COGNITIVE SEMANTICS: LOVE IS A JOURNEY (LAKOFF & JOHNSON)
Strictly speaking, a Conceptual Metaphor is a cognitive phenomenon and, as such, it is not made explicit in everyday language under the form "X stands for Y". Consequently, its realization is achieved through an unconscious process of instantiation, i.e., the projection of the Conceptual Metaphor onto linguistic expressions belonging to specific conceptual fields to refer to other unrelated conceptual domains.
Metaphors cover the entire conceptual world we live in and provide extensive inventories of instantiations of the most common conceptual metaphors in English. These examples, however copious, do not demonstrate the actual pervasiness and frequency of occurrence of CMs in ordinary language, a phenomenon which can only be perceived in a speaker's discourse not biased by any previous knowledge of the theory under analysis.
This is primarily what we attempt to achieve inductively in this study, namely, to demonstrate the actual relevance of CMs in the structuring of a speaker's discourse focused on a given topic. We take into account discursive concepts such as Halliday's theme,"...the set of options by means of which a speaker or writer is enabled to create texts -to use language in a way that is relevant to the context" ), information unit, which "represents the speaker's organization of the discourse into message units." and Chomsky's focus, which "determines the relation of the utterance to... other sentences in the discourse." However, we do refer to formal or intonational components of discourse, but only to the deep semantic aspects of conveyed messages through clauses in a discourse, since, as Lakoff points out, "The semantic content of the focus is an assertion of coreferentiality. ...the lexical-semantic content of the surface structure constituent bearing main stress has nothing whatever to do with the semantic content of the focus."
We consider discourse as the
largest unit of language, semantically structured by a general topic and constituted by more specific
pieces of discourse, which are structured by more specific topics. From this
point of view, the cohesion of
discourse lies in the experiential conceptualization that allows the users of a
language to communicate; in other words, basic physical experience and
conceptual metaphors.
Our second goal is to verify
whether this cognitive organizing phenomenon is comparable in the case of
native speakers of English and Spanish. To that extent, we carried out a fairly
in-depth analysis of the way they metaphorically conceptualize their feelings
and emotions as concerns LOVE and DEATH, and their reasonings in the case of
POLITICS and ECONOMICS.
In
order to carry out an in-depth analysis,
we will concentrate on only 4 areas of human understanding in this
study, two of them deeply rooted in culture (LOVE and DEATH) and the other two
(ECONOMICS and POLITICS) of a technical and scientific nature. The areas
selected for the study of CMs were researched both in oral and written
discursive units in the two languages. In the first case, the corpus analysed
was gathered through interviews held with native speakers of American English
and of Chilean Spanish. In the second case, the data were collected through a
sampling of selected texts from the political and the economy sections of
newspapers in both languages. The interviews comprised a set of ten items in
the case of LOVE and of nine in the case of DEATH, some of them direct
questions and others, suggestions of topics to talk about, each related to
subject matters that fall within the culturally determined domains inquired
into. Written texts were used to analyse some of the CMs that provide
underlying structure to the technical-scientific areas. We analysed 4 written
texts, one for each topic and language. These materials provided sufficient
data for researching the underlying metaphors that structure the
conceptualization of the domains selected. At the same time, they provided a
comprehensive view of the intentional and situational meanings that the CMs map onto the literal
metaphors present in these texts as units of discourse.
To
analyse the data we applied the metaphorical interpretation process proposed by
Carbonell, primarily intended as a metaphor understanding mechanism in
computational analysis. To describe his method Carbonell uses technical
language that belongs, in many cases, to this field of research. As students of
linguistics, we have introduced some modifications in the original analysis so
as to make it more concordant with a study of human understanding of the
domains already stated. As to the linguistic unit adopted, instead of focusing
on single utterances as Carbonell does, we have chosen discourse for our
analysis, so as to examine utterances in their relations to one another.
Carbonell's general process for applying metaphor-mapping knowledge is the
following:
1. LITERALNESS TEST:
"Attempt to analyze the input utterance in a literal, conventional
fashion. If this fails, and the failure is caused by a semantic case-constraint
violation, go to the next step".
First, all the utterances of a text in which non-literal language is
used have to be isolated. By non-literal we mean any utterance in which a
case of semantic violation is detected. More specifically, we will treat as
semantic violation any utterance in which we detect a conflict between the
semantic features of, at least, two constituents of the utterance under
analysis. This implies to have every item analysed in terms of the relation of
their semantic cases and types of predicates (actions, states and processes).
For this purpose, we use case model theory, as originally proposed by Fillmore, which distinguishes six propositional cases: Agent, Instrumental, Dative, Factitive, Locative, and Objective. Four of these cases were
sufficient for our analysis:
Agent
Dative
Locative
Objective
Objective includes here the cases of Instrumental
and Factitive, since the current
analysis deals only with the three main semantic features attached to cases:
Concreteness
Animateness
Humanity
For the Objective and Locative cases, only the feature of Concreteness is required. For Agent and Dative, a distinction must be made between predicates which can be
attached to any animate being and those which can only be assigned to human
animate beings, thus requiring cases which fulfill the feature of Humanity (e.g., to read, to feel, to
love, to think). To illustrate this, let us take the sentence the prices jumped. According to the
predicate involved, its corresponding case should be an Agent. But the entity involved cannot satisfy the needed
requirements of Concreteness and of Animateness; this is therefore an
example of Concreteness and Animateness in Agent.
In examining further analyses of case theory (Cook), we have found that new cases proposed to specify semantic relations can be analysed in terms of their literalness; therefore, they can also be subject to this test. Only the most general cases may avoid this semantic 'trap'.
Accordingly, we propose a set of three cases of Semantic Conflict [SC]:
Reference Conflict (RC): To account for a lack of physical
action/state reference, i.e., what is described is not actually (in physical terms) referred to.
Semantic Feature Conflict (SFC): To deal with the already mentioned relation of cases to actions/states. It is crucial to emphasize that SFC always involves RC, but not vice versa. Prices cannot possibly jump: they are neither Animate nor Concrete entities. But in the Spanish sentence me tiré a la piscina, there is no semantic violation; what is involved here is only a Reference Conflict, since no actual physical action is referred to.
Identification Conflict (IC): To refer to any instance of explicit metaphor (e.g., my life is rubbish), intended as a literal expression or as the speaker's "creative" expression.
2. RECOGNITION NETWORK:
"A recognition network contains the information necessary to decide
whether or not a linguistic utterance is an instantiation of the general
[conceptual] metaphor..."
According to Carbonell, there appears to be a small number of CMs
and metonymies (Mets), in the order of 50, that pervade commonly spoken
English. Many of these have been identified and exemplified by Lakoff and
Johnson, as well as by Carbonell himself. We will
use these CMs/ Mets for the recognition of metaphorical instantiations.
3. BASIC MAPPING:
(It) establishes those features of the literal input that are
directly mapped onto a different meaning by the metaphor. (Carbonell)
Once the CM underlying the instantiation(s) is identified, the next
step is to provide a rule by means of which the apparent semantic conflict case
is solved through a metaphorical process that involves the reinterpretation of
the semantic feature which causes the conflict, matching the components of the
CM (X and Y) with the pertinent roles of the analysed utterance. This
reinterpretation process will be graphically displayed in the form of re-read
rules of the type [A][B], which must be interpreted as meaning "re-read A as
B", A being the source domain and B being the target domain.
4. TRANSFER MAPPING:
"(It)
is a filter that determines which additional parts of the literal input may be
mapped onto the conceptual representation, and establishes exactly the
transformation that this additional information must undergo".
This step involves the same metaphorical reinterpretation process as
in 3, but in this case it includes
all the additional semantic features and variables which enrich and specify the
overall metaphorical meaning. This information will also be displayed in the
form of re-read rules.
5. IMPLICIT-INTENTION COMPONENT:
"The Implicit-Intention
Component encodes the reasons why [a] metaphor is
typically chosen by a writer or speaker..."
Carbonell states that a writer chooses a metaphor as a function of
the ideas he or she wants to convey to the reader; the understander ought to
know why the particular metaphor was chosen and what the metaphor conveys that
is absent from a literal expression of the same concept. In this final step, one
is able to account for the speaker's choice of a metaphorical expression
instead of a literal one, taking into account for this purpose the emotional,
cultural, and social variables that might play a role in this choice.
We have found
that Conceptual Metaphors pervade the four cultural areas under research;
therefore, they are basic constituents of cognitive processes, discourse
organization and human understanding.
CMs and Mets are
basic conceptualizations; they cannot be paraphrased. Through the
Implicit-intention analysis, we have found that in many cases CMs and Mets
overlap, that is to say, they explain themselves circularly, by means of other
CMs and Mets. This fact rejects the dicotomy between literal and non-literal
meaning: due to the high frequency of 'non-literal' instantiations we cannot
continue clasifying meaning as we have been doing so far.
Differences
between the two languages, though they exist, are only relevant in terms of the
frequency of different Conceptual Metaphors or Metonymies; they reveal
predictable specific inherent peculiarities of each culture.
Conceptual
differences between sex groups, although detected, were not accounted for since
they are not significant in the same terms as differences between languages,
frequency related to specific relevance. In-depth analyses of differences
related to sex and culturally specific conceptions and approaches to the
analysed areas would require further and much more specific studies than the
one attempted here.
Along with the
verification of the pervasiness of metaphorical conceptualizations, we have
come across another interesting aspect: the areas of love and death are equally
important in terms of CMs: LIFE IS A JOURNEY/ LOVE IS A JOURNEY, PEOPLE ARE CONTAINERS OF STATES, and EVENTS
ARE OBJECTS/ CONTAINERS. This can also be observed in the areas of economics
and politics, whereas the following Metonymy prevails: THE INSTITUTION FOR THE
PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE.
The latter
finding led to the conclusion that the four conceptual areas analysed can be
conflated under two macrometaphors, namely, the Event Structure Metaphor (which
entails the CMs EVENTS ARE OBJECTS/ CONTAINERS and LIFE IS A JOURNEY/ LOVE IS A
JOURNEY) and the Met THE INSTITUTION FOR THE PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE. In effect, it
was found that they act as conceptual superstructures of the metaphorical
processes seen at work in all the researched domains, and consequently, they
appear to be the underlying semantic macroconstituents of the discourses
involving the topics of love, death, economics, and politics.
We will examine
the macrometaphors found in our analysis with some detail, and end up by
discussing the relevance of metaphor and Lakoff and Johnson's theory to
linguistics.
THE
EVENT-STRUCTURE METAPHOR: The current analysis coincides with Lakoff's proposal concerning the Event Structure Metaphor: various aspects of event
structure, including notions like states, changes, processes, actions, causes,
purposes, and means, are cognitively characterized via metaphor in terms of
space, motion, and force. This general metaphor is organized in
hierarchical structures, in which 'lower' mappings in the hierarchy (LOVE IS A
JOURNEY) inherit the structures of
'higher' mappings (LIFE IS A JOURNEY), as Lakoff aptly puts it,
"In our culture, life is assumed to be purposeful, that is, we are
expected to have goals in life. In the Event Structure Metaphor, purposes are
destinations and purposeful action is self-propelled motion toward a
destination. A purposeful life is a longterm activity, and hence a journey.
Goals in life are destinations on the journey. The actions one takes in life
are self-propelled movements, and the totality of one's actions form a path to
a destination... One's expected progress through life is charted in terms of a
life schedule, which is conceptualized as a virtual traveler that one is
expected to keep up with. ... the metaphor A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY makes
use of all the structure of the Event Structure Metaphor, since events in a
life conceptualized as purposeful are subcases of events in general. ...events in a love relationship are special cases of life events.
Thus, the LOVE IS A JOURNEY metaphor inherits the structure of the LIFE IS A
JOURNEY metaphor. What is special about the LOVE IS A JOURNEY metaphor, is that
there are two lovers, who are travelers, and that the love relationship is a
vehicle. The rest of the mapping is a consequence of inheriting the LIFE IS A
JOURNEY metaphor. Because the lovers are in the same vehicle, they have common
destinations, that is, common life goals. Relationship difficulties are
impediments to travel".
A metaphor higher up in the hierarchy, such as the Event Structure
metaphor, is more widely spread than those at lower levels. In fact, it should
be a universal phenomenon since all human beings experience and refer to
events. Lower CMs, like LIFE IS A JOURNEY and LOVE IS A JOURNEY, are more
culturally restricted. However, we have seen that these lower CMs pervade the
two western languages under analysis. The universality of the Event Structure
Metaphor could only be tested in relation to utterly different cultures.
In addition,
CMs like LIFE IS A JOURNEY, LOVE IS A JOURNEY, ECONOMIC ACTIVITY IS A RACE,
etc., share the common conceptualization of defining TIME in physical-spatial
terms: periods of time are stretches of land, sequence in time is movement,
moments and events are places, past and future are directions, time is even
conceived of as a surface or as a moving object. This conceptualization is
essential since most aspects of our lives (life itself, actually) are partially
or totally defined in terms of time (i.e., what we believe that time is). Now,
why is this CM the one selected to define time? Probably because our physical
experience in terms of place is our most basic experience, and our concepts of
movement, orientation, distance, existence, and others spring from this
experience. Another reason may be found in that TIME and PLACE are closely
related concepts since it is on the bases of both that we attribute existence
to people and objects.
However, we
know that TIME, at least in our occidental culture, is also defined in terms of
another widely spread CM, namely, TIME IS MONEY. The difference between the two
conceptualizations is the apparent basicness of TIME IS PLACE. As shown by
Lakoff and Johnson, TIME IS MONEY is a culturally based CM: its existence is
intimately related to the socio-economic system in which we act; if this
cultural factor changes, so would this CM. TIME IS PLACE, on the other hand,
defines our concept of time in more elementary terms since it is previous to any other
conceptualization.
Another
important finding is that the Event Structure Metaphor proved also to be
relevant in the conceptualization of what discourse is in itself: since a
discourse is perceived as having a continuity in time and time is mainly
understood as movement, DISCOURSE IS A JOURNEY is the CM that structures our conception
of discourse. This is useful to understand how
we structure what we are saying in a discourse and throws light on the
meaning of sequential discursive markers like "now",
"then", "next", and "finally", among others.
We have pointed
out that our spatial experience is a basic one, but a different thing is to
claim, as we have done through this study, that places are clearly shaped and
defined concrete entities. The question is: are places (concrete) entities? Our
answer is twofold: for methodological purposes in this analysis, they are
basically concrete entities; we assume that we experience no trouble in
recognizing a stretch of territory, a country, a town, a house, etc.. Strictly
speaking, nevertheless, we must recognize that in many instances places are not
as concrete and well-defined as other entities ( like balls, boxes, tables,
houses, planes, etc.). In fact, we generally attribute shapes and boundaries to
tracts of land on completely arbitrary conventions, without any overt boundary
indicating physical separation. For example, a pencil ends clearly where no
more of it is perceived through our senses; on the contrary, the exact division
between Chile Argentina
This answer may
seem contradictory: if we know that the very concept of place is a
metaphorization of some type involving the entification of what is not an
entity, why do we treat it as an object in our analysis? The issue at stake
here is that of the difference between a physical and a basic experience.
Perceiving a tree as a concrete entity is probably easier than perceiving Nepal
It follows from the previous
discussion that our most common mental categories -TIME, STATE, CHANGE,
CAUSATION, ACTION, PURPOSE and MEANS- are conceptualized via metaphor. The fact
that such categories constitute core notions of our conceptual systems, shows
that metaphor is central to ordinary abstract thought (Lakoff 1992: 36).
THE INSTITUTION FOR THE PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE
Concerning the discourse
of economics, the metonymic conceptualization THE INSTITUTION FOR THE PEOPLE
RESPONSIBLE serves to relate abstract institutions to other collective
entities, such as 'the people' and 'public opinion'; otherwise, it would be
difficult, if not impossible, to articulate discourse in this area. In the
discourse of politics, on the contrary, we have already seen that metonymies
are not inescapable phenomena like the CMs STATES/ EVENTS ARE OBJECTS; in fact,
they convey 'economical' ways of referring to political matters, which can
perfectly be paraphrased. Their existence, however, allows for a number of
processes which can have political significance, as discussed in Section
4.
These two types
of discourse are not as primary as those that are built on topics dealing with
love and death. All the same, they are of great significance in contemporary
western society and in everyday interaction. Despite this significance, the
concepts they involve cannot be defined in simple terms. In fact, there is no agreement,
even among specialists in these fields, as to what expressions such as
"the people", "public opinion", "socially
positive", and "common good" mean.
Let us examine
two instantiations in each language:
.. The United States
.. United States
.. Estados
Unidos ha asumido el rol de gendarme
.. Occidente
se arrepiente de haber armado al "monstruo".
In the first two
cases, the writer's attitude towards the political action of the entity United
States
and
justification, whereas in the remaining ones the writer's attitude is that of
criticism. However, both use the same cross-domain mapping:
UNITED STATES PERSON LEADER
[- concrete] [+
concrete] [+
human]
[+ abstract entity] [+
animate] [+
nation's representative]
[+ nation] [+
human] [+
performer of social actions/ decisions]
Both writers
agree in the personification process this metonymy conveys. It is only within
this conceptualization that the Chilean Spanish writer can criticize the
leader's actions and decisions. The writer assumes that the metonymical
conception corresponds only to a nation, but that it cannot be further
generalized, i.e., the United
States
Political analysis, as a rule,
attempts to disentangle ideological and biased opinions that overlap with the
discursive 'straight', objective structure, presupposing that any political
idea is subjective and is intended to be for or against something or someone.
Geis analyses political discourse in news magazines from the viewpoint
of considering it biased discourse. This bias conditions the choice of lexical items
to ascertain an emotional or expressive effect on the reader, together with
"not essentially linguistic" features, such as "the overall
impression of a sentence, paragraph, or story." "The theory and practice of politics and political talk is
primarily concerned with power," and political discourse analysis
also focuses on the ideological meaning in text, which "serves to sustain
relations of domination." However, Seidell states that 'discursive
process' forms a 'matrix of meaning' in which metonymy -together with
substitution, paraphrase, and synonymy- plays an important part. As
concerns this last assertion, our analysis was not focused on ideological,
biased political discourse, but on underlying conceptualizations that
demonstrate that political discourse can be examined without the researcher
being politically involved, and that conceptual generalizations can be
achieved.
The role that metaphors play in
political discourse has been only recently acknowledged. Postman refers
to the incidence of implicit and complex metaphorical conceptualizations with
respect to political discourse in the United States United States
THE RELEVANCE OF METAPHOR IN LINGUISTICS
The place metaphor has
been assigned in linguistics is directly connected to the conceptual bases of
this discipline as a science. The relation of a cognitive semantic approach,
such as the theory of conceptual metaphor, to linguistic research, is a crucial
aspect of the current discussion, since CMs allow generalizing over the
linguistic constituents to be found in discourses related to specific domains.
Structural linguistics, from Saussure to Chomsky, has led language studies to
basically delimit their field of inquiry to phonology and grammatical structure and has
assigned the semantic and pragmatic aspects of language a marginal status.
The issue of meaning is similar to what we have seen about metaphor:
it is a marginal area, already unsatisfactorily undertaken. Furthermore, it
conveys problems that go far beyond simple conclusions. The current situation,
as Lakoff puts it, is that generative semantics and Chomsky's Government
and Binding theory assume that semantics is to be represented in terms of
logical form; the philosophy of language assumes that conceptual systems are
purely historically contingent, that there are no conceptual universals,
observing that conceptual systems change through time; European philosophy
makes a distinction between the study of the physical world, which can be
scientific, and the study of human beings, which cannot be scientific; the
fields of symbolic artificial intelligence and information processing
psychology assume that thought is a matter of algorithmic symbol manipulation,
of the sort done by a traditional computer program. There is no linear
development of linguistic research from structuralism to semantics. Instead,
they seem to be, by their nature, at odds with one another.
From a
scientific perspective, there can be "no tolerance for vague notions,
imprecision, and ambiguity" (Widdowson). A descriptive model
represents underlying knowledge that users of language are generally unaware
of, and can only realize as communicative behaviour.
And communicative behaviour is vague, imprecise, and ambiguous. This
is because it draws on resources for meaning in the language which cannot
always be reduced to linguistic rules since they just have not been encoded as
such in the language system, and because language behaviour has to be imprecise if it is to function
effectively as communicative interaction.
It is at this point that Ogden and Richards' principles of function and language should be, in our opinion, reexamined: they state that the attempt to generalize from the exceptional cases in which symbols and referents correspond (i.e., logical, scientific language), to a necessity for such correspondences in all communication is invalid, because such a correspondence may give to scientific symbol systems a great deal of scope and accuracy, and render them manageable to deductive processes; but it can only be imposed when limited to the simplest and most schematic features.
Ordinary language, as a rule, dispenses with [correspondence],
losing in accuracy but gaining in plasticity, facility, and convenience. Nor is
the loss so great as is sometimes supposed, for by straining language we are
able to make and communicate references succesfully, in spite of the misleading
character of our symbols if taken literally.
However,
language function cannot be taken into account separately from synchronic
semantics. All linguists agree with this assertion, but no one turns it into
practice, because we are trapped by the analytic nature of science.
Our whole outlook on life, our behaviour, our character, are
profoundly influenced by the use we are able to make of [language], our chief
means of contact with reality. ... How many grammarians still regard their
science as holding the keys of knowledge? It has become for them too often
merely a technical exercise of strictly limited scope, instead of the inspiring
study of the means by which truth is acquired and preserved.
A linguistic
symbol is a web of active, changing, and imprecise meanings that the users of a
language can handle with no difficulty. This is the actual linguistic competence. But a descriptive,
analytical approach cannot cope with concurrent meanings: it has to work
disjunctively, and this is part of our linear metaphorical conceptualization of
scientific analysis. Analysis, in its very nature, means separation: the man's
necessity to separate things, first from himself, and then in their structure,
in order to apprehend them; to possess things by his knowledge. Functionalists
have been no exception to this rule, by considering the social domain the
source and the goal of meaning, which can be interpreted as function
indistinctively. Halliday explains language simply (and erratically) as
the natural link of the "whole" system of meaning (social and
cultural) to "syntagms", formal grammatical items and sequences.
He states that a discourse analysis must be based on grammar, in order to make explicit the speaker's interpretation of the meaning of a text. Halliday's final assertion is that what makes it possible for language to be what it is in the process of cognition is the textual function, which allows language to have "texture", i.e., to be a text. It becomes evident that the simple explanation of the ideational function of language in logical and grammatical terms has led Halliday to interpret the remaining functions, which he consider more important, in the same fashion, thus postulating again structuralist principles, the same old "false assumptions." The root of the problem is to understand language by means of its functions, which can be social, postponing a deeper research of its essence, which is necessarily conceptual.
He states that a discourse analysis must be based on grammar, in order to make explicit the speaker's interpretation of the meaning of a text. Halliday's final assertion is that what makes it possible for language to be what it is in the process of cognition is the textual function, which allows language to have "texture", i.e., to be a text. It becomes evident that the simple explanation of the ideational function of language in logical and grammatical terms has led Halliday to interpret the remaining functions, which he consider more important, in the same fashion, thus postulating again structuralist principles, the same old "false assumptions." The root of the problem is to understand language by means of its functions, which can be social, postponing a deeper research of its essence, which is necessarily conceptual.
From a cognitive point of view,
we must look for the conceptual principles on which language is based, through
investigating discourse, the mayor linguistic unit, in its semantic structure.
Thus, metaphor comes into view when examining all these issues:
conceptualization; objective, true, literal meaning, and the functions of
language.
An expression or statement may
be interpreted metaphorically not when it shows falsity or incoherence but,
instead, when it shows "the banality of that [literal] reading's truth,
its pointlessness, or its lack of congruence with the surrounding text and
non-verbal setting " (Black). Furthermore, to
"take a metaphor... 'literally' is to overlook the fact that a symbol...
is not occurring in its original use" (Ogden and Richards).
Metaphor and ambiguity are
central features of language use. Natural language, through its necessity to
adapt to changing communicative processes, not only "allows" for
metaphor; it is metaphor and ambiguity which allow language to function
effectively. But metaphors cannot be reduced to rule because once they are,
they cease to be metaphors and become incorporated into the semantic system.
The point about metaphors is that they depend on a disparity between
the established rules of the code and the extempore exploitation on...
potential resources for meaning which are not reduced to rule. ... The essence
of metaphor is that it represents ambiguity which can be reconciled with
effective communication but which cannot be resolved by analysis. (Widdowson)
Communication is
much more than the sum of its parts. Users of language do not find any problem
in understanding expressions such as he
was a real bastard, or él vive
colgado de las faldas de su mamá, since they live by a whole semantic
system, in which all the levels of meaning function at the same time. However,
these three levels of meaning are hierarchically constituted, according to
their experiential level, from basic concrete, physical, and spatial to
interpersonal or situational. This hierarchy depends on the faculty of a
semantic feature to be entirely downplayed. Is the basic meaning of journey
completely removed when used to refer to events? The answer seems to be no; in
any transaction both participants keep their inherent qualities.
As we have seen, our conceptual
system is metaphorically grounded. Every experience involves cultural
presupositions, and there is no direct physical experience of the world. When
we live by conceptual metaphors as we do in our culture, we tend not to see
them as metaphors at all. It is the grounding in experience that shows how
basic metaphors are in our societies. They form constitute an environment as
essential as conceptualization itself.
Part of what makes the theory of
Conceptual Metaphor so interesting is that the evidence for it contradicts and
challenges most basic academic principles: "...if the results of the [CM
theory] are accepted, then the defining assumptions of whole disciplines are
brought into question" (Lakoff 1992: 84).
From Rodolfo Barbaste Navarro, Daniel Muñoz Acevedo: A contrastive study of language and culture within a cognitive
approach: the Theory of Conceptual Metaphor (Seminario de investigación para
optar al grado de Licenciado en Humanidades con mención en Lengua y Literatura
inglesa. Universidad de Chile, Facultad
de Filosofía y Humanidades, Departamento
de Lingüística)
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