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In-Depth Information
10.3 Generating Metaphors that are Affective
and Effective
The Google n-grams [ 4 ] is a rich source of popular metaphors of the form Ta rge t i s
Source , such as “ politicians are crooks ”, “ Apple is a cult ”, “ racism is a disease ” and
Steve Jobs is a god ”. Let src
denote the set of stereotypes commonly used to
describe a topic T , where commonality is defined as the presence of the corresponding
metaphor in the Google n-grams. To find metaphors for proper-named entities, we
also analyze 3/4-grams of the form stereotype First [Middle] Last , such as “ tyrant
Adolf Hitler ” and “ boss Bill Gates ”. Thus, e.g.:
(
T
)
src
(
racism
)
={ problem, disease, joke, sin, poison, crime, ideology, weapon }
src
(
Hitler
)
={ monster, criminal, tyrant, idiot, madman, vegetarian, racist, … }
Let typical
denote the set of properties and behaviors harvested for T fromWeb
similes (see previous section), and let srcT ypical
(
T
)
denote the aggregate set of
properties and behaviors ascribable to T via the metaphors in src
(
T
)
(
T
)
. Thus:
(
1
)
srcTypical
(
T
) =
typical
(
M
)
M
src
(
T
)
We can generate conceits for a topic T by considering not just obvious metaphors
for T ,but metaphors of metaphors . Thus:
(
2
)
conceits
(
T
) =
src
(
T
)
src
(
M
)
M
src
(
T
)
The features evoked by the conceit TasM are then given by:
(
3
)
salient
(
T
,
M
) =[
srcTypical
(
T
)
typical
(
T
) ]∩[
srcTypical
(
M
)
typical
(
M
) ]
The degree to which a conceit M is apt for T is given by:
) = |
(
,
)
(
) |
salient
T
M
typical
M
(
4
)
aptness
(
T
,
M
) |
However, we should focus only on apt conceits M
|
(
typical
M
conceits
(
T
)
where:
(
5
)
apt
(
T
,
M
) =|
salient
(
T
,
S
)
typical
(
M
) | >
0
and rank the set of apt conceits by aptness (T, M), as given in (4).
The set salient (T,M) identifies the properties and behaviors that are evoked and
projected onto T when T is viewed through the metaphoric lens of M . For affective
conceits, this set can be partitioned on demand to highlight only the unpleasant
aspects of the conceit (e.g. “you are such a baby!”) or only the pleasant aspects (e.g.
“you are my baby!”). The authors of [ 22 ] further show how n-gram evidence can be
used to selectively project the salient norms of M onto T .
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