Концептуализация чрезмерного действия через метафору Shower в английском языке

Abstract

The article presents the results of the research into the functioning of the “Excessive action is Shower” metaphor used to express the aspectual semantics of excessive action in contemporary English fiction texts. To reveal how such metaphors are built, the research investigated their semantic structure, i. e., the relations between the source and targets involved in metaphorical mappings. The results indicate that both meanings of the word Shower, i. e., the direct one (rain) and the one derived from it (device for washing) get into metaphorical relations to name excessive action.The study identified five foci of metaphorical projections. They come to the fore when Shower is used metaphorically. The article provides a detailed classification of nouns collocating with Shower to express excessive action. It was found that the majority of such nouns name heavy or light objects, objects of material well-being and attitude, while nouns naming emotions and time rarely function as targets.The article analyses contextual conditions to describe the functioning of the Shower metaphor. In particular, it focuses on most common syntactic structures of the Shower metaphor, prepositions it combines with, and accompanying linguistic phenomena. These include the following that appear regularly: a) the use of other Water metaphors in the close context as subtypes of the general conceptual metaphor “Excessive action is Water” (a “burst” of metaphors); b) semantic changes when a word with a positive meaning acquires a negative one when it functions as a target (axiological clashes).The study identified the pragmatic potential of the Shower metaphor. It concluded that its prevailing evaluative connotation is negative. The study also found that the conceptual metaphor “Excessive action is Shower” is productive in English and is culturally specific.