MULTIPLE USES OF A SINGLE SOURCE DOMAIN

Conceptual metaphors are pairings of source and target conceptual domains. When discussing a metaphor, we must always specify both the source and the target domain, for a very good reason: A language may use the same source domain to describe many different target domains, and it may describe a single target domain using many different source domains. Each of these source–target pairings has a distinct mapping and should be treated as a separate conceptual metaphor. It makes little sense to talk about English's fire metaphors, for example, as a coherent group. English uses fire as a source domain for concepts such as life, desire, destruction, and anger; the target domains differ greatly, and each source–target pairing draws on different aspects of the fire domain.

In this section, we will go through several ASL metaphors that use the same source domain: the vertical up–down scale (cf. Sweetser 1995 for vertical-scale metaphors in English, Brennan 1990 for some BSL examples). As each source–target pairing is analyzed, we will see that they fall into two types: the “positive-end-up” type and the “positive-end-down” type. Moreover, each pairing's use of the vertical scale is different and is motivated by a different set of experiences in the world. The positive-end-up mappings are based on two different kinds of experience: the fact that piles of objects become taller when more objects are added, and the fact that height or high ground gives one an advantage in a physical confrontation.