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Zoltán Kövecses: IDIOMS, METAPHORS, AND MOTIVATION IN FOREIGN ...
phrases that are linguistic examples of the conceptual metaphors. For example,
the mappings for anger is fire include:
etc.
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the thing burning → the angry person
the fire → the process of anger
the cause of fire → the cause of anger
the degree of the heat → the intensity of anger
But if we look at the other conceptual metaphors, we notice that they are composed
of the same mappings. For example, the thing burning can also be the person
in love, the person imagining, or the entity undergoing a conflict, etc. Given
this, we can generalize the mappings in the following way, and think of these
more general mappings as a generic-level metaphor-intensity is (degree of) heat:
intensity is heat
the thing burning → the person in a state/process
the fire → the state/process (like anger, love, imagination)
the cause of the fire → the cause of the state/process
the beginning of the fire → the beginning of the state/process
the existence of the fire → the existence of the state/process
the end of the fire → the end of the state/process
the degree of the heat of the fire → the intensity of the state/process
Such mappings account for why particular idioms (or, as a matter of fact, also
one-word metaphors) mean specifically what they do. For example, ‘set fire to
one’s imagination’ means what it does because it is based on the mapping ‘the
beginning of the fire → the beginning of the state/process’; ‘extinguish the last
sparks of the revolution’ means what it does because it is based on the mapping
‘end of the fire → end of the state/process’; and ‘burn with excitement’ means
what it does because it is based on the mapping ‘the degree of the heat of fire →
the intensity of the state/process’.
The conceptual metaphors and the mappings constituting them provide
strong motivation for the use of certain words and their meanings. The generalized
mappings of the sort we saw above can systematically explain why idioms
and words mean what they do outside their primary application. The use of this
kind of motivation may contribute to the learning of idioms in a foreign language,
as some studies indicate (see, e.g., Kövecses and Szabó 1996; Boers 1997, 2000,
2004).