Conceptual Metaphors in Linguistics Discourse

Abstract

On the material of English the paper aims at identifying and investigating conceptual metaphors in linguistics discourse. Different versions of conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson,1980, 1993; Kovecses 2008, 2017; Reddy 1979) form the theoretical basis of the study. The empirical data embrace 11 textbooks in different branches of linguistics - historical linguistics, phonetics, lexicology, pragmatics, stylistics and sociolinguistics. The observations have shown that linguistics discourse is quite understudied from the standpoint of conceptual metaphor theory.

As a result of the study a number of conceptual metaphors, mainly of ontological and structural type, have been identified and examined. The following ontological metaphors have been attested in the data: Language is a Mirror; Language is a Container; Language is Female. The most frequently encountered structural metaphors are as follows: Language is a Code; Language is a Living Organism; Language has a Family; Language Relations are Family Relations.

The metaphors in question are employed with the purpose of describing language from different perspectives.