Vossian antonomasia is a prolific stylistic device, in use since antiquity. It can compress the introduction or description of a person or another named entity into a terse, poignant formulation and can best be explained by an example: When Norwegian world champion Magnus Carlsen is described as ‘the Mozart of chess’, it is Vossian antonomasia we are dealing with. The pattern is simple: A source (Mozart) is used to describe a target (Magnus Carlsen), the transfer of meaning is reached via a modifier (‘of chess’). This phenomenon has been discussed before (as ‘metaphorical antonomasia’ or, with special focus on the source object, as ‘paragons’), but no corpus-based approach has been undertaken as yet to explore its breadth and variety. We are looking into a full-text newspaper corpus (The New York Times, 1987–2007) and describe a new method for the automatic extraction of Vossian antonomasia based on Wikidata entities. Our analysis offers new insights into the occurrence of popular paragons and their distribution.
%0 Journal Article
%1 fischer2019michael
%A Fischer, Frank
%A Jäschke, Robert
%D 2019
%J Digital Scholarship in the Humanities
%K 2019 dh myown vossanto
%N 1
%P 34–42
%R 10.1093/llc/fqy087
%T »The Michael Jordan of greatness« – Extracting Vossian antonomasia from two decades of The New York Times, 1987–2007
%U https://academic.oup.com/dsh/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093/llc/fqy087/27620601/fqy087.pdf
%V 35
%X Vossian antonomasia is a prolific stylistic device, in use since antiquity. It can compress the introduction or description of a person or another named entity into a terse, poignant formulation and can best be explained by an example: When Norwegian world champion Magnus Carlsen is described as ‘the Mozart of chess’, it is Vossian antonomasia we are dealing with. The pattern is simple: A source (Mozart) is used to describe a target (Magnus Carlsen), the transfer of meaning is reached via a modifier (‘of chess’). This phenomenon has been discussed before (as ‘metaphorical antonomasia’ or, with special focus on the source object, as ‘paragons’), but no corpus-based approach has been undertaken as yet to explore its breadth and variety. We are looking into a full-text newspaper corpus (The New York Times, 1987–2007) and describe a new method for the automatic extraction of Vossian antonomasia based on Wikidata entities. Our analysis offers new insights into the occurrence of popular paragons and their distribution.
@article{fischer2019michael,
abstract = {Vossian antonomasia is a prolific stylistic device, in use since antiquity. It can compress the introduction or description of a person or another named entity into a terse, poignant formulation and can best be explained by an example: When Norwegian world champion Magnus Carlsen is described as ‘the Mozart of chess’, it is Vossian antonomasia we are dealing with. The pattern is simple: A source (Mozart) is used to describe a target (Magnus Carlsen), the transfer of meaning is reached via a modifier (‘of chess’). This phenomenon has been discussed before (as ‘metaphorical antonomasia’ or, with special focus on the source object, as ‘paragons’), but no corpus-based approach has been undertaken as yet to explore its breadth and variety. We are looking into a full-text newspaper corpus (The New York Times, 1987–2007) and describe a new method for the automatic extraction of Vossian antonomasia based on Wikidata entities. Our analysis offers new insights into the occurrence of popular paragons and their distribution.},
added-at = {2018-12-21T11:14:13.000+0100},
author = {Fischer, Frank and Jäschke, Robert},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2de3d056802bbf03481f9bb71c3791efc/jaeschke},
doi = {10.1093/llc/fqy087},
interhash = {ebcd76351a1afb6222627e7420cd6f3f},
intrahash = {de3d056802bbf03481f9bb71c3791efc},
journal = {Digital Scholarship in the Humanities},
keywords = {2019 dh myown vossanto},
number = 1,
pages = {34–42},
timestamp = {2022-11-16T08:53:18.000+0100},
title = {»The Michael Jordan of greatness« – Extracting Vossian antonomasia from two decades of The New York Times, 1987–2007},
url = {https://academic.oup.com/dsh/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093/llc/fqy087/27620601/fqy087.pdf},
volume = 35,
year = 2019
}