Metaphor or the war on words – a critical analysis of the theory of conceptual metaphors

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Indeed, the present work develops a fre- quency related instrument showing which words from the semantic field of war are more likely to indicate X IS WAR conceptual metaphor and which are more likely to indicate the use of other Source Domains. The book is structured in the following way. The cognitive school of linguistics started as a movement towards placing the language in a broader psychological perspective away from the concept of modularity. It emphasised the importance of real life data and criticised invented, artificial examples.

In the s its major theoretical and philosophical premises were formulated by Langacker , and Lakoff — Johnson , In the s the Lakoffian Conceptual Metaphor Theory was applied to a variety of new fields of study, such as literature and political discourse. It was also tested in psycholinguistic studies and applied to neural networks modelling. Today, we can witness a surge of studies applying CMT analy- ses to new areas of linguistic investigations such as historical linguistics Tissari , , ; Fabiszak , Fabiszak — Hebda In press , sociolinguistics e.

Kristiansen — Dirven In press and discourse studies of the language of the media Charteris-Black , Koller , Musolff , Nerlich , a and b. This work represents the latter trend in the development of cogni- tive linguistics, often called cognitive discourse analysis. Similarly to the studies mentioned above, the present one recognizes the links between structural and functional European linguistics and American cognitive linguistics.

Both schools of linguistic thought see meaning as contextually motivated. Further, both functional and cognitive linguistics share a view of language production as an interactive process. The language of the media has attracted special attention for two major reasons. One, its relative availability and two, its significant influ- ence on the public discourse. It is through the media that a social consensus on the conceptualisation of social institutions is negotiated and achieved. The role of corpora in contemporary linguistic investigations and the distinctive position of the language of the media and its relations with cognitive discourse analysis are presented in Chapter Two.

Chapter Three provides a wider perspective on the conceptualisa- tion of war in a variety of liberal arts and sciences. Attempts to reflect on the nature of war and its role in society as a driving force of change have been made since ancient times. A short review, based on Hassner b , of the philosophical explorations of war starts the presentation of the con- temporary approaches to the meaning of war. It is preceded by a brief dis- cussion of the views of the two 19th century theoreticians of war and war- fare, Clausewitz and Jomini, whose works are still read and taught in army academies and history seminars.

Then, the social studies approach to war is discussed on the basis of a sociological analysis of the Second Gulf War. The representation of war in literature, and its scrutiny by liter- ary critics is given in the next section. The discussion of the literary stud- ies is narrowed down to Polish and British literature, as the texts analysed in Chapter Four were addressed to audiences brought up within these two cultures. A revision of a short history of war correspondents links the popular cultural image of war with media studies.

One section is devoted to CMT based linguistic studies of the language used in reporting and talking about war. The chapter ends with an overview of different theories of war and recasts them as the expert and the folk model of the concept.

This model forms a backdrop for the analyses in Chapter Four. Chapter Four in an attempt to elucidate the meaning of political discourse focuses on what Koller calls secondary discourse, i. The analysis of the rhetorical strategies used in the war reports of the s and is based on the newspapers mentioned before. This comparative study of political media discourse fo- cuses on the linguistic representation of two conceptual patterns. One is the categorisation and the construal of the meaning of such concepts as war, politics and diplomacy.

This dual nature of the term, may and often does, increase the degree of ambiguity of the political texts. Another conceptual pattern coming to the fore in the analy- sis of war reports is the vilification of the enemy employing a range of linguistic strategies, which are uncovered in the analysis. This chapter then, concentrates on WAR as a target of metaphoric mappings within a particular discourse genre. The chronological presentation of the meta- phorical discourse patterns in the Polish and British press was designed to show how much or, in fact, how little variation there was in these patterns over the span of 20 years and cross-culturally.

In this way, Chapter Four reveals how stable the rhetorical patterns used in the construal of war in newspaper reports are. In the last part of the book, a number of lexemes identified in the British corpus analysed in Chapter Four are selected and used to query in the British National Corpus BNC. Chapter Four is focussed on WAR as a target of metaphors within a specific type of discourse: The reason for this is that the conclusions drawn from this part of the study are meant to apply to lan- guage in general, not to any specific genre.

The aim of the investigations is to test if the words commonly considered as indicators of the X IS WAR metaphor are indeed most frequently used in the domain of war when used non-metaphorically. The conclusions from this study are to be taken with caution and can perhaps serve as a starting point for further research as frequency is not tantamount to salience and it is salience, not sheer fre- quency, that determines the indicator status. It is assumed, nevertheless, that if a given word-form is more often used in a primary sense other then war, it may more frequently bring its status as an indicator of the X IS WAR metaphor into question.

These considerations focus on just one element of WAR as source of metaphors, i. Chapter I Conceptual metaphor and its implications for discourse 1. Introduction Conceptual Metaphor Theory has developed within the so-called cognit- ive approach to language, which was a reaction to the Chomskyan para- digm. Although cognitivists do not claim that people are born with a complete tabula rasa, they reject the hypothesis about the existence of Universal Grammar as an inborn language learning device.

The human brain is born with a certain structure of nervous cells and connections between them. Langacker and Lakoff refer to Chomskyanism as generative theory and appropriate the name cognitive for their own approach. On the meaning of the adjective cognitive in linguistics see Krzeszowski b.

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In the late s and the s Langacker, Lakoff and others who all started within the generative paradigm see e. Langacker , La- koff broke away from transformational rules and gave rise to a new trend in lin- guistics. At present the two approaches seem to converge on many issues see, e. Jackendoff to be presented in more detail in Section 3. It is considered to be the closest representation of the neurophysiological basis of language. As Kemmer — Barlow When no processing is occurring, the information represented by such units simply resides in patterns of con- nectivity including differential connection strengths resulting from pre- vious activations.

Taking into account the immense complexity of the human brain, cognitiv- ists maintain that parsimony of a theoretical description of language is not a condition sine qua non of a well-formulated grammar. They believe that the neuronal networks responsible for certain functions can be accessed, and thus activated by many different nodes. Lists of forms as well as rules do not exclude each other — they can exist side by side.

Complex concepts are created through partial compositionality, i. This value is context-dependent and may vary with every usage event. Moreover, both the component parts and the complex can be available to reflection relative to their degree of the entrenchment3 of the complex. The same processes which ensure cognitive development are also responsible for language acquisition. It is the experience between a hu- man organism and the environment as well as the growing awareness of the body which facilitate this learning.

This is a basic assumption of cog- nitivism. Linguistic abilities are not a separate module of cognition, but are akin to other cognitive abilities, such as categorization, figure-ground differentiation and imagery, as a creative process involved in everyday thought and represented in language. Categorization is the process re- sponsible for our ability to generalize, to create and use stereotypes and to create metaphors. The major tenets of Conceptual Metaphor Theory CMT Lakoff — Johnson , , which tries to account for the mental processes 3 Entrenchment is here understood as automatization and fossilisation of the com- plex, so that it becomes perceived as a whole, which may only partly be available for analysis of its units Langacker Conceptual metaphor and its implications for discourse 17 enabling our understanding of the physical, social and cultural worlds is presented in Section 2 below.

The presentation starts with the account of the early version of the theory and continues with its more recent devel- opments, including its contribution to discourse analysis in Section 2. Section 3 is dedicated to a brief discussion of Idealised Cognitive Models Lakoff , Section 4 to image schemata Johnson and Section 5 to force dynamic schema Talmy which may all contribute to the underlying conceptual structure providing the basic scaffolding for human thinking.

Section 6 is also devoted to an alternative approach to human mental processing — the Blending Theory Fauconnier — Turner Fi- nally, axiological semantics Krzeszowski , a which attempts to elaborate CMT to account for the system of social and cultural values implied in language is presented in Section 7. Conceptual Metaphor Theory 2. The early formulation Within Conceptual Metaphor Theory CMT , metaphors, as expressed in language, are not seen as stylistic ornaments, but as evidence for the fact that thinking about, and understanding of the world outside our organ- isms, as well as the working of our bodies, involves metaphoric proc- esses.

CMT claims that this understanding is possible through a system of related concepts, some of which are emergent, some structured meta- phorically, and some both emergent and structured metaphorically. Meta- phors allow us to understand one thing in terms of another. Metonymy, on the other hand, is referential in nature, it uses one thing to stand for an- other. Lakoff — Johnson Any adequate theory of human conceptual system will have to give an ac- count of how concepts are 1 grounded, 2 structured, 3 related to each other, 4 defined.

It must be stressed, however, that psycholinguists do not hold a unified view on experientialism. Some of them, e. Gibbs , are fervent supporters of the claim, others, like Murphy are equally zealous opponents. Gibbs believes, following Lakoff — Johnson, that everyday concepts are metaphorically structured and quotes four rea- sons to support his claim. The first three are linguistic in nature, i. The experimenters found out that the images for idioms were much more constrained than those for non-idiomatic expressions and explained this as a result of an operation of a conceptual metaphoric constraint.

In another study, Nayak — Gibbs investigated the facilitation of the process of understand- ing idioms related to emotions if they appeared in heavily metaphorical contexts. As such facilitation did occur, Nayak — Gibbs interpreted the re- sults as evidence for the metaphorical structure of emotion concepts. Murphy , on the other hand, voices serious doubts concerning the existence and the role of conceptual metaphor. When it comes to the experiential grounding of metaphorical concepts, he is completely scepti- cal. A strong criticism of polysemy can be found in Szwedek In press a and b.

Conceptual metaphor and its implications for discourse 19 Having made this reservation Murphy turns to discussing the arguments Gibbs employs to support the conceptual metaphor claim. First, he turns to the polysemy argument. He highlights the fact that cognitivists in their metaphor-based descriptions of various linguistic phenomena do not devote much space to possible, alternative, literal explanations of these phenom- ena.

Here he touches upon one more important issue, i. Geer- aerts introduces the notion of the redefinition of the prototypical meaning focus as a result of such diachronic change. This appears to be a perennial problem for studies which en- croach on both linguistic and psychological territory: Christopher Johnson investigated the acquisition of metaphor in L1.

Only later do these two domains differentiate, but the connections established in early childhood between the sensory domain of seeing and what later becomes the abstract domain of knowing are already there and facilitate further metaphoric mappings. They constitute what Lakoff — Johnson That is, in neural programming Naraya- nan managed to show that general motor control schemas can be used for computations about such abstract notions as verb aspect or the meaning of the MORE IS UP metaphor.

Going back to the original proposal of CMT, Lakoff — Johnson , in their study of ARGUMENT, first tried to create a folk model of the concept, then to discover the metaphors structuring the concept and the relationships between them. It turned out that metaphors often create coherent, but not necessarily consistent complexes metaphor mixing. This is possible because vari- ous metaphors in the present example: As we make more argument, more of a surface is created. These entailments ensure the coherence of the conceptualiza- tion As more of a surface is created, the argument covers more ground: It also seems that they are akin to the notion of ter- tium comparationis, necessary in any comparative definition of meta- phor, sometimes referred to as the abstract schema for standard and tar- get in Langacker , or the generic space Fauconnier — Turner Conceptual metaphor and its implications for discourse 21 Szwedek , , demonstrates that, unlike in Lakoff — Johnson , it is not so much shared entailments, but the inheritance of properties that is responsible for metaphor coherence.

The basic tenet of the theory holds that any abstract entity must first be objectified before any metaphoric mappings can obtain be- tween domains. It is firmly experientially grounded in the sense of touch. This primacy of objectification allows Szwedek to suggest a hierarchical topology of metaphors, in which ontological metaphors are viewed as more basic than structural or orientational metaphors.

Our immaterial worlds are perceived, or rather constructed in terms of ma- terial things. We can understand all other elements of our lives processes, phenomena only by assigning material features to these abstract elements — without in fact knowing what exactly we are talking about. It helps to clarify the relationship between various do- mains and facilitates cross domain mappings.

The position of Lakoff — Johnson on the status of source and target domains remains unclear. This is not the case. What, then, constitutes the difference between them? What kind of embodied experience explains this fact? An escape from this vicious circle would be to resort to a more basic concept, e.

Force con- stitutes the more abstract schema, which has emerged from instantiations of its various guises, and which now serves as the commonality allowing the comparison between the two concepts. Lakoff — Johnson propose a slightly different solution. When these primary metaphors become inputs for blending processes, complex multidirectional links can be formed.

This may be yet another explanation for the reversibility of source and target in some metaphors. Conceptual metaphor and its implications for discourse 23 2. The criticism of Conceptual Metaphor Theory Taylor Lakoff claims that all the dead metaphors are evidence of our metaphoric thinking. He in fact uses the term metaphor as an all covering term for figurative thought as repre- sented in everyday language. He entirely disregards the rhetoric tradition and its typology of figurative expressions.

In his theory, a distinction be- tween catachresis and a novel metaphor seems irrelevant. Much of the criticism of Lakoff — Johnson stems from an inadequate representation of the views Lakoff — Johnson criticize. More- over, CMT is presented as a completely novel approach, as if it had no links whatsoever with a long time metaphor research. Kardela a and b points to such predecessors of cognitive theory as Koehler , and Guiraud Geeraerts discusses the links between CMT and philosophical epistemology, in particular Husserl and Merleau-Ponty , Fabiszak compares the cognitive approach to metaphor theorists from various disciplines such as the French structuralism Barthes and Cohen , semiotics Chatman and Eco , , , philosophy Vico following Eco , and Cassirer following Krois , and English structuralism Ullman , and Lyons Jakobson [] proposes a theory of 10 On the multi-domain approach to metaphor — Blending Theory, see section 6 below.

He sees the evidence for his claim both in language and in human behaviour. For him, metaphor understood as sub- stitution and similarity is connected with selection aphasia, the poetry and romanticism in literature, and expressionism and symbolism in art; metonymy, on the other hand, understood as dependent upon predication, contexture and contiguity is responsible for agrammatism, novel and re- alism in literature and cubism in art.

Dirven [] elaborates the connection between the Jakobsonian metaphoric and metonymic poles with paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations in language, respectively. He views metonymy and metaphor as two mental strategies, which although forming a continuum, can be opposed in their prototypical uses along the following lines Dirven In metonymy two elements are brought together, they are mapped on one another, but keep their existence and are construed as forming a contigu- ous system. Although the source domain itself is wiped out, some aspects of its own nature or structure are transferred to that of the target domain.

The contrast between the two elements or domains is often so great that this disparity can only lead to full substitution of one domain by the other. Croft [] is strongly critical of CMT, but he adheres to its ma- jor claims. He notices that the status of domains is of vital importance to the theory, therefore their nature cannot remain underspecified.

This is a sick relationship. They have a strong healthy marriage. Their marriage is on the mend. Conceptual metaphor and its implications for discourse 25 This shows how arbitrary the concept of domain and domain mapping is and how vague the procedures for domain identification are. He advocates such methods as a means of linguistic analysis of examples, elicitation of folk models, and introspection. In view of this argument, in Chapter Three I shortly review the definitions of the concept of war as proposed or at least implied in philosophy, sociol- ogy, literature, mass media studies and linguistics.

This revision is hoped to provide a necessary cultural grounding for the understanding of the concept of war essential in the identification, categorisation and labelling of conceptual metaphors in Chapter Four. A further discussion of the pro- cedure of domain identification and a proposal for a method facilitating it is given in Chapter Five. Nerlich — Clark [] also offer a review of the roots of the present day theory of metaphor. They refer to Locke, Kant and Vico the first two also discussed by Lakoff — Johnson as the founding fa- thers of the 19th and 20th century philosophy of language.

From among many contributors to the field, they consider Wegener 11 as one of the most prominent. Nerlich — Clark Mean- 11 From a long list of authors quoted by Nerlich — Clark I have selected only those few whose affinity to cognitive theories of meaning I deemed most significant. The ideas expressed in Lakoff — Johnson have given spur to many linguistic and interdisciplinary studies of metaphoric thinking. The following passage from Lakoff — John- son The conceptual systems of cultures and religions are metaphorical in nature.

Symbolic metonymies are critical links between everyday experience and the coherent metaphorical systems that characterize religions and cultures. Symbolic metonymies that are grounded in our physical experience provide an essential means of comprehending religious and cultural concepts. Clearly, Conceptual Metaphor Theory can contribute to studies concerned with the intersection of language, cognition and society. It can inform dis- course studies — see Section 2. Their basic premise is that a poetic use of metaphor is based on the very same conceptual experientially grounded metaphors as the everyday metaphors are.

In fact, poetic metaphors consist in the extension, elaboration, questioning and com- position of the same patterns as those discussed in Lakoff — Johnson The authors further develop CMT by positing the existence of generic-level metaphors. These differ from the specific-level or basic metaphors in two ways: This metaphor is built on an elaborate and widespread belief that humans, animals, plants, things, or in short, the world as we know it, can be ordered in a hierarchy from more to less complex or advanced.

Each level has characteristic properties, arranged in such a way that the higher order beings share the properties of the lower order, but not vice versa. For example, humans can have animal instincts, but animals do not have morality. The Great Chain of Being Model per- forms two functions. The second function is per- formed in combination with the Maxim of Quantity, and consists in al- lowing the selection of the most relevant attributes available in the source domain. Interestingly, corpus studies can provide some if only indirect evi- dence for the existence of the Great Chain of Being.

Such sets of words [corpse, body, victim] also provide an insight into the way in which English categorizes a small part of the social world. There are several terms for dead humans. There are terms for dead animals, if they are useful as a food source. But there are no terms for dead insects or smaller dead plants. The vocabulary embodies a hierarchy of importance and gives decreasing attention to humans, ani- mals and plants. Jackendoff — Aaron in their review of Lakoff — Turner stress the same drawbacks of presentation as was the case for Lakoff — Johnson Metaphor from a functional perspective Goatly creatively develops the idea of conceptual metaphors.

He calls their lexical realizations root analogies and plots a complex and de- tailed network of such analogies for the English language. Unlike Lakoff and his co-workers, though, Goatly gives a careful consideration to a number of other approaches to metaphor. This, however, may occasionally result in a certain terminological confu- sion. One such case is with the term simile and its relation to metaphor. Is simile synonymous to metaphor or not? The answer to this question ap- pears in passim Goatly An undisputable contribution of Goatly to CMT is his attempt to place it within a larger framework, that of Relevance Theory and the Halli- dayan functional approach to language.

Goatly believes that the live meta- phor which increases processing effort remains relevant if we extend the suggested levels of decoding, consisting of the knowledge of the language system, the knowledge of the context situation and co-text , and factual and socio-cultural knowledge, by a fourth element: His elaborated model Goatly Conceptual metaphor and its implications for discourse 29 Goatly The next five functions have a strong interpersonal element: Argument by Analogy seems partly ideational, partly emotive; Cultivation of Intimacy, Humour and Games certainly have a phatic element … The ideological function, too, is both ideational and interpersonal ….

Fiction is partly interpersonal an partly textual. Apart from situating CMT within Relevance Theory and functionalism, Goatly gives careful consideration to the processes of identifying lin- guistic metaphors in texts. In order to do so he proposes an exhaustive list of markers which signal that a metaphor has been used.

He also de- vises a methodology for topic target and ground tertium compara- tionis specification. Reliable tests for metaphor identification have always been an im- portant methodological issue. Yet, a regular use of this comprehensive and detailed inventory of lexical and syntactic triggers, seems a formidable research task. Another useful strain of research introduced in Goatly is an attempt to show how contextual variables of a social situation influence the interpretation of metaphors. To do so, he analyses the use of metaphor in six different genres: His results indicate that the distribu- tion of metaphor types within the different genres may depend on the purpose of the text, its discoursal tradition, the relation between the author and the reader of the text and directly related to the processing times available to the addressor and the addressee, which in turn are related to the Processing Effort.

In other cases, different terms should be used, for example catachresis or analogy. Such under- standing may underlie a variety of linguistic expressions, both these which we call metaphor and those which we cal analogy. Lakoff — John- son do not claim that linguistic expressions cannot be classified in the tra- ditional way. What they do is to claim that their functioning, as well as much of human social and cultural, non-linguistic behaviour can be eluci- dated through a conceptual process, which they call conceptual metaphor. He stresses that … all of these types of figures [metaphor, irony, euphemism] are alike in that they communicate in an indirect way what might have been commu- nicated directly in terms of the conventions of language.

For this reason, they have an effect over and above what would accompany the accom- plishment of the intended effect Sadock Similarly to CMT, he agrees that certain meta- phors, e. Ortony acknowledges this terminological difference and points out that the word metaphor is used in present-day cognitive re- search in two meanings: A related inflationary thrust is shown in a persistent tendency … to re- gard all figurative uses of language as metaphorical, and in this way to ig- nore the important distinctions between metaphor and such other figures of speech as simile, metonymy, synecdoche.

He also rejects the division into dead and live metaphors: It is no more helpful than, say, treating a corpse as a special case of a per- son: A so called dead metaphor is not a metaphor at all, but merely an ex- pression that no longer has a pregnant metaphorical use. The secondary subject is to be regarded as a system rather than an indi- vidual thing. This position is similar to that presented by Jackendoff — Aaron in their review of Lakoff — Turner Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Discourse Analysis The studies on the intersection of CMT and discourse have flourished, as evidenced in such works as Nerlich , a and b , Musolff , Charteris-Black and Zinken , Nerlich stresses that metaphors play not only a representational, but also a performative func- tion.

They orient their users towards possibilities for action and shape their involvement and material investment. For example, in the British media representation of Foot and Mouth Disease, the pervasive metaphors were the military metaphors, and military solutions were applied to the problem extermination of large herds of livestock and incineration of their carcasses. Whether the actions could have been different if another mode of representation had been chosen, is impossible to ascertain.

They are strategically fuzzy, ideologically biased, have a social and cultural history, influence social and cultural frames and activate specific emotional commitments. The social grounding of metaphors is also pronounced in Musolff , who proposes to employ the concept of the given scenario within the metaphorical framework to solve the problem of cross-linguistic differ- ences between German and British media representation of the debates about Europe. He shows how, within the same conceptual metaphor, differ- ent sets of mappings are selected in different discourses, giving rise to con- tradictory axiological values of the overall representations.

That is, in Russian, a house is usually a tenement block with many flats, which implies some independence within the flats, but also stresses a need for communal effort in servicing and managing the whole building. In the US and Britain a house is single-family small building set in a garden, fenced with walls.

In this structure of the Source Domain the focus is on the separation from the others, not on co-operation. Charteris-Black places the study of metaphor firmly within a discourse analytic framework and proposes to call it Critical Metaphor Analysis. There are two valuable theoretical contributions in his work.

The second is- sue concerns methodology and calls for enhancing qualitative data analy- sis with quantitative metaphor frequency counts made possible by the use of language corpora. This topic will be further elaborated on in Chapter Two Section 4. Zinken identifies the major difference between the two approaches. ESL, on the other hand, makes a distinction between myth conventional and metaphor performative , defined by Zinken The distinction between metaphors and myths serves the purpose to dis- tinguish two types of an imaginative, narrative understanding of the world: Metaphoric acts can be habitualised and thus be used with very little consciousness — as in what I have called discourse metaphors Zinken et al.

In their lexi- cally based theory of conceptual projection, they draw a clear line between conventional uses of language, which does not require projection though these projections may historically have resulted from them , and innovative uses. They also try to overcome the problem with stable between-the- domains mappings by positing that the projection obtains between lexical concepts senses rather than entire domains.

The lexical concepts are viewed as access points to larger networks of meaning, both linguistic and conceptual. Thus the identification of domains and domain boundaries is no longer a problem. They do not reject CMT entirely, but rather add or re- new its socio-historical focus, as evident in the following passage: Conceptual metaphor and its implications for discourse 35 The authors show that the interpretation of the metaphoric expression de- pends not only on the conventional metaphor that may be or may have been underlying it, but also on its interaction with the context, which fa- cilitates the appropriate profiling of the concept in question.

Cameron — Deignan stress the need to focus on discourse analysis and corpus research in the investigation of the linguistic realisa- tions of conceptual metaphors. They present a number of questions result- ing from their research. For example, they show that linguistic metaphors are subject to lexical and grammatical restrictions.

They refer to Deignan , who discovered specific patterns of distribution of linguistic meta- phors that cannot be explained by reference to the underlying conceptual mappings. For instance the plural noun flames is used more frequently about anger and love, while singular flame more often refers to faith and idealism and rarely to anger. Cameron — Deignan We argue here and elsewhere that the relationship between language and thought is instead a two-way interaction within a single complex system.

In this view metaphor emerges from a dy- namics of language and thinking, and is at the same time conceptual and linguistic. Furthermore our data suggest that the affective — the beliefs, atti- tudes, values, and emotions of participants — plays a central, but often ne- glected, role in the emergence of particular forms of metaphor. They develop their emergentist discourse approach to metaphor further and say: Metaphorical language and metaphorical thinking are therefore interde- pendent, each affecting the other in the dynamic and dialogic processes of talking-and-thinking Cameron — Deignan They also expand their approach with a socio-cultural dimension: An important dimension of the dialogics of metaphor is its use to express affect and attitude along with the ideational content Cameron — Deignan The emphasis on the role of metaphor in the expression of affect and the values of the speaker is also discussed in reference to frame shifting Coulson and axiological semantics Krzeszowski , in Sections 6 and 7, respectively.

All of these studies constitute the theoretical foundation for Chapter Four in which I analyse the use of linguistic metaphor in war reports to identify its function in war discourse in different times and languages. The presentation of data on a selected military conflict as represented in one newspaper is divided into three parts: Paragraph- structuring metaphors are lexical realisations of a single conceptual metaphor underlying larger portions of text, such as a paragraph or an entire article.

They play an important discourse-structuring function. Isolated metaphors are also linguistic expressions motivated by concep- tual metaphors, but their impact on discourse is limited to one sentence or sentence fragment only. Other rhetorical strategies may, or may not be motivated by conceptual metaphors but they contribute to the overall imagery and often enhance the rhetorical effect of the text. The next section gives a brief overview of the Conceptual Meta- phor Theory to consolidate the presentation so far.

Then we turn to other conceptual structures ICM, image schemata, force dynamics organiz- ing our mental processes to finish with Blending Theory and axiological semantics. He structures the taxonomy of metaphors around four coinciding dimensions: Both conceptual and linguistic metaphors can be highly conven- tionalised or novel unconventional. A distinction mentioned before in 2. As far as the nature of metaphors is concerned, they can be either knowledge-based or image-based with a specific sub-type: When it comes to the level of generality, metaphors can either be specific or generic.

These two concepts are related to natural taxonomies with basic level representatives of a category and the hyperonym, the general label for the category. In the case of the conceptual metaphor the generic-level is represented by e. It offers a more structured account of the metaphorical construal of the world and the interaction between meta- phorical expressions and metaphorical concepts. Idealized Cognitive Models Lakoff developed his theory of meaning further in his Women, Fire and Dangerous Things where he proposed the existence of Idealised Cognitive Models as the reference constructs for understanding concepts.

He defines them as follows Lakoff In his discussion of the Dyirbal classifier system, based on Dixon , he isolated what he believes to be the general principles of hu- man categorization There are eight such principles.

Conceptual metaphor - Wikipedia

Cen- trality distinguishes the basic from the peripheral members of the cate- gory. Chaining allows for the structuring of complex categories, so that the basic members can be chained to less central members, and these in turn to the members even further away from the centre. Not all the members are chained to each other, but those which are may be a testi- mony to the extension of the category.

Experiential domains and Ideal- ized Models motivate the links in the chains. They may but need not be culture specific. Specific Knowledge supersedes general types. Category members do not have to share common properties. These principles may explain motivate the existing categories, but cannot predict the new members.

An analysis of the Japanese classifier hon enables Lakoff Finally, he suggests that there are four types of cognitive models: If cognitive models are synonymous to ICMs, it re- mains unclear why one should posit the three last types. The existence of image schemata has been posited by Langacker , , and meta- phoric and metonymic mappings explained in Lakoff — Johnson That is, are 13 Moreover, the status of ICM vs. Fillmorian propositional structure is not deline- ated, either.

If and how they differ is not spelt out. Conceptual metaphor and its implications for discourse 39 propositional structures and image schemata parts of ICMs or are they ex- ternal to ICMs? Are metonymy and metaphor principles cum rules or processes responsible for the change within the models? All of these doubts amount to a fundamental question: Do we need ICMs at all? Do we need an empty label that can be filled in with any concept posited by other authors?

It seems that Lakoff does not give an adequate grounding for the independent existence of ICMs. He simply does not de- fine how they differ from constructs posited earlier and in what way they improve the descriptive adequacy of cognitive linguistic theory.

He claims that our meaning construction emerges from our bodily experience. The physical experience of the human body is the basis for a series of image schemata, which recur in a wide range of human everyday activities. For example, there are gestalts for complex categorical structures, for metaphorical projections, and for uni- fied narrative patterns. There are seven basic im- age schemata, which underlie the notion of force. Blockage represents a situation in which our force meets an obstacle which stops or resists it.

Di- version is viewed as a variant of counterforce, where as a result of the in- teraction of two or more forces their vector is changed. Removal of re- straint is a case in which the obstacle blocking our force is removed by an external force. Attraction takes place when through the operation of magnetic field or gravitation one ob- ject is pulled towards another.

After these detailed considerations Johnson admits that these schemata and features do not exhaust the list of distinct force gestalts and suggests a few more, i. It is difficult at this stage not to see the obvious problem of all se- mantic investigations, that is the number and identity of elements necessary for a description of meaning.

Feature semantics could not solve the prob- lem. Image schemata do not seem to solve it either. Perhaps a desire for a complete definition cannot be satisfied? Johnson used his force gestalts to explain the structure of the Eng- lish modal verbs. His endeavour was based on the work of Talmy and Sweetser The investigation led him from the experientially grounded gestalts to the abstract notion of modality. In this way he hoped to have proven that even the most abstract of human concepts emerge from bodily experience. Force dynamics As a representative of the moderate wing of cognitivism, Talmy is clearly rooted in the generative tradition, as evidenced by the representations he uses Still, he is truly cognitive in an attempt to identify the structuring common to various cognitive systems, such as language, visual perception and reasoning.

Despite the cognitivist demand for real-occurring data, Talmy uses constructed examples and formulates claims which could not be tested statistically, and therefore reduces possible empirical arguments to a manner of speech, as in: That is, linguistic expressions that manifest fictive motion far outnumber ones that manifest fictive stationariness. In other words, linguistic expression exhibits a strong bias toward conceptual dynamism as against staticism Talmy In this passage, expressions such as more, far outnumber, a strong bias toward could be referring to some real statistical values.

Instead, they are used as if they were intensifiers. An Event Frame consists of conceptual elements and interrelationships between them, which are often evoked together or co-evoked. First of all, Talmy stresses both the co- existence and the exclusion of certain elements from the frame window- ing vs. For example, the force-dynamic event frame consists of such sche- matic elements as Agonist and Antagonist, an intrinsic force tendency as- cribed to them — either towards action or towards rest, resultant of the force interaction — either action or rest, balance of strengths — weaker vs.

As can be easily noticed, the elements of the event frame pattern into opposing dyads, receiving additional support from and even more basic characteristics of human reasoning — a propensity for dichotomy. According to Talmy In addition, force—dynamic principles can be seen to operate in discourse, pre- eminently in directing patterns of argumentation, but also in guiding dis- course expectations and their reversal.

He expands this idea in the following passage Talmy This antagonist represents a sense of responsibility or propriety and appears as an internalization of external social values. In effect, per- haps, a force-dynamic opposition originating between the self and the sur- roundings seems here to be introjected into an opposition between parts of the self.

Correspondingly, the desiring part is understood as more central and the blocking or spurring part as more peripheral. Blending Theory Fauconnier presents his Blending Theory as an attempt to under- stand how language processing as well as other cognitive processes can be performed at such a staggering speed. There are three types of mental spaces: Generic space can be understood as a tertium comparationis for the input spaces. This generic space reflects some common, usually more abstract, structure and organi- zation shared by the inputs and defines the core cross-space mappings be- tween them.

Candidates for generic space concepts are image schemas, force dynamic interactions, abstract motion, or the superordinate concepts envisaged by Glucksberg — Keyser []. However, the list of possible GS elements has not been clearly deline- ated.

In fact, it remains an open research programme Turner and Brandt p. The cross-space mappings between at least two input spaces allow for a partial projection into the blend, which is supplemented with three interrelated processes: Conse- quently, the counterparts from the input spaces can be projected into the blend separately; they can be fused, as a result of the projection; or only one of them is projected.

In this way, a part of the blend structure is inher- ited from the inputs, and a part emerges from the above mentioned proc- esses. It remains unclear if the Generic Space has any direct influence on the Blend or is only mediated by the Input Spaces. Another perennial problem in the studies of meaning that is shared by both feature-based semantics on the one hand, and CMT and BT on the other, is the limit to the detail of definition.

Cognitive semantics has criticized feature semantics for not being able to provide a finite, exhaus- tive list of definitional features. It seemed that when the distinction be- tween the encyclopaedic and dictionary definition of lexical items is blurred15 and supplemented with a radial structure of prototype-based categorization, the problem will be solved. But it is not the case. In meta- phorical mappings of CMT as well as cross-space mappings and input — blend projections, the number or nature of these mappings is not clearly determined. Conceptual metaphor and its implications for discourse 45 age-schematic constraint Turner , which has been formulated in rather weak terms: Second, the constraint is not inviolable; however, if it is violated, the violation is to be taken as a carrier of significance Turner As in so many of the examples reviewed in the book, a striking feature of the blended construction is its underspecification.

Although there are strong constrains on blending, which I shall recapitulate below, there is no recipe for knowing what will be projected from the inputs and what will be projected back. In that respect the system is very flexible. In view of the critique of the feature theory on very similar grounds, it is difficult to see this flexibility as a theoretical gain of the new approach. It seems that the only way out of this conundrum is to change the perspec- tive on the issue. Within the regions, it is possible to recognize areas of greater salience, easier to identify and name than others, which can be represented in network nodes.

In this way what was regarded as a weakness of lexical semantic studies can be changed into their strength. Approximate definitions are not incomplete, because of defective or im- perfect lexical analyses, but are a result of the dynamic nature of lexical meaning itself. But it may take a lot of elaboration for the speaker and the hearer to converge on sufficiently similar constructions. And, then again, there is no need for convergence. The folk theoretical illusion that each expression of language has a meaning that we all retrieve in basically the same way allows interlocutors to interact under the impression of mutual comprehension, when in fact they may be engaged in quite different men- tal space construction.

Without at least partial con- vergence of communicated conceptualizations, any social activity would be doomed to failure, which is not the case. The proposal presented in Fauconnier is further elaborated in Fauconnier — Turner One of the issues they expand on is the comprehensive description of the constitutive and governing principles of blending.

The constitutive principles, or the structure of the mental spaces and the basic relations obtaining between them, do not differ much from what was proposed in Fauconnier The governing principles are a new development. They are all, by definition, open to modification. Conceptual metaphor and its implications for discourse 47 and a number of Principles for Compression All of these prin- ciples facilitate the achievement of the overarching goal: This goal can be subdivided into several subgoals such as Com- press what is diffuse, Obtain global insight, Strengthen vital relations, Come up with a story, Go from many to one.

In the running of the blend, the principles and goals can cooperate or compete: Compression helps human scale, human scale helps getting a story, getting a story helps global insight, going from Many to One helps the blend achieve human scale. Similarly, integration competes with unpacking since absolute integration leaves a blend that carries no sign of its distinctive inputs Fauconnier — Turner Cognition is embodied, and the spectacular intellectual feats that human beings perform depend upon being able to anchor the integration networks in blends at human scale, using the vital relations that are employed in perception and action.

It also claims a neurological reality through connections, as indicated on page In the neural interpretation of these cognitive processes, mental spaces are sets of activated neural assemblies, and the lines between elements corre- spond to coactivation-bindings of a certain kind. When it comes to the relationship between blending and conceptual metaphor, Fauconnier He formulates it in the following words: I have a reservation concerning point 1.

Likewise, I disagree with the claim Grady et al. It is therefore not the case that metaphor is responsi- ble for the mappings in the blending process, but rather that blending may be a more general cognitive process, the result of which and not the cause of which is the metaphoric structuring of some concepts. Coulson employs BT, CMT and frame shifting a reorgani- zation of frame elements in semantic representations resulting from a re- stricted deployment of background knowledge on the part of the speaker in order to explain a wide array of semantic leaps phenomena.

An important aspect which she brings forth in her dis- cussion of the abortion debate is the framing of moral discourse. She also points out that, unlike rhetoric theorists, 18 Coulson Semantic leaps is not a technical term, but, rather, a family of interesting natu- ral language phenomena. It includes all sorts of non-standard meanings absent from dictionaries and, typically, not computable by traditional parsers. Leaps include things such as metaphoric and metonymic expressions, hyperbole, un- derstatement, and sarcastic quips.

They also include things such as innuendo, subtle accusations, and the private meanings which arise when people live or work closely together. Conceptual metaphor and its implications for discourse 49 such as Black and Perelman — Olbrechts-Tyteca , cognitive linguists rarely address the issue of values in such constructions. The development of the Blending Theory can contribute to con- ceptual metaphor studies in that it draws the attention of the analysts to the common underlying elements of the Source and Target Domains. Axiological semantics A notable exception to the generalization expressed by Coulson is the work of Krzeszowski , a , who promotes the idea of axiologi- cal semantics.

He further develops this idea: This must be so, because Man is a valuating being. All our actions, our thinking, our attitudes and interactions with the world and with the other people, and last but certainly not least, our emotions are connected with or laden with certain values. To appreciate the presence of values as well as to valuate we need a platform of reference upon which valuations can be made.

In other words, we need to recognize some sys- tem of values. Valuations constitute an aspect of all categorizations, and categorizations directly manifest themselves in language. This establishes a direct link between values and language Krzeszowski a: He further goes on to dis- cuss the axiological aspects of metaphors. A summary of the chapter and an outline for the analysis Conceptual Metaphor Theory is an attempt to elucidate the mental proc- esses responsible for our understanding.

It claims that metaphor-based understanding consists in a co-activation of the source and target do- mains, which can be formalised in terms of metaphorical mappings. As a method of linguistic analysis of metaphorically structured concepts it first requires a description of the concept in terms of the folk model.

The sec- ond step is to identify and name possible conceptual metaphors the evi- dence for which is found in linguistic expressions. Then metaphoric map- pings underlying groups of expressions are formulated. In CMT-informed discourse analysis attempts are made to explain the discourse function of conceptual metaphors Cameron — Deignan , Charteris-Black , Musolff , Nerlich It is not uncommon to hear someone say "He won that argument" or "I attacked every weak point in his argument". The very way argument is thought of is shaped by this metaphor of arguments being war and battles that must be won.

Argument can be seen in other ways than a battle, but we use this concept to shape the way we think of argument and the way we go about arguing. Conceptual metaphors are used very often to understand theories and models. A conceptual metaphor uses one idea and links it to another to better understand something.

For example, the conceptual metaphor of viewing communication as a conduit is one large theory explained with a metaphor. So not only is our everyday communication shaped by the language of conceptual metaphors, but so is the very way we understand scholarly theories.

Conceptual metaphor

These metaphors are prevalent in communication and we do not just use them in language; we actually perceive and act in accordance with the metaphors. In the Western philosophical tradition, Aristotle is often situated as the first commentator on the nature of metaphor, writing in the Poetics , "A 'metaphorical term' involves the transferred use of a term that properly belongs to something else," [6] and elsewhere in the Rhetoric he says that metaphors make learning pleasant; "To learn easily is naturally pleasant to all people, and words signify something, so whatever words create knowledge in us are the pleasantest.

This has been sometimes called the "Traditional View of Metaphor" [8] and at other times the "Classical Theory of Metaphor". In his work Institutio Oratoria , Quintilian states," In totum autem metaphora brevior est similitudo" or "on the whole, metaphor is a shorter form of simile". Janet Soskice , Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of Cambridge , writes in summary that "it is certain that we shall taste the freshness of their insights only if we free them from the obligation to answer questions that were never theirs to ask".

A mapping is the systematic set of correspondences that exist between constituent elements of the source and the target domain. Many elements of target concepts come from source domains and are not preexisting. To know a conceptual metaphor is to know the set of mappings that applies to a given source-target pairing.

The same idea of mapping between source and target is used to describe analogical reasoning and inferences. A primary tenet of this theory is that metaphors are matter of thought and not merely of language: The metaphor may seem to consist of words or other linguistic expressions that come from the terminology of the more concrete conceptual domain, but conceptual metaphors underlie a system of related metaphorical expressions that appear on the linguistic surface.

Similarly, the mappings of a conceptual metaphor are themselves motivated by image schemas which are pre-linguistic schemas concerning space, time, moving, controlling, and other core elements of embodied human experience. Conceptual metaphors typically employ a more abstract concept as target and a more concrete or physical concept as their source.

For instance, metaphors such as 'the days [the more abstract or target concept] ahead' or 'giving my time' rely on more concrete concepts, thus expressing time as a path into physical space, or as a substance that can be handled and offered as a gift. Different conceptual metaphors tend to be invoked when the speaker is trying to make a case for a certain point of view or course of action. For instance, one might associate "the days ahead" with leadership, whereas the phrase "giving my time" carries stronger connotations of bargaining.

Selection of such metaphors tends to be directed by a subconscious or implicit habit in the mind of the person employing them. The principle of unidirectionality states that the metaphorical process typically goes from the more concrete to the more abstract, and not the other way around. Accordingly, abstract concepts are understood in terms of prototype concrete processes. The term "concrete," in this theory, has been further specified by Lakoff and Johnson as more closely related to the developmental, physical neural, and interactive body see embodied philosophy.

One manifestation of this view is found in the cognitive science of mathematics , where it is proposed that mathematics itself, the most widely accepted means of abstraction in the human community, is largely metaphorically constructed, and thereby reflects a cognitive bias unique to humans that uses embodied prototypical processes e. The conduit metaphor is a dominant class of figurative expressions used when discussing communication itself metalanguage. It operates whenever people speak or write as if they "insert" their mental contents feelings, meanings, thoughts, concepts, etc.

Thus, language is viewed as a "conduit" conveying mental content between people. Defined and described by linguist Michael J. Reddy, PhD, his proposal of this conceptual metaphor refocused debate within and outside the linguistic community on the importance of metaphorical language. In their work, Lakoff and Johnson closely examined a collection of basic conceptual metaphors, including:. The latter half of each of these phrases invokes certain assumptions about concrete experience and requires the reader or listener to apply them to the preceding abstract concepts of love or organizing in order to understand the sentence in which the conceptual metaphor is used.

There are numerous ways in which conceptual metaphors shape human perception and communication, especially in mass media and in public policy. Lakoff and Johnson focus on English, and cognitive scholars writing in English have tended not to investigate the discourse of foreign languages in any great detail to determine the creative ways in which individuals negotiate, resist, and consolidate conceptual metaphors.

Andrew Goatly in his book Washing the Brain [15] considers ideological conceptual metaphors as well as Chinese conceptual metaphors. Underhill, a modern Humboldtian scholar, attempts to reestablish Wilhelm von Humboldt 's concern for the different ways languages frame reality, and the strategies individuals adopt in creatively resisting and modifying existing patterns of thought.

Taking on board the Lakoff-Johnson paradigm of conceptual metaphor, he investigates the way in which Czech communists appropriated the concept of the people, the state and struggle, and the way German Communists harnessed concepts of eternity and purity. He also reminds us that, as Klemperer, the main critic of Hitlerdeutsch, demonstrates, resisting patterns of thought means engaging in conceptual metaphors and refusing the logic that ideologies impose upon them.

A less extreme, but similar, claim is made by George Lakoff in his book Moral Politics and his later book on framing , Don't Think of an Elephant! Lakoff claims that the public political arena in America reflects a basic conceptual metaphor of ' the family. Two basic views of political economy arise from this desire to see the nation-state act 'more like a father' or 'more like a mother. Urban theorist and ethicist Jane Jacobs made this distinction in less gender-driven if not wholly desexualizing terms by differentiating between a 'Guardian Ethic' and a 'Trader Ethic'. In a society where guarding children is the primary female duty and trading in a market economy is the primary male duty, Lakoff posits that children assign the 'guardian' and 'trader' roles to their mothers and fathers, respectively.

Both of these theories suggest that there may be a great deal of social conditioning and pressure to form specific cognitive bias. Anthropologists observe that all societies tend to have roles assigned by age and gender, which supports this view. Lakoff and Johnson both devote a significant amount of time to current events and political theory, suggesting that respected linguists and theorists of conceptual metaphor may tend to channel their theories into political activism.

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