A Corpus-Based Approach To Universality And Variation In Metaphor

The embodiment thesis views the more abstract target domains of cognition (mind) as based on concrete source domains such as the human body (parts). As a result, the human body plays a crucial role in the creation of meaning and its understanding. The present study takes the interactive view of embodiment and offers a corpus-based and comparative analysis of various conceptualizations of the body (parts), the heart and the head, for inner life experiences both in English and Chinese. It explores the universality and variation in metaphor as well as the cultural basis of metaphorical conceptualization in order to establish significant links between the universal conceptualizations of the body, the respective linguistic expressions and the culture specificity of body metaphors in different cultures.The primary aim of this study is to reexamine the role of the body in abstract conceptualizations by exploring body and culture as groundings of metaphor, and this line of research is deemed as a new and promising trend to seek out language-mind-culture interactions in metaphor studies. The second aim is to address the critical methodological issues about systematic identification of linguistic and conceptual metaphors in natural data from large-scale corpora. The present study is expected (a) to contribute to the understanding of the cultural basis of metaphor and hopefully to provide new insights into the claim that metaphor arises from body-language-culture interactions; and (b) to shed light on inductive methods of metaphor identification in general.The present study is concerned with the symbolic dimension of metaphor in both language and thought and does not involve the cognitive process and its cognitive representation in language user's mind. Metaphor research in language and thought needs their own methods of metaphor identification and analysis. This study is innovative in methodology by employing the Pragglejaz Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) for identifying linguistic metaphors, and the WordNet and SUMO method for identifying conceptual structures of linguistic metaphors. The MIP method is only concerned with identifying linguistic metaphors, not conceptual structures of them. The conceptual structures of linguistic metaphors are addressed separately with the WordNet and SUMO method that adds transparency to the procedure. The methodological separation between identifying linguistic and conceptual metaphors has a clear advantage over the top-down approach that would start out from conceptual metaphors in the study of metaphor in language and thought.Comparison of English and Chinese leads to the identification of the following similarities and differences:(a) Metaphor is indeed pervasive in language and metaphorical uses are as frequent as or more frequent than literal uses. Linguistic metaphors are related systematically to each other, with fixed and semi-fixed expressions as a major indicator of metaphorical uses; and (b) Two conceptual metaphors for mental life, HEAD/HEART AS A CONTAINER and HEAD/HEART AS AN OBJECT OF MANIPULATION, are found in English and Chinese. A difference seems to exist in terms of degree of saliency or conventionality of the shared conceptual metaphors, with HEAD AS A CONTAINER in English and HEART AS AN OBJECT OF MANIPULATION in Chinese as the most productive metaphor for mental life respectively; and (c) Both English and Chinese share the conceptual metaphors HEART AS AN OBJECT, HEART AS A CONTAINER, and HEART AS MOTION for emotional life. A difference seems to exist in terms of degree of saliency (or conventionality) of the shared conceptual metaphors, with HEART AS AN OBJECT in English and HEART AS A CONTAINER in Chinese as the most productive metaphor for emotional life respectively. The difference in saliency of the shared conceptual metaphors is a reflection of the relative preferential conceptualizations of body (parts) for inner life experiences in two different cultures.The findings of the study suggest a significant role of the body (parts) in the conceptualizations of inner life experiences in English and Chinese. In addition, cross-cultural variations in metaphor are observable in the "range of the target" that the two languages and cultures have available for the conceptualizations of the head and/or the heart. The following cross-cultural variations in metaphor are noted:(a) English uses two source domains, while Chinese selects five source domains to characterize mental life. HEART AS A LOCATION, HEART AS MOTION, and HEART AS LIGHT, are alternative metaphors for mental life in Chinese; and (b) English employs three source domains, while Chinese selects five source domains to characterize emotional life. HEART AS HEAT and HEART AS FOOD are alternative metaphors for emotional life in the Chinese language. The underlying reason is that the "range of the source domains" is extended in the Chinese language and culture, resulting in the cross-cultural variations in English and Chinese.The conceptualizations of human body (parts) as seats of emotional and mental life reveal different cultural models in the two languages and cultures. The major loci of cognition (mental life) are revealed to be in the head region and the heart region in English and Chinese respectively. The English language displays cerebrocentrism and dualism between the head as the locus of thought and the heart as the locus of emotions, while Chinese displays a holistic heart-centering conceptualization (or cardiocentrism), with the heart as the locus of both thought and emotions. The underlying reason for the difference between the conceptualizations of the heart, seems to lie in the general trends of philosophical thought in the English and Chinese cultures. As language is part of the cultural system, the conceptualizations of the body (parts) are indeed a phenomenon at the cultural level of cognition.The overall claim of the study is that the interaction approach to body and culture as grounding of metaphor is descriptively more adequate and has greater explanatory power in accounting for both universality and variation in metaphor than either the "embodied cognition" or the "cultural cognition" approach. Metaphor is a widespread phenomenon that occurs in the interactions of body, language, and culture.