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Cognitive Analysis of the Meaning of (se) casser la tête
Cross-Cultural Studies
2019,
54(), pp.193-228
DOI : 10.21049/ccs.2019.54..193
Publisher : Center for Cross Culture Studies
Research Area : Literature
DOI : 10.21049/ccs.2019.54..193
Publisher : Center for Cross Culture Studies
Research Area : Literature
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The fundamental issue is that the idea of the metaphor was not often considered to be a subject of linguistics, but Lakoff and Johnson considered metaphor as a subject of linguistic analysis through the theory of conceptual metaphor, arguing that metaphors are not only prevalent in our everyday language, but also in the world of thought. Generally speaking, cognitive linguistics also takes the view that an adequate conceptual framework for linguistic analysis should view figurative language not as a problem, but as part of the solution. Conceptual blending is one of the methodologies of cognitive linguistics that deals with how the meaning is structured, and it is a rather complex cognitive process consisting of input spaces, cross-mapping and projection that are brought into the blend. The blend develops the emergent structure that serves as a clue to the composition of the meaning. The conceptual metaphor theory focuses on the abstract conceptual metaphor itself, but the blending theory focuses on how the metaphorical meaning of an individual expression is constructed in those cases. The conceptual theory works as a cognitive model stored in an individual’s long-term memory, but the blending theory works through the mental space that is constructed during real-time processing in the brain. We use this blending theory to analyze the metaphorical meaning of (se) casser la tête through the conceptual integration network model. This analysis confirms that the conceptual metaphor {The head is a container} that presents in long-term memory is expressed in metaphorical meanings, which are at once considered to be distinct by the conceptual integration network configured in real time, according to the different contexts provided in the sentences.
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