Publications

Publication details [#10243]

Stanojevic, Mateusz-Milan. 2009. Dijakronijska varijacija u metaforickim modelima: razrada metodologije [Diachronic variation in metaphorical models: Developing a methodology]. Zadar. vi, 337 pp.

Abstract

The cognitive linguistic approach to conceptual metaphor has a number of advantages, the most important being its comprehensiveness' conceptual metaphor is an offline and an online process, conventional and innovative, based on culture and biology, synchronic and diachronic in nature. This diversity is also the root of the most significant research problem in conceptual metaphor theory: the lack of a theoretical model that would take into account the multifaceted nature of conceptual metaphor, simultaneously offering a detailed and comprehensive methodological research apparatus. The aim of this dissertation is to produce an integrated model of conceptual metaphor with a special emphasis on diachronic research and offer a comprehensive systematic research method. More specifically, the dissertation offers answers to three research questions: whether diachronic research of conceptual metaphor is a plausible enterprise, what are the elements of a comprehensive theory of metaphorical models and what kind of methodology can take into account all of the necessary theoretical issues. On the practical level, the answers to these research questions are based on testing the developed research method on the Middle English concept LOVE. Thus, in addition to offering a theoretical and methodological framework, we present a study of a relatively poorly investigated area of Middle English, which, in turn, allows making informed assumptions about the development of the concept LOVE from Middle English until today. The application of the integrated model and the comprehensive research method to the Middle English concept LOVE produced the expected results. We showed that the concept LOVE in Middle English is a complex metaphorical cultural model with a relational literal base (consisting of participants S1 and S2 and time t which extends beyond the scope of view). There are various types of love in Middle English, and a range of linguistic expressions are used in the domain, and this study focuses on the noun love. Based on a semantic and grammatical analysis of the noun we have determined the literal standard which served as the criterion to establish metaphorical conceptualizations. The following schematic conceptual metaphors were found in the corpus: LOVE IS AN OBJECT, LOVE IS A FORCE, personification, LOVE IS SERVICE and a handful of more detailed metaphors. Moreover, we found numerous non-metaphorical conceptualizations, which function in keeping with the image schemas of FORCE and BALANCE in the LOVE cultural model. The examination of the relation between linguistic expressions and conceptual metaphors showed that linguistic expressions which are furthest from the core (verbs combined with the noun exhibit the most schematic metaphorical relationship to the concept LOVE. The closer we come to the core of the expression (e.g. the noun love premodified by an adjective), linguistic and conceptual examples are less numerous but increasingly more characteristic of the target concept. The discourse method confirmed these results and enabled a reconstruction of the scenario of romantic/courtly love and the interaction of the grammatical schema, stages in the scenario and metaphorical conceptualizations. In the first stage of the scenario, LOVE is conceptualized as a force that has an influence on the person in love or is personified. In the second stage (single participant conceptualizations only the lover) conceptual metaphors showing the intensity of the emotion (LOVE IS FIRE, quantity and size of LOVE as an object) and the lover's inability to control oneself (LOVE IS A FORCE and its detailed conceptualizations and personification) are particularly prominent. In second stage conceptualizations with two participants, the lover's longing for love or the loved one is schematically conceptualized as a bounded entity (detailed conceptualizations include: VALUABLE COMMODITY, FOOD, THIRST), and the lover's behaviors towards the loved one are structured using the conceptual metaphor LOVE IS SERVICE. In the following stages of the scenario the loved one notices that the lover loves him/her. This is expressed using the conceptual metaphor LOVE IS SERVICE: the lover does various favors for the loved one, and the value of the favors is estimated on the basis of the BALANCE image schema. In other types of love (e.g. erotic love) other metaphors may be used in this stage, e.g. the EXCHANGE OF GOODS schematic metaphor with detailed conceptualizations of ABDUCTION, THEFT, BUYING, etc. In the final stages of the scenario mutual love and the fulfillment of the scenario“ conceptual metaphors characteristic of the LOVE model are no longer there, and their place is taken by conceptualizations related to other cultural models that may follow love (e.g. happiness, marriage, etc.). (Mateusz-Milan Stanojevic)