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Journal of Literary Semantics 32 (2003), 19–34
The theory of conceptual metaphor claims that poetic metaphor basically uses the same cognitive mechanisms as everyday metaphor; and what makes poetic metaphor look different, however, is its extension, elaboration, and combination of those mechanisms in ways that go beyond the ordinary. In light of this claim, the present study focuses on a particular kind of metaphor, synesthetic metaphor, with data extracted from the novels and short stories by Mo Yan, a preeminent contemporary Chinese novelist highly acclaimed for his innovation with language. An analysis shows that his use of synesthetic metaphors (as well as other metaphors and figures), although very novel and unusual, largely conforms to some general tendencies found in both ordinary and poetic language by previous empirical studies. The finding supports the claim that human meaning and understanding are embodied, constrained by the kind of body we have and how it functions.
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Synesthetic metaphor: A cognitive perspective NING YU
Abstract The theory of conceptual metaphor claims that poetic metaphor basically uses the same cognitive mechanisms as everyday metaphor; and what makes poetic metaphor look different, however, is its extension, elaboration, and combination of those mechanisms in ways that go beyond the ordinary. In light of this claim, the present study focuses on a particular kind of metaphor, synesthetic metaphor, with data extracted from the novels and short stories by Mo Yan, a preeminent contemporary Chinese novelist highly acclaimed for his innovation with language. An analysis shows that his use of synesthetic metaphors (as well as other metaphors and figures), although very novel and unusual, largely conforms to some general tendencies found in both ordinary and poetic language by previous empirical studies. The finding supports the claim that human meaning and understanding are embodied, constrained by the kind of body we have and how it functions.
1. Introduction The past few decades have witnessed an intellectual movement leading to the recognition that metaphor is not only a figure of speech, but also “a figure of thought” (Lakoff 1986). The study of metaphor has expanded its traditional territory from literary criticism and rhetoric to various fields that overlap, to various degrees, on the common ground of cognitive science, including linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. Leading in this movement for the last two decades is a cognitive theory of metaphor known as “the theory of conceptual metaphor”, associated with cognitive linguistics. This theory holds that metaphor is pervasive and ubiquitous in everyday language and thought, rather than just a rhetorical device of poetic imagination (e.g., Gibbs 1994; Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987a, 1993; Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999; Lakoff and Turner 1989; Sweetser 1990; Turner 1991). JLS 32 (2003), 19–34
0341–7638/03/032– 19 © Walter de Gruyter
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Ning Yu
According to the theory of conceptual metaphor, metaphor is not merely a matter of words, but also a matter of thoughts. It is primarily conceptual in nature, with surface manifestations in language. It is the main mechanism through which abstract concepts are comprehended and abstract reasoning is performed. One cannot think abstractly without thinking metaphorically. As a basic cognitive structure, metaphor allows us to understand a relatively abstract concept in terms of a more concrete or more structured concept. Structurally, metaphors are mappings across conceptual domains, involving projections from a source domain to a target domain. Such mappings are asymmetric in that they are uni-directional, that is, from the more concrete to the more abstract. They are partia