Lecture 7. The cognitive view of metaphor

• 1. Conceptual system of world reflection

• 2. Universal metaphors
• Interrelationship of culture, language and
consciousness has always attracted linguists. The
study of a language role in national-cultural
construction of the world picture is of great
importance.
• Any language serves as a code, a link between a
person’s inner and outer world: a person, perceiving
the world in the activity process, records the results
of such cognition in his language and culture.
• In this case, the world picture can be understood as
the totality of knowledge about the world, impressed
in one or another language form, a specific language
vision of the world characteristic of every person.
• Language world picture is a definite way of
conceptualizing reality which is specific for a
definite language and is partly universal and partly
nationally specific; therefore, native speakers can
see the world in the light of their own languages.
• In accordance with modern cognitive
semantics conception, metaphorical modelling
is a means of reality comprehension,
presentation and estimation in people’s
mentality which reflects their national self-
consciousness.
• Metaphors play the role of one of the most
productive means of secondary nominations forming
in language world picture creation and possesses the
property of: “foisting(impose) specific world view on
the native speakers;
• such view is the result of the conceptual system of
world reflection colouring in accordance with
national cultural traditions and the very ability of a
language to foist(impose) invisible world in this or
that way” .
• George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their famous
work “Metaphors We Live By” have suggested that
metaphors are not merely stylistic, but are also
cognitively important; they are pervasive(universal)
in everyday life in thought and action as well as in
language.
• They created the concept of “conduit(channel)
metaphor”, helping to understand that
communication is something that ideas go into; the
container is separate from the ideas themselves.
• Lakoff and Johnson and others have strengthened
the connection between metaphor and thought by
proposing that the conceptual system is not only
involved in the processing of metaphor, but that
thought is itself structured metaphorically.
• Metaphors are an essential component of human
cognition and a means of conceptualising more
abstract areas of our experience in terms of
familiar and concrete.
• They involve(include) a source domain
(usually concrete and familiar), a target
domain (usually abstract or less structured),
and a set of mapping relations or
correspondences between them. In the
conceptual metaphor COMPETITION IS WAR,
for example, WAR is the source and
COMPETITION is the target domain.
• With the help of conceptual metaphors we can
understand theories and models, because they
use one idea and link it to another to
understand some things better.
• The very way we understand scholarly theories
is also shaped by the language of conceptual
metaphors; they prevail(dominate) in
communication and we actually perceive and
act in accordance with them.
• Ethno cultural metaphor is an important
element of language world picture,
representing the manner of reality
classification and division which is accepted in
certain language communities and serves as a
reflection of the existing system of values.
• The parameters of such correspondences can
be diverse, for example the presence, absence
or dominance in metaphors of any language of
one of the four elements (earth, fire, air,
water), the context they are used in,
attachment of feelings, emotions and personal
qualities to the parts of human body, up-down
distributions etc.
• Thus, for instance, we can suppose that for English people, to
some extent, hydrophobia is what typically comes from the
presence in the English language of a whole number of
expressions, including the word “water,” which denote trouble,
• e.g. “under water,” “water under the bridge,” “to get into hot
water,” “to keep one’s head above the water.”. At the same time
phraseological unit “to be all water under the bridge” speaks
about relationship when mistakes or troubles are forgotten. It
follows from this that water in most cases is associated with
trouble .
•  
• Let us take as an example the English “animal”
metaphor.
• The considerable part of animals’ and birds’ names
in the English cultural-speech consciousness is
connected with the concept “he,” although the
modern grammar system relates to the neutral
gender “it,” in particular the metaphorical basis
“he” is connected with such images as “Frog,”
“Fish,” “Caterpillar,” “Tortoise,”.
• In a word, ethno cultural metaphors serve as one of
the main components of a nation mentality, the
circle of concepts, assimilated by a nation.
• Peoples, who are close historically and culturally,
have much in common in the essential layer of set
metaphorical expressions.
• For instance, in English iron serves as an indicator
of hardness and firmness, hence there are such
idioms as “a man of iron,” “iron-bound” and so on.
• 2. Native speakers of all languages use a large number
of metaphors when they communicate about the world.
• Such metaphorically used words and expressions may
vary considerably across different languages. The
"images" different languages and cultures employ can
be extremely diverse.
• Given this diversity, it is natural to ask: Are there any
universal metaphors at all, if by "universal" we mean
those linguistic metaphors that occur in each and
every language?
• Not only is this question difficult because it
goes against our everyday experiences and
intuitions as regards metaphorical language in
diverse cultures, but also because it is
extremely difficult to study, given that there
are 4-6000 languages spoken around the world
today.
• The system of metaphors called the Event
Structure metaphor includes submetaphors
such as causes are forces, states are
containers, purposes are destinations, action is
motion, difficulties are impediments (to
motion), and so forth.
• Remarkably, this set of submetaphors occurs, in
addition to English, in such widely different
languages and cultures as Chinese (Yu 1998) and
Hungarian .
• As a final example, Lakoff and Johnson describe the
metaphors used for one's inner life in English. It
turns out that metaphors such as self control is object
possession, subject and self are adversaries, the self
is a child, are shared by English, Japanese, and
Hungarian.
• Given that one's inner life is a highly elusive
phenomenon, and hence would seem to be
heavily culture- and language-dependent, one
would expect a great deal of significant cultural
variation in such a metaphor.
• All in all, then, we have a number of cases that
constitute near-universal or potentially
universal conceptual metaphors, although not
universal metaphors in the strong sense.
• So how did the same conceptual metaphor emerge then
in these diverse languages?
• The best answer seems to be that there is some
"universal bodily experience" that led to its emergence.
• Lakoff and Johnson argued early that English has the
metaphor because when we are happy, we tend to be
physically up, moving around, be active, jump up and
down, smile (i.e., turn up the corners of the mouth),
rather than down, inactive, and static, and so forth.
• These are undoubtedly universal experiences
associated with happiness (or more precisely, joy),
and they are likely to produce potentially universal
(or near-universal) conceptual metaphors.
• The emergence of a potentially universal
conceptual metaphor does not, of course mean that
the linguistic expressions themselves will be the
same in different languages that possess a
particular conceptual metaphor.
• Metaphorical linguistic expression may vary widely
cross-culturally but many conceptual metaphors
appear to be potentially universal or near-universal.
• This happens because people across the world share
certain bodily experiences.
• However, even such potentially universal metaphors
may display variation in their specific details
because people do not use their cognitive capacities
in the same way from culture to culture.
 Questions on lecture 7
• 1. How does a language serve between a person’s inner and
outer world?
• 2. Define the notion ‘Language world picture’.
• 3. What is metaphorical modelling?
• 4. What is the role of Metaphors in language world picture
creation?
• 5. What language units are Metaphors according to George
Lakoff and Mark Johnson?
• 6. Define the notions ‘a source domain’ and ‘a target domain’.
• 7.Why is the ethno cultural metaphor an important element of
language world picture?