Abstract
In this article my main concern is the linguistic evidence for the view that metaphor is conceptual in nature. Since the fact that there is a great diversity of linguistic evidence for patterns of metaphorical thought has been, by and large, not emphasized enough, I overview a variety of such evidence, which can be derived from the study of different aspects of meaning within a particular language, crosslinguistically, and at a metalinguistic level. However, in itself the variety of linguistic evidence, even though it speaks very strongly for the idea that metaphor is conceptual in nature, is not sufficient to justify it. Therefore, recognizing the fact that claims about our conceptual system which are based on linguistic analyses alone remain within the "language - thought - language" circle, the article discusses also some kinds of nonlinguistic evidence for conceptual metaphors. Psycholinguistic research on metaphorical reasoning is presented as a major source of such nonlinguistic verifications. Drawing on Daniel Barenboim's BBC Reith lectures of 2006, it is also argued that convergent evidence from language and music may serve to break open the "language - thought - language" circle.
References
CALD 2008 Cambridge Advanced learner's dictionary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
L-1 "In the beginning was sound", Lecture by Daniel Barenboim at Cadogan Hall, London, BBC Radio, lecture audio and transcript of Reith lectures 2006, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2006/lecture1.shtml
LD- Discussion after L1.
L-3 "The magic of music", Lecture by Daniel Barenboim at the Berlin State Opera, BBC Radio, lecture audio and transcript of Reith Lectures 2006, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2006/lecture3.shtml
MED 2002 Macmillan English dictionary for advanced learners. (1st edition.) 2002. Oxford: Macmillan Publishers Limited.
Allwood, Jens 2003 "Meaning potential and context: Some consequences for the analysis of variation in meaning", in: Hubert Cuyckens - René Dirven - John R. Taylor (eds.), 29-65.
Barcelona, Antonio (ed.) 2000 Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads. A cognitive perspective. (Topics in English linguistics 30.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Brinton, Laurel J. - Elizabeth Closs Traugott 2005 Lexicalization and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Contini-Morava, Elen - Robert S. Kirsner - Betsy Rodríguez-Bachiller (eds.) 2004 Cognitive and communicative approaches to linguistic analysis. (Studies in functional and structural linguistics 51.) Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Cuyckens, Hubert - René Dirven - John R. Taylor (eds.) 2003 Cognitive approaches to lexical semantics. (Cognitive linguistics research 23.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Damsio, Antonio 1999 The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co.
Damsio, Antonio 2003 Looking for Spinoza: Joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co.
Evans, Vyvyen 2004 The structure of time. Language, meaning and temporal cognition. (Human cognitive processing 12.) Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Evans, Vyvyen 2006 "Lexical concepts, cognitive models and meaning construction", Cognitive Linguistics 17: 491-534.
Filipović, Luna 2007 Talking about motion. A crosslinguistic investigation of lexicalization patterns. (Studies in language companion series 91.) Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Freeman, Margaret H. 2000 "Poetry and scope of metaphor: Toward a cognitive theory of literature", in: Antonio Barcelona (ed.), 250-281.
Gibbs, Raymond W. 1994 The poetics of mind. Figurative thought, language, and understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gibbs, Raymond W. 2005 "The psychological status of image schemas", in: Beate Hampe (ed.), 113-134. in press "Walking the talk while thinking about the talk: Embodied interpretation of metaphorical narratives".
Gibbs, Raymond W. (ed.) 2008 The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gibbs, Raymond W. - Marcus Perlman 2006 "The contested impact of cognitive linguistic research on the psycholinguistics of metaphor understanding", in: Gitte Kristiansen - Michael Achard - René Dirven - Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez (eds.), 211-228.
Raymond W. Gibbs - Gerard J. Steen (eds.) 1999 Metaphor in cognitive linguistics. Selected papers from the 5th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, 1997. (Current issues in linguistic theory 175.) Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Giora, Rachel 2003 On our mind: Salience, context, and figurative language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Górska, Elżbieta 2008 "Four arguments for patterns of metaphorical thought", Acta Philologica 34: 5-31. forthcom. "LIFE IS MUSIC - a case study of creative metaphorical thought".
Górska, Elżbieta - Günter Radden (eds.) 2005 Metonymy-metaphor collage. Warszawa: Warsaw University Press.
Grady, Joseph E. 2005 "Image schemas and perception: Refining a definition", in: Beate Hampe (ed.), 35-55.
Hampe, Beate (ed.) 2005 From perception to meaning. (Cognitive linguistics research 29.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Heine, Bernd 1997 Cognitive foundations of grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heine, Bernd - Ulrike Claudi - Friederike Hünnemeyer 1991 Grammaticalization: A conceptual framework. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Heine, Bernd - Tania Kuteva 2002 World lexicon of grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jäkel, Olaf 1999 "Kant, Blumenberg, Weinreich: Some forgotten contributions to the cognitive theory of metaphor", in: Raymond W. Gibbs - Gerard J. Steen (eds.), 9-27.
Johnson, Mark 1987 The body in the mind: The bodily basis of imagination, reason, and meaning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Johnson, Mark 2005 "The philosophical significance of image schemas", in: Beate Hampe (ed.), 15-33.
Keysar, Boaz - Shen Yeshayahu - Sam Gluckensberg - William S. Horton 2000 "Conventional language: How metaphoric is it?", Journal of Memory and Language 43: 576-593.
Koenig, Jean-Pierre (ed.) 1998 Discourse and cognition: Bridging the gap. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language of Information (CSLI) Publications.
Kövecses, Zoltán 2002 Metaphor. A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kövecses, Zoltán 2005 Metaphor in culture. Universality and variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kövecses, Zoltán 2008 "Conceptual metaphor theory. Some criticisms and alternative proposals", Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 6: 168-184.
Kristiansen, Gitte - Michael Achard - René Dirven - Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez (eds.) 2006 Cognitive linguistics: Current applications and future perspective. (Applications of Cognitive linguistics 1.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Krzeszowski, Tomasz P. 1988 "Wstęp do wydania polskiego" [An introduction to the Polish edition], in: George Lakoff - Mark Johnson, 5-18.
Lakoff, George 1993 "The contemporary theory of metaphor", in: Andrew Ortony (ed.), 202-251.
Lakoff, George - Mark Johnson 1980 Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, George - Mark Johnson 1988 Metafory w naszym życiu [Metaphors we live by]. (Translated by Tomasz P. Krzeszowski.) Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy.
Lakoff, George - Mark Johnson 1999 Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books.
Lakoff, George - Mark Turner 1989 More than cool reason. A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Langacker, Ronald W. 1987 Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol. 1: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Langacker, Ronald W. 1998 "On subjectification and grammaticalization", in: Jean-Pierre Koenig (ed.), 71-89.
Langacker, Ronald W. 2004 "Form, meaning, and behavior: The cognitive grammar analysis of double subject constructions", in: Elen Contini-Morava - Robert S. Kirsner - Betsy Rodríguez-Bachiller (eds.), 21-60.
Langacker, Ronald W. 2006 "On the continuous debate about discreteness", Cognitive Linguistics 17: 107-151.
Langacker, Ronald W. 2008 Cognitive grammar. A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ortony, Andrew (ed.) 1979 Metaphor and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ortony, Andrew (ed.) 1993 Metaphor and thought. (2nd edition.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Özaçalişkan, Şeyda 2005 "Metaphor meets typology: Ways of moving metaphorically in English and Turkish", Cognitive Linguistics 16: 207-256.
Reddy, Michael J. 1979 "The conduit metaphor - A case of frame conflict in our language about language", in: Andrew Ortony (ed.), 284-324.
Shopen, Tim (ed.) 1985 Language typology and syntactic description. Vol. 3: Grammatical categories and the lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Slobin, Dan I. 2004 "The many ways to search for a frog: Linguistic typology and expression of motion events", in: Sven Strömqvist - Ludo Vehoven (eds.), 219-257.
Strömqvist, Sven - Ludo Vehoven (eds.) 2004 Relating events in narrative. Vol. 2: Typological and contextual perspective. Mahvah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Talmy, Leonard 1985 "Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical form", in: Tim Shopen (ed.), 57-149.
Turner, Mark 1987 Death is the mother of beauty: Mind, metaphor, criticism. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Turner, Mark 1996 The literary mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tyler, Andrea - Vyvyan Evans 2003 The semantics of English prepositions: Spatial scenes, embodied meaning and cognition. Cambridge - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Zbikowski, Lawrence M. 2008 "Metaphor and music", in: Raymond W. Gibbs (ed.), 502-523.
Zlatev, Jordan 2003 "Polysemy or generality? Mu", in: Hubert Cuyckens - René Dirven - John R. Taylor (eds.), 447-494.
Barsalou, Lawrence W. 2008 "Grounded cognition", Annual Review of Psychology 59: 617-645, available at http://psychology.emory.edu/cognition/barsalou/papers/Barsalou_ARP_2008_grounded_cognition.pdf, (date of access: 8 June 2009).
Barsalou, Lawrence W. 2009 "Simulation, situated conceptualization, and prediction", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: Biological Sciences 364: 1281-1289, available at http://psychology.emory.edu/cognition/barsalou/onlinepapers.html (date of access: 29 June 2009).