There are many metaphors in a person's conceptual system-thought. The knowledge of correspondences or similar characteristics between these two items is necessary to comprehend a conceptual metaphor. We refer to these conceptual analogies as ― mapping‖- a concept given by Kửvecses (2002: 6). A metaphor has two conceptual domains. One is the thing that is to be understood, which is called the target domain, and the other is the thing that is used to understand the first one, and it is called the source domain.
All metaphors of love in my thesis are performed and analyzed according to this theory. That is why ―love ―is conceptualized in terms of ―fire‖ or ―war‖or ―light‖
(I‘m in a war every minute, I will fight to follow, let‘s begin, and this is war!).
Concrete concepts facilitate the understanding of these complex emotions such as
―Love is music‖ is a metaphoric expression utilizing the source domain of dance.
Another lyrical gem is found in section Love is religion; in the lyrics of ‗Looking for an Angel‘, Minogue uses metaphorical expressions with rich symbolism‘.
Although feelings and emotions are extremely difficult to understand, these abstract concepts can be conceptualized with the help of more concrete ones thanks to the correspondence between the domains for instances:
We have the mapping ―Love is the heaven‖
Target domain: Love Source domain: Space
The happy dreams Miraculous scenery
The person falling in love An angel
―Love is a game‖ metaphor is embodied through the mapping below.
Target domain: Love Source domain: Games
Lovers Game players Rules Promises
Achieving the goals Winning the game
Losing the game Being apart We have the mapping for ―love is war‖
Target domain: Love Source domain: War
Lovers Soldiers
Love relationship Weapons
Being hurt mentally Being hurt physically
Achieving the goals of love Winning the war
Being apart Losing the war
Source: Journey Target: Love
The travelers the lovers
The vehicle the love relationship
itself
The journey events in the relationship
The distance covered the progress made
The obstacles encountered the difficulties experienced
Decisions about which way to go
choices about what to do
The destination of the journey the goal(s) of the relationship 3.4. Discussion of findings
3.4.1. Occurrence of linguistic items used metaphorically in songs.
No Metaphorical images Number used Percentage (%)
1 Love is a concrete and real object 11 12.8
2 Love is the abstract thing 10 9.6
3 Love is light 5 5.8
4 Love is madness 3 3.5
5 Love is religion 2 2.3
6 Love is closeness. 15 17.4
7 Love is a living creature 5 5.8
8 Love is magic 2 2.3
9 Love is a natural phenomenon 5 5.8
10 Love is music 2 2.3
11 Love is a journey. 4 4.6
12 Love is the heaven 5 5.8
13 Love is a game. 3 3.5
14 Love is fire 8 8.1
15 Love is a war 5 5.8
16 Love is deeper high 1 1.1
Total 81 100%
Table 1.2: Occurrence and Percentage of Conceptual metaphors denoting love in English songs in the late 20th century from the cognitive perspective After reading a great number of songs to look for metaphorical images, there are 68 songs in which the writers use metaphors to enrich the artistic value of their works.
It can be said that the musicians makes use of this type of figurative language.
Thanks to them, every melody sublimes to a high point of readers‘ heart. A result from the research is that there are 80 metaphorical imagines are quoted in 68 song lyrics and are distributed to 16 main metaphors. ―Metaphor of closeness‖ and
―metaphor of concrete object‖ are used with the highest numbers 15(17.4%) and 11 (12.8%) respectively. The images used for this two sets of metaphors are very familiar to the real life such as voice, shoulder, candle, holiday or mountain, ect.
These things are so close to us but they are not old. They wear new clothes on the old concept – love. Meanwhile, the metaphors of religion, magic, music, game are less used at the same rate (2.3%). This figure may not lead to any result or assessment because of the limitations of songs. In fact, these are the really interesting topics going into many works of literature and music, especially in short story, ―love is game‖ is always the hottest matter. Metaphor ―love is fire‖ and ―love is abstract thing‖ make up a comparative number (8.1% and 9.6 %) which shows quite a big favor for this type of metaphors. These images bring about the positive thought and bright look about the passion of human beings.
3.4.2. Occurrence of love metaphors in English songs in three subtypes.
No Metaphorical images Ontological metaphors (%)
Structural metaphors (%)
Orientational metaphors(%) 1 Love is a concrete and real
object
12.8 2 Love is a living creature 5.8 3 Love is a natural phenomenon 5.8
4 Love is a game. 3.5
Total 27.9
5 Love is religion 2.3
6 Love is closeness. 17.4
7 Love is the abstract thing 9.6
8 Love is magic 2.3
9 Love is madness 3.5
10 Love is music 2.3
11 Love is a journey. 4.6
12 Love is the heaven 5.8
13 Love is light 5.8
14 Love is fire 8.1
15 Love is a war 5.8
Total 81
16 Love is high/deep 1.1
Total 1.1
Table 1.3: The occurrence and percentage of conceptual metaphors denoting love in three subtypes
It is clear from the table that there is a significant difference in the number of conceptual metaphors of each type. There are numerous structural metaphors found in the data and these are categorized under suitable conceptual metaphors.
Noticeably, structural metaphors are found in songs with the highest occurrence, making up 81% of all three subtypes. This group is the largest of three types and
includes some of the most interesting cases. Ontological metaphors account for 27.9% and the lowest frequent type is orientational metaphors with above 1%. In
short, there is a preference for using metaphor in structural type and it is hard to find out the orientational one in the songs from the late 20th century.
3.5. Summary
This chapter has showed that love metaphors are very popular with variety of expressions. The researcher clarifies the metaphorical images of love in songs, analyzes and categorizes them into 3 subtypes: ontological, structural or orientational metaphors with 16 sets of metaphor. Then, the writer introduces and explains the ways how these metaphors are used and the artistic value in these songs. Lastly, some discussions are given about the percentage of the occurrence of metaphors in songs.
PART C: CONCLUSION
1. Concluding remarks and Implications 1.1. Concluding remarks
1.1.1. The typical metaphorical images of love and lovers in English songs
In this section, the writer will summarize my findings on the data, compare them to my objectives mentioned and conclude the section in outlining points of interest for possible further study. My thesis is to find the fresh figurative language and novel metaphorical linguistic expressions of love‖ and ―lovers‖ in some English songs in the late 20th century from the cognitive perspective mostly basing on theory of the famous writers such as Lakoff and Johnson, Kửvecses. The focus of my study is on metaphors of love, of which the data provided the ample amounts. The metaphors of love found in the data often are utilized every day. In this thesis, I analyze 16 sets of basic metaphors: Love is natural phenomena, games, war, music, light, concrete things, madness, abstract things, closeness, heaven, religion, journey, living creature, magic, fire, high/deep. In each metaphorical system, there are various metaphorical images such as moon, mountain, star, ect. Structural metaphors are the prevalent type of metaphors in the data and provide the richest source for elaborating concepts. This can be seen in the analysis as well.
1.1.2. How these metaphorical images are expressed in songs.
As analyzed above, the metaphors of this research are applied basing on mechanism of mapping built by Lakoff and Johnson, Kửvecses. A set of mappings across domains is used. We try to understand the target domain by the use of the source domain
Target domains are therefore believed to have relationships between entities, attributes and processes which mirror those found in the source domain. At the level of language, entities, attributes and processes in the target domain are lexicalized using words and expressions from the source domain.
1.2. Implications
Most important, being aware of metaphors reminds us of the central role that poetic
skills play in our thought. Finding a metaphor plays a vital role in feeling and perceiving the value of literature. After studying metaphors of love in English love songs, the researcher has found out implications for using metaphors in general and metaphors of love in particular for learners, teachers and translators..
1.2.1. Implications for learners
Once learners are able to have their own metaphors and use them to promote the ideas flexibly, they will become metaphor masters. If the learners know to take advantages of the benefit of using metaphor, they can improve all the skills in learning a second language
Conceptual metaphor provides students with the possibility of understanding one concept in terms of another. From a domain, they can refer to many various domains by the metaphorical expressions. As a result, they will broaden their vocabulary and make them more productive.
Learners should know what a metaphor is if they are studying examples of metaphors in text. Simply knowing the definition, however, is not sufficient. They should be able to identify examples of metaphors in the text on their own. They should be able to explain the purpose for the metaphor and analyze how it contributes to the theme of the work. Thus, applying conceptual metaphors in learning language will help students improve their reading comprehension a lot.
When studying one language, it is necessary not only to study vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing, speaking or listening, but also to know how to use language in natural way. Metaphor is specially used in daily life, in any languages and in many situations. In both spoken language and literature language, metaphor can be frequently appeared. As soon as understanding the message of each metaphor in songs and literal works, learners can easily communicate with native speakers naturally or use flexibly in their own writing. So, metaphor plays an important role in improving reading and writing skills. It is necessary to write paragraphs containing a metaphor appropriately as possible. Learners should use metaphors in their own writing to train their language competence better. As students become aware of their own metaphors for learning they can recognize how their language
competence progresses.
In addition to the above skills, learning literature cannot lack using metaphor. The use of metaphor in poetry is one of the most important aspects of poetic style that must be mastered. Despite being the major students of English, they have few chances to practice using metaphor in writing. They still get a lost to understand and analyze metaphor in song or literal works. Therefore, when learning English literature, they must try their best to identify, analyze and use metaphor steps by steps from sentence to text.
1.2.2. Implications for teachers
Not many students understand metaphor clearly and dare use metaphor in communication as well as in literal works frequently. Some can use metaphor in their writing but illogically and inflexibly. Hence, teachers must spend enough time and create appropriate methods to teach them to learn it in the best way.
Teachers should make their students aware of the applicability and significance of metaphors. The students should understand the nature conceptual metaphor and how it can be applied in daily life. Teachers can create the interesting lessons to inspire learner to be absorbed in metaphor with the easy and exciting activities such as sharing examples, brainstorming, trying composing short poems…
Metaphor is an effective language tool for teachers to teach vocabulary in the collocation of word. Metaphor is frequently used in poetry, as poets endeavor to find creative ways to express experience. Encouraging students to use metaphors will help them improve their writing ability and produce interesting pieces that others will enjoy reading. It can be difficult for students to create their own metaphors. However, there are activities that teachers can use to help students understand metaphors and to inspire the use of these literary devices to help bring writing to life
Students often limit their descriptive writing to what they see. Teachers make students think about all five senses when they are writing. For example: Write a short poem about ―love‖. (Teachers can suggest making a list of love metaphors.,
"Love is a..." and fill in the end with the first thing students think of that feels true:
love is a race, love is a chocolate, love is a fight,...Then Students can start to
describe what they know and think about).
The influence of a first language in metaphoric processing has been explained as the result of the cultural background and expectations of that language, which affects the way learners, conceptualize the target language and process metaphors in the target language (Boers, 2003; Kửvecses, 2004). Thus, it is important that learners discern the way figurative language is used in a particular culture because learning a language means learning about culture learners can gain linguistic and non- linguistic knowledge. As a means of cultural transmission metaphors can raise learners‘ awareness of the relationship. Consequently, teachers should provide students with knowledge of culture.
1.2.3. Implications for translators
Metaphors are language, and language is culture. Most metaphors are thereby culture-bound, and can only be understood in direct translation by those sharing the same language and/or culture. However, metaphors can become a translation problem, since transferring them from one language and culture to another one may be hampered by linguistic and cultural differences or differences in metaphorical conceptual systems and the contexts in which they emerge.
For instance, metaphor ‗she is a fox‘ means ―she is attractive‖ in English but implies ―she is evil‖ in VietNam. Since metaphors are related to different cultural domains, this implies that the translator has to do the job of conceptual mapping on behalf of the target language reader; he has to look for a target language similar cognitive equivalence in the target culture. The more the source language and target language cultures in question conceptualize experience in a similar way, the easier the task of translation will be.
In order to have a good transitional equivalent of conceptual metaphors, the translators should be aware of cultural elements that have a great influence on using some expressions of metaphors.
If the translators fail to understand the conceptualization, misunderstanding of text and cross-cultural communication will certainly occur. It is highly suggested that the translators are able to understand metaphors in order to have metaphorical
expression equivalence in cross-cultural communication.
2. Limitations and suggestions for further studies
The data consists of 68 song lyrics and even though the amount of lyrics did not seem excessive in the beginning, the workload needed in finding and analyzing all the metaphorical expressions in the 86 data proved out to be suitable. The number of song lyrics should have been reduced in order not to deviate from the typical extent of theses. Organizing metaphorical expressions under the appropriate conceptual metaphors works well but I am not contented with the way each of them is analyzed. With the love for literature, I could have analyzed every example elaborately and more interestingly but because of limitation of pages and time, I only mentioned them generally. This research mainly focuses on semantic mechanism of metaphors used in English love songs by famous bands and writers.
Thus, there are still some exciting aspects that need further studies: It would be a fascinating idea to widen the topic to other fields such as metaphors in folk songs, in poetry, novels… It would be better to analyze metaphor from the other perspectives. Furthermore, the later one could choose only one metaphor to deepen such as ―love is religion‖ with many sources of material. For example:
- An investigation on the metaphors of love in the 21st century songs in comparison with the last century from cognitive perspective.
- A study on the problems of translating metaphors in literature.
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