Applications of conceptual

metaphor theory to foreign

language teaching
Zoltán Kövecses
Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Key notions
• SYSTEMATICITY
• MOTIVATION
• THEORETICAL EXPLICITNESS
• COHERENCE
• CULTURAL EMBEDDEDNESS
• SALIENCE
• CREATIVITY
Key principles
• Teach metaphors in systems. STRUCTURED RELATIONS AMONG
ITEMS. (SYSTEMATICITY)
• Teach how and why metaphors are motivated. A AND B ARE NOT
ARBITRARILY LINKED. (MOTIVATION)
• Make students consciously aware of the metaphorical status of
expressions. EXPLICIT AWARENESS OF THEORY. (THEORETICAL
EXPLITICITNESS)
• Teach metaphors as multimodal and multigenre structures.
COHERENCE BETWEEN VARIOUS MODALITIES. (COHERENCE)
• Teach metaphors in a cross-linguistic/cultural perspective.
CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURES ARE CULTURALLY EMBEDDED. (CULTURAL
EMBEDDEDNESS)
• Use corpus-linguistic evidence for the metaphors you teach. MORE
FREQUENT STRUCTURES ARE MORE USEFUL. (SALIENCE)
• Make students use metaphors creatively. METAPHOR SYSTEMS ARE
NOT RIGID, THEY ARE USED CREATIVELY (CREATIVITY)
1. Teach metaphors in systems.
• That kindled my ire.
• Those were inflammatory remarks.
• Smoke was coming out of his ears.
• She was burning with anger.
• He was spitting fire.
• The incident set the people ablaze with anger.

• ANGER IS FIRE
Mappings:

• the cause of fire  the cause of anger

• causing the fire  causing the anger
• the thing on fire  the angry person
• the fire  the anger
• the intensity of fire  the intensity of anger

Kindle, inflammatory, burn, spit fire, set ablaze

Interlocking metaphor hierarchies
• (a) the metaphors are organized in a straightforward hierarchy
• (b) different aspects of a given generic-level concept are differentially
conceptualized
• (c) a single aspect of several different abstract concepts may organize
subordinated specific-level conceptual metaphors into a hierarchy
• (d) the target domains are part of an independently existing hierarchy
of concepts
• (e) a particular specific level target concept is a special case of a
number of different higher-level concepts that have their own
characteristic conceptual metaphors.
Straightforward hierarchies

• EMOTIONS ARE FORCES

• ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN A CONTAINER (He was boiling with
anger.)
• ANGER IS A STEW (He was stewing.)
Different aspects of a single generic
concept
• Events: EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS
• Occurrences: OCCURRENCES ARE MOVEMENTS (What’s going on here?)
• Actions: ACTIONS ARE SELF-PROPELLED MOVEMENTS (What’s going to be the next step?)
• Cause: CAUSES ARE FORCES (You’re driving me nuts.)
• State: STATES ARE LOCATIONS / BOUNDED REGIONS (She’s in love.)
• Change: CHANGE IS MOTION (FROM ONE LOCATION TO ANOTHER) (I almost went crazy.)
• Actions: ACTIONS ARE SELF-PROPELLED MOVEMENTS
• Purpose: PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS (I want to reach my goals.)
• Difficulty: DIFFICULTIES ARE IMPEDIMENTS (TO MOTION) (Let’s get around this problem.)
• Manner: MANNER IS PATH (OF MOTION) (We’ll do it in another way.)
A single aspect of several different
specific-level concepts
• ANGER IS FIRE (He was smouldering with anger.)
• LOVE IS FIRE (The fire was gone from their relationship.)
• DESIRE IS FIRE (It was his burning ambition to become a lawyer.)
• IMAGINATION IS FIRE (The scene set fire to his imagination.)
• ENTHUSIASM IS FIRE (He lost the fire.)
• CONFLICT IS FIRE (The fire of war burnt down Europe several times in
the course of its history.)
• ENERGY IS FIRE (She’s burning the candle at both ends.)
„Main meaning focus”
2. Teach how and why
metaphors are motivated.
• Similarity-based metaphors
HUMAN LIFETIME IS THE LIFE-CYCLE OF A PLANT
• Correlation-based metaphors
INTENSITY IS HEAT
• Schematization-based metaphors
HEAVEN IS A(N IDEAL) PLACE
• Context-based metaphors
DIFFICULTY IS BEING IN THE MOUNTAIN STAGE (OF A BICYCLE RACE)
3. Make students consciously aware
of the metaphorical status of
expressions.
• Make the theoretical background explicit: conceptual and linguistic
metaphors; source and target domains.
• Experiments show that effectiveness is better if students are given a
brief intro to CMT.
• „people need to be made aware of the metaphor-approach before
they can put it to use. The passive existence of metaphorical
motivation, that is, the mere presence of conceptual metaphors in the
mind, does not seem to be sufficient for their active use in the
learning of a foreign language” (italics in the original).
4. Teach metaphors as
multimodal and multi-genre
structures.
• 1. Everyday conventional English:

• ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN A CONTAINER

• container  body
• hot fluid  anger
• degrees of heat  degrees of intensity
• etc.
• 2. Everyday creative English (by blending):

• God, was he ever mad. I could see the smoke coming out of his ears –
I thought his hat would catch fire!
• 3. Creative poetic English
Fantasies of murder: not enough: / to kill is to cut off from pain. / but the killer goes
on hurting / Not enough. When I dream of meeting / the enemy, this is my dream:
white acetylene
ripples from my body
effortlessly released
perfectly trained
on the true enemy
raking his body down to the thread / of existence / burning away his lie / leaving him
in a new / world; a changed / man. (Adrienne Rich)
• 4. Visual creativity:
5. Teach metaphors in a cross-cultural
and intracultural perspective.
• Pressure of coherence: universal bodily experience and nonuniversal
contextual experience.
• Dimensions of metaphor variation: crosscultural and intracultural
dimension.
• Within-culture variation: social, subcultural, ethnic, style, diachronic,
and developmental dimensions.
• Globalization in metaphor use: English as a lingua franca. (push)
6. Use corpus-linguistic evidence
for the metaphors you teach.
What is metaphorical salience?

• The number of mappings, or correspondences, in a conceptual

metaphor
• The type frequency of linguistic expressions belonging to a conceptual
metaphor
• The token frequency of linguistic expressions belonging to a
conceptual metaphor
• American English: (1) CONTAINER, (2) POSSESSED OBJECT, (3)
OPPONENT.
• Spanish: (1) POSSESSED OBJECT, (2) OPPONENT, (3) CONTAINER.
• Turkish: (1) CONTAINER, (2) NATURAL FORCE, (3) OPPONENT and
POSSESSED OBJECT.
• Hungarian: (1) CONTAINER, (2) OPPONENT, (3) POSSESSED OBJECT.
7. Make students use metaphors
creatively
• Pressure of coherence: body and context / The influence of context / Knowledge
about the main elements of the discourse

conceptualizer1, topic/theme of discourse, and conceptualizer2.

“To use an analogy from the Tour de France, he’s still in the mountain stage, and will
be for some time” (2013, USA TODAY).
 
mountain stage metaphor: “impediment to motion  difficulty of action (making
full confession and being forgiven)” in the ACTION IS MOTION conceptual metaphor.
Conclusions
• Seven principles that might aid the teaching of metaphors.

• How can they be employed in the classroom?

• Assume teachers and students who know a lot about CMT.

• Could textbooks be developed along these lines?

• The future looks promising (but somewhat distant ).

• THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION.