Concepts of metaphor and metaphorization plus notion – a commentary to the state of research Cover Image

Koncepcje metafory i metaforyzacji a pojęcie – komentarz do stanu badań
Concepts of metaphor and metaphorization plus notion – a commentary to the state of research

Author(s): Maria Gołębiewska
Subject(s): Philosophy, Language and Literature Studies, Philosophy of Language
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku
Keywords: metaphor; metonymy; metaphorisation; conceptualisation; reasoning; imagination

Summary/Abstract: The article aims to present some diverse concepts of metaphorization of colloquial language and scientific discourse. The starting point of scientific discourse is colloquial thinking – it uses logical argumentation, but also rhetorical figures, typical of everyday reasoning, such as metaphors. The point of reference is the Aristotelian definition of metaphor, which was contemporarily reinterpreted by 1) linguists (among others, Émile Benveniste and cognitive linguists) – the metaphorical sources of notions, the metaphor considered as the starting point of conceptualisation, 2) literary and cultural studies – the application of metaphor in the various cultural messages linked to the mythical thinking and the reasoning and argumentation by analogy – among others, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Edmund Leach, and in particular by 3) philosophers who characterised a metaphorization process as a specific kind of thinking, which conditions the regularity and systematicity of reasoning and imagining (Hans Blumenberg, Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida). The article presents and compares the aforementioned statements, marking the distinctness between metaphor and metonymy, showing the necessity for this distinction in the research concerning: the role of metaphor in colloquial and scientific discourse, the relations between sense and metaphor, the connexions between truth, notion and metaphor. Additionally, I analyse the case of the metaphor of horizon, which is typical of the contemporary phenomenological and hermeneutical discourse.

  • Issue Year: 2/2017
  • Issue No: XXIX
  • Page Range: 25-49
  • Page Count: 25
  • Language: Polish