1. Analogy, Language and Cognition
metaphors
Analogy, Language and Cognition
Daniella Ferrari
Lucas Silva
Natália Grandi

2. Contextualizing This presentation is based on:
The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor, by George Lakoff (1993)
The Cognitive-Linguistic Revolution in Metaphor Studies, by Gerard Steen

3. Cognitive-linguistic approach to metaphor launched by Lakoff and Johnson (1980)
dominant traditional views held that metaphor was an isolated, seldom occurring poetic or rhetorical quirk;
Lakoff and Johnson claimed that metaphor is not a deviant phenomenon in language but a fundamental cornerstone in cognition.

4. In classical theories of language
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.
It was seen as a matter of language not thought
Everyday language had no metaphor
Metaphor used mechanisms outside the realm of everyday conventional language

5. Cognitive linguists consequently claim that metaphor is not the deviant language of poets, politicians, and patients, as was the dominant view, but one basic building block of a lot of language, thought, and communication.
Metaphor is a major and indispensable part of our ordinary, conventional way of conceptualizing the world, and that our everyday behavior reflects our metaphorical understanding of experience

6. Our relationship has hit a dead-end street.
LOVE IS A JOURNEY
Imagine a love relationship described as follows:
Our relationship has hit a dead-end street.
love is being conceptualized as a journey
the relationship is stalled
the lovers cannot keep going the way they've been going
they must turn back
or abandon the relationship altogether

7. LOVE IS A JOURNEY
The metaphor involves understanding one domain of experience, love, in terms of a very different domain of experience, journeys.
Look how far we’ve come.
It's been a long, bumpy road.
We can’t turn back now.
We’re at a crossroads.
We may have to go our separate ways.
The relationship isn’t going anywhere.
These are ordinary, everyday English expressions. They are not poetic, nor are they necessarily used for special rhetorical effect.

8. TARGET-DOMAIN IS SOURCE-DOMAIN or TARGET-DOMAIN AS SOURCE-DOMAIN
Metaphorical expressions are not in language, but in thought: they are general mappings across conceptual domains
The mapping is the set of correspondences
TARGET-DOMAIN IS SOURCE-DOMAIN or TARGET-DOMAIN AS SOURCE-DOMAIN

9. EXAMPLES time as motion ideas as food arguments as war
organizations as plants
time can fly
ideas need to be digested
arguments can be won or lost
organizations can grow or need to be pruned

10. Crossing map of conceptual domains: an Example
“A verdade é como um leão; você não precisa defendê-la. Deixe-a solta, e ela se defenderá a si mesma.” Cito a frase de Santo Agostinho para fazer um paralelo com o Programa Escola sem Partido: desembaraçado das mentiras que seus adversários espalham para enredá-lo perante a opinião pública, ele se defende por si só.
Programa Escola sem Partido acaba com cooptação da esquerda. Miguel Nagib, Especial para a Folha. Folha de São Paulo, 11/09/2016.
DOMÍNIO ALVO: VERDADE
DOMÍNIO FONTE: LEÃO
Autossuficiente / se impor
Animal que consegue se defender
“Publicar” / deixar público
Soltar
Animal feroz
Mentiras
Preso
Adversário
“Prendedor”

11. The explanation of this pervasive and systematic presence of metaphor in thought is that the former, ‘target’, concepts are typically abstract, less well understood and hard to delineate in comparison with the latter, ‘source’, concepts, which are typically more concrete, better understood and easier to specify.