Lingua Inglese - Corso Monografico

Conceptual Metaphor

In Lakoff's opinion, the essence of metaphor is to understand and experience one kind of thing in terms of another. He describes metaphor as the vehicle for our everyday reasoning and action. Our conceptual system, through which we both think and act, is metaphorical in nature. We can study this system through the observation of language: since communication is based on the same conceptual system that we use to think and act, language allows us to study this system. Language is used to understand the way metaphors work because of metaphor's systematicity, which is the manner of using certain vocabulary expressions to talk about certain metaphorical expressions and concepts. Systematicity also concerns the link between metaphorical concepts.

According to the contemporary theory, metaphor is primarily conceptual, conventional, and part of the ordinary system of thought and language. This theory can be traced back to Michael Reddy, who shows that metaphor is placed...

In thought, not in language;

metaphor is major and indispensable part of our ordinary way of conceptualizing

the world;everyday behaviorour reflects our metaphorical understanding of experience.

A major difference between the contemporary theory and the classical one is based on the

literal-figurative distinction. classical theories of language

In :metaphor was seen as a matter of language, not thought (language vs. thought)

o metaphorical expressions were assumed to be out of the realm of ordinary

o everyday language (ordinary vs. figurative language)

this theory was not merely taken to be true but came to be taken as definitional.

The word metaphor was defined as a novel or poetic linguistic expression where one or more

words for a concept are used outside of its normal conventional meaning to express a similar

concept.

contemporary theory cross-domain mapping in the

The (Lakoff) describes metaphor aconceptual system. literal,

Those concepts that are not comprehended via

A conceptual metaphor might be called but as soon as one gets away from concrete physical experience and starts talking about abstractions or emotions, metaphorical understanding is the norm. The metaphor involves understanding one domain of experience (e.g. love) in terms of a very different domain of experience (e.g. journeys): the principle that allows us to do that is the scenario metaphor.

More technically, the metaphor can be understood as a mapping from a source domain to a target domain, which is tightly structured. There are ontological correspondences that make it possible to associate entities in the source domain with entities in the target domain. The strategy used to name these mappings is "mnemonics". Mnemonic names typically have the form of "target domain is source domain" or "target domain" as "source domain".

TARGET DOMAIN	SOURCE DOMAIN
LOVERS	JOURNEY
RELATIONSHIP	VEHICLE
LIFE GOALS	DESTINATIONS

The metaphor is not the mnemonic.

which is just a short way to make reference to the metaphor. The metaphor is the mapping. The mapping is the set of correspondences, whereas “love is a journey” is just the name of this mapping. We can use “love is a journey” as a way to refer to the mapping by mnemonic. The mapping is conventional, which means that it is a fixed part of our conceptual system, one of our conventional ways of conceptualizing love relationships. conceptual metaphor linguistic In addition, we can make a difference between the metaphor and the metaphorical expression. The first one itself is the mapping (metaphorical expression). the source-target domain relation, to which many metaphorical expressions may correspond or refer to. The term metaphorical expression refers to a linguistic expression (a word, phrase or sentence) that is the surface realization of such a cross-domain mapping (this is what the word metaphor referred to in old theory). Polysemy generalization is a generalization over related senses.linguistic expressions.
Inferential generalization is a generalization over inferences across different conceptual domains.
Some of the characteristics of metaphors are:
- not mere words: metaphors are not just a matter of language but of thought and reason;
- fixed: when a mapping is in our conceptual system, it allows us to understand new and imaginative uses of the mapping (given the ontological correspondences and other knowledge);
- fixed pattern: each conventional metaphor (or each mapping) is a set of conceptual correspondences across conceptual domains, so each mapping defines an open-ended class of potential correspondences across inference patterns.
One other feature is that of hierarchy which puts "mappings" at the superordinate level. For example, in the LOVE IS A JOURNEY mapping, a love relationship corresponds to a vehicle, which is a superordinate category. Whereas special cases (such as car, boat, train) are collocated in a basic level. This happens because

Generalizations allow us to maximize the possibilities for mapping some rich conceptual structure in the source domain onto the target domain, since it permits many basic-level instances, each of which is information rich.

Some concepts that normally collocated into the grammars of languages are metaphorical in nature; in this case metaphor becomes central to grammar. These concepts are:

• Categories: they are understood metaphorically in terms of bounded regions or containers. The logic of classical categories is the logic of containers (if X is in container A and container A is in container B, then X is in container B). This logic comes from the topological properties of containers.
• Quantity and linear scales: the concept of quantities involves at least two metaphors. The first one is the "more is up, less is down" metaphor. The second one is that "linear scales are paths". The metaphor maps the starting point of the path onto the bottom of the scale and maps distance

the constraints of language and conceptualization. By understanding the underlying image-schemas and their mappings onto abstract concepts, we can gain insight into the cognitive processes involved in abstract reasoning. For example, the concept of quantity is often understood in terms of containers. We talk about "filling up" a container with objects or "emptying" a container. This metaphorical mapping from containers to quantity is based on the invariance principle, where the exterior of a container is mapped onto the concept of quantity. Similarly, the interior of a container is mapped onto the concept of emptiness or lack of quantity. Another example is the concept of paths and goals. We often talk about "reaching a goal" or "following a path." This metaphorical mapping from paths to goals is also based on the invariance principle, where the source of a path is mapped onto the concept of starting point or origin, and the goal of a path is mapped onto the concept of destination or endpoint. These examples illustrate how metaphorical mappings from spatial image-schemas to abstract concepts are guided by the invariance principle. This principle ensures that the cognitive topology of the source domain is preserved in the target domain, allowing us to reason about abstract concepts in terms of spatial relationships. In conclusion, the invariance principle provides a framework for understanding the metaphorical nature of abstract reasoning. By recognizing the underlying image-schemas and their mappings onto abstract concepts, we can better understand the cognitive processes involved in abstract reasoning.

Some metaphors come in this phenomenon is called duality. For example, Timepassing is a motion. It is possible for two different metaphorical mappings to exist in two different parts of a sentence. The phrase "within the coming weeks" makes use of the metaphor of time as a stationary landscape which has extension and bounded regions. On the other hand, "coming" makes use of the metaphor of time as a moving object. This is possible because the two metaphors for time pick out different aspects of the target domain. In fact, "the coming weeks" conceptualizes those weeks as a whole, in motion relative to the observer, while "within" looks inside that whole and conceptualizes it as a bounded region.

Metaphorical mappings are sometimes organized in hierarchical structures, in which "lower" mappings in the hierarchy get the structure of

the“higher” mappings.

Example.

LEVEL 1: the event structure metaphor

LEVEL 2: A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS JOURNEY

LEVEL 3: LOVE IS A JOURNEY metaphors”

Among conceptual metaphors, there are “image “one shot” which simply map oneimage onto other.metaphors”

“Strategic are those that have a crucial role in affection ongoing political decisionsand actions. The strategic component is caused by a “coincidence” of a peculiar kind“synchronic co-incidence”.

PERSUASION ANALYSIS

To analyse persuasion in text we need to make reference to the general framework:contextual perspective: analysis”- this level is also known as “preliminary and the tools itinvolves are genre and context. The first level of analysis, which is known as “preliminaryreading” has to do with keywords extrapolation, contextualization of the speech as acommunicative event and identification of genre and register.

Textual perspective:

analysis - it is also known as textual and the tools involved are word order, evaluation, ideology, rhetorical structures, figures, arguments or argumentative lines, frames, discourse worlds, narratives etc.

Cognitive perspective - it's made of a four-step procedure and it's known as cognitive and interactional analysis; it mostly involves the analysis of metaphors and emotions.

This framework has different levels and, according to the degree of delicacy, it can be divided into major (I), medium (II) and microtext analysis (III). It's since it allows communication amongst the different levels, and circular, as from the micro text we can go back to the macro text. The major level includes the framework as a whole, which means it includes all the level of analysis. The medium level involves the textual perspective (plus narrative analysis) and also

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The cognitive perspective. The micro level is based on a four-step procedure. Political discourse. As we analyse as a genre, we have to pay attention to the institutions of the country appealed to. For example, the British Prime Minister's speeches (speeches and statements) are different from the America President speeches (AN, SU, RA): this happens because of the different institutional context. Limbo. The shift from contextual-textual (II) to cognitive perspective (III) is marked by the which social cognitions and models deals with and which does not consist in a specific step in the analytic process, but only allows us to create a link between the two different levels. Social cognitions include knowledge, attitudes and ideologies and they are defined as mental representations shared by members of social collectivities and distributed over them. They monitor discourse, communication and all the forms of a