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Figurative Meaning Construction in Thought and Language
Edited by Annalisa Baicchi
[Figurative Thought and Language 9] 2020
► pp. 253–282

Cutting and breaking metaphors of the self and the Motivation & Sedimentation Model

| Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Sweden | Department of Language and Culture, UiT the Arctic University of Norway, Norway
| Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Sweden | Centre for Language EvolutionStudies, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland

Why are expressions of irreversible separation (e.g. I feel torn apart) used to speak about the self? Are they to be treated as metaphorical? We address these questions by using concepts and methods from cognitive semiotics, and especially the conceptual-empirical loop. We develop identification and classification procedures based on intersubjective intuitions, and apply these to data from a corpus of personal descriptions of traumatic experiences. To provide a principled explanation of these expressions, we employ the Motivation & Sedimentation Model (hereafter, MSM), which distinguishes between three interacting levels of meaning making: the Situated, the Sedimented, and the Embodied. On this basis we provide a definition of metaphor, leading to the conclusion that most instances of expressions in the sample would qualify as metaphorical, while affirming that metaphoricity is a scalar notion.

Keywords: cognitive semiotics, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, metaphoricity, iconicity, irreversible separation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.What: Cutting and breaking metaphors of the self
    • 2.1Separation: Reversible and irreversible, actual and non-actual
    • 2.2Irreversible, non-actual separation of the self
  • 3.How: Identifying C&B metaphors of the self in English Corpora
    • 3.1Data and methodology
    • 3.2Identifying irreversible non-actual separation (INAS) expressions
    • 3.3Different dimensions of the self
  • 4.How: Probing the data with quantitative tools
    • 4.1Representativeness
    • 4.2Correlations between INAS expression types and self-dimension types
  • 5.What, Why and How: MSM and cutting and breaking metaphors of the self
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.9.11dev
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