Publication details
On conceptualizing excessive action through the Shower metaphor in English
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Journal of Applied Linguistics and Lexicography |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | https://journall.org/index.php/main/article/view/85 |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.33910/2687-0215-2021-3-1-4-15 |
| Keywords | conceptual metaphor; action quantity; excessive action; water metaphor; aspectuality |
| Attached files | |
| Description | The given article presents the results of the research into the functioning of the "Excessive action is Shower" metaphor which is used to express the aspectual semantics of excessive action in contemporary English fiction texts. In order to reveal the mechanism of metaphor constructing, its semantic structure was analysed, i.e., the relations between the source and targets upon which metaphorical mappings were built. The results indicate that both meanings of the word Shower, i.e., the direct one (rain) and the one derived from it (device for washing) get into metaphorical relations to name excessive action. Five foci of these metaphorical projections have been singled out which come to the fore when Shower is used metaphorically; a detailed classification of nouns collocating with Shower to express excessive action was made. The study shows that among these nouns those are frequent which name heavy or light objects, objects of material well-being and attitude. Nouns naming emotions and time rarely function as targets. To describe the functioning of this metaphor the contextual conditions were described - syntactic structures in which the metaphor is regularly used, prepositions with which Shower is combined, accompanying linguistic phenomena, among which the following are regular: a) the use of other Water metaphors in the close context which are subtypes of the general conceptual metaphor “Excessive action is Water” (a “burst” of metaphors); b) semantical changes when a word with positive meaning acquires negative meaning when it functions as a target (axiological clashes). The findings of this study let us identify the pragmatic potential of this metaphor and conclude that its prevailing evaluative value is negative; as well as claim that the conceptual metaphor "Excessive action is Shower" is productive in English and is culturally specific. |
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