, and Dagbladet. The articles consist of a mix of news reporting (including direct citations from politicians and other public figures) and opinion pieces. As of this writing, the resulting concordance lines are being filtered to 1) discard all occurrences of DUGNAD that are unrelated to the pandemic, and to 2) gather together occurrences of the lexemes that occur in the same texts. The final dataset will then be annotated for features of aptness: specifically, 1) the understanding of the metaphor's implications evidenced in the data (i.e. the entailments of the dugnad metaphor explicitly referred to in the newspaper articles) and 2) any stated or reported reactions to the imposition of that dugnad (i.e. acceptance/support or rejection/resistance). This study will add a Norwegian contribution to the growing body of research stimulated by the #ReframeCovid initiative: "an open, collaborative and non-prescriptive initiative to collect alternatives to war metaphors for COVID-19 in any language, and to (critically) reflect on the use of figurative language about the virus, its impact and the measures taken in response" (Olza et al., p. 98; see e.g. Hanne, 2022, Pérez-Sobrino et al., 2022; Semino, 2021). How the dugnad metaphor compares and contrasts with the war metaphor will thus also be explored. This paper will present research that is currently in a preliminary phase. The language of presentation will be 'Norwenglish' (English with untranslated Norwegian examples). References: Chiappe, D. L., Kennedy, J. M., & Chiappe, P. (2003). Aptness is more important than comprehensibility in preference for metaphors and similes. Poetics (Amsterdam), 31(1), 51-6
Aronsen, Jan Magnus; Sørensen, Erik Øiolf; Daugstad, Karoline; Nacey, Susan Lee; Tafintseva, Valeria & Beyer, Audun [Show all 21 contributors for this article] (2022). Infrastruktur og tjenester for FAIR forskningsdata – Status og forslag til videre arbeid : Sluttrapport fra utredningsgruppen 15.3.2022. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Denne rapporten er en av flere leveranser fra utredningen «Felles infrastruktur og tjenester for FAIR forskningsdata», på oppdrag fra Digitaliseringsstyret for høyere utdanning og forskning. Rapporten publiseres på nettstedet openscience.no som er under utvikling som et samlingssted for informasjon om åpen forskning. Hovedredaktør for nettstedet er Sikt – Kunnskapssektorens tjenesteleverandør, og redaksjonsrådet har også medlemmer fra UHR og fra Forskningsrådet. Hovedmålgruppe for nettstedet er de norske forskningsinstitusjonene. Rapporten retter seg mot både forskningsinstitusjoner i universitets- og høyskolesektoren, helsesektoren og instituttsektoren, myndighetsorganer, finansiører og de enkelte forskningsmiljøene.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2021). Metaphor identification and its application to real-world discourse. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) observation that metaphor is a central aspect of our daily lives, both in metaphor and thought, sparked off a ‘metaphormania’ in the fields of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and other disciplines. This growing interest in metaphor has - especially in recent years - led to a focus on increased methodological rigor when it comes to metaphor identification, in the goal of producing reliable, replicable and theoretically valid research. This talk introduces the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU), the protocol that currently offers the most thorough and well-tested guidelines for the manual identification of linguistic metaphor (see Steen et al., 2010; Nacey et al., 2019). After a brief introduction to the procedure, the talk moves on to discuss three recent and/or ongoing projects involving various ways of applying MIPVU to different types of ‘real-world’ discourse: 1) ‘Metaphors about relationship abuse’ based on analysis of metaphorical analogies in an online discussion forum (Nacey, 2020); 2) ‘Learner translation of metaphor: Smooth sailing?', exploring metaphor translation strategies of student translators (Nacey & Skogmo, forthcoming 2021); 3) ‘Conceptualizations of the doctoral education process’ based on analysis of linguistic metaphors in dissertation acknowledgments. References Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Nacey, S. (2020). Figurative production in a computer-mediated discussion forum: Metaphors about relationship abuse. In A. Gargett & J. Barnden (Eds.), Producing Figurative Expression: Theoretical, Experimental and Practical Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Nacey, S., Dorst, A. G., Krennmayr, T., & Reijnierse, W. G. (Eds.). (2019). Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Nacey, S. & Skogmo, S. F. (forthcoming 2021). Learner translation of metaphor: Smooth sailing? Metaphor and the Social World, 11(2). Steen, G. J., Dorst, A. G., Herrmann, J. B., Kaal, A. A., Krennmayr, T., & Pasma, T. (2010). A method for linguistic metaphor identification: From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2021). 'Flipping the Tin' podcast episode 1: Digital/Hybrid Events and Sustainability. [Internet]. Sardines Digital Engagment. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
If you didn’t already know, we have launched a new podcast called Flipping the Tin! We chat with industry specialists, policymakers, and conference attendees on the future of events. In our first episode, we have distinguished guests Professor Susan Nacey and Dr Bodo Winter to discuss their experiences of digital events and the route to sustainability within academic conferencing. Susan Nacey is a Professor of English as a second/foreign language. Her current position is vice dean for research at the faculty of education as part of inland Norway University of applied science. She's a linguist who focuses on investigating metaphor in different types of spoken and written discourse. Dr Bodo Winter is a senior lecturer at the department of linguistics at the University of Birmingham. He's a linguist studying the intersection of language and perception with a focus on gesture and multimodal communication.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2021). What's new in metaphor and space? [Internet]. Researching and Applying Metaphor 2021 Conference Facebook . Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Have you ever wondered what role metaphor plays in dissertation acknowledgements? 👉 Susan Lee Nacey is updating us on some of her recent research, and how dissertation acknowledgements are metaphorically structured! 🎧 Listen to Susan live 🗣 in the video section "What's new in metaphor and space?"
Nacey, Susan Lee (2021). Conceptualizations of the Doctoral Education: “Detours, Delays and Sidetracks Can Enrich Your Life”. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper investigates conceptualizations of the doctoral education process, based on analysis of all dissertation acknowledgements written between 2014-2019 by candidates from four PhD programs offered by a Norwegian university: 49 acknowledgements totaling roughly 28,000 words, approximately half in English and half in Norwegian, and covering academic disciplines ranging from the humanities to applied ecology. This study thus expands upon earlier studies related to metaphor and Higher Education through availing itself of a hitherto unexplored data source for identification of metaphorical conceptualizations, and in the Norwegian Higher Education context. Dissertation acknowledgements “act as a means of demonstrating academic credibility, recognizing debts, and achieving a sense of closure at the end of a long and demanding research process” (Hyland, 2003, p. 243). While their main purpose is ostensibly to express gratitude to individuals and institutions, acknowledgements also provide insight into the persona of the writers, allowing them space for reflection and expression of personal and professional identity (see Hyland, 2004, p. 304). Analysis adheres to a metaphor-led discourse dynamics approach because metaphor facilitates talk about abstract concepts (such as education), making them more comprehensible. In doing so, metaphor also provides a window into conscious and unconscious attitudes, opinions and beliefs (see e.g. Bager-Elsborg & Greve, 2017; Cameron, 2010). More specifically, the acknowledgements are analyzed as follows: Scandinavian adaptation (Nacey et al., 2019); 2. Group the identified metaphors by their vehicle category (e.g. LOCATION, JOURNEY, TRANSFER), determined through a flexible and iterative process following Cameron, Maslen, and Low (2010); 3. Link vehicle categories with to identify metaphors about the a priori topics of a) the doctoral process (generally), b) academic assistance (particularly supervision) and c) supervisors. The primary research question addressed here asks which metaphors doctoral students in Norway use to describe their educational experience, investigating metaphors that may appear either systematically or rarely, as well as those that may be used either by many or by few informants. Such an overview provides empirical evidence as to how such students conceive of their various aspects of the doctoral process. In making explicit how these students actually think about these issues, this investigation also provides insight into alternative ways in which they could think about them - that is, the metaphors uncovered could be used as the starting point for discussing hitherto implicit attitudes, addressing and possibly reframing potentially problematic conceptualizations.
Risco, Irene Castellano; Nacey, Susan Lee & Alejo-González, Rafael (2021). Collaborative Metaphor Identification in Digital Space. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper contributes to the ongoing discussions concerning ways of strengthening the study of metaphor through the application of valid, reliable and transparent research methods, an area that has increasingly received focus in the past decade (see e.g. Pérez-Sobrino & Julich-Warpakowski, 2020). It details experiences gained during the operationalization of a collaborative international research project called ‘Metaphor in Academic Talk: L2 metaphor production in higher education CLIL discussion seminars’ (MetCLIL). The project aims to research the role of metaphor in university seminars where English is used as the Medium of Instruction (EMI), a follow-up to the EuroCoAT project investigating metaphor produced in EMI office hour consultations at various universities throughout Europe. By contrast, the MetCLIL data consists of EMI discourse recorded during discussion seminars at universities in 6 countries: Spain, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The project’s first phase, corpus compilation, has been completed: 9 sessions have been recorded and transcribed (amounting to 15 hours 30 minutes /111,552 tokens). The project’s second phase involved the metaphor tagging using the Metaphor Identification procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU; Steen et al., 2010). Consisting of explicit step-by-step instructions for identifying metaphor, MIPVU is intended as a reliable and replicable procedure. Despite this, issues with respect to its consistent application have been raised (see e.g. Nacey et al., 2019). In this paper, we discuss ways in which an international collaborative team, whose members have varying degrees of previous experience with MIPVU and are based in different locations, may nevertheless effectively apply the procedure to large amounts of data. Here we detail digital solutions, ways in which we organized the analysis and assure its quality, and many of the challenges and theoretical issues that arose in the group. Regarding this latter issue, for instance, we found some differences between novice and expert researchers in certain space-related terms such as certain prepositions (e.g., ‘about’ and ‘at’) or nouns (e.g., ‘boundary’ or ‘span’). We report the problems these and other terms entailed and how they have been addressed and solved. References Nacey, S., Krennmayr, T., Dorst, A. G., & Reijnierse, W. G. (2019). What the MIPVU protocol doesn’t tell you (even though it mostly does). In S. Nacey, A. G. Dorst, T. Krennmayr, & W. G. Reijnierse (Eds.), Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pérez-Sobrino, P., & Julich-Warpakowski, N. (2020). Zooming in on empirical methods in metaphor research. Paper presented at the RaAM 2020Virtual, Hamar, Norway. https://uinnlandetmy.sharepoint.com/:f:/r/personal/susan_nacey_inn_no/Documents/RaAM%202020Virtual?csf=1&web=1&e=k3zA9g Steen, G. J., Dorst, A. G., Herrmann, J. B., Kaal, A. A., Krennmayr, T., & Pasma, T. (2010). A method for linguistic metaphor identification: From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2021). Metaphorical patterns in Norwegian doctoral acknowledgements. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper investigates patterns of systematic metaphors used to characterize various aspects of the Norwegian doctoral education period, based on analysis of a corpus of dissertation acknowledgements (DAs). The primary research question addressed here asks which metaphors doctoral students in Norway use to describe their educational experience. The DAs were collected from all doctoral dissertations produced between 2014-2019 from four programs at a Norwegian university. Between them, these programs cover widely varying academic disciplines. The corpus contains nearly 27,000 words in 49 dissertation acknowledgements, 24 written in English and 25 in Norwegian. Dissertation acknowledgements “act as a means of demonstrating academic credibility, recognizing debts, and achieving a sense of closure at the end of a long and demanding research process” (Hyland, 2003, p. 243). While their main purpose is ostensibly to express gratitude to individuals and institutions, acknowledgements also provide insight into the persona of the writers, allowing them space for reflection and expression of personal and professional identity. This study is grounded in the Conceptual Metaphor Theory. By this view, metaphor is a frequently used as a resource by which we discuss abstract, complex concepts in terms of more concrete entities, whereby certain real or perceived qualities from a (typically concrete) 'source' domain are mapped onto a (typically abstract) 'target' domain (see e.g. Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Put simply, metaphor represents a way in which we talk about one thing in terms of another. Cognitive linguists would add that metaphors also represent ways that we actually conceive of the world around us. Metaphors facilitate communication, as they "can be used to persuade, reason, evaluate, explain, theorize, offer new conceptualization of reality and so on" (Semino, 2008, p. 31). This study adheres to a discourse dynamics approach to metaphor identification and analysis, (Cameron, 2010; Cameron, Low, & Maslen, 2010; Cameron & Maslen, 2010a). This process involves a three-step procedure, consisting of 1) identifying linguistic metaphors (socalled 'metaphor vehicles', 2) sorting the identified vehicles into vehicle groups, and 2) linking the vehicle groups with their topics. As a whole, the discourse dynamics approach allows for the identification of sets of related linguistic metaphors employed by different people about the same topics (that is, 'systematic metaphors'; see Cameron & Maslen, 2010b), as well as metaphors that are less commonly employed about these topics (e.g. 'one-shot' metaphors). Given the nature of the data in question, fairly equally divided between Norwegian and English discourse, the analysis also has the potential for revealing cross-linguistic similarities and differences. An overview of the systematic metaphorical patterns in DAs is intended to provide empirical evidence concerning how such students view the doctoral education process in general, as well as the assistance they receive along the way. Furthermore, this investigation may also provide insight into alternative ways in which they could think about these issues —that is, the metaphors uncovered could be used as the starting point for discussing hitherto implicit attitudes, addressing and possibly reframing potentially problematic conceptualizations.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2020). Hva er egentlig en metafor? Susan Nacey om hvordan vi bruker metaforer i dagligspråket vårt. På en benk med Einar Øverenget. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Er kampen mot koronapandemien en krig? Eller er det en dugnad? Metaforer hjelper oss å forstå kompliserte forhold, og hvilke metaforer vi bruker sier noe om hvem vi er. Filosof Einar Øverenget møter Susan Nacey, professor i språkvitenskap ved Høgskolen i Innlandet. Nacey forsker på hvordan vi bruker metaforer i språket vårt i forskjellige sammenhenger.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2020). Metaphor identification and its application to real-world discourse. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee; Busse, Beatrix; Taylor, Charlotte; Tyne, Henry & Winter, Bodo (2020). Organizing virtual conferences. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
In this virtual seminar, five organizers of virtual conferences will discuss their experiences in (involuntarily) transforming their physical conferences to virtual ones. Our goal is to empower others to be able to do the same & to demonstrate that there is a wide variety of do-able options.
Nacey, Susan Lee & Skogmo, Siri Fürst (2020). Learner translations of metaphor: Creative solutions? Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee & Skogmo, Siri Fürst (2020). Learner translations of metaphor. Full text in Research Archive
Creed, Allison & Nacey, Susan Lee (2019). Education is Giving and Taking: A Comparative Study of Metaphor Usage in Australian and Norwegian University Promotional Videos. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Internationalisation, an increasingly mobile student population, and advancement in digital network technologies is transforming Higher Education and challenging notions of lifelong learning and career trajectories. Furthermore, culturally imbedded beliefs underpin sustainable education and career crafting behaviours. Knowledge of how universities and their students and graduates construct, understand, and apply notions of education and working life is essential. Conceptual metaphor theory, following Lakoff and Johnson, offers figurative frames to examine and enable self-understanding and self-definition as well as a framework for theorising education and working life. Our research aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion of transformative career development learning for self-determination. We performed a cross-cultural comparison of metaphorical language used in online promotional videos of Australian and Norwegian university students talking about education, career, and working life. The Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) was applied to the English transcriptions and an adapted Scandinavian version of MIPVU to the Norwegian transcriptions to gain reliable, quantifiable, and comparable results. This work informs research of vocational development and management and offers an innovative methodological choice that integrates a linguistic approach to address concepts and problems in education, career, and working life.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2019). Metaphorical competence in learner language. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2019). Metaphors in L2 Norwegian high-stakes exams. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory advances the view that metaphor is a fundamental cognitive process defining our understanding of reality: “the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing [e.g. love] in terms of another [e.g. a journey]” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 5). Such metaphors in thought (conceptual metaphors) are reflected as metaphors in language, i.e. by the words and expressions we produce (linguistic metaphors). Empirical research has since confirmed that linguistic metaphors are ubiquitous in both L1 and L2 language (see e.g. Nacey, 2013; Steen et al., 2010). Metaphor therefore necessarily plays a central role in language learning; indeed, Littlemore and Low (2006) argue that metaphor plays an important role in all areas of L2 communicative competence. Previous research about metaphor and language learners has focused primarily on metaphor comprehension, interpretation and/or appreciation, with L2 studies frequently concentrating on metaphor in connection with vocabulary acquisition and retention. Much less work has been carried out on production of metaphor in the L2, with most of those studies that have been conducted investigating L2 English, rather than other L2 languages. This paper addresses that gap by investigating metaphor language in the Norwegian Second Language Corpus (ASK), mapping out and analyzing the metaphorical language produced by Norwegian L2 language learners in essays where they were required to interpret a Norwegian poem and actively incorporate its message into their own text. The empirical data consists of 22 ASK texts written by L2 Norwegian learners as part of the Test i norsk – høyere nivå ['Test in Norwegian – higher level'], a high-stakes language test primarily intended for immigrants to Norway who need to document their language skills for employment or for admission to Norwegian universities and colleges. These texts – comprising roughly 10,000 words – were produced by informants with one of eight different L1s and from one of twelve different countries, in response to the identical task. They were instructed to write a text incorporating their own opinions and experiences of friendship with the message(s) in the Kolbein Falkeid poem Det er langt mellom venner ['It is far between friends'], a poem whose core is metaphorical simile. This study identifies all linguistic metaphors in the L2 texts using the Scandinavian version of the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Amsterdam, which requires analysis of each word for metaphorical status (Nacey, Greve, & Falck, submitted). Subsequent analysis focuses upon metaphor density, as well as the role of both deliberate metaphors and metaphor clusters. The main goal of the chapter is to explore the ways in which these L2 learners use their language resources to expand upon Falkeid’s metaphors and/or produce alternative metaphors in their responses. This chapter thus contributes to the knowledge base about the role of metaphor in L2 written production created in a high consequence, test-taking situation. References Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Littlemore, J., & Low, G. (2006). Figurative thinking and foreign language learning. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Nacey, S. (2013). Metaphors in learner English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Nacey, S., Greve, L., & Falck, M. J. (submitted). Linguistic metaphor identification in Scandinavian. In S. Nacey, A. G. Dorst, T. Krennmayr, & W. G. Reijnierse (Eds.), Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Steen, G. J., Dorst, A. G., Herrmann, J. B., Kaal, A. A., Krennmayr, T., & Pasma, T. (2010). Metaphor in usage. Cognitive Linguistics, 21(4), 757-788.
Nacey, Susan Lee & Greve, Linda (2019). 'Royal' metaphors in Danish and Norwegian New Year's Eve speeches. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper presents a comparative analysis of metaphor in the New Year’s speeches (NYEs) of the Danish queen and the Norwegian king. NYEs constitute an annual tradition in both countries, broadcast early in the evening of December 31 of each year, where these monarchs summarize the highlights of the past year and look ahead to hope and aspirations for the year to come (Hovland, 2000). In many respects, Denmark and Norway share a common historical, cultural, and linguistic background; indeed, the two languages are mutually comprehensible (Torp, 1998). In light of such similarities, one might assume the null hypothesis to be true, that there be no important differences with respect to metaphor use in the two set of speeches. Our primary data consists of two sets of five speeches per monarch dating from 2013 to 2017: roughly 4500 words per set. We address two main research questions: 1. How is metaphor used in these NYE speeches? 2. Is metaphor used in similar ways in the Danish and Norwegian NYE speeches? To do so, we first identify all linguistic metaphors in the speeches through applying the newly-developed Scandinavian version of the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (Nacey, Greve, & Falck, submitted), allowing for the calculation of the overall metaphor density in each speech. We then identify all metaphorical clusters in each speech (that is, groupings with a frequency of >20% metaphor over a 20-word span), and investigate the rhetorical function of each cluster (see Littlemore, Krennmayr, Turner, & Turner, 2014). We complement this analysis by identification of all potentially deliberate metaphors in the speeches, using the Deliberate Metaphor Identification Procedure (Reijnierse, Burgers, Krennmayr, & Steen, 2017). Our analysis, with its focus upon metaphor density, metaphor clusters and deliberate metaphors, allows for determination of the function metaphor plays in the highly-conventionalized genre/ topics of NYEs. Our findings indicate that the monarchs’ rhetorical use of metaphor differs greatly, even though the speeches deal with many of the same events and issues, and function in both countries as unifying national rituals. References Hovland, B. M. (2000). Kongelige jule- og nyttårstalar: Tre skandinaviske ekempel. Copenhagen: Nordisk Ministerråd. Littlemore, J., Krennmayr, T., Turner, J., & Turner, S. (2014). An investigation in metaphor use at different levels of second language writing. Applied Linguistics, 35(2), 117-144. Nacey, S., Greve, L., & Falck, M. J. (submitted). Linguistic metaphor identification in Scandinavian. In S. Nacey, A. G. Dorst, T. Krennmayr, & W. G. Reijnierse (Eds.), Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Reijnierse, W. G., Burgers, C., Krennmayr, T., & Steen, G. J. (2017). DMIP: A method for identifying potentially deliberate metaphor in language use. Corpus Pragmatics. Retrieved from DOI: 10.1007/s41701-017-0026-7 Torp, A. (1998). Nordiske språk i nordisk og germansk perspektiv. Oslo: Novus forlag.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2019). Metaphors in high-stakes language exams. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2019). Metaphors in L2 Norwegian ASK texts: ‘Det er langt mellom venner’. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2018). Metaphorical analogies in an online discussion forum for relationship abuse survivors: “That analogy really works for me”. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
When people undergo traumatic events, they frequently turn to metaphor in an attempt to make what might initially seem indescribable into something comprehensible to others, and/or to help themselves reach a clearer understanding of what has happened to them (see e.g. Demjén, 2016; Kövecses, 2000; Semino et al., 2015). This investigation explores such metaphorical language produced in a publically available online discussion forum by survivors of relationship abuse to communicate about various aspects of their experience. The forum allows survivors of relationship abuse to start and/or respond to threads about their ongoing or past experience in an abusive relationship. The relationships discussed involve a love partner, family members, colleagues, and/or platonic friends. The threads comprise a corpus of 44.6 million words produced over a six-year period. The specific linguistic focus here consists of the metaphorical analogies overtly flagged by use of the lexeme ANALOGY, used by such survivors when discussing their abuse experience: roughly 500 extended metaphors in all. All such identified metaphorical analogies were assigned brief ‘labels’ summarizing their contents, which were then semantically annotated using the Wmatrix corpus analysis and comparison tool to identify their underlying metaphorical frames (see e.g. Musolff, 2016; Semino & Demjén, 2016 for discussion of frames and scenarios). The particular scenario in any given frame were then fleshed out to fill in the correspondences between the various elements expressed in the analogy and the various elements in the abuse experience, along with any overall message. Finally, the analysis discusses the ways in which survivors negotiate and develop metaphorical scenarios and frames among themselves in their forum discussions. More specifically, investigation into the co-text of the identified analogies allows for evaluation into how survivors react to, accept, expand, and/or reject the metaphorical comparisons advanced by members of the discourse community. The findings from this research contribute towards a greater understanding of the experience of relationship survivors, validating their perceptions, needs and feelings as universal, rather than limited to the ‘exaggerations’ of a selected few.
Nacey, Susan Lee & Greve, Linda (2018). ‘Royal’ Clusters and Deliberate Metaphor: A comparative study of metaphor in Danish and Norwegian New Year’s Eve speeches. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper presents a comparative analysis of metaphor in the New Year’s Eve speeches (NYEs) of the Danish queen and the Norwegian king. NYEs constitute an annual tradition in both countries, broadcast early in the evening of December 31 of each year, where these monarchs summarize the highlights of the past year and look ahead to hopes and aspirations for the year to come. Our primary data consists of two sets of five speeches per monarch, every other year from the past decade (2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017), roughly 4500 words per set. The monarchs are therefore discussing many of the same events, in speeches that have identical purposes. Methods We apply a modified version of the Deliberate Metaphor Identification Procedure (Reijnierse et al. 2017) to all texts – modified by virtue of being applied to Scandinavian languages with the newly-developed Scandinavian version of the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (see Authors (forthcoming)). We complement this analysis by visualizing metaphorical density in each speech in separate time series analyses (see Cameron and Stelma 2004; Littlemore et al. 2014; Author1 (submitted)), to identify all metaphorical clusters in each speech (that is, groupings with a frequency of >20% metaphor over a 20-word span). Findings Despite similarities in country and language background, topic, and genre, we reject the null hypothesis that there will be no significant differences (in terms of quantity and function) in the role metaphor plays in these monarchs’ speeches. Conclusion Our analytical approach involving deliberate metaphors and metaphor clustering in the context of Scandinavian NYEs facilitates determination of the function metaphor plays, as well as how similar messages may be conveyed, both with and without use of metaphors.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2017). The metaphors of betrayal. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Prodekan Susan Nacey fra Høgskolen i Innlandet på Hamar er lingvist, og forsker på hvordan vi bruker metaforer når vi skriver og snakker. I foredraget «The metaphors of betrayal» tar hun for seg hvordan overgrepsutsatte bruker metaforer når de snakker om erfaringer med misbruk og helbredelse. Foredraget blir holdt på engelsk.
Nacey, Susan Lee & Creed, Allison (2017). Career and working life: An investigation of metaphor usage in online promotional videos of Australian and Norwegian universities. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Analysis of metaphoric language offers a means to explore self and identity as well as a framework for theorising career and working life; such analysis is currently emerging within the field of vocational psychology for the study of career, work, and organisational dynamics. Indeed, metaphoric themes are recognised as fundamental to understanding the notion career (Inkson, 2004; Mignot, 2000; Super, 1957; Super, 1980), meaningfulness in the workforce (Lengelle, Meijiers, & Hughes, 2016; Savickas, 2011), and organisational behaviour more broadly (Cornelissen, Oswick, Christensen, & Phillips, 2008; El-Sawad, 2005; Morgan, 2006). For instance, the classical developmental theory of career by Super conceptualised career as a vehicle or lifelong path. More recently, Inkson proposed nine metaphors for career, including a cycle, a resource, and a story. In communication with others, metaphors form fuzzy categorical clusters of expectations and associations accessed in culturally and socially situated contexts of discourse. Our investigation analyses online videos of Australian and Norwegian university students talking about education, career, and working life, created to promote career-related benefits of higher education. We apply the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrie Universitat (MIPVU) (Steen et al., 2010) to the English transcriptions and an adapted Scandinavian version of MIPVU to the Norwegian transcriptions to gain reliable, quantifiable and comparable results concerning the metaphor used by these students to discuss their careers as students and as college graduates. The aims are twofold: first, to compare the metaphors identified in these videos with those previously established by scholars of vocational psychology; and second, to perform a cross-cultural comparison between the promotional uses of metaphor in these different university contexts and languages. Furthermore, we argue that metaphors offer an interpretive repertoire to facilitate the coherent transfer of interrelated physiological, emotional, and cognitive dimensions. This work represents an innovative methodological advance for research into career and working life.
Graedler, Anne-Line; Dirdal, Hildegunn; Guldal, Tale Margrethe; Hasund, Ingrid Kristine; Rørvik, Sylvi & Nacey, Susan Lee [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2017). Tracking Written Learner Language (TRAWL): A longitudinal corpus of Norwegian pupils' written texts in second/foreign languages. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2017). Development of L2 metaphorical competence from ages 10-19. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory advances the view that metaphor is a fundamental cognitive process defining our understanding of reality: “the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing [e.g. love] in terms of another [e.g. a journey]” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 5). Such metaphors in thought (conceptual metaphors) are reflected as metaphors in language, i.e. by the words and expressions we produce (linguistic metaphors). Empirical research has since confirmed that linguistic metaphor is ubiquitous in language (see e.g. Nacey, 2013; Steen et al., 2010). As a consequence, metaphor necessarily plays a central role in language learning, including all aspects of communicative competence in a second language (L2) (see e.g. Littlemore & Low, 2006). This investigation details a pseudo-longitudinal corpus-based exploration into the development of metaphorical competence of L2 learners as they progress through their school career. The particular focus here is on the written production of linguistic metaphors in L2 English written by parallel groups of pupils from the ages of 10-19 in Norway, where the subject of English is obligatory from the first grade (at age six). The Norwegian government defines English as one of three ’core’ subjects (along with Norwegian and mathematics), and considers it as both a key language subject and as a subject for the personal growth and development of pupils (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2013). The particular objectives and methods are adapted from a Littlemore et al. (2014) investigation into the metaphor use of Greek and German-speaking learners of English with varying degrees of English proficiency. More specifically, the MIPVU metaphor identification procedure will first be applied to 180 texts (20 per grade level), to identify all linguistic metaphors in these texts (see Steen et al., 2010). The main objective is to measure how the metaphorical density varies per grade level - that is, variation in number of linguistic metaphors per lexical unit. A second goal is to compare patterns for open-class versus closed-class metaphors across grade levels, to identify whether any particular level at which the use of the former overtakes the latter as has been observed in previous research (Littlemore et al., 2014). A third goal is to examine whether the distribution of metaphor clusters varies across levels, as clusters have been found to serve important communicative functions and might therefore be expected to increase with improved proficiency (see Cameron & Low, 2004). The empirical data is retrieved from the “Tracking Written Learner Language” corpus (TraWL), a compilation of authentic texts written by Norwegian pupils. TraWL is a longitudinal corpus, currently under compilation as part of a wider, ground-breaking project into the development of L2 writing in the Norwegian school system. The corpus consists of texts written in L1 Norwegian, L2 English, L2 Spanish, L2 German and L2 French, which are being collected from schools in differently populated geographical regions in Norway, ranging from the capital city to rural municipalities. All texts have been submitted as class work by pupils from the fifth grade in primary school to the final year of upper secondary school. Compilation of TraWL began in the fall of 2016 and will continue for the foreseeable future, to accommodate longitudinal studies of writing development of either individuals or groups, in the L1 and in the L2(s). As of this writing, however; AP only allows for cross-sectional (pseudo-longitudinal) studies of learners at various stages of development, starting from the fifth grade. The present investigation therefore represents an initial exploratory look into the metaphor production in second language writing from different groups of pupils from nine different grade levels, from the primary through the upper secondary school levels.
Aas, Hege Larsson & Nacey, Susan Lee (2017). Investigating fluency variables in learner language: Methodological concerns. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper discusses methodological concerns related to the identification and analysis of fluency variables in studies of spoken native and interlanguage corpora. The specific focus here is pause behaviour observed in relation to interlanguage fluency, an area that has received growing attention in recent years. The paper addresses the following research question: How can a spoken learner corpus be compiled to make valid claims about utterance fluency variations? Pauses, like other phenomena associated with hesitation, can be “welcome as overt, measurable indications of processing activity which requires a certain amount of time” (Chafe 1980, p. 170). The frequency and duration of pauses can be studied independently as potential hesitation phenomena, but pauses are also an important component of other variables often measured in fluency research, such as mean length of run (MLR) and phonation-time ratio. These measures are viewed as utterance fluency variables in Segalowitz’ (2010) trifold definition of second language fluency, described as any observable feature of the utterance that can potentially indicate a speaker’s ability to process language (cognitive fluency), and/or affect listeners’ perceptions of the same speaker’s fluency level (perceived fluency): “it is not possible to globally characterize a person’s L2 speech as “fluent” in some unidimensional, absolute fashion. All that one can say at this point is that under such and such circumstances a person’s L2 speech has certain objectively measurable characteristics and that these can be interpreted by listeners to be fluent or dysfluent in particular ways” (Segalowitz, 2010, p. 39). Contrastive studies of native and interlanguage speech production (e.g. Ginther et al., 2010;Götz, 2013) typically reveal between-group differences in measurements based on pause identification, and these differences are often seen as “fluency gaps” (Segalowitz, 2010), reflecting differences in the cognitive fluency levels of the speakers when processing the language. Conclusions about interlanguage fluency from such studies necessarily rest upon the transcriptions and annotations of the spoken language under study, e.g. that the pauses analysed reflect what was actually said (or not said, in the case of unfilled pauses). Consequently, in studies based on transcription data, views of pause behaviour across languages may easily be constrained by the choices made at the transcription stage of spoken corpus compilation. A valid and reliable transcription of pauses in spoken language – in particular conversational data – requires overt consideration of a number of issues that may not be immediately obvious. These include (a) the presence of initial silences, (b) pauses that occur in conjunction with overlapping speech and backchanneling, and (c) end-of turn pauses (when does a turn end?). As observed by Du Bois et al. (1992), “in some cases, the question of who a pause belongs to, how long it lasts, and even whether it has occurred in a specific place, become subtly and inextricably linked to the interpretation of turn-taking and overlapping between speakers” (p. 42). In an attempt to bring this perspective to the forefront, we present examples from our data to illustrate the various challenges involved. Our point of departure is the compilation of two related spoken corpora: The unpublished Norwegian version of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI) (Gilquin, De Cock, & Granger, 2010), and its smaller counterpart (NorwC) consisting of interviews with some of the same speakers speaking in their L1 Norwegian (NL1, cf. Gilquin (2008)). Based on a close analysis of the transcription of pause behaviour in six interviews, the paper argues that speech production as a whole should not be considered in isolation, and that utterances should not be viewed as independent from their immediate co-text.
Munden, Juliet Hilary & Nacey, Susan Lee (2016). Flipping the classroom: What we did and what we learnt. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2016). Metaphor in an online discussion forum for survivors of relationship abuse. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
The overarching goal of this paper is to explore ways in which survivors of relationship abuse use metaphor to communicate about various aspects of their experience, and in this way to shed light upon their underlying conceptualizations of identity, abuse and recovery. The empirical data consists of the metaphorical language produced in a publically available online discussion forum for anonymous posters, accessible without password protection. The forum allows survivors of relationship abuse to start and/or respond to threads about their experience in an abusive relationship (usually with a love partner, but sometimes a family member, colleague, and/or platonic friend). The present study explores metaphor published in almost 4000 threads with roughly 9.6 million words, produced in English by 4124 individual contributors from around the world: so-called ‘Big Data’ made possible by the ready availability of massive amounts of text from e.g. social media sources (see e.g. Larsson, 2015; Steen-Johnsen & Enjolras, 2015). These threads were produced over a four-year period, and were harvested, processed and uploaded to the Wmatrix web interface tool (http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix/) for semantic domain tagging. This material constitutes a unique corpus through which the authentic language of abuse survivors may be analyzed. This paper follows the methodology employed in the Metaphor in end-of-life care project (http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/melc/; see e.g. Koller, Hardie, Rayson, & Semino, 2008). The focus of the present investigation is language tagged for the domain of Living creatures: animals, birds, etc., and subsequently identified as metaphor using MIPVU (Steen et al., 2010). The analysis shows how survivors use variations of related underlying conceptual metaphors to communicate their understanding of differing aspects of the trauma they have suffered: Sense of… Example Self I have never felt so much like a butterfly in complete metamorphosis. Abuser he isn't anyone .... a chameleon who changes clothes and opinions based on who he is with. Third party When she contacted me again just before christmas it had started to go sour with her primary target/enabler mutt. Abuse experience He led me down the Rabbit Hole and at the bottom, I found his empty soul. Recovery thanks to this site and people like you I no longer feel like a crazy Fatal Attraction bunny boiler. The findings from this research contribute towards a greater understanding of the experience of abuse victim/survivor, and validate perceptions, needs and feelings of such people as universal, rather than limited to the ‘exaggerations’ of a selected few. References Koller, V., Hardie, A., Rayson, P., & Semino, E. (2008). Using a semantic annotation tool for the analysis of metaphor in discourse. Metaphorik.de, 15, 141-160. Retrieved from http://www.metaphorik.de/15/koller.pdf Larsson, A. O. (2015). Studying Big Data – ethical and methodological considerations. In H. Fossheim & H. Ingierd (Eds.), Internet research ethics (pp. 141-156). Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk. Steen, G. J., Dorst, A. G., Herrmann, J. B., Kaal, A. A., Krennmayr, T., & Pasma, T. (2010). A method for linguistic metaphor identification: from MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Steen-Johnsen, K., & Enjolras, B. (2015). Social research and Big Data – the tension between opportunities and realities. In H. Fossheim & H. Ingierd (Eds.), Internet research ethics (pp. 122-140). Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2016). Weighing ethical considerations in corpus research based on online data sources. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper discusses ethical concerns related to compilation of a so-called ‘big-data’ corpus (roughly 47. 5 million words) harvested from a publically archived online discussion forum under no password protection, where users use pseudonyms to post about their experiences related to a specific (named) type of trauma. Such corpus data would provide unique empirical data illustrating how these trauma survivors use metaphor about various aspects of their experience (sense of self, sense of other(s), road to recovery, etc.), and in this way shed light upon their underlying conceptualizations of both trauma and post-traumatic growth. This research would contribute towards increased scientific knowledge about how metaphor functions as a cognitive tool when making sense of a tumultuous situation, as well as towards raising general awareness about the effects of the traumatic experience in focus. The research methodology would parallel that of the Metaphor in end-of-life care project http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/melc/), which used semantic tagging to identify metaphors in online forum discourse of terminal patients and their caretakers. The field of internet research ethics is young, having developed during the last 15-20 years. Results include numerous internet ethical guidelines, by groups ranging from scholarly associations to national research ethics committees. Although there is no single standard, guidelines concerning ethical viability of internet research generally address the following: intrusiveness, public/private, vulnerability, potential harm, confidentiality, intellectual property rights, and informed consent. Such considerations must be balanced against other important ethical values such as scientific and societal value, i.e. the ‘greater good’. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. This paper weighs the ‘for’ and ‘against’ cases for allowing the proposed research to proceed, viewed in the context of stringent Norwegian ethical internet research guidelines and law – thus illustrating the sometimes thorny ethical issues that corpus linguists must consider when using online sources as data.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2015). Metaphor in L1-L2 translations. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2015). Metaphor in L1-L2 novice translations. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2015). Metaphor in multiple learner translations. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2014). Metaphoricity in English L2 learners’ prepositions. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper investigates preposition use in written and spoken language of advanced Norwegian learners of English, to provide empirical evidence concerning the nature of the ‘problem’ with prepositions.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2014). Metaphorical Prepositions in L2 English. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee & Graedler, Anne-Line (2014). Phrasal verbs in spoken and written L2 learner English. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper presents research on the use of phrasal verbs (PVs) in Norwegian L2 English, addressing the following questions: 1) Are there contrasting syntactic/semantic patterns of PV usage across the spoken and written modes? 2) How often do learners produce anomalous PVs? 3) Is there a correlation between anomalous PV usage and figurative use? 4) Is there a correlation between anomalous PV usage and L1 transfer? PV usage is generally acknowledged as “one of the most problematic areas for learners of English” (Jenkins, 2009, p. 51). First, PVs are subject to syntactic restrictions that may not be readily apparent to learners. Second, semantics poses a challenge, because PVs are often highly polysemous with both literal and (often several) figurative meanings. Third, negative L1 transfer may also play a role, especially for learners whose L1 has similar verb-particle constructions. In addition, stylistic considerations have an impact, as do the ways in which PVs are traditionally taught (see e.g. Cowie, 1993, pp. 38-39; Waibel, 2007, pp. 21-32) . At the same time, PVs are viewed as highly important to proficiency in English. Much of the previous research focuses on learner avoidance of PVs rather than actual usage (e.g. Hulstijn & Marchena, 1989; Laufer & Eliasson, 1993; Liao & Fukuya, 2004). However, there are exceptions, such as the corpus-based studies by Hägglund (2001), Waibel (2007), and Gilquin (accepted). Pye’s (1996) report on PV errors in the Cambridge Corpus of Learner English, asserts that learners often make mistakes in this area. The present paper adds empirical evidence concerning the real magnitude of the challenge that PV use presents, by investigating the PV production in written and spoken language of Norwegian learners, thus comparing PV use across modes and for an added group of English language learners. The data consists of all PVs uttered by fifty L2 English students in the entire Norwegian subcorpus of LINDSEI (Gilquin, Cock, & Granger, 2010) – approximately 13 hours of conversation equaling 83,000 words – along with all PVs in roughly 211,000 words of argumentative texts retrieved from the Norwegian component of the ICLE corpus (Granger, Dagneaux, Meunier, & Paquot, 2009). Informants for both corpora were Norwegian college students characterized as higher-intermediate to advanced learners of English. All PVs in the material were categorized according to structural type: Verb+Particle, Verb+Object+Particle, and Verb+Particle+Object (following Gilquin, accepted). The PVs in each pattern were then analyzed along a nominal scale for metaphoricity (yes/no/don’t know) (see Nacey, 2013; Steen et al., 2010). Such classification allows for comparison not just of overall PV usage in the two corpora, but also for preferences for particular syntactic and/or semantic patterns across modes. An additional focus concerns ‘anomalous’ PVs - identified through lack of codification (either of the entire PV or of the particular contextual meaning) in standard English dictionaries - with a view towards establishing whether learner challenges increase as the contextual meaning shifts away from a core, concrete meaning to a more peripheral, metaphorical meaning. Finally, anomalous PVs were also investigated for possible L1 transfer of the verb, the particle, or the entire construction.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2014). Review: Gaëtanelle Gilquin and Sylvie De Cock (eds.). Errors and disfluencies in spoken corpora. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2013. 172 pp. ISBN 978-90-272-0271-0. ICAME Journal. ISSN 0801-5775. p. 178–182. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2014). Review: MacArthur, F., Oncins-Martínez, J.L., Sánchez-García, M., Piquer-Píriz, A.M. (Eds). (2012). Metaphor in use: Context, culture, and communication. Amsterdam & Phildeliphia: John Benjamins. Metaphor and the Social World. ISSN 2210-4070. 4(2), p. 299–306. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2014). Metaphor in L2 English: Error or creativity? Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2014). Error versus creativity: The metaphorical language of Norwegian L2 English learners. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2013). The Norwegian component of LINDSEI. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper finds its starting point in observations made during the development of the Norwegian component of LINDSEI, the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (Gilquin et al. 2010). It addresses some of the challenges inherent in the production of spoken corpora whose compilation depends upon widespread international collaboration. The LINDSEI corpus was created under the direction of the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics (CECL) in Belgium, which specializes in the collection and use of learner and multilingual corpora. The first edition of LINDSEI contains 554 interviews of learners from 11 different L1 backgrounds (usually 50 interviews per subcorpus). The interviews have been conducted in English, to capture the learners’ ‘interlanguage’, an idiosyncratic dialect that shares characteristics of their L1 and L2 (and sometimes other languages as well) (see Corder 1981: 17, 85). The interviews in the individual subcorpora were collected by researchers at academic institutions in the 11 different countries, adhering to a tri-fold structure previously determined by the CECL. Furthermore, researchers at these individual institutions were responsible for transcribing their respective interviews, following guidelines also provided by the CECL. Finally, the CECL was responsible for the collation of the 11 subcorpora into a single accessible database, with transcriptions (but not audio files) now available to researchers on a CD-ROM. Plans for a second edition began even before the publication of the first edition, with the ambition of including the audio files, and linking the spoken and transcribed text. Moreover, data from learners with other language backgrounds will be added, thereby increasing the size and linguistic range of the corpus. One of the additional subcorpora in the expanded LINDSEI will comprise interviews of Norwegian speakers of L2 English; the creation of this Norwegian component is well underway, as a team of researchers at Hedmark University College (Norway) under my direction has now recorded 50 interviews and nearly completed all the transcriptions. This paper focuses on the two specific areas of corpus design and orthographic transcription. It explores issues that were raised while retracing the footsteps of the first group of LINDSEI researchers through the employment of the already-established guidelines for corpus compilation and transcription. These issues include those relating to the particular Norwegian context (e.g. means of obtaining legal authorization for collection), general issues regarding compilation and transcription (e.g. the role/identity of the interviewer) and specific ones relating to the nature of learners’ interlanguage (e.g. ‘standard’ transcriptions of filled pauses). The overarching aim of this paper is to contribute to the development of ‘best practice’ in projects requiring diverse groups of researchers to create ‘comparable’ spoken corpora, so that such corpora may truly be comparable. Corder, S. P. (1981). Error analysis and interlanguage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gilquin, G., S. De Cock, & S. Granger. (2010). Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI). Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain.
Nacey, Susan Lee & Graedler, Anne-Line (2013). What can oral learner corpora reveal about preposition use? Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Mastering English prepositions is generally acknowledged as difficult, “… a traditional and recurring nightmare for all learners of English” (Littlemore & Low 2006: 285). In determining the appropriate preposition, learners face multiple challenges, including e.g. the polysemous nature of English prepositions as well as a lack of complete correspondence between English preposition use and preposition use in the learner’s L1. Such potential problems are compounded by the manner in which prepositions may be presented in grammar books, where their various meaning extensions are frequently portrayed as arbitrary, leaving learners with few options other than to memorize prepositions “narrow context by narrow context” (Lindstromberg 1998: 227) and/or develop good dictionary-using habits (see e.g. Parrott 2010). This paper adds empirical evidence concerning the real magnitude of the challenge that preposition use presents, through investigating the use of English prepositions in oral language produced by advanced learners. This investigation answers the following questions: 1) How often do these learners produce an inappropriate preposition? 2) Is there a correlation between inappropriate use and L1 influence? 3) Is there a significant difference between Norwegian learners’ preposition use in oral and written language? The data for the investigation is the Norwegian subcorpus of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (Gilquin et al. 2010). The subcorpus contains 50 interviews of advanced English L2 students, amounting to approximately 13 hours of recorded and transcribed conversation.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2013). What learner corpora can reveal about preposition use. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Mastering the English preposition system is generally acknowledged as difficult, “…a traditional and recurring nightmare for all learners of English” (Littlemore & Low 2006: 285). In determining the appropriate preposition, learners face multiple challenges, including e.g. the polysemous nature of English prepositions as well as a lack of complete correspondence between English preposition use and preposition use in the learner’s first language (assuming that the L1 even uses them). Such potential problems are compounded by the manner in which prepositions may be presented in grammar books, where their various meaning extensions are frequently portrayed as arbitrary, leaving learners with few options other than to memorize prepositions “narrow context by narrow context” (Lindstromberg 1996: 227) and/or develop good dictionary-using habits (see e.g. Parrott 2010: 94). This paper presents the results of an in-depth investigation of the written texts of advanced Norwegian learners of English, to provide empirical evidence concerning the nature of the ‘problem’ with prepositions. It answers the following questions: 1) How often do these learners produce an inappropriate preposition? 2) Is there a correlation between inappropriate use and metaphorical use? 3) Is there a correlation between inappropriate use and L1 influence? The data for this investigation consists of 1773 prepositions identified in roughly 20,000 words of argumentative texts retrieved from the Norwegian component of the International Corpus of Learner English. These instances were first classified by metaphorical status using the Metaphorical Identification Procedure, calling for comparison of their contextual and basic (most concrete) senses (see e.g. Steen et al. 2010). All contextually anomalous prepositions, both metaphorical and non-metaphorical, were subsequently categorized in terms of their congruence between the L1 and L2 by virtue of two factors: 1) the required syntactical structures required by the two languages in the particular context and 2) the correspondence between the basic meanings in congruent cases. In ‘congruent’ cases, both the L1 and L2—Norwegian and English in the present investigation—require prepositions in context (factor 1). Application of factor 2 shows that there are three congruency patterns, one of which indicates L1 influence. This investigation follows on the heels of recent research about adapting the cognitive view of metaphor as a pedagogical tool through showing how metaphorical senses are related to the core senses of prepositions in a principled manner and replacing conventional wisdom that there is no rhyme nor reason for why one preposition is preferred over another in a given context (see e.g. Lindstromberg 1998; Tyler & Evans 2003). What this investigation adds, however, is empirical evidence from one group of L2 English learners concerning the real magnitude of the challenge preposition use presents, with subsequent suggestions for how learner corpora may help in the development of a more nuanced, targeted approach to prepositions in the classroom. Lindstromberg, S. (1996). Prepositions: Meaning and method. ELT Journal, 50(3), 225-236. Lindstromberg, S. (1998). English prepositions explained. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Littlemore, J., & G. Low. (2006). Figurative thinking and foreign language learning. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Parrott, M. (2010). Grammar for English language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Steen, G., A. C. Dorst, B. Herrmann, A. Kaal, T. Krennmayr, & T. Pasma. (2010). A method for linguistic metaphor identification: from MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tyler, A., & V. Evans. (2003). The semantics of English prepositions: Spatial scenes, embodied meaning and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nacey, Susan Lee (2012). Metaphorical creativity and EFL English. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Prodromou (2007: 21) observes that “What is considered creative in the mouth of an L1-user is often seen as deviation in the mouth of even the most advanced successful bilingual user of the language.” Judgement of acceptability is thereby attributed to who has the authority to say something rather than what is said. This paper sheds further light on perceptions of error and creativity in the language of EFL learners by focusing on the complex concept of metaphorical creativity. I propose that an additional criterion dividing creativity from error in learner language concerns the degree of deviation from native-speaker English, rather than the merely the occurrence of deviation in and of itself. When deviation is wide, the metaphor has a better chance of being accepted as creative; when there is only a small degree of deviation, metaphor will more likely be perceived as error. Novel metaphors written by advanced Norwegian learners of English provide support for this hypothesis. By way of example, consider the following, where the metaphorical embodiment of message results in an unconventional collocation with stand, rather than an alternative such as endure: …the methods might change but the message will stand. Here, both Norwegian and English share an underlying conceptual metaphor which is linguistically encoded in slightly different ways, just enough to be perceived as somehow wrong, rather than creative – regardless of provenance, authorial intention or degree of interpretability. This observation has important implications for the role of metaphor in EFL teaching. It has been suggested that learners be encouraged to “…produce what they perceive as ‘creative’ metaphor” (Littlemore 2009: 101) in an effort to make their English more closely resemble that native-speaker English. In so doing, however, EFL learners risk being judged linguistically incompetent due to unconventional phraseology (see e.g. Danesi 1993, MacArthur 2010, Philip 2006).
Nacey, Susan Lee (2012). Metaphorical creativity in the Expanding Circle. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This paper investigates metaphorical creativity to shed light on the borderline between error and creativity in the writing of Extended Circle English language learners. Metaphorical creativity is a complex area, with many intertwining factors playing a role in its identification. In this paper I argue that there is a hitherto overlooked aspect dividing error from creativity in learner language. Namely, an added criterion of metaphorical creativity concerns the degree of deviation from Inner Circle English, rather than deviation in and of itself. This hypothesis is supported by novel metaphors identified in texts written by advanced Norwegian learners of English. The concept of metaphorical creativity is first problematized. To begin, metaphorical creativity necessarily involves metaphor. Here a cognitive approach is adopted, in which metaphor is viewed as ubiquitous rather than a specialized trope. Metaphor in thought (conceptual metaphor) is distinct from metaphor in language (linguistic metaphor) (see e.g. Deignan 2005, Steen 2007, Steen et al. 2010). This paper is concerned with the latter. Possible defining criteria of creativity are explored, some or all of which may affect judgment of metaphor as either error or creative use. Novelty is one such criterion, based on linguistic form and frequency. Additional proposed criteria include value and aptness- both highly subjective measures. Deliberate use is a further consideration, i.e. must the metaphor have been deliberately produced and/or perceived as deliberate in order to be deemed creative ? Moreover, the criterion of deliberateness may interact with that of proficiency; "what is at one stage of language use an error may, at another stage, be a conscious innovation" Genre expectations may also influence readers’ acceptance of creative language. Finally, authority as a measure in judging metaphorical creativity plays a role (Prodromou 2007). It is generally accepted that Inner Circle English speakers create metaphor, an acceptance which extends to Outer Circle English through the concept of "weird English," the unorthodox English of polycultural writers such as Rushdie and Nabokov. But what happens when Extended Circle English writers of lesser proficiency create metaphor? As learners, they are usually expected to adhere to a particular target norm. Most deviation is not viewed as difference, but as error. Still, it is possible for metaphors inspired by for example transliteration, either deliberately or unintentionally, to be perceived as metaphorical creativity no matter their provenance (Ch'ien 2004: 8, Hessler 2002) Such metaphors vary widely from standard Inner Circle metaphors, frequently due to differing underlying conceptual metaphors resulting in unorthodox English linguistic metaphors (see e.g. Charteris-Black 2002). Novel metaphors written in English by Norwegians, by contrast, typically result in somewhat unconventional collocations rather than any spectacular imagery. By way of example, consider the following, the metaphorical embodiment of message results in an unconventional collocation with stand rather than an alternative such as endure: …the methods might change but the message will stand. The choice of stand is arguably the result of unintentional transfer from Norwegian cognate stå. Here, both Norwegian and English share an underlying conceptual metaphor which is linguistically encoded in slightly different ways. In short, linguistic metaphors such as those produced by Norwegian students are frequently simply not “weird” enough to be considered products of metaphorical creativity, regardless of intention.
Nacey, Susan Lee & Graedler, Anne-Line (2011). Communication strategies in a corpus of advanced learner English. Full text in Research Archive
Nacey, Susan Lee (2011). Issues in building a corpus of American church marquees. Full text in Research Archive

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Susan Lee Nacey

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