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making it more specific. Thus, he refers to death as the external exile of the
raft, implying that death can be looked at as banishment, as being
unwanted while by raft he does not suggest something what would take us
swiftly, directly, luxuriously or securely to a given destination:
We are all driven to the same place
sooner or later, each ones lot is tossed
from the urn the lot which will come out
and will put us into the eternal exile of the raft
(Horace, bk.2, Carmen 2.28-28)1
The third and perhaps the most powerful of all ways that poets use
and invoke in their readers is composing or the formation of composite
metaphors, i.e. the simultaneous use of two or more unconventional
metaphors in the same passage or even in the same sentence. For example,
in Sonnet 73 by Shakespeare, one of the most exquisite poems in English
about death, there are at least five conventional conceptual metaphors
sculpted into the composite metaphorical conception of death. They are:
LIGHT IS A SUBSTANCE, EVENTS ARE ACTIONS, LIFE IS A PRECIOUS
POSSESSION, A LIFETIME IS A DAY and LIFE IS LIGHT:
Quoted in Lakoff and Turner (1989 : 11). The two scholars further compare Horaces use
of death as departure with Robinsons elaborating (special case) of the same general
conventional metaphor.
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My spirits rose.
Youre in high spirits.
Im feeling down
Hes really low these days.
My spirits sank.
is an orientational metaphor that underlies these
linguistic realizations:
The number of books printed each year keeps going up.
His draft number is high.
My income rose last year.
The amount of artistic activity in this state has gone down in the past year.
The number of errors he made is incredibly low.
His income fell last year.
He is underage.
If youre too hot, turn the heat down.
Orientational metaphors have primarily an evaluative function.
Because they make a set of target concepts coherent in our conceptual
system, Kvecses (2002: 36) believes that the term coherence metaphor is
more in line with the cognitive function these metaphors perform. By
coherence he means that certain target concepts tend to be conceptualized
in a uniform manner. Thus, concepts like happy, healthy, conscious,
control, virtue, rational are associated with upward orientation, while
their opposites receive downward orientation:
HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS DOWN: She was on cloud nine.; Shes really low these
days
HEALTHY IS UP; SICK IS DOWN: Shes always in top shape; He fell ill.
CONSCIOUS IS UP; UNCONSCIOUS IS DOWN: Wake up!; He sank into a coma.
CONTROL IS UP, LACK OF CONTROL IS DOWN: Im on top of the situation, He
is under my
control.
VIRTUE IS UP, LACK OF VIRTUE IS DOWN : Shes an upstanding citizen; That
was a lowdown thing to do.
RATIONAL IS UP, NONRATIONAL IS DOWN: The discussion fell to an
emotional level. He
couldnt rise above his emotions.
As it has been pointed out in chapter 8, spatial image schemas are
bipolar and bivalent. Consequently, positive-negative evaluation is not
limited to the spatial orientation up-down. Whole, center, link, balance, in,
goal, front are regarded as positive while their opposites, not whole,
MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN
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In his "Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origin", Nigel Rees (1998:232) provides two
explanations for spill the beans; the first can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, and the
second is related to a Turkish custom. The ancient Greeks were said to hold secret ballots
for membership of clubs by using beans. A white bean was a 'yes' vote, a brown bean a 'no'
vote. The beans were counted in secrecy so that a prospective member would know how
many people voted for or against him. If the jar containing beans was knocked over, that
secret might get out. The other possible explanation is that gypsy fortune tellers in Turkey
do not have crystal balls, neither do they read tea leaves. One of the many ways they tell
fortunes is to spill beans out of a cup and interpret the resulting pattern.
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