13 metaphor concept. The metaphor concept borrows structuring ideas from the
domain of a journey and applies them to life. Although there are more approaches to metaphor, the researcher will
choose the theory from Lakoff since the theory is widely known. Moreover, Lakoff provides the concrete cases of the metaphor occurrence which are similar
with the cases in this research.
5. Metaphor Identification Procedure
In order to differentiate whether an expression contains metaphorical meaning or not, there several steps need to be taken. Stern 2000 discusses about
metaphor identification procedure MIP within the framework of the metaphor. The procedure involves metaphor annotation at the word level as opposed to
identifying metaphorical relations between words or source - target domain mappings between concepts or domains. There are four steps neededin order to
discriminate between the words used metaphorically and literally. The first step is to read the entire text-discourse to establish a general understanding of the
meaning. The second step is to determine the lexical units in the text-discourse. The third step is establishing the meaning of each lexical unit in the text in
context. This step analyzes how it applies to an entity, relation, or attribute in the situation evoked by the text or contextual meaning. There is possibility that the
lexical unit has a more basic contemporary meaning in other contexts than the one in the given context. Basic meanings tend to be more concrete. What they evoke is
easier to imagine, see, hear, feel, smell, and taste. If the contextual meaning is contrasts with the basic meaning but can be understood in comparison with it, the
14 lexical unit can be marked as metaphorical. By following the metaphor
identification procedure, the researcher can easily predict the expression containing metaphorical meaning. Although the prediction can be done easily, the
researcher still consults dictionaries to find the metaphorical meaning found in the expression.
6. Metaphor and meaning
The existence of metaphor is not something that can be easily confined. Although metaphor occurs in the language people use, it needs effort to
differentiate the literary and metaphorical meaning of the language. Goatly 1997 argues that the only difference between literal language and metaphorical
language is that literal language sticks on conventional criteria for classification, whereas in metaphorical language, the similarities and the criteria for
interpretation are relatively unconventional. In this research, the unconventional metaphor deals with indirect use of language.
Goatly 1997:14 explains that the perception and cognition pass the speaker’s thought and not directly accessible to anyone except the speaker. The
speaker proceeds the thought to form the proposition, which is the most relevant for conveying the thoughts. In order to communicate the proposition, the speaker
has to make it accessible to the hearer by using language code. Then, the hearer can interpret it by guessing what thought of the speaker want to convey. From the
idea conveyed by Goatly 1997, the researcher concludes that the larger the gap between proposition expressed and the meaning intended, the more metaphorical
the utterance will be.
