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- Genre: Academic theses
Explaining Fukushima to children: a cross-cultural study of bodily functions as metaphor in Japanese
Description
This research proposes that a cross-cultural disconnect exists between Japanese and American English in the realm of bodily functions used as metaphor. Perhaps nowhere is this notion illustrated more clearly than by a cartoon that was inspired by recent tragic events in Japan. In the afternoon of Friday, March 11, 2011, the northeast coast of Japan was struck by a massive earthquake and tsunami that caused immeasurable loss of life and property and catastrophic damage to the nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture. In the immediate wake of these events, Japanese artist Hachiya Kazuhiko, determined to make the situation comprehensible to children, created a cartoon in which he anthropomorphized the damaged Fukushima Daiichi reactor and likened the dangers associated with it to illness and bodily functions. This cartoon garnered considerable notoriety, both in Japan and abroad. The reactions of English speakers appeared to differ from those of Japanese speakers, suggesting the existence of a possible cross-cultural disconnect. This research into the reactions to the cartoon and other relevant literature (both in English and Japanese), viewed against federal regulations regarding the broadcast of "obscenity" in the United States, commentary on American society, and how the use of similar language in American cartoons is seen, clearly indicates that negative attitudes toward the use of bodily functions as metaphor exist in the United States, while the same usage is seen differently in Japan.
ContributorsHacker, Michael (Author) / Adams, Karen (Thesis advisor) / Gelderen, Elly van (Thesis advisor) / Prior, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
My job in this thesis is to explore a supposedly dragon-filled area of philosophy, tropology. By 'tropology,' I only mean the study of figurative speech, or, more particularly, metaphors. It seems clear to most people that metaphors have meaning. But this fact flies in the face of several different theories of meaning. Such as, the meaning of a metaphor can't be properly conveyed by Possible Worlds Semantics or Truth-Conditional Semantics. Tropology is also an area of philosophy with very few commonly accepted theories. It is not like the study of reference, where there are two theories, each having a large following. The the various theories in tropology are so radically different, with each having relatively few followers, that the it is widely unexplored in philosophy. Some theories claim that metaphors is the exact same as another use of speech (namely, similes). Another claims that metaphors lack “meaning.” And a third claims that metaphors do 'mean' but getting at that meaning requires some special mental operations. By the end of this thesis, you will not only have my map of tropology, my theory of metaphors, but also some experimental philosophy about them to help put to rest some theories.
ContributorsSmith, Davis Alexander (Author) / Pinillos, Angel (Thesis advisor) / Kobes, Bernard (Committee member) / Reynolds, Steven (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Metaphor as a way of thinking permeates daily life. It affects how people understand and experience everything. It also plays an important role in artistic creation. The idea of creating highly personal but commonly understood metaphors was central to the research and creation of Ink. I created this work to find out how I—as a Chinese artist with unique personal experiences, educational experiences, and cultural perspectives—can explore metaphors that would resonate with predominantly Western audiences. This research specifically addressed the metaphorical meanings of the colors black and white and drew from my visual artistry to compose dances, stage setting, and costume design.
ContributorsLiang, Yingzi (Author) / Rajko, Jessica (Thesis advisor) / Kim, Marianne (Committee member) / Rex-Flint, Melissa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
This dissertation focuses on the psycho-cultural perceptions and social interactions among a sample of 58 Chinese immigrant women in the Maricopa County, the Phoenix metro area of, Arizona, and the manner in which they are able to negotiate multiple identity markers that in part influence and define their capacity to achieve and maintain self-referential growth. The central question this dissertation seeks to address is: what historical forms have emerged, accumulated and reproduced through the actions of women in spaces within and between households, networks and social relations, voluntary associations, political participation, economic and financial transactions, and educational, religious, and civic, recreational and artistic activities; and how are these symbolically represented?This research is comprised of three stages. First, I show how a group of Chinese immigrant women living in, Arizona, combine the Eastern and Western connotations of the Phoenix metro area, to create a fourfold conceptual metaphor of the phoenix. Second, I demonstrate that how such symbolization and metaphorization represent their personal immigration experience, femininity, ethnic identity, and geographic location. Third, I also highlight how they associate themselves with the heuristic of the phoenix as a tool for self-empowerment, virtue, well-being, and self-representation.
This dissertation concludes that the Chinese women living in the Phoenix area not only apply the metaphor of the phoenix to themselves, but also reference this mythical bird in their social media ID, clubs names, and themed events, and include it in their oral traditions. In contrast, they reject, negotiate, or resist the stigma and stereotypes attached to the “dragon” symbol which often convey qualities of overpowering and irrational oppression in western mythology. Instead, they associate themselves with the heuristic of the phoenix as a tool for self-empowerment, virtue, well-being, and ethnic self-representation. Such metaphorization and symbolization contribute to their resistance to the symbolic violence by countering with their own powerful self-referential narratives, that have shaped their Chinese community.
ContributorsShi, Hua (Author) / Cruz-Torres, Maria (Thesis advisor) / Velez-Ibanez, Carlos (Committee member) / Li, Wei (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Sound and space are intimately and intricately interconnected, but it remains unclear in what ways sound and music call forth in listeners—cognitively and emotionally— sensations of space. This thesis approaches sonic evocations of space from two perspectives that, despite their commonalities, are often considered separately. The first is lived space, the types of expanses we experience it in daily life, the second is outer or extraplanetary space. Existing scholarship on the relationships between sound and space, including that of Edward S. Casey and Steven Feld (1982), Steve Larson (2012), Georgina Born (2013), and Gascia Ouzonian (2020), reach beyond the physical conceptions of sound and into the metaphorical and the cultural, creating a rich discourse about place, orientation, and perception. Informed by the seminal theories of Victor Zuckerkandl (1973), George Lakoff (1980), and Mark Johnson (1980, 2007), among others, this thesis explores embodied musical metaphor using an empirical cognition study in which twenty-six voluntary participants were asked to respond to successions of pitches drawn from popular science fiction film scores and to note any kind of motion and spatiality they felt. The results of this experiment demonstrate that melodic figures are tied to ideas of physical motion and that sizes of intervallic relationships matter. In all, this thesis shows that listeners’ sense of space is greatly informed by specific cues from their sonic environment, and that sound can be used to challenge or manipulate spatial perception, especially in multimedia applications.
ContributorsJordan, Nicholas Gabriel (Author) / Schmelz, Peter J (Thesis advisor) / Knowles, Kristina L (Thesis advisor) / Fossum, Dave (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023