Theories of conceptual metaphor

Metaphor is the common factor in all cognitive approaches to the study of literature, so is the natural starting point for considering culture, cognition and literature. Traditionally, a metaphor has been considered a linguistic expression where the attributes of the source domain are transferred onto those of the target domain. For instance, in the expression ‘life is a dream’, selected attributes of the concept ‘dreaming’ are mapped onto those relating to the idea ‘life’, resulting in an innovative synthesis. Recently, though, findings from cognitive science have demonstrated that such uses of language are the surface manifestations of deep-seated human mental processing that is fundamentally metaphorical. Many branches of Cognitive Science have established that everyday mindwork relies on mapping the characteristics of one conceptual domain onto another, and that the product is more than the sum of the parts, or more than a simple blend or mapping. Our capacity for abstract reasoning, imagination, learning and comprehension all depend on being able to blend ideas, reconceptualise one thing in terms of the characteristics of another, make mental representations of the combination, and draw analogies from the similarities and differences. Taken beyond the linguistic into the cognitive sphere, metaphor has therefore become the subject of crucial interest to literary and linguistic cognitive approaches, as well as being the centre of attention and debate more broadly in a wide variety of disciplines.