Conclusions

In this paper I presented two main approaches (which are by no means new) toward the study of metaphor: traditional, which views metaphors as forms of language and conceptual (or as Lakoff calls it “contemporary”), which considers metaphors to be forms of mental representation. I didn’t try to present any critical analysis and highlight the drawbacks of the mentioned theories as any theory discussed in this paper can prove to be either true or false under certain circumstances. My assumption is that any attempt to find a universal infallible theory of metaphor is doomed to failure. Nevertheless all the above described theories give certain clues to the general idea of metaphor comprehension.

The question “how do metaphors work” is a bit like the question “how does one thing remind us of another thing?”[82]. There is no single answer to either question, though there are definite psychological, logical and linguistic models which obviously play a major role in answering both.

Comparison and analogy are the basic mental processes, which relate the two domains (or the topic and the vehicle) in metaphor and thus underlie the process of metaphor comprehension from the point of view of logic.

From linguistic point of view the basis of metaphor is a semantic change, which allows us to “switch” the words from their normal, proper functioning and use them to describe some different situations. And this in its turn becomes possible due to “semantic flexibility” of words: words have to be sufficiently flexible to cover the range of possible applications [81]. Metaphorical transfer can be based on either the denotative or connotative part of the lexical meaning of the vehicle. The denotative information plays the major role in understanding sentences as Sam is a giant meaning Sam is big (giant ‘a legendary humanlike being of great stature and strength’[75]. Connotative information plays a crucial role in comprehension statements as Richard is a gorilla^, which means Richard is fierce, nasty, prone to violence and so forth. Neither the definition of the word (gorilla ‘an anthropoid ape of western equatorial Africa related to the chimpanzee but less erect and much larger’ [75] nor back ground information about gorillas (as some investigations show that gorillas are not at all fierce and nasty but shy, sensitive creatures, given to bouts of sentimentality) can be of any help here. What really matters is the following connotative information: generations of gorilla mythology have set up certain associations that enable this metaphor to work even though both speaker and hearer know these beliefs to be false. That also may lead us to the conclusion that from the point of view of psychology metaphors are based on associations, which together with the above mentioned factors play a crucial role in metaphor comprehension.

All the examples given in the paper show that metaphors are both restricted and systematic. Restricted in the sense that not every way that one thing can remind us of something else will provide a basis for metaphor, and systematic in the sense that metaphors must be communicable from speaker to hearer in virtue of a shared system of principles.

The fact that different things or events, etc. used metaphorically (as the vehicle) may evoke different associations on part of the listener or the reader results in two main difficulties concerning metaphor comprehension. Firstly, in the process of metaphor interpretation it is always necessary on part of the reader/listener to make restrictions in the properties of the vehicle and decide on those which fit the given context (the examples of language acquisition given in this paper (p. 12–13) show that the mistakes children make in metaphor comprehension are predetermined by their inability to make suitable restrictions). The properties which give rise to similar interpretations relate to salient features of the lexical items involved. And, secondly, various interpretations and sometimes even misinterpretations are a necessary “by-product” of metaphor.

One more conclusion may be that we shouldn’t by any means underestimate the role of context in metaphor comprehension. It is context that helps us to make restrictions and to select just those properties that are relevant in and fit this particular context. If a metaphoric utterance is given out of context it may have different interpretations depending on many factors such as age, sex, education, temperament, but mainly cultural background of the listener or reader. Thus, metaphor comprehension is closely connected with one’s knowledge of the world. In order to figure out the meaning of the contextual expression and to grasp the speaker’s idea, listeners make immediate use of common ground information – the beliefs, knowledge, and attitudes shared by both speakers and listeners.

Conceptual theory of metaphor claims to give a certain clue to metaphor comprehension by focusing not on singular instances of metaphor, but on more or less systematic linguistic correspondence between different conceptual domains. It shows that there are metaphoric utterances, which are closely connected as they embrace the whole conceptual field and there are certain common threads that hold that field together. Thus, metaphors are not simply figures of speech, but to some extent they are modes of thought. This approach gives us a possibility to try to reveal various mental models (which can differ considerably across cultures) via metaphor and present their cross-cultural analysis.

My main conclusion, nevertheless, matches that of B. Fraser “metaphors are black holes in the universe of language. We know that they are there; many prominent people have examined them; they have had enormous amounts of energy poured into them; and sadly, no one yet knows very much about them” [36].

 The example is taken from Searle [102, 88]

 Here and further on in this paper I will use Richards’ terms “the tenor” or “the topic” meaning something that is being asserted , “the vehicle”, which is used metaphorically to form the basis of comparison.

 As the author himself doesn’t provide any systematic interpretations of similes as “the range was so large that it was not possible to find any clear-cut trends” (Fraser), we will focus our attention on metaphors.

 The example is taken from [11].

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