Cognitive metaphor

Al McCormack

In the 20th century, a metaphor for linguistics becomes a unifying phenomenon, the study of which laid the foundation for the development of cognitive science . A more detailed consideration of metaphor as a way of thinking within the framework of cognitive linguistics is the work of Al McCormack's “Cognitive Theory of Metaphor” [1] , in which he characterizes the metaphor as one of the types of cognitive process, which includes the acquisition of new knowledge about the world. It is understood that in the internal analysis of a metaphor, we discover the cognitive processes contained in it, which allow us to obtain new information.

According to McCormack, the cause of the appearance of a metaphor is the comparison by the human mind of semantic concepts that are incomparable in life. On the one hand, a metaphor implies a similarity between the properties of its components, since it should be understood, and on the other hand, a dissimilarity between them, since the metaphor has the goal of creating some new meaning.

J. Lakoff and M. Johnson

The question of the conceptual metaphor gave impetus to research in the field of human thought processes. This helped to conclude that the metaphor is primarily a method of thinking about the world, translated into verbal form. Such problems were dealt with by such linguists of the 70s - 80s as A. Healy, R. Harris, A. Ortoni, R. Reynolds and others. The most clearly conceptual theory of metaphor is formulated by J. Lakoff and M. Johnson. In their work “Metaphors We Live” [2], they described a conceptual metaphor as the intersection of knowledge about one conceptual area in another conceptual area. The main postulates defended in this work are as follows:

A conceptual metaphor is not a “shortened comparison”, not one of the ways to decorate speech, or even a property of words and the language as a whole. In the view of modern cognitology, a metaphor is one of the main mental operations, it is a way of knowing, structuring and explaining the world around us. “The metaphor penetrates into everyday life, not only in language, but also in thinking and action. Our everyday conceptual system, in the language of which we think and act, is essentially metaphorical. ”

The statement about the ability of a metaphor to create a “new reality” is reinforced by Lakoff and Johnson not only with examples, but also with logical judgments of the type: since a significant part of everyday reality is conceptualized in metaphorical terms and our understanding of the world is also partly metaphorical, therefore, the metaphor plays a very significant role in establishing a new reality for us.

• DISPUTE - WAR

The presence of this metaphor is confirmed by an extensive series of statements such as:

I could not defeat him in an argument;

He defeated all my arguments;

You cannot defend your allegations;

His remarks hit right on target;

Do not resort to this strategy: the enemy will erase you from the face of the earth;

Do not agree? - Your shot! - etc.

“Although there is no physical battle, ” Lakoff and Johnson write, “ there is a verbal battle, and the structure of the dispute — attack, defense, counterattack, etc. — reflects this . ” Thus, we can conclude that the essence of the metaphor is "understanding and experiencing the essence of one kind in terms of the essence of another kind . "

• LOVE IS A DISEASE

Love is defined as the disease from which a person suffers.

“Everything is contracting in my stomach. Love eats me from the inside. "

“He needed two painful trimesters to sort out the symptoms ... It was love.”

• CONSCIOUSNESS - THE WAY

Consciousness is the road along which a person moves, overcoming obstacles: take a short walk through the twists of his minds; advance among bookstores, feeling in a maze

• Conceptual metaphors have the ability to create a new reality. If a new metaphor becomes part of our conceptual system and is the foundation of our reality, it changes this system and all that come from not representations and actions

For example, the Western influence on world cultures is partially explained by the introduction of the TIME – MONEY metaphor in them, which is used everywhere: time-based telephone calls, hourly wages, hotel rates, annual budgets, interest on loans, and performance of public duties related to spending on them a certain time

• In Russian cognitive science, Professor A. P. Chudinov, in the monograph “Russia in a Metaphorical Mirror: A Cognitive Study of a Political Metaphor (1991–2000)”, using materials obtained from the media as an example, explores the functions of a metaphor in Russian political space. One of the areas for borrowing lexical tools and meanings for metaphors is the sphere of "Man." Politicians and publicists often use statements such as: the face of the executive branch, the backbone of a market economy, access to the president’s ear, the heart of the Urals, muscles to play, legs to vote, forests are the lungs of the planet, money is the blood of the economy, a knife in the back of democracy, etc. These examples allow us to formulate a cognitive metaphorical model. POLITICAL LIFE - HUMAN ORGANISM

• Arutyunova N.D. Metaphor // Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary.- M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1990. - P.296-297.
• McCormack E. Cognitive Theory of Metaphor // Theory of Metaphor. M., 1990.
• Lakoff D., Johnson M. Metaphors with which we live. - M .: URSS editorial, 2004.

• http://philolog.pspu.ru/module/magazine/do/mpub_5_101#b2
• https://www.myfilology.ru/188/metafora-i-metonimiya-kak-sredstvo-osmysleniya-realnosti-bazovye-kognitivnye-metafory/