scholarly journals Concepts of Life and Death in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’

Eikon / Imago ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Mirka Cirovic

No Dane of flesh and bone has been written so devoutly about as Hamlet, which is why he has lived the fate of only a few literary heroes who exist independently of texts and theatre. The tragic hero has become a metaphor in himself, which is why I will attempt to read and interpret Hamlet through the prism of conceptual metaphor theory. My prime interest will be invested in metaphorical representations of life and death perceived as target domains in the process of mapping. It is preoccupation with these abstract notions that gives somber color to the play, defines its mood of nihilism and disillusionment. Hamlet is the play with a high number of references to life, death, the afterlife, and human purpose so that metaphorical linguistic expressions that deal with these themes become corpus for the analysis in this paper. Conceptual metaphor analysis will reveal profound meanings of the selected lines, which are to be found beneath the level of language and syntax, in the sphere where conceptualization of the abstract occurs. Conceptual metaphor analysis may also help us get closer to Shakespeare the man since his unlimited consciousness is, at least to some extent, translated into Hamlet.

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Rachel Kirkwood

The purpose of this study is to explore how an interdisciplinary approach can benefit Quaker Studies. The paper applies conceptual Metaphor Theory to help explicate aspects of theology in 17th century Quaker writings. It uses a combination of close reading supported by a corpus of related texts to analyse the writing of 4 key figures from the first decade of the movement. Metaphor analysis finds that orientational schemas of UP-DOWN and IN-OUT are essential structural elements in the theological thought of all 4 writers, along with more complex metaphors of BUILDINGS. Quaker writers make novel extensions to and recombinations of Biblical metaphors around Light and Stones, as well as using aspects of the theory of Elements. Such analysis can help explicate nuances of theological meaning-making. The evaluation of DOWN IS GOOD and UP IS BAD—except in specific circumstances—is distinctively Quaker, and embodied metaphors of divine immanence in humans indicate a ‘flipped’ soteriology which is distanced from the Christ event.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 256-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen K. Dodge

This paper demonstrates the fruitful application of the formalization of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, combined with metaphor constructions and computational tools to a large-scale, corpus-based approach to the study of metaphor expressions. As the case study of poverty metaphor expressions illustrates, the representation of individual metaphors and frames as parts of larger conceptual networks facilitates analyses that capture both local details and larger patterns of metaphor use. Significantly, the data suggest that the two most frequently used source domain networks in poverty metaphor expressions each support different types of inferences about poverty, its effects, and possible ways to reduce or end it.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Stickles ◽  
Oana David ◽  
Ellen K. Dodge ◽  
Jisup Hong

This paper describes an innovative formalization of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and its implementation in a structured metaphor repository. Central to metaphor analysis is the development of an internal structure of frames and relations between frames, based on an Embodied Construction Grammar framework, which then informs the structure of metaphors and relationships between metaphors. The hierarchical nature of metaphors and frames is made explicit, such that inferential information originating in embodied conceptual primitives is inherited throughout the network. The present analysis takes a data-driven approach, where lexical differences in linguistic expressions attested in naturally-occurring discourse lead to a continued refinement and expansion of our analyses.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 110
Author(s):  
Mohammad Abedltif Albtoush ◽  
Sakina Suffian Sahuri

Combining a cognitive approach based on Lakoff’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory and a pragmatic approach based on Critical Metaphor Analysis, this study investigates the use of ANIMAL metaphoric scenarios to figure corruption as a relationship between predators and prey and the cultural implications in the Jordanian context. It also seeks to identify the diverse functions performed by the use of ANIMAL metaphors. Data for the study consist of 10 excerpts taken from a satire-genre discourse “sawalief.com”. My argument is that all animal metaphors in the corpus promote the contrast between the ACTIVITY of corrupters and the PASSIVITY of the citizenry and that the goal of this rhetoric is to move the PASSIVE citizenry into ACTION by shaming them into fighting corruption. This is clearly illustrated through the use of two types of ANIMAL metaphoric scenarios: ACTIVE ANIMALS representing corrupters and politicians, and PASSIVE ANIMALS representing the citizens. In addition, the use of these metaphors performs diverse functions: ideological, cognitive, and rhetorical. 


PARADIGM ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Zainur Rofiq

<p class="Abstrak">The integration between the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and the pragmatic aspect of the metaphor usage has resulted in the emergence of the Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) approach to examine metaphors in public discourse. By applying this approach, the present study explores the types of metaphors in Ustadz Hanan Attaki (henceforth UHA) and Ustadz Abdul Somad (Henceforth UAS) both English and Indonesian speech corpora on economic discourses and their possible latent ideologies. The results also indicate that some (linguistic) realizations of conceptual mappings of the metaphors in UHA and UAS’ corpus are used to evoke the emotion and the soul of their audiences. Further, the current study also shows that both UHA and UAS share similar <em>collectivism/jama’ah</em><em> </em>ideological values manifested through the <em>journey </em>and <em>battle </em>metaphors dataset.</p>


Author(s):  
Zoltán Kövecses

The chapter reports on work concerned with the issue of how conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) functions as a link between culture and cognition. Three large areas are investigated to this effect. First, work on the interaction between conceptual metaphors, on the one hand, and folk and expert theories of emotion, on the other, is surveyed. Second, the issue of metaphorical universality and variation is addressed, together with that of the function of embodiment in metaphor. Third, a contextualist view of conceptual metaphors is proposed. The discussion of these issues leads to a new and integrated understanding of the role of metaphor and metonymy in creating cultural reality and that of metaphorical variation across and within cultures, as well as individuals.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Omar Bani Mofarrej ◽  
Ghaleb Rabab'ah

The present paper examines the metaphorical and metonymical conceptualizations of the heart in Jordanian Arabic (JA) within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). The main aim is to explore how the human heart is conceptualized in JA, and to test the applicability of the different general cognitive mechanisms proposed by Niemeier (2003 and 2008) to those found in JA. The data were extracted from Idioms and Idiomatic Expressions in Levantine Arabic: Jordanian Dialect (Alzoubi, 2020), and other resources including articles, dissertations and books of Arabic proverbs. The findings revealed that all the four general cognitive mechanisms suggested by Niemeier (2003 and 2008) are applicable to JA. The findings also showed that the similarity derives from the universal aspects of the human body, which lends tremendous support to the embodiment hypothesis proposed by cognitive linguists. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-285
Author(s):  
Mason D. Lancaster

This article provides an overview of metaphor theories and research on their own terms, as well as their use in Hebrew Bible (HB) studies. Though metaphor studies in the HB have become increasingly popular, they often draw upon a limited or dated subset of metaphor scholarship. The first half of this article surveys a wide variety of metaphor scholarship from the humanities (philosophical, poetic, rhetorical) and the sciences (e.g., conceptual metaphor theory), beginning with Aristotle but focusing on more recent developments. The second half overviews studies of metaphor in the HB since 1980, surveying works focused on theory and method; works focused on specific biblical books or metaphor domains; and finally noting current trends and suggesting areas for future research.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNAMARIA KILYENI ◽  
NADEŽDA SILAŠKI

Abstract Under the theoretical wing of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, we present a contrastive cognitive and linguistic analysis of the women are animals metaphor as used in Romanian and Serbian. Our main aim is to establish whether the names of the same animals are used in the two languages to conceptualise women and their various characteristics (particularly physical appearance and character traits), or alternatively, whether the two languages exhibit any linguistic or conceptual differences in this regard.


Author(s):  
Nenad Blaženović ◽  
Emir Muhić

An analysis was carried out with two interviews given by the tennis-player Novak Djokovic, one of which was in English and the other in his native Serbian. In both instances, Novak Djokovic used many conceptual metaphors throughout his speech, some of which were analysed in more detail. The main premise of the research was that people’s personalities change in accordance with language they speak at any given time and that they use different conceptual metaphors to describe the same events in different languages. The aim of the paper was to investigate whether personality shift in bilingual speakers can be observed through the speaker’s use of conceptual metaphors in different languages. Through the framework of conceptual metaphor theory, it was shown that Djokovic’s personality does change with the language he speaks. This change was shown through the conceptual metaphors, i.e., source and target domains that Djokovic used during the interviews. He does indeed use different source domains to conceptualise the same target domains in different languages.


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