Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) claims that human beings can only understand abstract, complex phenomena by metaphorizing them in terms of concrete, more basic phenomena – and do so systematically. Unsurprisingly, therefore, expressing a state of 'depression' often draws on metaphors. Such metaphors, however, are not necessarily verbal in nature. In this article, the authors analyse the metaphors used to communicate depression in nine short, wordless animation films. They conclude that these films feature two dominant metaphors: depression is a dark monster and depression is a dark confining space, proposing that these two can be understood as linked on the basis of Lakoff's 'duals' theory discussed in 'The contemporary theory of metaphor' (1993). Finally, the authors argue that the medium of animation has affordances for presenting conceptual metaphors that are not available to language. The article will primarily benefit metaphor scholars, since the further development of CMT crucially requires that not only verbal manifestations of conceptual metaphors are examined but also visual and multimodal ones. Moreover, it needs to be established to what extent such metaphors draw on a limited set of embodied source domains, as CMT would predict. The authors hope that their findings will also be relevant to anyone with an interest in the representation of depression.

Keywords: animation film • depression • conceptual metaphor theory • location–object duals • non-verbal communication • visual metaphor

Il lavoro, di natura filologica e storico-culturale, indaga il silenzio e la figura dell’ “uomo silenzioso” come concetti-chiave dell’etica egiziana e come attori di processi culturali fondamentali per questa civiltà. Attraverso la traduzione, l’analisi e il commento critico di testi sapienziali, narrativi, poetici, religiosi, autobiografici, e altre fonti documentarie, datati dal Primo Periodo Intermedio alla conquista romana, sono qui osservati la permanenza e l’evoluzione del tema lungo l’intero arco cronologico dell’Egitto faraonico. L’elaborato comprende un’analisi del lessico e della fraseologia collegata al tacere nella letteratura egiziana, lo studio delle menzioni significative del “silenzio” nelle maggiori opere letterarie, e una raccolta di più di 160 record dal corpus dei testi biografici su statue, stele, oggetti di corredo e pareti delle tombe, che registrano l’aggettivo “silenzioso” tra gli epiteti esornativi dei membri delle élite.
La documentazione viene esaminata, oltre che dal punto di vista filologico, anche nelle sue implicazioni socio-culturali, come elemento ritenuto necessario alla convivenza civile e al buon funzionamento di molti apparati dello stato, nonché come possibile soluzione nei momenti storici di crisi, in cui la comunicazione è corrotta dalla violenza.
Frequenza, rilevanza e coerenza delle occorrenze fanno del tacere, inteso come virtù attiva, utile alla comunità e apprezzata dagli dèi, una peculiarità singolare della cultura egizia, che a tutt’oggi manca di una trattazione esaustiva.


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The dissertation is aimed to assess the meaning of silence and of the figure of the “silent man” as key features of the ancient Egyptian concept of morality, and as performing forces in some of the most significant cultural processes related to this civilization. Through the translation and the critical analysis of wisdom texts, narratives, hymns, autobiographies and other written sources, dating from the First Intermediate Period to the Roman conquest, the thesis evaluates the permanence and the evolution of this attitude throughout the Pharaonic age. The work includes a study of the lexicon related to silence, a linguistic and historical survey of the mentions of this topic in all the major works of ancient Egyptian literature, and a database of over 160 records attesting the epithet “silent” in the personal autobiographies written on statues, stelae, and in funerary inscriptions of all kinds pertaining to the literate élite.
The selected documents are considered not only with from a philological point of view, but also in their socio-cultural implications. These texts paint a picture where silence is deemed necessary for a peaceful and fair coexistence, and for the correct functioning of many state institutions; it also arises as a form of solution for historical moments of turmoil, when the power of communication is corrupted and dissolved by violence.
The frequency and coherence of said evidence make silence an active and central virtue, fundamental for the society and appreciated by the gods; this fascinating peculiarity of the Egyptian mindset still lacked a comprehensive treatise.

The current study seeks to implement a deep learning classification algorithm us- ing argument-structure level representation of metaphoric constructions, for the identification of source domain mappings in metaphoric utterances. It thus builds on previous work in computational metaphor interpretation (Mohler et al. 2014; Shutova 2010; Bolle- gala & Shutova 2013; Hong 2016; Su et al. 2017) while implementing a theoretical frame- work based off of work in the interface of metaphor and construction grammar (Sullivan 2006, 2007, 2013). The results indicate that it is possible to achieve an accuracy of approximately 80.4% using the proposed method, combining construction grammatical features with a simple deep learning NN. I attribute this increase in accuracy to the use of constructional cues, extracted from the raw text of metaphoric instances.

Though there exists a profound, and constantly evolving literature exploring the nature of English speakers’ alternations of temporal metaphors (Gentner, Imai, & Boroditsky 2002; McGlone & Harding 1998; Matlock, Ramscar, & Boroditsky 2005 as a selection), strikingly little work has been done on extending the research in temporal reasoning to other examples of metaphoric duals (as defined in Lakoff 1993)—alternations in which the target domain referent is either construed as moving object in space, such as in “His sadness is catching up to him”, or as a location to which other entities are oriented to, as in “He fell into a deep sadness”—in other domains. Additionally, to date there has been very little exploration of the factors and motivations that might influence speakers to select one metaphoric dual over another. In the current paper, I look at dualism, constrained to two metaphoric target domains—EMOTION and THOUGHT—in order to analyze both the effects of emotional valence on duals outside of the target domain of TIME, as well as to compare between target domains in order to look at finer- grained differences in dualism—do duals in the domain of EMOTION behave in a similar fashion to those in the domain of THOUGHT? To the best of my knowledge, this question has yet to be explored in the current literature. My results indicate that while emotional valence may not be a significant factor when deciding on the semantic role assignment of target domain referents outside of the domain of TIME, the full story is intriguingly far more complicated, and incorporates the interaction of additional cognitive phenomenon, such as interactions between target domain behavior, verb frequency, and emotional valence, in tandem.

Emotions as an important aspect of being human has been under investigation in cognitive
linguistic studies. This study analyses the metaphorical mappings of the emotions with the
focus on happiness, sadness and love in Turkish novel "Innocent Museum" by Orhan
Pamuk. In this study, I examine how these emotions are conceptualized based on the
Conceptual Metaphor Theory by Lakoff & Johnson and what kind of bodily experiences
are being used as source domains in expressing the three emotions in Turkish.
Through this analysis, I argue that there are culture specific metaphors as it is in
HAPPINESS IS PURE SUBSTANCE for happiness, SADNESS IS BURNING IN PAIN for
sadness, LOVE IS SUFFERING for love. At this point conceptual metonymies are also
discussed since physiological effects of these emotions are reflected in emotion
expressions.
To identify the metaphors used in the novel, I first read the entire text and determined the
emotion-related lexical units including collocations before and after the lexical unit that
might have a potential metaphorical mapping. In the third stage those potential words
were examined on the basis of linguistic and cognitive criteria (Charteris-Black, 2004)
resulting from a shift in domain use. While making the analysis, I looked for the relevance
between the literal meaning of the potential word and the one in the given context. If the
meaning of a word in the given context is different from the literal meaning but if it has a
relevance with it, I marked it as metaphorical.
Through this analysis, I will also argue what body parts are utilized and where the center
in the body is for expressing certain emotion in Turkish. Being a collectivist culture,
Turkish will yield interesting data for the metaphor studies.

This research aims at analyzing the conceptual metaphors of Hope Aspiration or Imagination in Thai and the conceptual system of Thai people, derived from the usage of Metaphors by Cognitive Linguistics Theory. The both data in this research are from the selected Thai published and on-line documents. The results of this study are as follows: there are 12 kinds of conceptual metaphors of Hope Aspiration or Imagination in The conceptual metaphor reflects 2 systems of the hopeful metaphoric concept of Thai native speakers; The conceptual system of ontological correspondences and the conceptual system of epistemic correspondences.

Resumen: El objetivo de este artículo es resumir, a través del análisis de las fuen-tes teóricas principales, el desarrollo de dos tradiciones en la interpretación de la metáfora. Simbólicamente las podemos denominar: 1) Visión formalista, centrada en la descripción de los rasgos de la metáfora, su estructura formal y las funciones que desempeña en un texto o un discurso; y 2) Visión pragmática y cognitiva que propone comprender la metáfora en relación con la situación comunicativa, mos-trando también su papel como una de las cadenas básicas del pensamiento humano. Abstract: The aim of this article is to summarize, through the analysis of the main theoretical sources, the development of two ways to interpret metaphor. They might be called: 1) the formalist vision, centered on description of features of metaphor, its formal structure and its functions in a text or a discourse; and 2) the pragmatic and cognitive vision that offers an understanding of metaphor in the communicative situation showing its role as one of the basic chains of the human thought.

From the Middle-Hittite Period onward, and in particular from the reign of Šuppiluliuma I until the end of the Hittite Empire, the Hittite kings made large use of several diplomatic instruments to build and define their relations with the other rulers of the Near East.
In particular, diplomacy was based on the issuing of three textual categories: treaties, international decrees and verdicts, and international correspondence.
In all these textual categories, several topics related to the political discourse are expressed by metaphors. In particular: phases of political life, relations between kings, the concepts of alliance and enmity, characteristics of the Hittite king, and finally politically relevant events.
These topics are closely related to one another from what can be called patterns or networks of metaphors.
Metaphor is not here intended traditionally as figure of speech but, according to the so-called Conceptual Metaphor Theory developed by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson (see Metaphors we live by, 1980), as the result of a cognitive process. Metaphor is thus “pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action” (Lakoff – Johnson 1980, 3). In this paper, in particular, I intend to discuss the metaphors employed in the three textual categories of treaties, international decrees and verdicts, and international correspondence in the aforementioned topics in order to answer the following research questions:
- can networks of metaphors be found in a single category and/or in all of them?
- what is the function of these networks for the specific textual category and, more in general, for Hittite diplomacy?
- do these networks show changes depending on the dating of the text or on the language (Hittite vs Akkadian)?
The answer to these questions intend to underline the complexity of the Hittite diplomatic apparatus on the textual and on the conceptual level.

Research in cognitive linguistics over the past three decades has contributed much to our understanding of processes of meaning construction, and to the role mappings between different domains play in the imaginative resources manifested through metaphor and metonymy. In this chapter I explore how meaning construction is shaped when one of the domains involved in such mappings involves patterned non-linguistic sound—that is, music. Mappings of this sort challenge (in a helpful way) some of our basic presuppositions about processes of meaning construction (since they suggest that " meaning " can be built up either wholly or in part through extra-linguistic means) and point to uniquely creative resources for human expression. My exploration of cross-domain mappings that involve music will be illustrated by examples drawn from a variety of genres (including oratorio, Hindustani raga, and the symphony) and will consider how musical utterances offer unique resources for the construction of meaning and thus for creativity.

This chapter, included in The Routledge Companion to Music Cognition, ed. Richard Ashley and Renee Timmers (New York: Routledge, 2017), reviews research on analogy and conceptual metaphor theory and explores how these have been applied in music cognition research.

از دستاوردهای زبان‌شناسیِ شناختی کشف این حقیقت است که زبان‌ها اغلب برای ملموس کردن برخی مفاهیم انتزاعی از استعاره‌های مفهومی بهره می‌برند. استعاره‌های مفهومی به توضیح حوزة مقصد که حوزه‌ای انتزاعی است از طریق حوزة مبدأ که حوزه‌ای ملموس است می‌پردازند. یعنی از طریق مقایسة حوزة انتزاعی مورد نظر با حوزه‌ای ملموس درک آن را برای شنوندگان راحت‌تر می‌کنند. در این پژوهش به تحلیل استعاره‌های مفهومی موجود در متنی کهن به زبان ختنی می‌پردازیم. زبان ختنی زبانی ایرانی و از شاخة ایرانی میانة شرقی است. این پژوهش به بررسی بیستمین فصل از کتاب زمبسته می‌پردازد که حاوی اشعار مهم و معتبر بودایی است. فصل بیستم این رساله متنی است از زبان بودا که برای اندرز و خطاب به شمن‌های بودایی سروده شده است. بنابراین هدف آن آموزش مفاهیم مهم و بسیار پیچیدة آیین بودایی است و علت به کار رفتن استعاره‌های مفهومی متعدد در این متن نیز احتمالاً همین موضوع است. این مطالعه اولاً نشان می‌دهد که زبان ختنی نیز مانند دیگر زبان‌ها از چنین استعاره‌هایی بهره جسته است و در مرحلة دوم درک بهتر آموزه‌های بودا در این فراز از متن زمبسته را میسر می‌کند.

Notre article propose une approche pragmatique de la relation im/politesse-métaphores conceptuelles. L'im/politesse sera analysée dans la perspective de la pragmatique historique, notre démarche favorisant la manière dont les participants aux interactions évaluent et conceptualisent l'im/politesse. Les modalités d'évaluer ou les réflexions sur l'im/politesse peuvent relever des scenarios métaphoriques à de différents degrés de conventionalité. L'analyse est fondée sur un corpus littéraire (prose, dramaturgie, mémoires, correspondance) appartenant à la génération quarante-huitarde. Les expressions métaphoriques retrouvées dans le corpus relèvent la métaphore de l'individu comme objet sur lequel on doit travailler afin de devenir apte pour la socialisation. Mots-clés: politesse, impolitesse, métaphore conceptuelle, réflexivité métadiscursive, réflexivité métacognitive.