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Luận văn Thạc sĩ Translation procedures applied in the English Vietnamese translation of the conceptual metaphors in the novel “The call of the wild”

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATION STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN TUẤN MINH

TRANSLATION PROCEDURES APPLIED
IN THE ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION
OF THE CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS IN THE NOVEL
“THE CALL OF THE WILD”

(Các thủ thuật được áp dụng trong việc dịch Anh-Việt ẩn dụ ý niệm
trong tiểu thuyết “Tiếng gọi nơi hoang dã”)

M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code:

8220201.01

HANOI – 2019


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATION STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN TUẤN MINH

TRANSLATION PROCEDURES APPLIED


IN THE ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION
OF THE CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS IN THE NOVEL
“THE CALL OF THE WILD”

(Các thủ thuật được áp dụng trong việc dịch Anh-Việt ẩn dụ ý niệm
trong tiểu thuyết “Tiếng gọi nơi hoang dã”)

M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Field:
English Linguistics
Code:
8220201.01
Supervisor: Dr. Huỳnh Anh Tuấn

HANOI – 2019


DECLARATION
I hereby declare that this thesis represents my own work and has not been
previously included in a thesis or dissertation submitted to this or any other institution
for a degree, diploma or other qualifications.

Signature

Nguyen Tuan Minh
June, 2019

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Dr. Huỳnh Anh Tuấn,
my teacher and supervisor, whose inspiring and full-of-fun lectures on Cognitive
Linguistics and conceptual metaphors had given me inspirations to choose and keep
working on this research. Also, he provided me with useful advice on research
direction and encouragement during the work.
Also, I am extremely grateful to Ms. Vương Thị Thanh Nhàn, lecturer of
Translation & Interpreting Division, Faculty of English Teacher Education, ULIS,
VNU, whose paper on the translation procedures and equivalence on Quan họ terms
had enlightened me on my research goals and who had kindly offered me invaluable
advice and materials on translation equivalence and metaphor translation.
My deep appreciation also goes to my father, my mother and my younger
brother who provided me with money, food, care and encouragement while I was
totally devoted to reading materials and writing this paper.

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ABSTRACT
The translation of conceptual metaphor from English to Vietnamese has been
largely ignored. In the world, some studies have dealt with the treatment of conceptual
metaphors from Arabic to English and from Russion into English, etc. However, no
studies on the English-Vietnamese translation of conceptual metaphors can be found.
Therefore, this paper examines some conceptual metaphors available in the novel “The
Call of the Wild” and the translation procedures used to translate them from English to
Vietnamese. Based on the conceptual theory of metaphors proposed by Lakoff and
Johnson (2003), a number of conceptual metaphors have been uncovered in the English
versions such as DOGS/WOLVES ARE HUMAN, NATURE IS A HUMAN
BEING/AN ANIMAL, TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT, STATES ARE LOCATIONS,

etc. together with some 230 linguistic realizations. After that, based on the adapted
analytical framework on the translation procedures of conceptual metaphors proposed
by Al-Harrasi (2001), the study found various translation procedures, including
keeping the same conceptual metaphor, using another conceptual metaphor, deleting
the conceptual metaphor, and converting the conceptual metaphors.
Keywords: conceptual metaphors, translating conceptual metaphor, translation
procedures

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION ........................................................................................................... ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................... iii
ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................... v
LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................... vii
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................. 1
1. Rationale .................................................................................................................. 1
2. Aims and objectives ................................................................................................ 3
3. Research method ..................................................................................................... 3
4. Scope of the study ................................................................................................... 4
5. Significance .............................................................................................................. 4
6. Structural organization of the thesis ..................................................................... 5
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW.................................................................... 6
1. Metaphors and conceptual metaphors ................................................................. 6
1.1. Traditional view of metaphors ........................................................................... 7
1.2. The conceptual metaphor in the cognitive view ................................................ 9
2. Conceptual metaphors in literature .................................................................... 18

3. Translation and translation procedures ............................................................. 19
3.1. Translation ........................................................................................................ 19
3.2. Translation procedures ..................................................................................... 20
3.3. Translation of metaphors and conceptual metaphor ........................................ 25
3.4. Previous studies ................................................................................................ 25
CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY ........................................................................... 27
1.Research questions................................................................................................. 27
2. Description of data ................................................................................................ 27

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3. Data collection and data analysis procedures .................................................... 28
4. Methods of the study ............................................................................................ 28
5. Analytical framework ........................................................................................... 29
CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS ................................................... 33
1. The conceptual metaphors and their linguistic manifestations in the novel ... 33
1.1. Knowledge-based metaphors ........................................................................... 33
1.2. Image-schema metaphors ................................................................................. 40
2. The procedures applied in translating the conceptual metaphors ................... 41
2.1. Keeping the same conceptual metaphor ........................................................... 42
2.3. Using a different metaphor ............................................................................... 44
2.4. Converting the conceptual metaphor................................................................ 44
2.5. Deleting the expression of the metaphor .......................................................... 45
3. Discussion .............................................................................................................. 45
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION .................................................................................. 48
1. Recapitulation of main ideas................................................................................ 48
2. Implications ........................................................................................................... 49
3. Limitations............................................................................................................. 50
4. Suggestions for further research ......................................................................... 51

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................. 52
APPENDIX ..................................................................................................................... 0

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Percentage of translation procedures……………………………41

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CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents the reason for choosing the research topic and highlights
the purposes and the methods of the study. Also, the structure and the scope of the
research are also discussed.
1. Rationale
The world today has been much closer together thanks mostly to the advances of
technology that has helped bridge the great physical distance that seems at first
daunting between different places in the world. Besides, it would be a great mistake to
ignore the crucial role taken by translation, the key player that bring people spiritually
and emotionally closer, by boosting the understanding among cultures, “aiding the
understanding of an increasingly fragmentary world” (Bassnett, 2002).
The cultural aspects of translation have been a constant emphasis in translation
(Bassnett, 2002). Normally, when thinking about the relationship between culture and
translation, one may immediately think of cultural words, which are particularly
associated with a particular language and cannot be translated literally (Newmark,
1988) and wonders how these culture-rich concepts can be rendered into the target
language. Therefore, not surprisingly, a large body of research in translation study has
been dedicated to this area. It does not take one much time to search for a few studies

on translation of culture-specific terms. To name a few, Hapsari and Setyaningsih
(2013) in their study “Cultural Words and the Translation in Twilight” worked with
100 cultural words related to food, house, artifacts, transportation, clothes,
communication such as “madrone trees”, “pelicans”, “crib” and “ravioli”, etc, and
various translation procedures applied to render these terms into Indonesian. Nhàn
(2015) studied the translation procedures in translating terms used in “Quan họ”, a
traditional way of singing and performing songs in Bắc Ninh, a northern province of
Vietnam. In this research, she discussed a great number of cultural words, their

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translation procedures and their equivalents such as “áo the”, “khăn xếp”, “liền anh”,
“liền chị”, “hát thờ”, “hát canh”,etc.
However, another equally important part in culture but often ignored in
translation is the pattern of thoughts and ways in which people of different cultures
categorize things. A famous theory that summarizes the relationship between
languages, thought and culture is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Proposing the idea of
linguistic determinism, Sapir and Whorf argue that language determines thought and
language is a reflection of culture (Yule, 2006).
Therefore, under the light of cognitive linguistics, there is something more than
just cultural terms. Evan and Green (2006) maintained that patterns of thought or
conceptualization are reflected in language. Different groups of people (different
cultures), speaking different languages have their own ways of understanding,
perceiving and construing their physical environment around them and other
experiences. In other words, each culture will perceive and understanding reality in
different ways or thought is also a product of culture.
“The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man” (Jose
Ortega y Gasset, 1948). Metaphors have long been a focal interest for the academic
world and widely studied from many perspectives, including traditional views,

philosophers’ view and cognitive view, etc. Studying metaphors from the cognitive
approach and their translations will present certain benefits and new insights as the
conceptual metaphor, with its basis in basic physical, physiological and cultural
experience of human beings, serves as a powerful tool in revealing these differences in
the thinking patterns, allowing the possibility of examining and comparing different
ways of construing reality of different groups of people.
To some degree, conceptual metaphors have some properties that are the same
as cultural words. Although sometimes, two cultures share the same expressions, most

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of the time, the expression in a particular language is culture-specific. For example,
there are numerous “cultural thoughts” in the English language such as THE SUN IS A
HUMAN (the sun-kissed valley) or STATES ARE LOCATIONS (they went from bad
to worse) (phrases taken from The Call of the Wild). What does a translator, as a
traveler from one source to another (Michel Cronin, cited in Bassnett, 2002), do when
they work with such metaphors/images? Do they keep the same metaphors; create a
new metaphor or what else?
2. Aims and objectives
The overall purpose of this study is to investigate the treatment of conceptual
metaphor, in other words, the translation procedures used to translate the conceptual
metaphors in the novel “The Call of the Wild”from English to Vietnamese.
To achieve this aim, the following objectives are set: (1) identifying the
conceptual metaphors present in the English novel and their linguistic expressions; (2)
comparing the conceptual metaphors in the English source text and the Vietnamese
target text to reveal the translation procedures used.
3. Research method
This research adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods to achieve the desired
outcomes. First, basing on the description offered by Lakoff and Johnson (2003) on

conceptual metaphor, the paper investigates the English version to identify the
conceptual metaphors available and their linguistic manifestations. After that, based on
the adapted framework by Al-Harrasi (2001), the Vietnamese translations of these
linguistic realizations are examined and compared to the source text to reveal what
translation procedures are adopted to deal with those conceptual metaphors. Next,
quantitative research method will be applied to reveal which translation procedures are
the most used.
This research aims at answering two questions:

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1. What are the conceptual metaphors and their linguistic manifestations in the
English novel “The Call of the Wild”?
2. What translation procedures are applied in translating the conceptual
metaphors from English to Vietnamese?
Research question 1 aims at identifying the conceptual metaphors in the English
novel and their linguistic realizations. Based on the results in question 1, question 2 is
devoted to deal with the issue of translation procedures.
4. Scope of the study
This study closely examines all the seven chapters in the English adventure
novel “The Call of the Wild” by the American writer, Jack London to list some
conceptual together with their linguistic evidence. This study classifies the conceptual
metaphors, by their nature, into knowledge-based and image-based metaphors. In
image-based metaphors, there are two sub-types, image-schema and image metaphors.
This paper focuses on knowledge-based and image-schema metaphors only.
This paper deals only with the translation procedures applied to treat the
conceptual metaphors in the process of translation from English to Vietnamese. In
other words, this study does not aim at making systematic quality assessments on the
translation quality but only discusses and argues on the treatment of conceptual

metaphors in translation when the translator moves between the two modes of thinking.
5. Significance
Normally, when conducting research in conceptual metaphors, one is likely to
examine only one type in depth, for example, LOVE IS A JOURNEY. However,
adopting the cognitive approach to the study of metaphors, this research investigates a
wide range of conceptual metaphors that underlie the language expressions in the novel
“The Call of the Wild”. Furthermore, the paper hopes to contribute to the large
reservoir of translation research by approaching translation from the view of cognitive
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linguistics, which is still under-researched compared to other approaches to the study
of metaphor in general. Hopefully, this paper will be beneficial to students, teachers
and translators who are interested in looking at metaphors from the cognitive
perspective, especially in a single work of literature. Finally, this paper is an attempt to
investigate the translation procedures adopted to deal with the conceptual metaphor
during the translation process from English to Vietnamese. Therefore, it is extremely
useful for those who have the intention of developing their own procedures that are
peculiar to the English - Vietnamese translation of conceptual metaphors.
6. Structural organization of the thesis
This paper is organized into five chapters. Chapter I is responsible for
introducing the research gap and the problems the research set out to solve and the
possible contributions. Chapter II provides the theoretical foundation for the paper by
bringing many approaches to the study of metaphors into discussion, placing the
arguments against other theories of metaphors made by cognitive linguists at the
center. Besides, the writer will review some related studies in this chapter. Chapter III
presents the methods for collecting, analyzing data for this research. Chapter IV is
reserved for the discussion of results and findings by presenting the answers for the
two research questions made at the beginning, together with its implication. Finally,
Chapter V, Conclusion, summarizes the main findings and arguments in this study,

highlighting some of its limitations and proposes some suggestions for further research.

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CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
The following chapter deals with the theoretical background of this research. It
provides the conceptual grounds of metaphors, conceptual metaphors and some related
issues in translation such as translation procedures used for metaphors. Besides, some
previous works on conceptual metaphor translation are also discussed.
1. Metaphors and conceptual metaphors
The issue of metaphor has been a constant concern for centuries. Galperine
(1981) states that metaphors have been discussed since the time of ancient Greek and
Roman literature, resulting in the definition of metaphor as a transference of meaning
from one word to another. Furthermore, Jakel (1997) also maintains that “For about
three hundred years now, various, mostly European philosophers and linguists have
been anticipating the central tenets and findings of the cognitive theory of metaphor”.
“What’s a metaphor?” sometimes becomes a difficult question, even to scholars.
A somewhat amusing anecdote told by Glucksberg (2001) about a professor, Ray
Gibbs, going to a conference on metaphors in Israel, when questioned by a check-in
security guard what a metaphor is. Failing to answer the question immediately, he got
into one-hour interrogation at the airport before rescued by an Israeli conference host.
According to Oxford Dictionary (1996), the word “metaphor” comes from the
Greek “Metapherein”, which means “to transfer” (“pherein means “to bear”). From that
simple definition, metaphors have come to mean many different things for many
different people. Linguists, psychologists and philosophers may define metaphors in
their own ways.
The Oxford Dictionary (1996) presented the definition of metaphors with two
senses. The first sense considers metaphor as a figure of speech in which a name or a
word is transferred to an object or action different from, but analogous, that to which it

is literally applicable. The second sense regards metaphors as a form of conceptual

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representation: “A thing considered as representative of some other (usually abstract)
thing: A symbol.” In general, most of the contemporary metaphor definitions address
these two senses from different aspects, either as a linguistic expression and a means of
communication or as a conceptual representation (Glucksberg, 2001).
Traditionally, metaphor is considered a figure of speech, just like simile, or in
other words, a matter of mere language. Philosophers think language is literal. Some
scholars think that the nature of metaphor is just presenting and matching similarities in
attributes of two different things. It is widely believed so until George Lakoff and Mark
Johnson published their book “Metaphors We Live By” in 1980, in which they proved
that metaphor is not only a linguist issue but an important apparatus of human
understanding and cognition. Since then, this view has been supported by numerous
scholars such as Croft and Cruse (2004), Kovecses (2002), etc. The following section
will present and discuss some common approaches to the study of metaphor, including
the traditional view and the modern approach of cognitive linguistics.
1.1. Traditional view of metaphors
According to Glucksberg (2001), Aristotle, one of the most ancient figure who
elaborated on the study of metaphor, in his work “Poetics” (Chapter 21) proposed four
types of metaphor, genus for genus, genus for species, species for genus and analogy.
The common nature shared by the first three types of metaphors is that they involve
substituting one word for another. An example of the genus for genus type is “Some
lawyers are sharks”. Here, the word “sharks” is used instead of a word from the same
semantic domain, genus, as “lawyers”.
Ma & Liu (2008), in their paper “A universal approach to metaphors”, discussed
many approaches to metaphor, including several prominent scholars in this field.
Beardsley (1966) considered metaphor a fascinating phenomenon in language and


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metaphors are not only present in poetic works. According to him, metaphor has both
denotative meaning and connotative meaning.
For example, in the sentence “The animal in the pen is a pig”. Here “pig” gives
a literal sense (denotation) of an animal with four legs and a long nose. However, the
word “pig” in another situation, such as “The man over there is a pig” has something
more than the literal meaning.

“Pig” in the second sentence is interpreted

metaphorically (denotative meaning): The man is fat, dirty, lazy and so on.
Compared to Beardsley, Richards (1967) presented a more profound analysis of
metaphor. In his paper called “The Command of metaphors”, he argued that the nature
of metaphor requires the comparison of more than two objects. He also put forward the
two terms for understanding the mechanism of metaphor: tenor and vehicle. A tenor is
the term, concept, or object that is meant while a vehicle is a thing that carries the
weight of the comparison. For example, in the metaphor “A city is a beehive”, “city”
is the tenor and “beehive” is the vehicle. Moreover, in this paper, Richards also
maintained that a word can be both literal and metaphorical at the same time. For
example, “The man has a wooden leg”. Here, “the wooden leg” can be understood as a
real physical condition in reality that the man has to suffer from or it can be interpreted
metaphorically as a failure to perform some job properly as expected, for example.
Searle saw metaphor as a type of indirect communication and metaphorical
sense comes from an expression in a specific linguistic and situational context, and
therefore, metaphors should be considered at the level of utterance: “The problem of
explaining how metaphors work is a special case of the general problem of explaining
how speaker meaning and sentence or word meaning come apart…Our task in

constructing a theory of metaphor is to try to state the principles which relate literal
sentence meaning to metaphorical [speaker’s] utterance meaning“ (Searle (1975). To
him, it depends on the listener whether to understand an utterance literally or

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metaphorically and metaphorical interpretation of an utterance requires the application
of conversation principles and speech act theory.
Among the various definitions provided by the scholars who subscribe their
views to the traditional approach, two summaries of this long-establishing strand of
metaphor provided by two eminent cognitive linguists, George Lakoff and Kovecses,
have captured them all. To set a ground before criticizing the traditional approach to
metaphor, Lakoff (1992) pointed out that “The word metaphor was defined as a novel
or poetic linguistic expression where one or more words for a concept are used outside
of its normal conventional meaning to express a similar concept”.
Kovecses (2002) also summarized the conventional attributes of metaphor. First,
metaphor is simply a matter of language, not of thought. Second, metaphor is used for
artistic and rhetorical purposes. Third, metaphor is based on resemblances between two
entities that are compared and identified. Fourth, metaphor is a deliberate use of words
and the ability requires special talents to do it well. Finally, it is commonly held that
metaphor is a linguistic phenomenon, a figure of speech that we can do without.
Metaphor is used for special effects and not an inevitable part of everyday
communication.
1.2. The conceptual metaphor in the cognitive view
1.2.1. What counts as a conceptual metaphor?
Cognitive linguistics, a new linguistic field which can be traced back in the
early 1970s (Evan & Green, 2006), is an interdisciplinary enterprise because it involves
both the study of human language and of the human mind. Like other linguistic
scholars, cognitive linguists try to describe the systematicity by providing various

theories. However, the reason behind is that they seek to reveal the links between the
human mind and language, holding a belief that human language reflects the thinking
patterns in the mind (Evan & Green, 2006).

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Since Lakoff and Johnson published their influential book “The Metaphor We
Live By” in 1980, the study of metaphor in the direction of cognitive approach has
attracted many followers. In their book, Lakoff & Johnson (2003) clearly presented
their view. To them, metaphor is a powerful tool of human cognition: “The essence of
metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another”
(Lakoff & Johnson, 2003).
This position is also shared by Hurford et.al (2007) in their book on semantics:
“Metaphors are conceptual (mental) operations reflected in human language that enable
speakers to structure and construe abstract areas of knowledge and experience in more
concrete experiential terms” (Hurford et. al, 2007).
According to this approach, to conceptualize an unfamiliar entity or a field of
knowledge, the speaker takes advantage of another already familiar one. The former
one is known as the target domain and the latter one, source domain. Normally, the
source domain is understood through the experience in the physical world and there
exists a conceptual mapping between the source domain and the target domain to help
structure the unfamiliar entity so that the cognitive load will be lessened when humans
are trying to conceptualize something new or unknown to us before (Hurford et. al,
2007). This modern view takes a wider approach that metaphors are not only present in
literary or figurative texts but ubiquitous in our daily life and metaphors do not only
exist in language but also in the human mind in the way we experience, act and think
about a particular topic. Our conceptual system is mainly metaphorical in nature.
(Lakoff & Johnson, 2003).
Kovecses (2010), in agreement with the above-mentioned scholars, gave a

concise definition of conceptual metaphor as understanding one conceptual domain in
terms of another conceptual domain. The conceptual metaphor is represented as the
following formula: CONCEPTUAL DOMAIN A IS CONCEPTUAL DOMAIN B. A

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conceptual domain is viewed as any organized experience of human beings such as
life, journey, time, money, etc. The nature of a metaphor in the form of A is B is the
mapping of part of our structure of knowledge from domain A to domain B (Lakoff &
Turner, 1989).
Lakoff & Johnson (2003) gave some typical examples on metaphors are used in
the daily language and how the language shapes people’s ways of thinking.
AN ARGUMENT IS WAR.
- He attacked every weak point in my argument.
- I’ve never won an argument with him.
- Your claims are indefensible.
- His criticisms were right on the target.
Normally, “attack” and “win” usually used when people talk about wars;
however, in these examples, they are utilized to talk about arguments. The analogies
between those two areas enable the speaker to make use of the familiar aspect of one to
describe another. This relationship is called conceptual metaphors. This metaphor
allows humans to understand what an argument is by making use of another domain
that has been already available and satisfactorily understood: physical battle. In the
wild, wars are pervasive because animals, as well as human beings are usually involved
in fights for territory, food, sex, etc. Therefore, our knowledge of fights is rich with
details and this knowledge is transferred or mapped to another domain, less clearly
understood, verbal argument.
In this example, AN ARGUMENT IS WAR is the conceptual metaphor (mode
of thinking) and one of its linguistic expressions is “Your claims are indefensible”. It is

noted that linguistic expressions are not the only means of realizing conceptual

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metaphors. In other words, conceptual metaphors can be manifested in movies, acting,
drawings, sculpture, etc. (Kovecses, 2010).
Lakoff and Johnson further analyzed this example by considering a different
culture in which arguing is not viewed with respect to wars but to dance. In the
argument, the participants involved do not see themselves as taking sides, defending
personal viewpoints, losing or winning but cooperating with each other in a balanced
and beautiful way. Therefore, bearing the metaphor (ARGUING is DANCING) in
mind, perhaps, they would think differently, act differently and talk differently about
arguing. In that way conceptual metaphors reflect and shape our pattern of thoughts.
In short, the new view of metaphor is captured by the following main points as
opposed to the traditional method. First, metaphor is a property of concept, not of
words. Second, the major function of metaphor is to better understand a concept, not
just for artistic purposes. Third, metaphor is often not based on similarity. Fourth,
metaphor is used in everyday language, not just by talented people. Fifth, metaphor is a
crucial apparatus of human thought and reasoning (Kovecses, 2010).
1.2.2 The cognitive mechanism of metaphors
Lakoff and Johnson (2003) hold that in conceptual metaphors, there are two
conceptual domains, source domain and the target domain. Source domain is the
domain from which metaphorical understanding is drawn from to understand another
conceptual domain. The target domain is the conceptual domain that is understood via
domain. To understand a conceptual metaphor requires comprehending the set of
correspondences (mapping) between the source domain and the target domain. One
major feature of conceptual metaphor is that it highlights and, at the same time, hides
certain aspects of the target domain. Therefore, one single concept can function as the
target domain of a number of conceptual metaphors. Take the concept of LIFE, for

example. Many conceptual metaphors in which LIFE is the target domain have been

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listed by Lakoff & Turner (1989), LIFE IS A JOURNEY, LIFE IS A STAGE, LIFE IS
BONDAGE, LIFE IS A DAY, etc., Each of these metaphors helps to conceptualize one
aspect of life, and therefore, constitutes a coherent system in the understanding of life.
If human thought is metaphorical in nature (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003), is it
possible for one to understand something non-metaphorcially? This question is partly
addressed in the book entitled “More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic
Metaphors” by John Lakoff and Mark Turner in 1989. Non-metaphorical terms are not
structured and organized in terms of another but in its own terms. To argue, the two
authors took the example of how human beings understand the concept of dog, which
can be understood non-metaphorically and metaphorically at the same time depending
on which aspects. According to them, the non-metaphorical understanding of dogs
includes human conceptualization of the dog’s physical features such as wagging tails,
wet black nose and so on. However, sometimes, it is possible to comprehend a dog’s
tail metaphorically as a flag, but this metaphor is not common and not autonomous.
Metaphorically, humans understand dogs as being “loyal”, giving a human trait to a
dog. In other words, we conceptualize some aspects of dogs in human terms and this is
metaphorical.
There are certain things that we do not understand metaphorically, things that
human beings think as straightforwardly physical, such as rocks, trees, arms, legs, etc,
because we normally can use our physical body to experience them directly. These
sources often function as the source domain in a conceptual metaphor. Of course, there
are also certain sources of concept that are mostly structured metaphorically by making
use of or referring to other concepts (metaphorical understanding) such as life (LIFE IS
A JOURNEY, LIFE IS A PLAY,...), death (DEATH IS DEPARTURE, DEATH IS
BREAKING FREE OF THE BONDAGE), and time (TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT,

TIME IS A THEIF,...) love (LOVE IS A JOURNEY, LOVE IS SICKNESS,...) and so
on. The reason is that we structure less clearly delineated and vaguer concepts (and
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usually less concrete) in terms of more concrete concepts and more clearly delineated
in our experience (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003).
Kovecses (2010) listed some common source and target domains that are often
involved in the creation of conceptual metaphors. Some common source domains are
the human body, health and sickness, plants, heat and cold, light and darkness, forces,
and so on. Some common target domains include emotion, desire, thought, nation,
human relationship, life, death, religion and so on. It is easily noticed from these
common source and target domains that they are in line with the explanation provided
above by Lakoff and Johnson on why some experiences are structured and
comprehended via another. The source domain experience and concepts seem to be
concrete and clearly outlined in our thought or experienced directly by our body while
the concepts in the target domains appear to be vaguer and less clearly delineated.
1.2.3. Kinds of conceptual metaphors
Kovecses (2010) presented certain ways in which conceptual metaphors can be
classified: according to the conventionality, function, nature, and level of generality.
a) By conventionality
According to conventionality, conceptual metaphors together with their
linguistic manifestations can be categorized into conventional and non-conventional
metaphors. Conventionality refers to the degree of how well-established or how deeply
entrenched the metaphors are in every day thought and expressions. If a conceptual
metaphor is said to be highly conventional, people use it to think and talk
unconsciously and without effort. Kovecses (2010) gave the following examples:
ARGUMENT IS WAR: I defended my argument.
LOVE IS A JOURNEY: We’ll just have to go our separate ways.
THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS: We have to construct a new theory.

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IDEAS ARE FOOD: I can’t digest all these facts.
SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS ARE PLANTS: The company is growing fast
Some examples of non-conventional conceptual metaphor mentioned in
Kovecses’s discussion are LOVE IS A COLLABORATIVE WORK OF ART and
LIFE IS A MIRROR.
b) By the cognitive function of metaphors
According to the cognitive function, conceptual metaphors have three
categories: Structural metaphors, ontological metaphors and orientational metaphors.
These three types often overlap and coincide in certain cases.
First, structural metaphors are defined as the metaphors that structure one
concept in terms of another, for example, AN ARGUMENT IS WAR. By employing
the concepts of WAR, the human mind can structure and conceptualize ARGUMENT
to some certain extents.
Second, orientational metaphors “organize the whole system of concepts with
respect to another” (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003). This type of metaphor is called
orientation because they deal with special orientation: up-down, in-out, front-back, onoff, deep-shallow, and central-marginal. Orientation metaphors give the mind some
hints on how to conceptualize abstract ideas with respect to special directions. For
example, the metaphor “HAPPY IS UP” is the basis for the expression “I’m feeling up
today” or in contrast, “UNHAPPY IS DOWN” gives rise to the sentence “I’m feeling
down today.”
Third, ontological metaphors imply that human mind takes advantage of the
tangible and already in existence and visible to visualize and conceptualize the
intangible and abstract entities, moving the source domain (physical world) to the
target domain (usually the non-physical world).In other words, this type of metaphors
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allows us to experience a wide range of invisible things as visible substances and
entities so that the tasks of categorizing, grouping and quantifying can be made
cognitively easy and convenient.
Lakoff and Johnson (2003) give numerous examples on how ontological
metaphors are employed in our daily life to facilitate our cognitive tasks in referring,
quantifying or identifying entities that are not visible or touchable to us.
INFLATION IS AN ENTITY
Inflation is lowering our standard of living.
If there’s much more inflation, we’ll never survive.
c) By nature of metaphors
Metaphors can be based on knowledge or image. By the nature of metaphors,
there are three categories: knowledge-based metaphors and image-based metaphors. In
the latter type, there are two sub-types: image-schema metaphors and image
metaphors.
Knowledge-based metaphors are based on the knowledge mapping from the
source domain to the target domain and the knowledge is very rich in details. For
example, consider the conceptual metaphor LOVE IS A JOURNEY. People experience
and knowledge tell them a lot about what it means by a journey, a starting points, a
path to travel, a destination, a means of transportation, a companion and obstacles on
the way, etc.,
In case of the image-schema metaphor, consider the image schema of in-out
suggested by the word “out” in “out of order”, “ out of money”, “pass out”, and so on.
Very little is mapped from the source to the target domain. This type of metaphor is

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based on our direct contact with the physical world. Some more examples of imageschema metaphors are given by Kovecses (2010):
Image-Schema


Metaphorical Extension

in-out

I’m out of money.

front-back

He’s an up-front kind of guy.

up-down

I’m feeling low.

contact

Hold on, please. (“Wait”)

motion

He just went crazy.

force

You’re driving me insane.

Unlike structural and image-schema metaphors, image metaphors (Image-based
metaphor) maps one image to another image. Here is an example cited in More than
Cool Reason by Lakoff & Turner (1989), in which the image of a slowly walking
woman to mapped onto the flow of a river, “Now woman-river, Belted with silver fish”

(The Peacock’s Egg).
The scope of this thesis does not cover image metaphors (as stated in the scope
of the study).
d) By level of generality
According to the level of generality, metaphors can be either at a specific level
or generic level. Specific level metaphors are comprised of specific concepts, which
are rich in details, such as life, death, journey, etc., while generic metaphors are made
of general concepts with a small number of properties. Here are some examples of
these two types of conceptual metaphors given by Kovecses (2010):

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