Contemporary Metaphor Studies and Classical Texts

Mnemosyne ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Anna A. Novokhatko
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Spatial Models ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
Spatial Metaphors ◽  
Ancient Texts

Abstract This article reviews recent studies on metaphor theories applied to the classical corpus and argues that approaches from cognitive linguistics are essential for the re-interpretation of Greek and Latin texts. Its main focus are two monographs, Andreas T. Zanker’s Metaphor in Homer and Tommaso Gazzarri’s Theory and Practice of Metaphors in Seneca’s Prose. The volume of collected papers on spatial metaphors in ancient texts edited by Fabian Horn and Ciliers Breytenbach proposes that the Lakoff-Johnson approach to cognitive metaphor is productive and that mappings from empirically accessible domains construct abstract concepts in spatial models of mental activity.

scholarly journals Metaphorical representation of the emotional concept of LOVE in W. S. Maugham’s artistic worldview

Litera ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 37-44
Author(s):  
Elena Obletsova ◽  
Vladimir Gurin
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
The World ◽  
Emotional Component ◽  
Valuable Thing ◽  
Emotional Concepts

This article is dedicated to examination of metaphorical nomination of the emotional concept of LOVE in the works of William Somerset Maugham. The novels “Mrs. Craddock”, “The Hero”, “The Theatre” and “Of Human Bondage” served as the material for this research. Emotional component serves as organizing core of the literary work; while metaphor is the means for representation of emotions. It is based on the shift of the existing knowledge on the world onto the emotional sphere of a person. The goal of this study is to describe metaphors used by W. S. Maugham for designation and representation of the concept of LOVE. The research is carried out in the context of cognitive linguistics. Despite a vast number of studies dedicated to cognitive metaphor, it remains relevant as it helps comprehending complicated abstract concepts. Metaphor becomes the means for accessing the emotional concepts. Analysis of metaphorical representation of the emotional concept of LOVE in the works of W. S. Maugham allowed revealing metaphorical models that are realized through cognitive metaphors: love is water, love is fire, love is illness, love is madness, love is pain, love is a person, love is a beast, love is a parasite, love is a construction, love is fetters, love is a valuable thing.

scholarly journals Metaforikus névadás

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 9-28
Author(s):  
Katalin Reszegi
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Psychological Reality ◽  
Cognitive Mechanism ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Proper Nouns ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
The Creation

The paper discusses the cognitive mechanics of metaphorical name-giving with a focus on place names, following an overview of cognitive metaphor theory and the questions of metaphorically used proper nouns. In cognitive linguistics, the use of metaphors is a cognitive mechanism that plays a fundamental role in human thought and understanding, and the creation of our social, cultural and psychological reality. A particular form of this also manifests in name-giving, creating a small but influential category of names. The category of place names also influences the application of this name-giving method: it is generally used in more informal names and name types. The creation of such a name requires the speaker to detach themselves from the conventional norms of direct descriptionand metonymic name-giving, and relies on their lingual creativity and ability to detach themselves from dominant name-giving models. However, names in the category can also be divided into subcategories. Beyond the typical common-noun-based metaphorical name-giving, more complex parallels can also be found, resulting in the associations connecting the names of several nearby locations. Place names can also serve as the base of metaphorical name-giving, supporting the complex meaning of these names. Despite the fact that the majority of metaphorical names are available from contemporary data collection, it is obviously a long-standing and ancient method of name-giving, as it is based on a cognitive mechanics that seem to be as old as humanity itself.

scholarly journals CONSTRUCTIVE ANALYSIS OF GERMAN AND HUNGARIAN IDIOMS

2021 ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Ilona Lechner
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Cognitive Tools ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Mental Strain ◽  
Conceptual Metaphors ◽  
Figurative Meaning ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
The Subject

The subject of the study is the examination of figurative meaning in Hungarian and German. In the present study, I present the interpretation of figurative meaning within the theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics by analysing idiomatic expressions in Hungarian and German on the example of the concept of ‘time’. In this contrastive research, I primarily look for the answer to how ordinary people use cognitive tools to grasp intangible abstract concepts such as ‘time’ and what connections can be observed between literal and figurative meaning. The examined Hungarian and German idioms are the linguistic manifestations of the conceptual metaphor time is money (valuable resource). The study aims to support the assumption that in any language an abstract meaning can only be expressed with a figurative meaning. Time is an abstract concept that is present in the everyday language use of all people. The expressions time passes, the time is here, my time has come, it takes a lot of time – to mention just a few, have become so conventionalized in our language that we take their meaning literally. Nonetheless, they are based on conventional conceptual metaphors that we use to make the concept of time more tangible to ourselves. The linguistic manifestations of these conceptual metaphors are created and understood without any mental strain. In the first stage of the research, I searched for possible German equivalents of Hungarian expressions, and then I used Internet search engines and idiom and monolingual dictionaries to select the most frequently used equivalent in German. As a next step, I examined 1) the word form, 2) the literal meaning, 3) the figurative meaning, and 4) the conceptual metaphor of idioms in both languages, which were either been identical or different. Because they are different languages, the word forms are inherently different. At the end of the study, I compared the formed patterns from which I drew conclusions, which support that figurative meaning is figurative in another language as well.

scholarly journals The concept of “Mental activity” as a component of the hero's linguistic personality in the novel by I.A. Bunin’s “Life of Arseniev”

Neophilology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 444-452
Author(s):  
Marina A. Dubova
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Cognitive Model ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Communicative Strategies ◽  
Infancy And Early Childhood

The work analyzes the concept of “Mental activity” as a component of the linguistic personality of a child during his infancy and early childhood on the linguistic material of the first book of the autobiographical novel by I.A. Bunin’s “Life of Arseniev”. Thus, the subject of the research is the linguo-cognitive model of the concept of “Mental activity” with a core and a system of peripheral means. Cognitive activity as a component of the characteristics of a linguistic personality occupies an important place in cognitive linguistics. Thus, the relevance of the presented article lies in the appeal to the phenomenon of the linguistic personality of the character of a work of art, the problem of its typology and method of description. The purpose of the article is to identify and then analyze the lexical means of representing the concept of “Mental activity” and its func-tioning in the novel based on statistical, descriptive methods and the method of conceptual analy-sis. In the conclusions reached by the author of the article, it is substantiated that the mental activity of a child reflects the specifics of his age and intellectual development, the characteristics of his environment, the socio-economic and cultural-historical conditions in which he grows up, is associated with the communicative strategies of his linguistic personality. The materials of the article can find practical application in university courses on textual criticism, cognitive linguistics, and linguistic text analysis.

DYING IS HARD TO DESCRIBE: METONYMIES AND METAPHORS OF DEATH IN THEILIAD

2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Horn
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Abstract Concept ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Battle Scenes

Homer'sIliadis an epic poem full of war and battles, but scholars have noted that ‘[t]he Homeric poems are interested in death far more than they are in fighting’. Even though long passages of the poem, particularly the so-called ‘battle books’ (Il.Books 5–8, 11–17, 20–2), consist of little other than fighting, individual battles are often very short with hardly ever a longer exchange of blows. Usually, one strike is all it takes for the superior warrior to dispatch his opponent, and death occurs swiftly. The prominence of death in Homeric battle scenes raises the question of how and in which terms dying in battle is being depicted in theIliad: for while fighting can be described in a straightforward fashion, death is an abstract concept and therefore difficult to grasp. Recent developments in cognitive linguistics have ascertained that, when coping with difficult and abstract concepts, such as emotions, the human mind is likely to resort to figurative language and particularly to metaphors.

The Essential Leadership Wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita

2013 ◽  
pp. 147-155
Author(s):  
Patrick Kim Cheng Low ◽  
Balakrishnan Muniapan
Keyword(s):  
Leadership Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Bhagavad Gita ◽  
Bhagavad Gītā ◽  
Ancient Texts

The Bhagavad Gita, a part of the Mahabharata composed more than 5,000 years ago by Vyasa, is a timeless leadership classic and its wisdom is highly relevant to leaders of today. Here, in this paper, the authors examine the various tenets of the Bhagavad Gita and provides its wisdom to contemporary leadership. Some of these teachings will certainly inspire the leaders to change from within and transform their leadership from transactional to transformational and towards transcendental. In presenting this wisdom, the authors have employed hermeneutics, which is a method to interpret ancient texts combined with some qualitative inputs received from leadership seminar participants. This paper is significant for both leadership theory and practice.

scholarly journals The heart’s downward path to happiness: cross-cultural diversity in spatial metaphors of affect

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-218
Author(s):  
Ewelina Wnuk ◽  
Yuma Ito
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Spatial Concepts ◽  
Bodily Experience ◽  
Spatial Metaphors ◽  
Metaphorical Mapping ◽  
Degree Of Similarity

Abstract Spatial metaphors of affect display remarkable consistencies across languages in mapping sensorimotor experiences onto emotional states, reflecting a great degree of similarity in how our bodies register affect. At the same time, however, affect is complex and there is more than a single possible mapping from vertical spatial concepts to affective states. Here we consider a previously unreported case of spatial metaphors mapping down onto desirable, and up undesirable emotional experiences in Mlabri, an Austroasiatic language of Thailand and Laos, making a novel contribution to the study of metaphor and Cognitive Linguistics. Using first-hand corpus and elicitation data, we examine the metaphorical expressions: klol jur ‘heart going down’ and klol khɯn ‘heart going up’/klol kɔbɔ jur ‘heart not going down’. Though reflecting a metaphorical mapping opposite to the commonly reported happy is up metaphor, which is said to link to universal bodily correlates of emotion, the Mlabri metaphors are far from idiosyncratic. Rather, they are grounded in the bodily experience of positive low-arousal states, and in that reflect an emic view of ideal affect centered on contentment and tranquility. This underscores the complexity of bodily experience of affect, demonstrating that cultures draw on the available sensorimotor correlates of emotion in distinct ways.

Conceptual metaphor theory

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 168-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltán Kövecses
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Standard Theory ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Basic Level

Despite its popularity in and outside cognitive linguistics, cognitive metaphor theory (CMT) has received a wide range of criticisms in the past two decades. Several metaphor researchers have criticized the methodology with which metaphor is studied (emphasizing concepts instead of words), the direction of analysis (emphasizing a top-down instead of a bottom-up approach), the category level of metaphor (claiming its superordinate status instead of basic level), the embodiment of metaphor (emphasizing the universal, mechanical, and monolithic aspects instead of nonuniversal, nonmechanical, and nonmonolithic aspects of embodiment), and its relationship to culture (emphasizing the role of universal bodily experience instead of the interaction of body and context). In the paper, I respond to this criticism largely based on my own research and propose a view on these issues that can successfully meet these challenges and that can be regarded as an alternative to the “standard theory.”

Ignes fatui or apt similitudes ?- the apparent denunciation of metaphor by Thomas Hobbes1

2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Musolff
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
Scholarly Publications ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
History Of ◽  
Metaphor Use

AbstractThomas Hobbes's condemnation of metaphor as one of the chief "abuses of speech" in Leviathan occupies a famous (to some critics, infamous) place in the history of thinking about metaphor. From the viewpoint of cognitive metaphor theory, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980,1981) have depicted Hobbes and John Locke as the founding fathers of a tradition in which "metaphor and other figurative devices [became] objects of scorn". Similar verdicts on Hobbes and on Locke as arch-detractors of metaphor can be found in many other accounts of the history of semantics. However, these indictments stand in marked contrast to a considerable number of scholarly publications that have shown that Hobbes's assessment of rhetoric and metaphor is far from a 'straightforward' denunciation of anything non-'literal'. In this paper I shall use results of this research in an analysis of key-passages from Leviathan to re-assess Hobbes's views on metaphor. I shall demonstrate that some critics of Hobbes have overlooked crucial differentiations (in particular, of different kinds of metaphor and similitude) in his concept of metaphor as a key-issue of public communication. Furthermore, I shall argue that Hobbes's foregrounding of the 'dangers' of metaphor use in political theory and practice should be interpreted as an acknowledgement rather than as a denial of its conceptual and cognitive force.

scholarly journals LINGUODIDACTIC APPROACHES TO TEACHING RUSSIAN WORD-FORMATION IN A FOREIGN AUDIENCE

2021 ◽  
pp. 10-15
Author(s):  
Л.К. Красильникова
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Foreign Students ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
Russian Word ◽  
Formation System

Статья посвящена актуальным вопросам обучения иностранных учащихся русскому словообразованию. В ней рассматривается полипарадигмальность современной лингвистики, которая находит свое преломление в теории и практике преподавания РКИ в области русского словообразования. При доминирующей роли функционально-коммуникативного подхода к изучению и представлению языкового материала в аспекте РКИ продуктивным является обращение к методам когнитивной лингвистики и лингвокультурологии. Приводятся примеры использования таких единиц системы русского словообразования, как словообразовательная парадигма и словообразовательное гнездо в качестве базы для развития речи иностранных учащихся в рамках разговорных тем «Русская природа» и «Роль животных в жизни человека». The article is about topical issues of teaching Russian word-formation to foreign students. Polyparadigmatic approach of Modern Linguistics is applied to the theory and practice of teaching Russian as a foreign language, particularly Russian word-formation. Allthough the functional-communicative approach to the study and presentation of language material in the aspect of Russian as a foreign language has the dominant position, it is productive to turn to the methods of cognitive linguistics and linguoculturology. Russian word-formation system units such as the word-formation paradigm and the word-formation nest are used as a basis for the development of foreign students' speech within such conversation topics as «Russian Nature» and «The role of animals in Human life».

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