Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: Conceptions of metaphor vary widely from literary tropes to their embodiment in human perception and action. This paper will examine these, advance on those embodied in practices of living and suggest a new way to approach visual metaphors, which have heretofore been used without much depth. One of the findings is that metaphors, when taken as embodied, can hardly be theorized or explained without the use of metaphors, suggesting that the processes underlying the use of metaphors are far more basic to the use of language than credited in traditional theories of language, especially of representation. The paper will rely on metaphors emerging in the use of contemporary information technology.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to test the persuasive effects of visual metaphors in advertising. Advertisements containing visual metaphors deliver persuasive claims in visual modality and metaphorical style of rhetoric, both of which may increase the persuasiveness of messages. The study has three advertisement message conditions: literal visual image with verbal claim, metaphorical visual image with verbal anchoring, and metaphorical visual image without verbal anchoring. Considering attitude toward the brand and purchase intentions as the outcome, results show that only ads containing visual metaphors without verbal anchoring metaphors were significantly different from the other two types of ads. This suggests that visual metaphors may be effective due to visual argumentation rather than the metaphorical rhetoric.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines the role of metaphor in conceptualizing health policy in the healthcare debates in Canada and the United States. The paper seeks to contextualize healthcare in both nations by examining the institutional, cultural, and communicative factors that have led to these two more similar than dissimilar nations adopting radically different healthcare systems.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Visual rhetoric has a positive effect on the appreciation of print messages. The role of the interplay of picture and text is an extension of this line of research. Print advertisements were tested containing metaphors created by the combination of pictorial and verbal terms. Non-metaphorical variants were made by combining the same pictorial terms with different texts. In both variants, the interpretation of the ad was either unmistakable (closed) or in need for additional inferences (open). It was investigated whether respondents, varying in age and education, would differentiate between types of advertisements for appreciation, comprehension and affect. Furthermore, it was established in which way comprehension and affect constituted appreciation. Results show that non-metaphorical open (or inappropriate) ads have more effect than closed metaphorical ads. Comprehension has a stronger effect on appreciation when metaphors are used.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The application of metaphors as a means to advance our understanding of organizations has a long-standing tradition in organization studies and organizational communication research, in particular. Generally speaking, metaphors allow for a description of organizational characteristics and functions in the terminology of another domain of interest. Anthropomorphic metaphors most commonly draw comparisons to the physiology of the human brain and the psychology of the human mind. At this, metaphorical understanding is creative rather than retentive, but it must follow a systematic approach in order to explore its theoretical value. Organizational learning and organizational memory are two prominent examples of anthropomorphic metaphors in organization studies. However, in the light of recent advancements in biology, neurology, and psychology, they lack the complementing metaphor of organizational sleep, given that sleep plays a particularly important role for the human mind’s processes of learning and memory. Based on the communication as constitutive of organizations (CCO) perspective (Castor, 2005; Cooren & Fairhurst, 2005) as well as the theory of social systems (Luhmann, 1995, 2000), this study re-contextualizes the metaphors of organizational learning and memory by illustrating sleep-wake cycles of organizational communication. In particular, the contrast between an ideal-typical 'healthy sleep organization' and an 'insomniac organization' leads to a reconsideration of existing theories of organizational learning and memory, on the one hand, and brings about new implications for the management of organizational communication, on the other hand.