Lakoff and Mark Johnson, although originally taking a hard-line
interpretation of these early authors
[8][11]
later
concede that Aristotle was
working within a different philosophical framework from what we engage
with today and that critical interpretations should take this in to account.
[12]
Modern
In his 2007 book
The Stuff of Thought
, cognitive scientist Steven
Pinker lays out several useful classifications for the study of conceptual
metaphor. Pinker first contrasts two perspectives on metaphor, what he calls
the killjoy theory and the messianic theory. The killjoy theory categorizes
metaphors as "dead", that is it asserts that modern day speakers are not aware
of the comparison made between source and target domains in the everyday
metaphors they use. For example, many are not cognizant that the phrase "to
come to a head" refers to the accumulation of pus in a pimple. In contrast, the
messianic theory correlates more closely with Lakoff and Johnson's idea of a
conceptual metaphor. This view states that users
of metaphors are aware of
how the metaphor maps onto the domains and use them to relate shared
perceptual experiences to more complex thoughts.
[13]
Another important distinction made by Pinker is that between literary,
or poetic metaphors, and conceptual, or generative metaphors. Poetic
metaphors are used for a variety of reasons but ultimately highlight
similarities or incongruencies in an expressive manner. Pinker's example of
this being the classic Shakespearian line "Juliet is the sun". These metaphors
can often appear convoluted or unclear without deeper context.
Conceptual
metaphors result from some inherent relation between two domains. These
metaphors, so innate they are considered cliche are interestingly able to
generate infinite new metaphors.
[13]
For example, thinking back on the
conceptual metaphor
ARGUMENT IS WAR
, one can build many new metaphors
such as "I shot him down" or "he blew my argument to pieces".
Pinker himself settles on a moderate view that falls in between the
messianic and killjoy theories on metaphor. Perhaps most interestingly, while
Pinker concedes that metaphor is a useful way to combat the limited ability
of
language to express thought, he postulates that a higher level of abstract
thought must still be present. Otherwise, Pinker points out, how could we
engage in critique of metaphors or employ metaphors for comedic effect?
[13]
Major criticisms of work done on conceptual metaphor stem from the
way many researchers conduct their research.
Many study metaphors in a
"top-down" direction, looking first at a few examples to suggest conceptual
metaphors, then examining the structure of those metaphors. Researchers
would look at their own lexicon, dictionaries, thesauri,
and other corpus to
study metaphors in language. Critics say this ignored the way language was
actually used and focused too much on the hypothetical metaphors, so many
irregularities were overlooked in favor of postulating universal conceptual
metaphors.
[14]
In 2007, Pragglejaz Group came up with a methodology for
identifying metaphorical expressions as a response to these criticisms.
[15]
Mappings
There are two main roles for the conceptual domains posited in
conceptual metaphors:
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