Abstract
In this paper, four conceptual metaphors very frequently used in the Montenegrin language are analyzed. These are conceptual metaphors: <i>Negotiation is Boxing Match, Stone is Weak, Bad, Low-Quality, Humorous is Bloody and Capital is a Woman (During Intercourse, with an Intention for Procreation)</i>. The mentioned conceptual metaphors have entered the focus of our scientific interest because they reveal some very important facts about the Montenegrin mentality. We can say that these facts are immanent to the way of thinking of the average resident of Montenegro to the extent that they are firmly woven into the linguistic expression. These conceptual metaphors can be found in all functional styles of the Montenegrin language, and, most importantly, they are most often used in everyday language. The conceptual metaphors we deal with in this paper, however, are not only related to the way of thinking of the inhabitants of Montenegro, but are, potentially, also part of the universal way of functioning of the human mind. In the explication of the mentioned conceptual metaphors, we will apply the methodology of cognitive linguistics, and above all, we will focus on the theory of conceptual metaphor. The literature on the phenomenon of conceptual metaphor in contemporary world and domestic linguistics is extremely large and diverse. In our research and theoretical foundation of the concept of conceptual metaphor, we will start, of course, from the now classic book by Lakoff and Johnson "Metaphors We Live By", and then we will add to this classical study in the continuation of the paper the insights that individual (cognitive) linguists have gained about conceptual metaphor in the last twenty years.
Highlights
Given the quantum of literature on conceptual metaphor, the widespread knowledge on this phenomenon, and the well-comprehension of conceptual metaphor in linguistics literature, the repetition of basic facts about conceptual metaphor may seem tasteless
Out of the four conceptual metaphors discussed, two of them - the second and the third one - represent the specificity of the Montenegrin language, while the remaining two - the first and the fourth one - are found in the other three languages based on the Neo-Shtokavian dialect: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian
All the conceptual metaphors discussed in this paper are interesting in that they reveal the mechanisms of functioning of the human mind in the process of conceptualization of certain phenomena, and two of them, related exclusively to the Montenegrin language are interesting because of the cultural-geographical determinants of metaphorically associative flows
Summary
Given the quantum of literature on conceptual metaphor, the widespread knowledge on this phenomenon, and the (relatively) well-comprehension of conceptual metaphor in (cognitive) linguistics literature, the repetition of basic facts about conceptual metaphor may seem (even) tasteless. For example, John Taylor is skeptical regarding Lakoff and Johnson's thesis that abstract domains cannot be conceptualized by their own terms, but must be approached through metaphor, and that metaphor is a way of speaking, but immanent to abstract thinking He notes the following: “In order for a target domain to be subject to mapping from a source domain, there has to be some prior conceptualization of the target domain. In order to call the link between the two domains a conceptual metaphor, there must be sufficient distinction between the source and target domains - the source and target domains must belong to parts of our experience that we perceive as suite different” [12] In one of his works Kovecses emphasizes some facts which are important for our research: “The point is that the primary metaphors are likely to be universal, whereas the complex ones that are formed from them are much less likely to be so. When we epistemologically have grounded our theoretical postulates, we may cross on concrete material of Montenegrin Language
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