Zoltán Kövecses

MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse

This article presents an explicit method that can be reliably employed to identify metaphorically used words in discourse. Our aim is to provide metaphor scholars with a tool that may be flexibly applied to many research contexts. We present the “metaphor identification procedure” (MIP), followed by an example of how the procedure can be applied to identifying metaphorically used words in 1 text. We then suggest a format for reporting the results of MIP, and present the data from our case study describing the empirical reliability of the procedure, discuss several complications associated with using the procedure in practice, and then briefly compare MIP to other proposals on metaphor identification. The final section of the paper suggests ways that MIP may be employed in disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies of metaphor.

Metaphors of anger, pride, and love : a lexical approach to the structure of concepts

This study is an attempt to uncover the structure of three emotion concepts: anger, pride and love. The results indicate that the conceptual structure associated with these emotions consists of four parts: (1) a system of metaphors, (2) a system of metonymies, (3) a system of related concepts, and (4) a category of cognitive models, with a prototypical model in the center. This goes against an influential view of the structure of concepts in linguistics, psychology, anthropology, according to which the structure of a concept can be represented by a small number of sense components.

Where metaphors come from : reconsidering context in metaphor

Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Metaphor, embodiment, and context Chapter 2: Meaning making Chapter 3: The conceptual system Chapter 4: Contextual factors Chapter 5: Metaphor and culture Chapter 6: Context and metaphorical creativity Chapter 7: Context and poetic metaphor Chapter 8: The conceptual context of linguistic humor Chapter 9: Happiness in context Chapter 10: Metaphor and context References Index

A new look at metaphorical creativity in cognitive linguistics

Abstract Where do we recruit novel and unconventional conceptual materials from when we speak, think and act metaphorically, and why? This question has been partially answered in the cognitive linguistic literature but, in my view, a crucial aspect of it has been left out of consideration or not dealt with in the depth it deserves: it is the effect of various kinds of context on metaphorical conceptualization. Of these, I examine the following: (1) the immediate physical setting, (2) what we know about the major entities participating in the discourse, (3) the immediate cultural context, (4) the immediate social setting, and (5) the immediate linguistic context itself. I suggest that we recruit conceptual materials for metaphorical purposes not only from bodily experience but also from all of these various contexts. Since the contexts can be highly variable, the metaphors used will often be variable, novel, and unconventional. The phenomenon can be observed in both everyday forms of language and literary texts.

The Concept of Anger: Universal or Culture Specific?

I will suggest that the English word ‘anger’ and its counterparts in diverse languages of the world are based on concepts of anger that have a great deal of complexity. This conceptual complexity derives from several sources: (1) the metaphors and metonymies that apply to the concepts in various languages; (2) the prototypes of anger that people share in these cultures, and (3) the many different senses that the word anger and its counterparts have in different languages. We can ask: Are there any universal aspects of the concept(s) of anger? On the basis of linguistic evidence from English, Chinese, Japanese, Hungarian, Zulu and Wolof, I will suggest that there are, but I will also claim that some of the aspects are culture specific. This raises the further important question of why there is both universality and culture specificity in the conceptualization of this emotion. At stake is the issue of which of the following two contradictory claims is valid: (1) that anger is conceptualized in the same way universally, or (2) that anger is a social construction and thus varies considerably from culture to culture. I will propose a compromise view, which can be called ‘body-based social constructionism’, that enables us to see anger and its counterparts as both universal and culture specific.

Metaphor, Culture, and Discourse: The Pressure of Coherence

The main question I wish to address in this chapter is the following: how can we account for metaphor variation in naturally occurring discourse using the cognitive linguistic theory of metaphor variation, as worked out in Kovecses (2005)? More specifically, what are the dimensions along which metaphors vary in natural discourse? Which aspects of metaphor are involved in this variation? And most importantly, what are the causes that produce such variation? In this chapter I propose a new notion in understanding the causes of metaphor variation in discourse: ‘the pressure of coherence’. The notion provides us with an explanation of metaphor variation in discourse that has not been available previously.

Metaphor and the Folk Understanding of Anger

The issue I wish to address in this paper is this: What is the role of metaphor in the naive or folk understanding of anger? This is an interesting theoretical question in itself because it raises the more general issue of the nature of the relationship between metaphor and culture. The issue has also become a topical one in recent years. Quinn (1991) suggested that, contrary to a claim made by Lakoff and Kovecses (1987), metaphor simply reflects culture. Quinn (1991:60) writes: “I will be arguing that metaphors, far from constituting understanding, are ordinarily selected to fit a preexisting and culturally shared model.” In contrast, Lakoff and Kovecses claimed that metaphors largely constitute the naive understanding of anger, as based on their study of American English. Thus, we have two diametrically opposed views here: in one, metaphor reflects cultural models and in the other, metaphor constitutes cultural models. I will try to show that neither of these views is fully adequate to explain the relationship in the case of anger, and that a compromise view is both possible and necessary. To demonstrate the feasibility of such a composite compromise view, I will continue to use the concept of anger as an example.

Introduction: Cultural Variation In Metaphor

Cognitive linguists have so far paid less attention to the diversity of metaphorical conceptualization across and within languages and cultures than to its universal aspects. They have been primarily concerned with the question: why are certain conceptual metaphors universal or at least near-universal? The authors of this volume all recognize that the issue of diversity in metaphorical thought is just as important. In particular, Michael Kimmel (this volume) problematizes the one-sided interest from the perspective of an anthropologist. Similarly, my major goal in this introduction is to outline some of the questions and answers that the issue of metaphorical diversity involves. These questions, in my view, include: (I) What are the dimensions along which metaphors vary? (2) Which aspects of metaphor are affected by metaphor variation? (3) What are the main causes of variation?

The Metaphor–Metonymy Relationship: Correlation Metaphors Are Based on Metonymy

Do metonymies play any role in the emergence of metaphors? There is a debate between scholars who suggest that many metaphors are based on, or derive from, metonymies, versus those who do not see such connection between the two. “Resemblance metaphors” do not seem to have anything to do with metonymy. However, in the case of “correlation metaphors” (see, e.g., Grady, 1997a, 1997b, 1999; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999), several researchers argue that metaphors arise from, and are not independent of, metonymies. My specific proposal in the article is that correlation-based metaphors emerge from frame-like mental representations through a metonymic stage. I suggest this happens when one of the elements of a frame-like mental structure is generalized (schematized) to a concept that lies outside the initial frame in a different part of the conceptual system. The generalization process leads to sufficient conceptual distance between the initial and the new frame on which metaphors can be based.

Cross-Cultural Experience of Anger: A Psycholinguistic Analysis

In this chapter, I will provide evidence for the embodied nature of the concept of anger and some of its metaphors from work in cognitive psychology. I will show that many unrelated languages and cultures do seem to share the generic-level metaphor: the angry person is a pressurized container. This metaphor, I suggest, is motivated by the universal embodiment of anger. The pressurized container metaphor underlies the widespread conception that anger is a force that makes the angry person perform aggressive or violent actions. The actual physiology of anger provides much support for this conceptualization. At the same time, however, there is a considerable amount of variation in the counterparts of anger both cross-culturally and intraculturally. To account for some of this variation, a new, more nuanced view of embodiment will be proposed, where the major idea is that the embodiment of anger consists of multiple components, and cultures may choose which of these components they focus on. I will call this process of selecting one or several such components “experiential focus.” This idea helps us in part explain why, despite universal actual physiology, different cultures can have widely different understandings of their anger-like experiences.