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Cinematic Metaphor: Expressive Movement and Meaning-making

We approach the meaning-making of audio-visual images through the transdisciplinary investigation of metaphors. Thereby we understand metaphoricity as a process of emergence, during which relations of meaning-making and, therefore, reality itself is established. The theory and method of Cinematic Metaphor draw on linguistic research on metaphors and gestures, as well as on film studies research on expressive movement. The eMAEX-approach was adapted in this context for the analysis of metaphors found in the expressive movements of audio-visual images and verbal-gestural everyday-interactions. Film-viewing and face-to-face interaction have in common that both are temporal forms of experience which are inherently interaffectively engaging, an engagement which produces metaphors as dynamic processes.

Project "Multimodal Metaphor and Expressive Movement"
(Cluster of Excellence Languages of Emotion, 2009–2013)

The foundation for the theory and method of Cinematic Metaphor was laid by several case studies of various audio-visual media formats (classical Hollywood cinema, contemporary German cinema, as well as news reports) as well as case studies of everyday face-to-face interactions. Film scholars, linguists, and gesture researchers collaborated in order to develop a transdisciplinary framework. This framework combines the linguistic approach of empirically reconstructing dynamic attention- and affect orientation in everyday communication based on the paradigm of multimodal metaphors with the film-analytical conception of expressive movements

Cinematic Metaphor thereby focuses on three aspects: bodily experience in the sense of a phenomenological embodiment, affectivity, and temporality. The affective dimension is linked to the expressive activation of the cognitive foregrounding of metaphoricity through expressive movements. Thus, the temporal unfolding of metaphoricity can vary, depending on the research focus: Complex metaphorical scenarios may stretch across whole scenes or films, therefore their analysis takes place on the meso- or macro-level of the eMAEX-approach. In other cases, the metaphoricity might solely unfold significantly on the micro level of a few shots.

Research focus "Methaphor: Cognition and filmic thinking"
(KFG Cinepoetics, 2015–2017)

At the center of the research focus stood the question, whether theoretical concepts and analytical models about the processes of metaphorization present a fruitful access to the film-theoretical topos of cinematic thinking. We investigated, whether and if so, how metaphoric meaning emerges through the interaction of cinematic images and viewers, and how audio-visual images unfold a genuinely cinematic metaphoricity. The conception of the Cinematic Metaphor as a theory and a method was further contoured in this context.

For an introduction, especially see the methodological appendix in Cinematic Metaphor. Experience – Affectivity – Temporality as well as the introduction of Cinematic Metaphor in Perspective. Reflections on a Transdisciplinary Framework.

Further Reading: