Metaphor And Its Social Functions

IntroductionThe aim of this paper is to have a comprehensive understanding of metaphor by illustrating the nature of metaphor, the process of the production of metaphor meaning and its forming mechanism. Based on the previous illustrations and sociolinguistic theories of metaphor, the paper further explores the social value of metaphor, especially in science and politics. In addition, it introduces cultural metaphors and its roles in intercultural communication.This paper contains four chapters. The first chapter presents an overview of the nature of metaphor. The contributions of some of the major theorists in the debate concerning metaphor have been sketched, including Aristotle's Comparison Theory, Black's Substitution Theory, Richards' Interaction Theory, and Lakoff's Cognitive Theory. Different theories of metaphor tend to lay particular emphasis, which may be semantic, pragmatic or cognitive. However, a comprehensive theory seems to be more acceptable, which views the issue from various disciplines. And for the purpose of the discussion, the attributes of metaphor are again discussed, including its semantic-contextual, logical and institutional features.The second chapter is focused on the question of how ametaphorical meaning is produced and comprehended.The personal construct theory, from psychological perspective, holds that any world view can be described in terms of elements and constructs, which has led to empirically-grounded accounts of the manner in which these elements are organized. Kelly proposed "constructive altemativism" as another name for personal construct theory. The theory suggests that the hearer on being presented with a metaphor does recognize it as such by virtue of its conceptual and linguistic structure and the features discussed in the first chapter. The hearer is alerted to an instance of non-literal language and is ready to receive an alternative meaning. Therefore, for the hearer to proceed, it is then necessary for him to perceive that the candidate element possesses some attribute by which it can be admitted to a domain in which it would be regarded as alien. Various complex cognitive mechanisms have been proposed. However, the existing formulations are handicapped by a lack of basic theoretical grounding.Since metaphors exist within language an account of the process involved in its use, we must also analyze them from cognitive-linguistic perspective. Two different concepts will appear in a metaphor and one concept is relocated from its customary domain into the other concept, which causes a semantic strain. It is through this semantic strain that the resemblance between the two concepts is perceived for a metaphorical meaning to be comprehended. Metaphorical meaning is of creativity.Indurkhya (1992) claimed that a metaphor can affect a linkage between concepts on the basis of attributes which can be specified only in retrospect, and which do not exist prior to the metaphor itself. It is an important source for polysemy.The third chapter deals with forming mechanism of metaphor, which is a central part in comprehending the nature of metaphor and functions of metaphor.In this chapter, traditional and modern theories on metaphor forming mechanism are recapitulated. Simply put, the comparison theory lays emphasis on word metaphor, the interaction theory on statement metaphor, while the cognitive theory on cognitive metaphor. I agree on the view that it is a result of interaction among various factors with reference to the lexical, semantic and conceptual metaphor.In metaphor forming mechanism, resemblance is considered the most important. Resemblance is defined as the state of two things resembling. It falls into two categories: physical resemblance and psychological resemblance. Also in this chapter Paul Henle's (1958) concept of Iconic Resemblance is briefly discussed. He gives the iconic character of metaphor, that is, the presentation of one thought is in terms of another to make visible and to show the first in light of the more vivid appearance of the...