Metaphors In English: The Role Of Metaphors In Language

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GOOD is UP and BAD is DOWN Metaphors in English INTRODUCTION: THE ROLE OF METAPHOR IN LANGUAGE According to the Cambridge Dictionary, metaphor is defined as “an expression which describes a person or object in a literary way by referring to something that is considered to possess similar characteristics to the person or object you are trying to describe” (Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 2nd Edition). Nevertheless, throughout the history people have been faced with different approaches to metaphor. Both literary and linguistic worlds have been trying for centuries to explain the role of metaphor in language. The best place to start with is probably the first thinker who elaborated on a theory of metaphor – Aristotle. Being the representative of the one of the two traditional positions on the role of metaphor in language, Aristotle, in his Poetics from 350 BC, defines metaphor as “the one thing that cannot be learnt from others and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars” (Punter 2007: 12). This Aristotle’s Classical view suggested that metaphor had a specific use in poetry. For him metaphor was just an ornament, a decorative addition to ordinary language that was used mainly by writers and poets in order to gain certain effects. Moreover, it was not considered a…show more content…
CLASSIFICATION OF CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS In 2002, in his Metaphor: A Practical Introduction, Zoltán Kövecses classified conceptual metaphors according to the cognitive functions thet they perform. He distinguished three general kinds of conceptual metaphor on this bases: structural, ontological and orientational. However, I will focus my attention only on orientational conceptual metaphors, to be more precise, the ones that deal with GOOD IS UP and BAD IS DOWN since this is the topic of this paper. ORIENTATIONAL

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