Metaphors in cognitive linguistics

Hearing the word ’metaphor’, we usually think of a device commonly used by poets for aesthetic and rhetorical purposes. As a lexical item, a metaphor is defined in the Collins COBUILD English Dictionary (1995:

1045) in the following way:”A metaphor is an imaginative way of describing something by referring to something else which has the qualities that you want to express”.

As a rhetorical device, it is described in A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms (1987: 144) like this: “In general, a metaphor ascribes to some thing or action X a property Y which it could not literally possess in that context”.

In his poem titled I wandered lonely as a cloud (1807), the English poet, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) uses the following figure of speech based on such a comparison (cf. The Norton Anthology of English Literature 1974):

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd

A host of golden daffodils.

The poet uses a metaphor to compare the daffodils to a crowd of people and a host of angels. The word ’crowd’ brings to mind an image of the daffodils chattering amongst one another, leaning their heads near each other in the wind. The word ’host’ makes them seem like their golden petals are shimmering like golden halos on angels.

The American poet, Robert Frost (1874-1963) is notably a poet of metaphors more than anything else as well (cf. The Norton Anthology of American Literature 1987). To Frost, metaphor is really what poetry is all about. In his essay entitled Education by Poetry, Frost says:

“Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, 'grace metaphors,' and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have.

Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, 'Why don't you say what you mean?' We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections - whether from diffidence or from some other instinct”.

Later on Frost goes on to argue that “all thinking, except mathematical thinking, is metaphorical, or all thinking except scientific thinking”. (This observation of Frost’s seems to be reflected in the cognitive theory of metaphors.)

There is a wonderful metaphor in Frost’s poem titled Good Hours (1914):

I had for my winter evening walk No one at all with whom to talk, But I had the cottages in a row Up to their shining eyes in snow.

The metaphor ‘cottages with shining eyes’ is based on the mapping between the physical and abstract domain: cottages don’t really have eyes, but the lighted windows give them that appearance.

Another of Frost’s beautiful poems titled Mending Wall (1914) is based on the apt metaphor ‘Good fences make good neighbours’:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbours.’

Spring is the mischief in me and I wonder…

In spite of the novelty of the above metaphorical expressions in these poems, the metaphors used in them are conventional and commonplace, therefore we understand them easily without being conscious of it.

Metaphors are, however, used not only by writers and poets, but by people in their everyday lives as well. As stated by Lakoff-Johnson (1890:

3), “our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature”. Without metaphors we would not be able to understand such basic concepts of our world, like life, argument, love, thought and society, etc. Let us just think of the following metaphorical expressions (cf. Lakoff 1994):

They are at a crossroads in their relationship.

This relationship isn’t going anywhere.

They are in a dead-end relationship.

This marriage is on the rocks.

This relationship has been spinning on its wheels for years.

Their marriage has really gone off the track.

They had come to the parting of their ways.

They parted on amicable terms.

If we hear these sentences in context, we will know that they are about love. The speaker wishes to convey the meaning of ‘lovers’ with the word

‘passengers’, the meanings of ‘the events of the love affair’ with the word

‘journey’, and ‘the goal of the relationship’ with the word ‘destination’. In other words, we conceive and characterise an abstract reality, i.e. ’love’ in term of concrete ones. The metaphor LOVE IS A JOURNEY underlies the above linguistic expressions, which includes three elements of a journey: the passengers, the journey itself and the destination.

As illustrated by the above example, metaphors are not just superfluous, though pleasant rhetorical devices, but an indispensable property of our thinking and conceptualisation (Kövecses 2005 b: 14). Thus our language is highly metaphorical, which uses thousands of expressions based on concrete, physical entities in order to express high-level abstractions.

As claimed by Lakoff (1987), Lakoff-Johnson (1980) and Kövecses (1998, 2005 a, b), our conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. Thus the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is often a matter of metaphor. The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another (cf. Lakoff &

Johnson 1980: 5). Cognitive linguists assume that we structure concepts (e.g. emotions, ideas, society, politics, economy, human relations, communication, time and events, etc.) is understood in terms of the source domain (e.g. the human body, health, illnesses, buildings, machines, animals, plants, sport, games and forces, etc.) (cf. Kövecses 2005 b: 32-45).

In cognitive terms, conceptual metaphors always combine two domains:

a concrete, well bounded ‘source domain’ and an abstract, ’target domain’.

The mechanism through which this happens is mapping, i.e. the source domain is mapped onto the target domain. To illustrate what kind of correspondences or mappings there are between a source domain and a target domain, let us have a closer look at one of our basic feelings, ‘love’

again. We often conceptualise ‘love’ via metaphors, such as LOVE IS A JOURNEY mentioned above and some more (cf. Johnson and Lakoff 1980, Lakoff 1994 and Kövecses 2005 b). Consider the following:

LOVE IS A PHYSICAL FORCE

There is incredible energy in their relationship.

I could feel the electricity between them.

LOVE IS A PATIENT This is a sick relationship.

Their relationship is in really good shape.

LOVE IS MADNESS I’m crazy about her.

She drives me out of my mind.

LOVE IS MAGIC

She cast her spell over me.

The magic is gone.

LOVE IS WAR

He is known for his many rapid conquests.

She is besieged by suitors.

Another common feeling, i.e. anger is understood in terms of heated fluid, and this is expressed by the conceptual metaphor ANGER IS THE HEAT OF A FLUID IN A CONTAINER, which underlies examples, such as I had reached boiling point, He was bursting with anger, She flipped her lid, He let out his anger and I gave vent to my anger, etc. (Lakoff 1987: 380-88). As pointed out by Lakoff, this metaphor is based on the folk theory of the physiological effects of anger, according to which increased body heat is a major effect of anger. Analysing the structural aspects of the above conceptual metaphor, Lakoff refers to the following sets of correspondences between the FLUID domain and the ANGER domain:

The container is the body.

Pressure in container is internal pressure in the body.

The heat of fluid is the anger.

Explosion is loss of control.

In other words, the effect of intense fluid heat is container heat and internal pressure. Accordingly, the effect of intense anger is body heat and internal pressure. When the fluid is heated past a certain limit, pressure increases to the point at which the container explodes. Accordingly, when anger increases past a certain limit, pressure increases to the point at which the person loses control.

In his dissertation on Motivation behind Idioms of Criticizing, Attila Cserép (2001: 180-185) suggests that idioms of criticising, such as be a sitting shot, come under fire, in the firing line, jump on sb, pot shot, shoot sb down in flames, turn one’s guns on sb and shoot down sb, etc. are motivated by the metaphor CRITICIZING IS WAR. Criticizing is conceptualised in terms of firing or shooting or more generally attacking somebody. A typical manner of attacking is firing a gun or using another weapon of some sort.

The attacker is mapped on the critic, and the weapon corresponds to the criticism. The person criticized corresponds to the person who is attacked.

As pointed out by the author, other idiomatic expressions of criticizing, such as cast sth in sb’s teeth, tear sb to pieces, get a lot of stick, pin sb’s ear back − with quite a lot of phrasal verbs among them, such as hit back, lash into, lash out, lay into, slap down, rip into and tear into (criticize sb/sth angrily and severely) − are based on the metaphor CRITICIZING IS PHYSICALLY HURTING. In the above examples physically hurting or hitting maps onto criticizing, the hurter maps onto the critic, and the person who suffers injuries or pain corresponds to the person who receives criticism.

As some of the above examples might have shown, we conceptualise the phenomena of our world as objects, materials, people, journeys or containers with boundaries. A wide range of domains, objects, sets, activities, even states are metaphorically conceived as containers. This assumption will be very important in the analysis of the meanings of particles/prepositions and prefixes. The conceptualisation of abstract categories as containers can provide an explanation for the different meanings of out in the English verb + out constructions.

As far as English multi-word verbs are concerned, the meaning of their majority is also abstract, which is one of the basic reasons why it is difficult to understand and master them. If we, however, understand the metaphors underlying these abstract meanings, it will make it easier for us to understand and use them properly.