认知语言学第三章

Summary of Conceptual Metaphors and Metonymies Traditionally, metaphors and metonymies have been regarded as figures of speech, i.e. as more or less ornamental devices used in rhetorical style.Metaphor is a figure of speech containing an implied comparison, in which a word or phrase ordinarily and primarily used of one thing is applied to another. Metonymy is a figure of speech that consists in using the name of one thing for that of something else with which it is associated.

Conventionalized, lexicalized or’dead’ metaphor is through its frequent association with a certain linguistic form, the figurative meaning of a word has become so established in the speech community (i.e. conventionalized) that it is entered in the lexicon as one sense of the word in its own right (i.e. lexicalized). When a unit of linguistic form and meaning is conventionalized and lexicalized, the metaphorical force of the word is no longer active, the metaphor is ‘dead’.Types of conventionalized metaphors include concretive metaphor, animistic metaphor humanizing metaphor, synaesthetic metaphor.

Metaphors are not just a way of expressing ideas by means of language, but a way of thinking about things. Metaphors that have unconsciously been built into the language by long-established conventions are the most important ones.From a cognitive point of view, metaphors are not just semantic extensions of one isolated category to another category in a different field, but that the connections and relations between categories play an important part. The crucial aspects of a metaphor are not only the properties inherent in the individual categories, but their role in the structure of an entire ‘cognitive model’.

Basic level categories supply the salient attributes for superordinate categories and event categories which are used as source models for the detailed attribute structure of abstract categories; The general classes of objects, organisms and persons are also used as source models. This object/ organism/ person view of the world facilitates the cognitive handling and manipulating of abstract categories; Basic image schemas are used for the spatial conceptualization of abstract categories.

There are some similarities and differences between metaphor and metonymy. Both are seen as being conceptual in nature, both can be conventionalized (i.e. automatic, unconscious, effortless and generally established as a model of thinking), both are means of extending the resources of a language and both can be explained as mapping processes.metaphor involves a mapping across different cognitive models, metonymy is a mapping within one model. The main function of a metonymic expression is to activate one cognitive category by referring to another category within the same model, and by doing that, to highlight the first category or the submodel to which it belongs.

Metaphors and metonymies are not just a way of expressing ideas by means of language, but a way of thinking about things. They are cognitive instruments. Metaphor involves a mapping across different cognitive models, metonymy is

a mapping within one model.

郭思明

应用语言学