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Drawing Attention to Metaphor: Case studies across time periods, cultures and modalities
Edited by Camilla Di Biase-Dyson and Markus Egg
[Figurative Thought and Language 5] 2020
► pp. 63–92

A multimodal perspective on MCA

Cues of (possible) metacommunicative awareness

| Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | Moscow State Linguistic University

Metacommunicative awareness (MCA) is proposed as a scalar phenomenon of being aware, to different possible degrees, that the form and/or content of how you are acting could communicate something to someone else. Observable signals of possible MCA that are based on greater use of effort are discussed on the verbal, prosodic, gestural, and other levels. Dynamicity in intensity is proposed as an important property of its nature, even if the quality of potential MCA differs between different registers and genres. The degree to which an expression, metaphoric or otherwise, is highlighted in a given instance by signals of possible MCA thus falls along a scale of saliency. This can be researched without delving into claims about supposed “deliberateness” of expression.

Keywords: attention, dynamicity, effort, gesture, metacommunicative awareness, metaphor, metaphoricity, English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background: Why begin with a multimodal perspective?
  • 3.(Possible) metacommunicative awareness: Signals of greater use of effort
  • 4.The relation to metaphor
  • 5.A look at metaphoric expression in words and in gestures
  • 6.MCA as a dynamic phenomenon: Possible MCA in different time relations, with special attention to metaphor
  • 7.Metacommunicative awareness is not necessarily deliberateness of expression
  • 8.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 April 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.5.04cie
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