Metadiscursive functions of conceptual metaphor in guided meditatation
Ignasi Navarro Ferrando, Antonio-José Silvestre-López
Círculo de lingüística aplicada a la comunicación November 14, 2025 DOI: 10.5209/clac.90259 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Corpus analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Meaning existential Interpersonal communication Comprehension Dimension graph theory Modality human–computer interaction Identification biology Cognitive science Semantics computer science Pragmatics Cognitive psychology Conversation Conceptual metaphor Ostensive definition Function biology Feature linguistics Sign mathematics Identity music Relevance theory Mechanism biology |
| Key points | Metaphor signaling plays an ostensive communicative function in organizing guided meditation discourse, maintaining attention and aiding comprehension of mental processes. |
Abstract
Metadiscourse focuses on the interactional dimension of communication, what Sinclair (1981) called the 'interactive plane', and the coherence of interpersonal resources used to organise discourse (Hyland, 2000, 2004, 2005, 2010). In this vein, we have analysed a corpus of recorded guided meditations from lay and religious meditation contexts. We have searched for explicit signals instantiating metaphors that guide the meditation practice by marking successive genre stages. The Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) (Steen et al., 2010) is applied to identify this type of meta-discursive mark. Three types of guided meditation are compared for the signalled metaphors used to guide meditative practice and their functions. The results show that metaphor signalling plays an ostensive communicative function in organising the text contents and serving the purpose of both maintaining the audience's attention and achieving their comprehension of the mental processes they are involved in during the meditative practice. The conclusions suggest a view of metaphor usage as a metadiscursive mechanism conveying non-denotational meaning and a clue factor in meditation discourse.