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A Reductive Analysis of Conceptual Metaphor from the Perspective of Philosophy of Dialogue
The theory of conceptual metaphor proposed by Lakoff and Johnson has a fundamental claim: A great deal of ordinary language is metaphorical. This claim triggers a question to be thought about in the present study: What is the nature of the small portion of non-metaphorical language? Unfortunately, this question has not been further tackled by Lakoff and Johnson, only to have left it over unanswered in the academic world. Accordingly, the present study attempts to investigate into two basic questions with regard to conceptual metaphor: What is the nature of conceptual metaphor? What characteristic can be found from the small portion of non-metaphorical language? Centering on the two questions, the present study is to conduct a reductive analysis of conceptual metaphor from the perspective of Buber’s philosophy of dialogue. Based on a series of analysis, the present study has found that the conceptual metaphor in nature is the secondary product of language and thought, and a language has a basic part consisting of primary words which cannot be metaphorical, and all metaphors are secondary and creative products in language use. Such expression as “I am you” cannot be interpreted as conceptual metaphor, simply because in terms of Buber’s philosophy of dialogue the primary words “I” and “you” are not conceptually descriptive but contextually sensitive instead.
WANG Yu, DU Shihong . A Reductive Analysis of Conceptual Metaphor from the Perspective of Philosophy of Dialogue[J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2022 , 22(5) : 97 -109 . DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1674-8921.2022.05.011
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