Lexical stylistic devices:metaphor

Metaphor has had a long history of investigation since ancient rhetoric, but it is in the second part of the 20th century with emergence of Linguostylistics and developments in adjacent trends in Linguistics and Literature, metaphor drew a close attention of scholars and received a new impetus in its investigations.
There were presented new approaches to metaphor regarding its definitions, mechanisms of its creation, classifications. Traditionally metaphor is understood as a trope, based on interaction of dictionary and contextual meanings, the relations between two meanings being associations of similarity, identifying one object with another. The structural and semantic classifications of metaphors give us an insight into the role they play in speech and language, i.e. either they are tr ...

Introduction 3
Chapter I. Structural and semantic classifications of metaphors 4
1.1. The ontology and definitions of metaphor 4
1. 2. Semantic classifications of metaphors 12
1.3 . Structural peculiarities of metaphors 20
Chapter II. Conceptual Metaphor Theory 23
2.1. The essence of metaphor in Conceptual Metaphor Theory 23
2.2. Classification of metaphors in the Conceptual Metaphor Theory 27
2.3. Imageable idioms and image metaphors 30
Conclusions 32
References 33

Metaphor is one of the most prominent and expressive tropes, i.e. lexical stylistic device based on interaction of a dictionary and contextual meanings of a word. It was known in ancient rhetoric as a transference of meaning and a device used for some artistic and rhetorical purpose, embellishment of speech.
Metaphor as a stylisic device remains within linguists’ interests, especially with the emergence of Linguostylistics as a branch of Linguistics in the middle of the 20th century. The topicality of metaphor research and of the present course paper is stipulated by the fact that new developments in Semasiology, Cognitive linguistics, Discourse and Corpus linguistics, Poetics and Literary criticism, Translation theory, Linguoculturology. New, systematic approaches demand a clarification a nd delineation of many aspects concerning metaphor.
The objective of the present research is giving a comprehensive description of metaphor as a stylistic device presenting various approaches to metaphor by domestic and foreign linguists.

It is a potent device for creating images both in prose and especially in poetry. “An image is a sensory perception of an abstract notion already existing in the mind” [18, p. 140]. Creating an image means bringing a phenomenon from the highly abstract to the essentially concrete. I.R.Galperin illustrates this statement by the example: Dear Nature is the kindest Mother still where the two concepts are brought together in the interplay of their meanings, which brings up the image of Nature materialized into but not likened to the image of Mother [18, p.140]. This is personification, a specific kind of metaphor, ascribing human qualities to inanimate objects. It follows that metaphor is an image-bearing stylistic device with the help of which writers and poets can express most subtle nuances of their emotions and vision of the world. In the following example by W.H.Auden we observe how the poet metaphorically expresses a man’s state, the one who feels emptiness in his heart and despair via images of a desert and a prison, the image of a healing fountain reveals the idea of hope:In the deserts of my heart Let the healing fountain start In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.A poetic metahor is an act of establishing an individual world outlook, it is an act of subjective isolation [5, p.83].Metaphorization can also be described as an attempt to be precise, as J. Murry Middleton thinks: “Try to be precise and you are bound to be metaphorical; you simply cannot help establishing affinities between all the provinces of the animate and inanimate world” [22, p.83]. The precision is not logical but emotional and aesthetic. Metaphor (or metaphoric renaming) is not only an effective stylistic device but also a common means of occasional denomination. Whenever a speaker does not know the name of a thing he has not seen before, he generally resorts to a metaphor, using a word or expression which denotes a similar thing, a thing familiar to him. Similarity on which metaphorical renaming is based may concern any property of the thing meant. It may be colour, form, character of motion, speed, dimension, value and so on, anything that shows resemblance [14, p.122]. It is a human nature to see similarities and this is one of the ways for the vocabulary of the language to coin new words. Metaphors, like all stylistic devices, can be classified according to their degree of unexpectedness into the so called genuine or original versus trite (hackneyed, stereotyped). Absolutely unexpected, unpredicted metaphors are called genuine. Those which are commonly used in speech and therefore are sometimes fixed in dictionaries are trite or dead metaphors. Their predictability is apparent. Genuine metaphors, as I.R.Galperin puts it, belong to language-in-action, i.e. speech metaphors. trite metaphors belong to the language-as-a-system, i.e. language proper, and are usually fixed in dictionaries as units of the language [18, p.141]. Linguostylistics deals preferably with ‘living’ expressive genuine metaphors which are new fresh, unexpected, and thus emphatic, making the reader or listener see new unexpected or hitherto unknown aspects or traits in the object of metaphorization. It is difficult to give examples of genuine metaphors as they soon lose their originality. Y.M. Skrebnev gives the following examples of metaphors from modern literature:1) trite metaphors: “I suppose we’re not barking up the wrong tree” [= not accusing an innocent person] (Christie). “Pat and I were chewing the rag about it [= were chatting about it] when the telephone bell on Pat’s desk came alive” [=rang] (Chase).“What’s biting her, I wonder?” (= what makes her uneasy?)2) fresh (genuine) metaphors: “Only briefly did I pay heed to the warning bell that rang sharply in my mind” (= the feeling of alarm);“If Aitkeen found out about us the New York job would go up in smoke (=every chance of getting this job would be lost) [15]. Philip Wheelwright distinguishes two types of metaphor: epiphora and diaphora. The term epiphora was goes back to Aristotle and denotes transference (epiphora) of the name from one object to another object. The semantic transference “movement” (phora) proceeds from a concrete and easily perceived image to the one (epi) which is more or less indefinite, more doubtful or strange. Life is a slumber: here the notion of life which is the tenor of the sentence is somewhat vague while everyone has his own reminiscences of slumber and waking up from it. Correspondingly slumber can be treated as vehicle – a semantic casing for all the aspects of life similar to it, to which the speaker wants to draw attention. By the same token the following metaphors are construed: God the Father, the milk of human kindness, his hark is worse than his bite, etc.The essential feature and function of epiphora is to express the resemblance between something relatively well-known and something which has a greater significance but is less known. It follows that there must be a certain intermediary image or concept which can be easily understood. In other words, there must be an initial “literal” basis for the next operations. When Edgar in “King Lear” says “Ripeness is all”, he uses the word, which in its direct meaning refers to a well-known state of gardens and fruit, but he uses it as a casing for his emotional state which is difficult to explain in plain words, but which brings together the notions of ripeness and readiness (compare Readiness is all in “Hamlet”). The sign is metaphoric if it is used with reference to the object which it does not denote in its direct sense but it possesses certain features inherent in the object which must the actual denotatum of this object.Notwithstanding that epiphora presupposes affinity between the tenor and the vehicle, it does not mean that the resemblance is self-evident. Such an obvious resemblance is devoid of any energy and tension, a mere comparison is not an epiphora. The best epiphoras are marked by freshness, they attract the attention to resemblances which are not easy to reveal unobtrusively. Epiphora is common in various genres. An example from poetry:All cries are thin and terse;The field has droned the summer’s final mass;A cricket like a dwindling hearseCrawks from the dried grass Richard Wilbur, ‘Exeunt” Diaphora represents a kind of “movement” (phora) via (dia) a completely new path of experience (real or imaginary), so that a new meaning emerges just by way of simple juxtaposition. Ph. Wheelwright illustrates diaphora by the following, as he calls it a trivial, example: My country ‘tis of theeSweet land of libertyHiggledy-piggledy my black hen.The poet expressed his ironic attitude towards his native country the USA by this genuine metaphor. This is a very unexpected juxtaposition of the tenor ‘sweet land of liberty’ and the vehicle ‘higgledy-piggledy my black hen’ which creates a quite striking and unexpected effect as the elements of the metaphor look incompatible. The juxtaposition of the concepts here is not based on factual resemblances but the emotional corresepondence. Though both of them, epiphora and diaphora, create images and are used in belles-lettre style, it is diaphora that creates most original, unexpected images.Notwithstanding a rather significant number of classifications of metaphors, a traditional and widely accepted subdivision of metaphor is the subdivision of decorative (imaginative, individual author metaphors) and nominative metaphors with understanding that there are no rigid boundaries between them, so that the firat ones can be transferred into the second one and sometimes vice versa. Of course, the first type of metaphors belongs to the domain of Linguostylistics and are treated as stylistic devices while the second one rather belongs to Lexicology.G.N. Sklyarevskaya describes in detail the semantic processes of both kinds of metaphor: the sequencies involved in metaphorization processes, the direction of metaphorization processes, regular and irregular metaphoric transferences, equivalency, reflecting the conceptual language system and the way the world view is reverberated in the metaphor, its functions, system organization stages and relations, systemic organization of metaphors within semantic fields and many others.Language metaphors are classified by G.N. Sklyarevskaya into three types:1) Motivated language metaphors in which there is a semantic component, explicitly connecting the metaphoric meaning with the source meaning: a heart of stone, golden hair, etc.2) Syncretic language metaphors based on emotive similarities: bitter disappointment, sweet melody, etc.3) Associative language metaphors are based on the ability to conscientially find analogies between any real objects. Metaphors based on associative links are universal and are prior to other types numerically and in their impact on the current semantic processes. For example: a pigsty ‘a place where swine are kept’ > a dirty room, house; a princess ‘a kings / queen’s daughter’ > a pretty little girl, etc. [14, pp. 48 - 57]. Language and artistic metaphors differ from one another on all the parameters. An artistic metaphor comes into being as a result of deliberate creative aesthetic research and is a work of art by a talented writer which results in a bright image-bearing symbol while a language metaphor doesn’t require such efforts but once it is introduced into the language system, it is used in speech ready-made. A language metaphor is easily substituted for by literary equivalents while it is unlikely in case of an artistic metaphor. An artistic metaphor destroys a habitual taxonomy of objects, while a language metaphor verbalizes a logical - conceptual system in the language, i.e. an artistic metaphor reflects the individual world of its creator, but a language metaphor is directly related to the linguistic taxonomy. [14, с. 156]. Metaphor has a great potential of placing together different object and phenomena, achieving a new understanding of the object, it is capable of revealing its essence [10, p. 217]. Another classification of metaphors was presented by P. Newmark in his book “A Textbook of Translation”. By metaphor he means any figurative expression: the transferred sense of a physical word. Metaphor is used to describe one thing in terms of another [24, p.104]. The purpose of metaphor is basically twofold: its referential purpose is to describe a mental process or state, a concept, a person, an object, a quality or an action more comprehensively and concisely than is possible in literal or physical language; its pragmatic purpose is to appeal to the senses, to interest, to clarify, to please, to delight, to surprise [24, p. 104]. P. Newmark distinguishes six types of metaphor: dead, cliché, stock, adapted, recent and original and concentrates on possible ways of translating them [24, pp. 106 – 113]. Dead metaphors are those where one is hardly conscious of the image. They frequently relate to universial terms of space and time, the main part of the body, general ecological features and the main human activities, such words as space, field, top, bottom, foot, mouth, arm, circle, drop, fair, rise, etc. Some simple artefacts such as bridge, chain, link also act as dead metaphors in some contexts and they are often translated literary. Common words may attain a narrow tecgnical sense in contexts: e.g. dog ‘element’, jack ‘shaft’, etc. In English dead metaphors can be livened up by conversion to phrasal verbs (drop out, weigh up). Cliché metaphors are those that have perhaps temporarily outlived their usefulness, that are used as a substitute for clear thought, often emotively, but without corresponding to the facts of the matter. Cliches are often used in informative texts, e.g. a break through, a jewel in the crown, etc. That’s why in translation they can be reduced to sense or replaced with a less tarnished metaphor by agreementwith the source language author, especially in public notices, instructions, propaganda or publicity. Cliché metaphors overlap with a stock standard metaphor. A stock or standard metaphor is an established metaphor which in an informal context is an efficient and concise method of covering a physical and / or mental situation both referentially and pragmatically – a stock metaphor has a certain emotional warmth and whichis not deadened by overuse, “they keep the world and society going – they ‘oil’ the wheels” . Examples: keep the pot boiling, throw a new light on, wooden face, a sunny smile, drop in prices, in store, hawks and doves, all that glitters isn’t gold, hold all the cards, etc. Here belong also verb metaphors deal with, go into, take up. Stock metaphors are sometimes tricky to translate, since their apparent equivalents may be out of date or used by a different social group. The first and most satisfying procedure for translating a stock metaphor is to reproduce the same image in the target language.Adapted metaphors are individual author’s occasional metaphors. in translation an adapted metaphor, if translated literally, might be incomprehensible. for example the one by Reagan the ball is a little in their court. It should be adapted in the target language. There are various degrees of adapted metaphors.By recent metaphors P.Newmark means metaphorical neologisms often ‘anonymously’ coined which have rapidly spread in the source language. It may be a new metaphor designating one of a number one of a ‘number’ of prototypical qualities that continually ‘renew’ themselves im language, e.g. fashionable with it, good groovy, drunk pissed, without money skint, stupid spastic, policeman fuzz, etc. They should be treated as all neologisms.Original metaphors are created or quoted by a writer. They contain the core of an important writer’s message, his personality, his comment on life, and though they may have some more or less cultural element, these have to be translated neat; such metaphors are a source of enrichment for the target language. Personification is a variety of metaphor. Personification is attributing human properties to lifeless objects – mostly to abstract notions and natural objects. Often are personified the Earth, Time, seasons of the year, etc. In modern poetry and prose the purpose of personification is to help visualize the description, to impart dynamic force to it or to reproduce the particular mood of the viewer. There are certain formal signs of personification which make the personified words resembling human features: 1) the name of a personified object is written with a capital letter; 2) the personal pronouns he or she are used. There also might be words Mr, Mrs, Ms, Miss found as an example from O’Henry’s story: Mr Pneumonia came… In the following example Night is personified as having common features with mother: Then Night, like some great loving mother lays her hands on our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained face up to hers, and smiles, and though she does not speak we know what she would say and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom and the pain is gone (Jerome). 1.3 . Structural peculiarities of metaphorsMetaphor has no formal limitations: it can be a word, a phrase, any part of a sentence, an idiom, a proverb, a sentence as a whole, a complete imaginative text. Moreover, there are not only ‘simple’ metaphors, i.e. those in which only one statement is metaphorical or contains a metaphorical element (a word, a phrase), but sustained (prolonged) metaphors as well. The latter occur whenever one metaphorical statement, creating an image, is followed by another containing a continuation, or logical development of the previous metaphors.A prolonged metaphor from the story “Ernestine” by Th.Dreiser is an illustration of a sustained metaphor: “’… she had in some way mismanaged the opportunities that had been hers, and next, that life was a confusing gamble in which the cards were frequently marked, and the dice weighted.” In this prolonged metaphor a confusing gamble is the central image, such words as the cards were frequently marked, and the dice weighted are contributory images which revive a trite central image. The central image life is a gamble , a trite metaphor is revived by following contributory images: confusing, cards were frequently marked, the dice weighted. The words conveying both the central image (gamble) and the contributory images are used in two senses simultaneously: direct and figurative. The contributory images help us understand that the life of the protagonist wasn’t quite decent and honest, and also she was manipulated. There are also prolonged metaphors when the central image is not given. In the following lines of P.B.Shelley’s “The Cloud” a prolonged metaphor is used:In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,It struggles, and howls at fits…Contributory images here presented by the words In a cavern, fettered, the thunder, struggles, howls create the image of a wild beast. There is a constant interaction between general and trite metaphors. Genuine metaphors if they are good and can stand a test of time, may through constant repetition become trite while trite metaphors may regain their freshness through the process of prolongation of the metaphor.Genuine metaphors are mostly to be found in poetry end emotive prose. Trite metaphors are generally used as expressive means in newspaper articles, in oratorical style and even in scientific functional style. The use of trite metaphors should not be regarded as a drawback of style. They help the writer enliven his work and make the meaning more concrete. Structurally metaphoric images can be represented on levels of a word, word combination (phrase), sentence, text.As it was pointed above, metaphors can be expressed by one word of any notional part of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, though adjectives and adverbs are treated also as epithets or metaphoric epithets in such examples as loud colours or iron will. However, one word is not enough to determine a metaphor. There must be a clue to it, i.e. the determining context like in the above examples, where for example colours and will make up the determining context for loud and iron. Here the context is minimal for adjectives. Nouns require a minimal context of a simple sentence A is B, e.g. She is a cat where the pronoun she determines a metaphoric transference from an animal to a human being. The verb requires a subject – predicate S – O or S – P – O minimal structures to realize a metaphor:1) S – P: Time flies;2) S – P – O: Suspicion scratched him. Metaphor is also represented within idioms, phraseological units: a rough diamond, a bull in a china shop, to wash dirty linen in public, to keep one’s head above water, etc. They are image-bearing expressive means of the language incorporating people’s experience and wisdom as well as proverbs and sayings, e.g. Cut your coat according to your cloth. Here we observe interplay of meanings, a transference from direct nominative meanings, denoting e.g. an inanimate object a rough diamond or an animal a bull in a china shop to a human being possessing qualities indicated in the source phrase. In proverbs interplay of meanings is observed because a proverb is expressed by a sentence describing an ordinary, trivial situation which having undergone a metaphoric transference is updated to the level of people’s wisdom or a moral lesson. Idioms and proverbs, however, are becoming trite in the course of time.To metaphoric texts refer parables and fables. In fables, for instance, there might be traced metaphoric transferences from animals’ to human behaviour. Like proverbs they express people’s wisdom and moral lessons. Chapter II. Conceptual Metaphor Theory2.1.