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.

Publications

• Artemov, Nikita, Elsa Kueppers, Sebastian Reimann, Lina Rodenhausen, and Alexandra Wiemann. 2024. Taking MIPVU Further Around the World—And Through the Ages: MIPVU for Religion-Related Texts: Challenges and Benefits. Metaphor Papers 9. https://doi.org/10.46586/mp.299.
• Dipper, Stefanie, and Frederik Elwert. 2024. Annotating Metaphorical Mappings: An Implementation of Steen’s Five Step Method. Metaphor Papers 11. https://doi.org/10.46586/mp.258.
• Elwert, Frederik. 2025. “God is like a Zookeeper: Metaphor Use in Religious Online Forums.” In Professions as Religious Metaphors, edited by Frederik Elwert. Metaphor Papers 25. https://doi.org/10.46586/mp.434.515.
• Jurczyk, Thomas, Roman Seidel, Adrian Bernhard, Tatjana Scheffler, and Johann Buessow. 2025. “Text Mining Tafsir: Compilation and Preliminary Explorations of a Curated Corpus of 80 Qurʾanic Commentaries.” Journal of Digital Islamicate Research 3 (1): 97–167. https://doi.org/10.1163/27732363-bja00010.
• Reimann, Sebastian, and Tatjana Scheffler. 2024a. “When Is a Metaphor Actually Novel? Annotating Metaphor Novelty in the Context of Automatic Metaphor Detection.” In Proceedings of the 18th Linguistic Annotation Workshop (LAW-XVIII), edited by Sophie Henning and Manfred Stede, 87–97. St. Julians, Malta: Association for Computational Linguistics. https://aclanthology.org/2024.law-1.9/.
• Reimann, Sebastian, and Tatjana Scheffler. 2024b. “Metaphors in Online Religious Communication: A Detailed Dataset and Cross-Genre Metaphor Detection.” In Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024), edited by Nicoletta Calzolari, Min-Yen Kan, Veronique Hoste, Alessandro Lenci, Sakriani Sakti, and Nianwen Xue, 11236–46. Torino, Italia: ELRA and ICCL. https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.982/.
• Reimann, Sebastian, and Tatjana Scheffler. 2025a. “The Struggles of Large Language Models with Zero- and Few-Shot (Extended) Metaphor Detection.” Journal for Language Technology and Computational Linguistics 38 (2): 97–109. https://doi.org/10.21248/jlcl.38.2025.287.
• Reimann, Sebastian, and Tatjana Scheffler. 2025b. “Using Large Language Models to Perform MIPVU-Inspired Automatic Metaphor Detection.” In Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Analogical Abstraction in Cognition, Perception, and Language (Analogy-Angle II), edited by Giulia Rambelli, Filip Ilievski, Marianna Bolognesi, and Pia Sommerauer, 10–21. Vienna, Austria: Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.analogyangle-1.2.
• Rodenhausen, Lina. 2024. “‘Mutter, Vater, Kind’. Ressourcenarme Automatische Metaphernverarbeitung für Religionswissenschaftliche Fragestellungen.” February 21. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10698475.
• Rodenhausen, Lina. 2025. “Disentangling ‘Polarization in Religion.’” Frontiers in Political Science 6 (January). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2024.1492172.
• Rodenhausen, Lina. 2025. “’Selig seid ihr, wenn euch die Menschen um meinetwillen schmähen und verfolgen‘ – Minderheitskonstruktionen progressiver und konservativer Christ:innen auf Reddit.” In Konstellationen religiöser Minderheiten und Mehrheiten in pluralen Gesellschaften, edited by Sarah J. Jahn and Sabrina Weiß. Bielefeld: transcript.

Presentations

• Elwert, Frederik: Religious Studies and the Two Cultures of Digital Humanities. Workshop Big Data, Social Media, and the Study of Religion, 01.04.2022, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
• Rodenhausen, Lina: Religious Online Forums and Metaphors about the Relationship with God. CERES Colloquium, 02.05.2022, Bochum, Germany.
• Elwert, Frederik: Data Management in the Humanities at CERES and RUB. Workshop Managing Research Data. An International Exchange of Experience, 11.05.2022, Bochum, Germany.
• Elwert, Frederik: Social Metaphors of Religion and Digital Research Methods. Workshop Breaking New Ground in the Study of Religion, 18.05.2022, Kraków, Poland.
• Rodenhausen, Lina and Sebastian Reimann: Capturing the Thread Structure: A Modification of CMC-Core to Account for Characteristics of Online Forums. Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) conference, 12.09.-16.09.2022, Newcastle, UK.
• Reimann, Sebastian: Automatic Metaphor Detection in Online Forums with a Focus on Deliberate Metaphor. CERES Colloquium, 04.11.2022, Bochum, Germany.
• Elwert, Frederik: Cusanus, Annotation, and the Thesaurus of Religious Metaphors. The Research Infrastructure of the CRC 1475. Workshop Exploring the Cosmos: Unraveling Cusanus' Metaphors, 15.06.2023, Bochum, Germany.
• Rodenhausen, Lina: We Are All Children of God, the Father (or Mother?!) – Parent-Child Metaphors about God and Believers in Christian Subreddits. Conference of the International Society for Media, Religion, and Culture (ISMRC), 02.08.-05.08.2023, Bochum, Germany.
• Reimann, Sebastian: Towards a Definition of Novel Metaphor for Automatic Metaphor Detection. ESSLLI 2023 Student Session, 04.08.2023, Ljubljana, Slovenia. 
• Reimann, Sebastian and Tatjana Scheffler: ChrisTof: A Novel Corpus of Christian Online Forums. CMC-Corpora Conference, 14.09.-15.09.2023, Mannheim, Germany. 
• Rodenhausen, Lina: Open vs. True Christians – Austausch zu christlichen Problemstellungen auf Reddit. Conference of the DVRW, 25.09.-28.09.2023, Bayreuth, Germany.
• Reimann, Sebastian: Automatic Metaphor Detection in Online Forums with a Focus on Deliberate Metaphor. CRC’s annual meeting, 20.09.-22.09.2023, Much, Germany.
• Rodenhausen, Lina: Metaphor and Social Positioning in Religious Online Forums. CRC’s annual meeting, 20.09.-22.09.2023, Much, Germany.
• Reimann, Sebastian and Tatjana Scheffler: Introduction: Computational Approaches to Metaphor and Figurative Language. 46. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS), 28.02.2024, Bochum, Germany.
• Rodenhausen, Lina: Mutter, Vater, Kind. Ressourcenarme automatische Metaphernverarbeitung für religionswissenschaftliche Fragestellungen. Conference of the Digital Humanities im deutschsprachigen Raum (DHd) 2024, 26.02.-01.03.2024, Passau, Germany.
• Elwert, Frederik: Multilingual Challenges from a Religious Studies Perspective. Conference of the Digital Humanities im deutschsprachigen Raum (DHd) 2024, 26.02.-01.03.2024, Passau, Germany.
• Rodenhausen, Lina: Polarization of Christianity - A Case Study of Progressive and Conservative Subreddits. Philosophy and Religious Studies Club University of Central Arkansas, 07.03.2024, Conway, USA.
• Rodenhausen, Lina: The Integration of Computational Methods in the Study of Religion and Metaphor. Computer Science Club University of Central Arkansas, 14.03.2024, Conway, USA.
• Rodenhausen, Lina: Systematizing the Intersection of Polarization, Religion, and Social Media. Institute for Communication and Religion Seton Hall University, 19.03.2024, South Orange, USA.
• Scheffler, Tatjana: Sustainable Social Media Research: The Case of Linguistics. Long-term archiving, cataloguing, and provision of dynamic data from social media – Twitter and beyond, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. 19.3.2024, Frankfurt, Germany.
• Reimann, Sebastian: When is a metaphor actually novel?: Annotating Metaphor Novelty in the context of Automatic Metaphor Detection. Linguistic Annotation Workshop (LAW) XVIII,  22.03.2024, St. Julien’s, Malta.
• Rodenhausen, Lina: Systematizing the Intersection of Polarization, Religion, and Social Media. Workshop Digital Religion Meets Politics, 10.05.-11.05.2024, Landau, Germany.
• Reimann, Sebastian: Metaphors in Online Religious Communication: a Detailed Dataset and Cross-Genre Metaphor Detection. 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING), 20.-25.05.2024, Torino, Italy.
• Reimann, Sebastian: Deliberate Metaphors in Religious Online Forums: Challenges and Possible Ways Towards their Automatic Detection. CRC’s annual meeting, 18.09.-20.09.2024, Much, Germany.
• Rodenhausen, Lina: Open vs. True Christians. Polarization in Christian Subreddits. CRC’s annual meeting, 18.09.-20.09.2024, Much, Germany.
• Rodenhausen, Lina: ’Polarisierung in Religion’ am Fall christlicher Subreddits. Workshop Orthodox, moderat, liberal? Perspektiven auf Polarisierung und Positionierung im religiösen Feld, 17.02.-18.02.2025, Bochum, Germany.
• Reimann, Sebastian: Metaphor Identification Procedure VU Amsterdam (MIPVU). Spring School Comparative Analysis of Religious Metaphors (CARMe), 17.03.-21.03.2025, Bochum, Germany. 
• Rodenhausen, Lina: Introduction to the Annotation Tool tAkita. Spring School Comparative Analysis of Religious Metaphors (CARMe), 17.03.-21.03.2025, Bochum, Germany.
• Elwert, Frederik: Deliberate Metaphor Theory: Metaphors We Communicate With. Spring School Comparative Analysis of Religious Metaphors (CARMe), 17.03.-21.03.2025, Bochum, Germany.
• Rodenhausen, Lina: Computational Text Analysis in the Study of Polarized Christian Subreddits. Conference Words in Numbers. Data-Driven Approaches to Texts in the Humanities and Social Sciences, 27.03.-28.03.2025, Essen, Germany.
• Elwert, Frederik: Where's the 'R' in Digital Humanities? Exploring the Current Intersection of Religious Studies and Digital Humanities. Conference Words in Numbers. Data-Driven Approaches to Texts in the Humanities and Social Sciences, 27.03.-28.03.2025, Essen, Germany.
• Reimann, Sebastian and Tatjana Scheffler: The Struggles of Large Language Models with Zero- and Few-Shot (Extended) Metaphor Detection. Workshop LLMFails, 08.04.-09.04.2025, Mannheim, Germany.
• Elwert, Frederik: Religious Data Management, Or: The Use of Vocabularies in Religious Studies. Workshop Re-designing the Modern Religious Bookshelf, 25.07.2025, Berlin, Germany.
• Reimann Sebastian: Using Large Language Models to Perform MIPVU-Inspired Automatic Metaphor Detection. The 2nd Workshop on Analogical Abstraction in Cognition, Perception, and Language (Analogy-Angle II). 01.08.2025, Wien, Austria.
• Elwert, Frederik: Linking Though What? Promises and Perils of Linked Data in the Study of Religion/s. IAHR 2025, 29.08.2025, Kraków, Polen.
• Rodenhausen, Lina: Open vs. True Christians. Polarisierung christlicher Reddit User:innen. Vernetzungstreffen Weltanschauliches Influencing, 15.10.-17.10.2025, Erfurt, Germany.
• Elwert, Frederik, Lina Rodenhausen, and Sebastian Reimann: Religious Metaphors at Scale: Digital and Computational Approaches to Metaphor Identification and Analysis. Conference Metaphors of Religion, 27.10.-29.10.2025, Bochum, Germany.
• Rodenhausen, Lina: We are All Children of God, the Father (or Mother)?! - Polarization in the Conceptualization of God-Human Relations. Conference Metaphors of Religion, 27.10.-29.10.2025, Bochum, Germany.