Image Schema

To begin with, it is necessary to explain the cognitive semantics concept of ‘domain’. It is a semantic structure that functions as a base for at least one concept. For example, the domain of commerce has concepts like buy, goods, price, etc., and the domain of temperature has concepts like hot, cold, etc. In conceptualising a number of domains, we create certain images with the

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help of their various concepts. When this happens – that is, when domains give rise to images – they are said to be “embodied” (Johnson 1987:xv; Lakoff 1987:xiv; Hampe 2005:1). In a more specific way, the ‘embodiment’ of domains is explained by the fact that in one way or another, they directly relate to our bodily movements through space, our manipulation of objects, and our perceptual interactions — ways through which we make meaning. It has however been observed that not all domains possess these bodily images. Those domains that lack images, that do not explicitly relate to bodily experience, are regarded as ‘abstract’ or ‘nonimagistic’ (Clausner & Croft 1999:14). Abstract conceptual structures, unlike their embodied counterparts, are indirectly meaningful. In trying to understand them, humans systematically link them to directly meaningful structures. When humans make meaning out of those abstract semantic structures by relating them (consciously or unconsciously) to their preconceptual foundations in bodily experience, image schema is said to have been formulated. Image schema as a concept is a notion that has received considerable attention from not only cognitive linguistics but also from neuropsychology (Hampe 2005:4). It represents schematic patterns arising from imagistic domains such as containers, paths, links, forces and balance that recur in a variety of embodied domains, and structure our bodily experience. One such example is the fact that, as Tenbrink (2008) has systematically explored in his studies, speakers use genuinely spatial and temporal terms (such as in front/behind, before/after, in/out, up/down, etc.) to describe the relation of objects or events to one another. When we say something is in/out of order, for example, we conceptualise order as a space (container), inside of which a product or device finds functionality and ‘good behaviour’. Once the device goes out of that space, it no longer possesses that quality. It has in fact been established by several research findings that we conceptualise an enormous number of activities in ‘container’ terms (cf. Johnson 1987:126; Lakoff 1987:271ff; Clausner & Croft 1999:13). There are a great many metaphors based on the container schema and they extend our body-based understanding of things in terms of container schemata to a large range of abstract concepts. The interpretation of the roots of some metaphors and basic expressions that stem from bodily experience are, as a matter of fact, supported by basic logic and are experienced in the following ways:

One way in which the human mind conceptualises certain information is in a part-whole schema. The logic behind this is that we are whole beings with parts that we can manipulate. Our entire lives are spent with an awareness of both our wholeness and our parts. We experience our bodies as wholes with parts. In order to get around in the world, we have to be aware of the part-whole structure of other objects. In fact, we have evolved so that our basic-

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level perception can distinguish the fundamental part-whole structure that we need (such as the family, the community, the different institutions to which we, as individuals, belong) in order to function in our physical environment. Related to the part-whole schema is the link schema which, as Lakoff (1987:274) puts it, “establishes our first link in the umbilical cord”. Throughout infancy and early childhood, we hold onto our parents and other things, either to secure our location or theirs. To secure the location of two things relative to one another, we use such things as string, rope, or other means of connection. Part-whole and link schemata are established whenever the following expressions are used: break up, split up, join, link, connection, member, related to, etc.

Furthermore, image schema is also conceptualised along the centre-periphery continuum. For example, it is argued that we experience our bodies as having centres (the trunk and internal organs) and peripheries (fingers, toes, hair). Far away from our bodies to the things around us, the centre-periphery schema still exists. Trees and other plants have a central trunk and peripheral branches and leaves. The centres are viewed as more important than the peripheries in two ways: (1) Injuries to the central parts are more serious (i.e. not mendable and often life- threatening) than injuries to the peripheral parts, and (2) ‘centre’ defines the identity of the individual in a way that the peripheral parts do not. A tree that loses its leaves is the same tree. A person whose hair is cut off or who loses a finger is the same person. This same conceptualisation is brought to bear in our use and interpretation of expressions like occupy the central position to mean what is considered important. Other image schemata, including source-path-goal schemata, up-down schemata, front-back schemata, linear order schemata, etc., have featured in several studies in other disciplines (e.g. Griffin 2012). Evidence of the up-down schema, for example, has been demonstrated across a variety of instances in our everyday communication as tokens of more and less. Logically speaking, when water is being filled into a vessel, the more water that is poured inside the vessel, the higher the scale. It is also explained that the stacking of piles in storages explains this imagery. This schema has also been transferred into our interpretation of volume control, rising prices, etc. Another commonsensical way of explaining this schema is through wellness and sickness. It is usually the case that people who are sick are said to be down. When they begin to recuperate, they are said to be up. This imagery is transferred to the references we make when we talk about how effective or functional the service we get from, say, the internet, is. When there is internet failure, we say, “there is down time”, etc.

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The assumption that linguistic meaning is based on usage and experience is one major aspect of cognitive linguistics whose relevance in TS has been repeatedly emphasised in a couple of theoretical stances. For example, the concept of directionality – the language direction from and into which the translator works in the process of translation – has provided the idea that “learning to translate into your language of habitual use […] is the only way you can translate naturally, accurately and with maximum effectiveness” (Newmark 1988:3, 26). This is probably because of the construction grammatical belief that the speakers of a particular language have over time accumulated a large inventory or assembly of symbolic structures made possible by usage and experience. Hence, the level of a translator’s competence in his working language is usually judged from the manner in which the TT is phrased. I have the impression that even though communicative competence in two of the languages is a major prerequisite for translation competence (one for comprehension in the source language, and the other for expression in the target language), it is often the case that translating into one’s foreign language has a greater tendency to give the translator away by revealing his or her (in)competencies in the foreign language (Newmark 1988:3). On the other hand, the effective transfer of the source-language image schemata into the target language would largely depend on how each phenomenon works from one language into another. Recent works in contrastive analysis, that is, research studies that aim “at mapping the similarities and dissimilarities of (usually) two languages and producing descriptive results” (Rabadán 2008:104), have yielded insights into how a number of same realities are conceptualised and expressed in different languages. In spite of the fact that there are several reference materials that outline the similarities and differences on how some of these realities are constructed in the contrasted languages, experience-based linguistic knowledge would lead to more result-oriented creativity in translation.

Having established from the foregoing that effective construction of linguistic meaning is mostly based on usage and experience, we now move to the second characteristic of cognitive linguistics.