cognitive studies of metaphor

cognitive studies of metaphor

Cognitive Studies of Metaphor
1. Introduction
Metaphor has been an important topic of research and analysis from Aristotle to the present. For more than 2000 years, it was generally recognized as a fundamental figure of speech, especially in literature. In contemporary research, however, metaphor is also seen as a “figure of thought”[1], and the study carried out by Lakoff expanded its traditional territory from rhetoric and literary criticism to various fields that overlap, to different degrees, on the common ground of cognitive science, including linguistics, semiotics, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology.
In fact, it was since the publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By and their subsequent work that there has been a metaphormania. The cognitive turn of metaphorology is first initiated by Richards, elaborated and developed by Black and revolutionized by Lakoff and Johnson and enriched by many other prominent linguists. What follows is a review of their study.
2. Richards and Black’s Interaction Theory
In his classic The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Richards puts forth the Theory of Interaction, which breaks the limitation of the traditional rhetoric study of metaphor and introduces a cognitive perspective. He points out that metaphor is no longer only a means of decoration but a process of thinking. He criticizes traditional theorists for simply treating metaphor as a linguistic phenomenon instead of “the intercourse of thoughts”. To him, metaphor means understanding one thing by virtue of another thing, so it is a mode of cognition. He states, “When we use a metaphor we have two thoughts of different things active together and supported by a single word, or phrase, whose meaning is a result of their interaction.”[2] He regards metaphor as the result of an interaction between tenor and vehicle in a metaphorical statement (tenor is the term he used to describe the subject of the metaphor, vehicle for the transported part....