37 found in the expressions were to move suddenly and with force, to move around
freely, and to escape from somebody or something.
Based on the data, the metaphorical meaning of to move or go quickly leaded with 56.25 percentage and becomes the dominant metaphorical meaning
of the verb fly. The second was placed by to seem to pass very quickly with 18.75 percentage. The meaning of to be successful took the third position with
the same 18.75 percentage as the second position. The fourth position was to be talked about by many people with 6.25 percentage. The meanings of the
metaphors to move suddenly and with force, to move around freely, and to escape from somebody or something had 0 occurrence in the expressions.
Table 4.3 The Percentage of the Metaphorical Meaning of the Verb Sink
No. Meaning of Verb
Sink BNC
COCA Total
Percentage
1. To cause something or someone to
fall or move to a lower level 7
7 14
46.7 2.
To prevent somebody or somebody’s plans from succeeding
5 4
9 30
3. To decrease in amount, volume,
strength 5
1 6
20 4.
To drink something quickly especially a large amount of
alcohol 1
- 1
3.3
5.
To cause something to fail or be in trouble
- -
- 6.
To become quieter
- -
- GRAND TOTAL
30 100
Table 4.3 presented the meanings of the metaphors withsink occurred in British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English, also the
frequency of the metaphorical meanings found in the occurrence. The researcher found 30 expressions containing the meanings of the metaphors withsink in
38 British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English.
Furthermore, there were four categorized metaphorical meanings of the verb sink found in the occurrence. The metaphorical meanings of the verb sink were to
cause something or someone to fall or move to a lower level, to decrease in amount, volume or strength, to prevent somebody or somebody’s plans from
succeeding, and to drink something quickly especially a large amount of alcohol. There were two meanings of the metaphors with sink which were not found in the
expressions. Those meanings of the metaphors were to cause something to fail or be in trouble and to become quieter.
Based on the data, the metaphorical meaning of to cause something or someone to fall or move to a lower level became the dominant metaphorical
meaning of the verb sink with 46.7 percentage. The second dominant metaphorical meaning wa
s to prevent somebody or somebody’s plans from succeeding with 30 percentage. To decrease in amount, volume or strength took
the third position with 20 percentage. The last position was placed by to drink something quickly especially a large amount of alcohol with 3.3 percentage.
The meanings of the metaphors with sink t
o
cause something to fail or be in trouble and to become quieter had 0 occurrence in the expressions.
From the results, the researcher found that there were 43 expressions containing the meanings of the metaphors withdrive, 16 expressions containing
the meanings of the metaphors withfly, and 30 expressions containing the meanings of the metaphors withsink found. The researcher categorized the
metaphorical meanings of the verbs and discovered sevenmeanings of the
39 metaphors withdrive, four meanings of the metaphors withfly, and four meanings
of the metaphors withsink. Furthermore, the researcher found the most frequent meanings of the
metaphors withdrive, fly, and sink occurred in BNC and COCA. The researcher found that the metaphorical meaning to influence something or cause it to make
progress became the most dominant meaning of the metaphors withdrivefound in the expressions. The metaphorical meaning of to move or go quickly was the
dominant meaning of the metaphors withfly. The most dominant meaning of the metaphors withsinkwas to cause something or someone to fall or move to a lower
level.The collected expressions containing metaphorical meanings would be used to solve the second research problem.
B. The Concrete Example Uses of Drive, Fly, and Sink Containing
Metaphorical Meanings in BNC and COCA
This section provided the discussion of the second research objective, the concrete example uses of the verb drive, fly, and sinkcontaining metaphorical
meaning in British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English. Dealing with finding the concrete example uses of the verb drive, fly, and
sink containing metaphorical meaning, the theory of Lakoff and Johnson 1980
would be functioned as the bases. Lakoff and Johnson 1980 stated metaphor involves three essential aspects, namely source domain, target domain, and a set
of mapping relations or correspondences. The researcher had to find those three aspects in an expression in order to get the metaphor concept. The finding would
40 be illustrated by using the ontological and epistemic domains correspondences
proposed by Kovecses1986.
1. The Concrete Example Uses of Drive Containing Metaphorical Meanings
in BNC and COCA
The meaning of drive based on Cambridge Advanced Learner‟s
Dictionary was to move or travel on land in a motor vehicle, especially as the
person controlling the vehicles movement. Based on Oxford Advanced Learner‟sDictionary, the meaning of drive was to operate and control the
direction and speed of a motor vehicle. Based on Webster‟s New Explorer
Encyclopedic Dictionary , drive meant to operate a vehicle or to have oneself
carried in a vehicle.Those definitions were the literary meanings of drive. In the first finding, the researcher already explained about the metaphorical meanings of
the verb drive. From the first finding, the researcher selected some expressions and analyzed the metaphorical concept occurred in the expression.
There were several metaphorical concept found in the selected expressions. The metaphor concepts of drive which were presented in this section
had relation with emotion. According to Kovecses 2000, some of the emotion concepts that received attention dealing with metaphor were anger, fear,
happiness, sadness, love, lust, pride, shame, and surprise. The researcher found that the emotion of love, anger, and lust became the representative of the
metaphor concepts found in the expressions. The conceptual metaphors for love were already obvious in everyday
language use. The reason could be that the source domain was natural and obvious
41 for most people when talking about the loved one. The naturalness even made the
feeling of the metaphor concept occurrence disappeared. These following expressions would give the picture how naturalness occurred in the metaphorical
concept which dealt with love emotion. You are mine and I am yours.
I won’t let anyone take you from me. Those expressions seemed to be natural and contained literary meaning
only. In fact, those expressions carried metaphor concept of THE OBJECT OF LOVE IS A POSSESSED OBJECT. In those expressions, the source domain was
A POSSESSED OBJECT, whereas the target domain is THE OBJECT OF LOVE. The researcher analyzed the correspondences between the source domain
and the target domain. A POSSESSED OBJECT represented a possession. When someone had something, the object became the person’s possession. The person
would take care of the object and would not let anyone else to take the object. While THE OBJECT OF LOVE represented lovers. When someone was in
relationship, the partner was considered as special person and possession. In metaphor concept of THE OBJECT OF LOVE IS A POSSESSED OBJECT, the
positions of possession and lovers were parallel or similar. The emotion of love could give different metaphor concept when it was
applied in different context. The next example was taken from British National Corpus. The expression would give different understanding about love metaphor
concept.
1You would drive her as potty as shes driving you.CHI 5207, BNC
42 The metaphor concept of the expression was LOVE IS MADNESS. In that
expression, the source domain was MADNESS and the target domain was LOVE. The correspondences between the source domain and target domain would be
illustrated in table 4.4. Table 4.4 Correspondences between MADNESS and LOVE
Ontological correspondences Source: MADNESS
Feeling Anger
Pressure Limit of
person’s ability to suppress anger
Target: LOVE
Feeling Romantic
Experienced pressure Limit of someone’s
resistance Epistemic correspondences
Source: MADNESS When the feeling is
pressured beyond the limit of a person’s ability to
suppress anger, the pressure will increase to surpass the
person’s emotion state and cause the person unable to
behave in reasonable way.
Target: LOVE When the feeling increases
beyond a certain limit, in which the person is attracted
to someone, the abundant feeling cause the person
unable to behave in reasonable way.
Although the expression did not state directly the term love, but the context of the expression gave the feeling that love is the cause of the madness.
The researcher interpreted the madness since there was the term potty in which had the similar meaning with silly or mad. The researcher noticed that the
correspondence of the source and target domain was that both of the domains could be directed from a person who had strong emotion toward someone. Lakoff
1980 gave the similar example of the expression containing LOVE IS MADNESS metaphor concept. He drives me out of my mind. Expressions found
43 in British National Corpus and Lakoff’s work positioned LOVE and MADNESS
at the same level, a strong feeling which made a person unable to behave in reasonable way after the feeling surpassed the person’s resistance.
Besides love, the researcher also presented anger and lust as the emotion that could affect the metaphor concept. The concrete example use dealing with
anger could be found in British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English.
2You can really be a snake eating its own tail and drive
yourself nuts with, “Will people like this or that?”.CGB 2130, BNC
3 Do you ever get frustrated by Spaghetti Junction? Does the Downtown
Connector drive you crazy when you are trying to get to the Braves
game? COCA
The metaphor concept of those expressions was ANGER IS INSANITY. Those expressions had the same source domain which was INSANITY whereas
the target domain is ANGER. The correspondences between the source domain and target domain would be illustrated in table 4.5.
