Phraseological metaphor : Dead or alive ?

Abstract

The aim of my paper is to explore phraseological meaning in discourse from the cognitive point of view. I argue against the dead-metaphor view which treats all phraseological units as clichés that have “lost their first bloom and their potency” and have been “established as the bad guy of the English language”, having suffered “a fall from freshness” (Kirkpatrick 1996). This is an old approach that phraseological units were once alive but now they are fossilised. Surprisingly, this attitude still persists in the face of advances in cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics (Lakoff and Johnson 1980 ; Gibbs [1994] 1999 ; Steen 1994) that show that the meanings of many phraseological units are motivated by peoples conceptual knowledge, which includes metaphorical and metonymic schemes of thought. The recent empirical research suggests that phraseological units are pervasive in discourse and that they are not simple dead metaphors but actually retain a good deal of their metaphoricity (Gibbs [1994] 1999). This goes against the idea that all phraseological units are dead metaphors. A cognitive approach to phraseological units in discourse reveals that stylistic use is not a deviation, a violation, a distortion or an anomaly but that these cases are stylistic instances of naturally occurring phraseological units. For phraseology stylistic use is a fact of discourse. It is a deliberate choice that reflects the cognitive processes of the mind in creative thinking, conveying a new perception, a different point of view, a novel vision calling for a change in the standard form of the phraseological unit. My claim is that phraseological metaphor is alive, it reflects a metaphorical concept while extended phraseological metaphor is an instantiation of creativity, reflecting extended figurative thought.