Orientational Metaphor Kinds of Metaphor

24 Get up. Wake up. I‟m up already. He fell asleep. He dropped off to sleep. He‟s under hypnosis. Physical basis: Human and most animals sleeps lying down and stand erect when they wake up. 3. HEALTH AND LIFE ARE UP; SICKNESS AND DEATH ARE DOWN He‟s at the peak of health. Lazurus rose from the dead. He‟s in top shape. He came down with the flu. His health is declining. Physical basis: Serious illness forces us physically to lie down, when you‟re dead yore physically down. 4. HAVING CONTROL OR FORCE IS UP; BEING SUBJECT TO CONTROL OR FORCE IS DOWN I have control over her. I am on top of the situation. He‟s in a superior position. He is my social inferior. He is low man on the totem pole. Physical basis: Physical size typically correlates with physical strength, and the victor in a fight is typically on top. 5. MORE IS UP; LESS IS DOWN The number of books printed each year keeps going up. His draft number is high. His income fell last year. He is underage. Physical basis: If you add more substance or of a physical objects to a container or pile, the level goes up. 6. FORESEEABLE FUTURE EVENTS ARE UP AND AHEAD All upcoming events are listed in the paper. What‟s coming up this week? I‟m afraid of what‟s up ahead of us. What‟s up ahead of us. 25 What‟sup.? Physical basis: Normally our eyes are in direction in which we typically move ahead, forward. As an object of a person or the person approaches the object the object appears larger. Since the ground is a perceived as being fixed, the top of being object appears to be moving upward in the person‟s field of a vision. 7. HIGH STATUS IS UP; LOW STATUS IS DOWN He has a lofty position. She‟ll rise to the top. He‟s at the peak of his c areer. He‟s at the bottom of the social hierarchy. She fell in status in status. . Social and Physical basis: Status is correlated with power social and power is UP physical 8. GOOD IS UP; BAD IS DOWN Things are looking up . We hit a peak last year, but it‟s been downhill ever since. Things are at an all-time low. Physical basis for personal well- being: happiness, health, life and control; the things that principally characterize what is good as a person are all UP 9. VIRTUE IS UP; DEPRAVITY IS DOWN He is high-minded. She has high standards. She is upright. That was a low-down thing to do. Physical and social basis: Good is up for a person physical basis together with the society as a person metaphor in the version where you are not identifying with your society. To be virtuous is to act in accordance with the standards set by the society-person to maintain its well- being from society person‟s point of view. Since socially based metaphors are part of the culture, it‟s society person‟s pint of view that counts. 26 10. RATIONAL IS UP; EMOTIONAL IS DOWN The discussion fell to the emotional level, but I raised it back up to the rational plane. He couldn‟t rise above his emotions. Physical cultural basis: in this culture, people view themselves as being in control over animals, plants, and their physical environment, and it is their unique ability to reason that places human being above them and gives human this control. Control is up. which has a physical basis, thus provides a basis for man is up, and therefor for rational is up. 41

3. Ontological Metaphor

An ontological metaphor is a metaphor in which an abstraction, such as an activity, emotion, or idea, is represented as something concrete, such as an object, substance, container, or person. 42 Ontological metaphors provide much less cognitive structuring for target concepts than structural ones do. Ontology is a branch of philosophy that has to do with the nature of existence. 43 According to Lakoff, ontological metaphors serve various purpose, and the various kinds of metaphors that are reflect the kinds of purposes served. 44 In general, ontological metaphors enable us to see more sharply delineated structure where there is very little or none: Table 2: 41 George Lakoff , Op. Cit., p.15-17 42 James R. Hurford, Op. Cit., p.335 43 Zoltan Kövecses, Op. Cit., p .38 44 George Lakoff , Op. Cit., 25-26 27 Source domain Target domains Physical object 1.Nonphysical or abstract entities eg.,the mind 2.Events e.g., going to the race 3. Action e.g.,giving someone a call Substance Activities e.g., a lot of running in the game Container 1. Undelineated physical object e.g., a clearing in the forest 2. physical and nonphysical surfaces e.g., land areas, the visual field 3. states e.g., in love 45 The range of ontological metaphors that we use for such purposes is huge. The following list gives some idea of the kinds of purposes, along with respentative examples of ontological metaphors that serve them: 46 Speakers can use these metaphors for more specific jobs: 1 To refer, to quantify, to identify aspects of the experience that has been made more delineated. For example, “My fear of insects is driving my wife crazy.” Conceiving of fear as an object we can conceptualize it as conceiving of fear 45 Zoltan Kövecses, Op. Cit., p.39 46 George Lakoff , Op. Cit., p.26. 28 as an object, we can conceptualize it as our possession. Thus, we can linguistically refer to fear as my fear, or your fear. We can conceive of personification as a form of ontological metaphor. In personification, human qualities are given to nonhuman entities. Personification is very common in literature, but it also abounds in everyday discourse. Examples: “His theory explained to me the behaviour of chickens raised in factories. ” “Life has cheated me.” “Inflation is eating up our profits.” “Cancer finally caught up with him.” “The computer went dead on me.” 47 Theory, life, inflation, cancer, com puter are not humans, but they are given qualities of human beings, such as explaining, cheating, eating, catching up, and dying. Personification makes use of one of the best source domains we have – ourselves. In personifying nonhumans as humans, we can begin to understand them a little better As in the case of the orientational metaphors, most of these expressions are not noticed as being metaphorical, one reason for this is that ontological metaphors, like orientational metaphor, serve a very limited range of purposes; referring, quantifying, etc. Merely vieweing an nonphysical thing as an entity or substance does not allow us to comprehend very much about it. But ontological metaphors may be 47 Geoge Lakoff, 1992. Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. UK: Cambridge University Press, p.20.