An Interactive Approach to Interpretation of Emotion Metaphor

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to further investigate the mechanism of emotion metaphor based on the conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). In order to fulfill this purpose, this study creates an interactive approach to the interpretation of the emotion metaphor. In this paper it is proposed that the interpretation of the emotion metaphor is not simply generalized as understanding one conceptual domain with another conceptual domain (the “elements of the source domain are mapped onto elements of the target domain” (KOvecses 2002: 6), but is an interactive process in which the comprehension of the emotion metaphor is achieved through three interactive levels: the surface linguistic level, the mediate psychological level, and the underlying cognitive level.