Thesis (M.F.A.)--West Virginia University, 2000. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iii, 21 p. : col. ill. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 9).

The human figure, allegory, myth, and the appropriation of other artist’s compositions are elements in my work. I aim to update traditional stories to conform to contemporary times and culture. In addition, I am striving to create a new method to visually express figurative storytelling. Breaking from the traditional flat painting surface, I use multiple shaped panels. The surface is broken into different shaped panels at varying distances from each other and from the wall. This allows for more exploration into shape and negative space while depicting the dramatic height of a story. As part of this method, my paintings explore the discrete nature of human vision, or how we focus on individual parts of a scene while the brain filters the gestalt.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--West Virginia University, 2005. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 30 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes a video file in the QuickTime format. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 30).

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This is a small qualitative study on figurative language teaching within Swedish schools that stems of from a social-constructionist perspective. The objective of this study is to establish to what extent figurative language is being taught throughout the Swedish school system and illustrate examples of different approaches teachers could use to teach it.

While studies suggest that figurative, or non-literal, meanings are automatically activated in single language users, little is known about how language proficiency may influence the automaticity of non-literal meaning activation. The present research sought to address this issue by comparing figurative language activation in Spanish-English bilinguals. An interference paradigm (Glucksberg, Gildea & Bookin, 1982) was used in which participants were to judge the literal truth or falsity of statements of the form Some Xs are Ys. Judgments on this task are typically slower to statements that, though literally false, are metaphorically true (e.g., Some lawyers are sharks), suggesting that metaphorical meanings are non-optionally activated (at least in single language users). The present research involved four experiments: Experiment 1 conducted with English-speaking monolinguals, replicated the metaphor interference effect; in Experiment 2 the effect was replicated in English-dominant and in balanced bilinguals tested only in English. Experiment 3 conducted with bilinguals tested in both languages, showed that the metaphor interference effect was not obtained in either language in English-dominant bilinguals and was obtained in Spanish only in the balanced group. The findings from Experiments 1 and 2 support the view that nonliteral (metaphoric) meanings are automatically accessed in monolinguals and bilinguals alike. Experiment 3 involved a fewer number of metaphor trials per language, raising the possibility that this procedural difference may have led to a weakening of the metaphor interference effect. This possibility was directly tested in Experiment 4, conducted with English-speaking monolinguals presented with the same number of metaphor trials as the bilinguals in Experiment 3. The results showed a clear metaphor interference, even with the reduced number of trials. As such, the findings of Experiment 3, where a metaphor interference effect was obtained only for Spanish items, are somewhat equivocal: at face value, they suggest that the effect is modulated by language proficiency. Alternatively, the metaphor interference effect may turn out to be present in both languages, but may simply have been obscured by variability owing to the small sample size per language order. Which of these two interpretations turns out to be valid will depend on additional testing. Implications of the present findings for theories of the organization of the bilingual representational system are addressed.

While studies suggest that figurative, or non-literal, meanings are automatically activated in single language users, little is known about how language proficiency may influence the automaticity of non-literal meaning activation. The present research sought to address this issue by comparing figurative language activation in Spanish-English bilinguals. An interference paradigm (Glucksberg, Gildea & Bookin, 1982) was used in which participants were to judge the literal truth or falsity of statements of the form Some Xs are Ys. Judgments on this task are typically slower to statements that, though literally false, are metaphorically true (e.g., Some lawyers are sharks), suggesting that metaphorical meanings are non-optionally activated (at least in single language users). The present research involved four experiments: Experiment 1 conducted with English-speaking monolinguals, replicated the metaphor interference effect; in Experiment 2 the effect was replicated in English-dominant and in balanced bilinguals tested only in English. Experiment 3 conducted with bilinguals tested in both languages, showed that the metaphor interference effect was not obtained in either language in English-dominant bilinguals and was obtained in Spanish only in the balanced group. The findings from Experiments 1 and 2 support the view that nonliteral (metaphoric) meanings are automatically accessed in monolinguals and bilinguals alike. Experiment 3 involved a fewer number of metaphor trials per language, raising the possibility that this procedural difference may have led to a weakening of the metaphor interference effect. This possibility was directly tested in Experiment 4, conducted with English-speaking monolinguals presented with the same number of metaphor trials as the bilinguals in Experiment 3. The results showed a clear metaphor interference, even with the reduced number of trials. As such, the findings of Experiment 3, where a metaphor interference effect was obtained only for Spanish items, are somewhat equivocal: at face value, they suggest that the effect is modulated by language proficiency. Alternatively, the metaphor interference effect may turn out to be present in both languages, but may simply have been obscured by variability owing to the small sample size per language order. Which of these two interpretations turns out to be valid will depend on additional testing. Implications of the present findings for theories of the organization of the bilingual representational system are addressed.

This paper primarily focuses on the description of the results of a study conducted on ten Chinese university students ESL learners to investigate  whether or not cultural context has a significant impact on university students’ ability to remember and understand English figurative idioms as part of English as a Second Language instruction in China. Since Idiom  is a kind of language block which concord rich cultural elements and the figurative idiom whose meaning cannot be easy inferred by the usual meaning of its constituent elements, so the present study was based on the relationship between culture and language, the origins of the idioms and their cultural connotations. As some scholars’ studies have shown before, knowing the origins and the source domains of the idioms can enhance the learners motivation, then their comprehension and retention of idioms are improved. The present study also demonstrates that the cultural context can facilitate learners understanding and memorization of the English figurative idiom.

Focusing on the unique challenges of Chinese-to-English translation, this thesis attempts to bridge the gap between practical concerns related to readability and the cognitive structure and functions of metaphor. It explores the possibility of a compromise between the interest of the reader, the culturally-bound expressiveness of original texts, and translator interpretation. The metaphorical difficulties that arise in the translation of two Chinese novellas, "Paper Dreams" by Lu Min and "One Hundred Birds Saluting the Phoenix" by Xiao Jianghong, are analyzed to demonstrate how compromise can begin to take shape through the combined application of reader accessibility guidelines and cognitive theories of metaphor. Ultimately, this process reveals how each metaphor requires customized solutions and suggests that voices from various fields should be taken into consideration when transforming the literature of one tongue into an imitative product in another.

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