Levels of metaphor
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Zoltán Kövecses
Abstract
What is the appropriate conceptual structure involved in conceptual metaphors? Various authors offer a large number of terms to discuss the issue. While domain is the most common term, many others are also used, including frame, image schema, cognitive model, idealized cognitive model, scene, schema, scenario, etc. The problem is compounded by the fact that the terms mean different things to different researchers. The main goal of the paper is to create some clarity in this terminological and theoretical confusion. I propose that conceptual metaphors simultaneously involve conceptual structures, or units, on four levels of schematicity: the level of image schemas, the level of domains, the level of frames, and the level of mental spaces. I call the resulting framework the “multi-level view of conceptual metaphor.” The multi-level view of metaphor can provide us with insights into a number of problems that have been raised and debated in the CMT literature. I show that the study of metaphor within such a framework can legitimately be pursued on the four levels of schematicity and that no level can be singled out as the only appropriate level of analysis.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their critical but very constructive comments on a previous version of the paper. Special thanks go to Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza and John Taylor for generously offering comments on an earlier draft. I am grateful to my doctoral students for their observations on an initial draft. I am also thankful to Olga Boryslavska for kindly drawing the diagrams used in the paper.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Usage-based linguistics and the magic number four
- Stopgap subordinators and and but: A non-canonical structure emergent from interactional needs and typological requirements
- Form-meaning correspondences in multiple dimensions: The structure of Hungarian finite clauses
- Levels of metaphor
- Book Reviews
- Heike Behrens and Stefan Pfänder: Experience Counts: Frequency Effects in Language
- Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk: Conceptualizations of Time
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Usage-based linguistics and the magic number four
- Stopgap subordinators and and but: A non-canonical structure emergent from interactional needs and typological requirements
- Form-meaning correspondences in multiple dimensions: The structure of Hungarian finite clauses
- Levels of metaphor
- Book Reviews
- Heike Behrens and Stefan Pfänder: Experience Counts: Frequency Effects in Language
- Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk: Conceptualizations of Time
