Young People, Criticality and Figurative Language

这个项目将有助于9-13岁的青少年理解和使用比喻语言的知识。青少年处于生命的脆弱阶段，因为他们从直接的照顾者那里转向外部，并受到一系列外部影响。这也是社会和教育发展的关键时期。比喻语言的加工和产生已经在成年人中得到了研究，在较小程度上也在较小的儿童中进行了研究(如Carriedo等人，2016)，但对青少年的关注很少。比喻语言，主要是但不仅仅是隐喻，已经被证明是构建思想和知识的核心(Lakoff 1993)。这意味着我们对青少年能够在多大程度上理解和使用一种主要的思维和交流工具的了解有限。该项目将调查青少年在两个相关领域对比喻语言框架功能的理解和使用：意识形态论证和新概念。第一点很重要，因为通过数字技术和社交媒体，几乎世界各地的青少年都可以史无前例地不受监督地获取来自可能试图扭曲和伪造现实的来源的内容。Wodak&KrzyzàNowski(2017)认为，数字和社交媒体是最近右翼民粹主义和种族主义激增的因素。艾扬格和梅西(2019)声称，互联网新闻平台的激增助长了错误信息的传播，破坏了人们对科学发现的信心。穆索尔夫(2023年)举例说明了隐喻在错误信息中的作用，展示了特朗普如何利用新冠肺炎大流行的广泛框架作为一场战争，来发展一个比喻性的“战时总统与中国病毒作斗争”的场景(2023年：263年)。这暗指第二次世界大战，把中国视为国敌，并被用来为美国取消对世界卫生组织的资助辩护。我们研究的第二个功能是构建新的，特别是抽象的和非直接的概念。人们普遍认为，隐喻是我们思考和谈论抽象的许多方式的基础。比喻语言在课堂上经常被用作教学工具(如卡梅隆，2002)，但对学生如何理解比喻语言的研究相对较少(Littlemore，2017)。该项目将产生以下细粒度的描述：青少年在社会和教育环境中可能接触到的书面文本和口语中比喻语言的形式和功能；青少年读者和听众对比喻语言理解的报告；青少年在社会和教育环境中使用比喻语言的形式和功能；青少年对比喻语言使用的反思。因此，我们将详细描述青少年使用的比喻语言，以及他们对比喻语言潜在的框架功能的认识。该项目将对认知语言学中的隐喻理论做出重要贡献。这些发现将在学术界以外具有重要意义，例如，批判性扫盲教育，旨在使年轻人能够深思熟虑地接触新闻和社交媒体，意识到可能扭曲和虚假的叙述(McDougall，2019)，以及经常在教学中使用隐喻的科学教育。

This project will contribute to knowledge about figurative language understanding and use among 9-13 year olds, termed 'tweens'. Tweens are at a vulnerable stage of life as they turn outwards from their immediate caregivers, and become subject to a range of external influences. This is also a critical time for social and educational development. The processing and production of figurative language have been researched in adults, and to a lesser extent, younger children (e.g. Carriedo et al., 2016), but the tween years have received little attention. Figurative language, largely but not solely metaphor, has been shown to be central in framing ideas and knowledge (Lakoff 1993). This means that we have limited knowledge about to what extent tweens are able to understand and use a major tool for thought and communication.The project will investigate tweens' understanding and use of the framing function of figurative language in two related areas: ideological arguments and new concepts. The first is important because through digital technology and social media, tweens almost everywhere have unprecedented unsupervised access to content from sources that may seek to distort and falsify reality. Wodak & Krzyzànowski (2017) argue that digital and social media are factors in the recent surge in right-wing populism and racism. Iyengar & Massey (2019) claim that misinformation, facilitated by the proliferation of internet news platforms, undermines faith in scientific findings. Musolff (2023) exemplifies the role of metaphor in misinformation, showing how Trump harnessed the widespread framing of the Covid-19 pandemic as a war to develop a metaphorical 'wartime president fighting against the China virus' scenario (2023: 263). This alluded to World War 2, cast China as a national enemy and was used to justify the US defunding of the World Health Organisation. The second function we research is the framing of new, especially abstract and non-immediate concepts. It is widely agreed that metaphors underlie many of the ways in which we think and talk about the abstract. They are often used as pedagogical tools in the classroom (e.g. Cameron, 2002), but there is relatively little research into how students understand them (Littlemore, 2017).The project will produce fine-grained descriptions of:the forms and functions of figurative language used in written texts and spoken discourse that tweens are likely to access in social and educational settings; tween readers' and listeners' reports of their understandings of such figurative language; the forms and functions of figurative language used by tweens in social and educational settings; tweens' reflections on their use of figurative language. We will thus develop a detailed description of figurative language used with and by tweens, and of their awareness of its potential framing functions. The project will make important contributions to metaphor theory within cognitive linguistics. The findings will have significance outside academia, for instance, in critical literacy education, which seeks to enable young people to engage thoughtfully with news and social media, with awareness of possibly distorted and false narratives (McDougall, 2019), and in science education, where pedagogical uses of metaphor are frequent.