Subproject C04

Metaphor and Social Positioning in Religious Online Forums

In this project, we analyze religious metaphors in online forum threads from the dual perspectives of computational linguistics and the study of religion. We will focus on the following three research questions: (1) Which explicit linguistic markers for meaning negotiation and non-literal meaning can be found in online religious forums? (2) How is metaphorical language and meaning negotiated overtly and covertly in the forum? (3) Whether and how are metaphors used to instantiate religious meaning and group membership in the online forums? Our analysis will be based on publicly available forum post.