Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods ISSN: 2251-
3. Theoritical framework
3.1. Cognitive linguistics
The first cognitive linguistic studies were conducted in the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. The foundations of cognitive linguistics are rooted in linguistics and cognitive sciences. Cognitive linguistics later spread to Europe in the late 1980s and since the 1990s, numerous scholars have been involved with cognitive research.
Although cognitive studies are still in the fourth decade of its development, it has gained so much fame and has been in vogue for this period. Cognitive linguistics has been dealing with other disciplines such as Psychology, Neurology, Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, and Literary Criticism since its foundation. Cognitive linguistics is an approach to linguistic studies based on our experience of the world, our perception, and our conceptualization. This flexibly patterned linguistics is based on human’s mental structure. As in Formalism and Functionalism, in cogntivism, we are not faced with a single theory but a hybrid of approaches with common grounds.
Cognition as well as perception is of great significance in cognitive linguistics. In cognitive linguistics, modularity or the independence of language from other cognitive abilities is no longer taken into considerations. In addition, Independence of linguistic modules including phonology, morphology, semantics, and syntax is out ruled and the understanding of a language is almost impossible without a full understanding of the cognitive system. Unlike Chomsky and Fodor, cognitivists believe that linguistic behavior is one part of all the cognitive abilities. These abilities make learning, reasoning, and analyzing possible. In sum, as it is believed, linguistic knowledge comes from human’s overall cognition. Whereas semantics in cognitive linguistics is of great importance, most discussion is centered upon meaning. It was a reaction against structuralism, in which meaning was underestimated. In general, cognitive linguistics is comprised of two broad parts: cognitive semantics and cognitive approach to grammar, of which more emphasis is on the former. In this school, the mental nature of meaning is noteworthy since this mental entity distinguishes cogntivism from other disciplines dealing with meaning. Cognitive semantics is not limited solely to a single theory but to a set of theories and approaches. In cognitive semantics, meaning is not only the literal one but also the metaphoric, figurative, associative, and non-dictionary meaning. In other words, there is no difference between semantics and pragmatics in this branch.
3.2.Metaphor
Metaphors play a great role in cognitive semantics. Why and how languages employ metaphors are aesthetically considerable. The first one who introduced metaphors was Aristotle. Metaphors are expressions that attribute to an object not normally associated with those qualities.
Lakoff and Johnson (1980:37) claim that metaphors are not merely tools for expressing thoughts but ways for thinking about things. Aristotle studied the relationship between metaphors and language. His objectives were to analyze the use of metaphors in verbal interactions. In his ‘Poetics’ and following comparison theory, Aristotle regarded metaphors as absolute comparison. As Aristotle put it, metaphors are one sort of figures of speech which are not necessary in our every day conversations and are aesthetically used. Accordingly, metaphors compare two different entities, one of which is expressed using words with literal meaning, and the other one in expressed via words with metaphoric essence (Artney, 1979).
Jorjani considers metaphors as shellfish conveying a number of meanings as pearls (Afrashi, 2004). As Safavi (2008) puts it, metaphors are forming by choosing one unit instead of some other unit on a vertical axis. The selected unit is used instead of the previously employed unit. He also adds that metaphors come from similes.
3.3.The contemporary approach to metaphors from cognitive linguistics points of view
The advent of cognitive linguistics created a great revolution in the traditional view of metaphors. Since then metaphors have been excluded from the scope of literature. Following the beliefs of Lakoff,
Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods ISSN: 2251-6204
Vol. 7, Issue 8 , August 2017
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cognitivists tried to investigate metaphors in the mind of human beings. Cognitive linguistics proved that the origin of metaphor is not only rooted in language, but also the language itself is the reflection of thoughts.
Having rejected the traditional belief that metaphors are limited to language and irrelevant to the thoughts, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) assert that metaphors cover every day life not only in language but also thoughts and the activities involved. Our conceptual system, base on which we think and act is basically metaphorical.
3.4.Conceptual metaphor
This conceptual theory was first introduced by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). This theory describes conceptual relations among scopes. Conceptual metaphors are, in essence, perception and experience of something in something else. Lakoff and Johnson regard this relation between two sets as “mapping”. They call the more palpable and concrete set as the source and the one with more abstract concepts as target.
Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods ISSN: 2251-6204
Vol. 7, Issue 8 , August 2017
Page 79
Consequently, lakoff describes the metaphors as “the mapping between domains of corresponding conceptual system”. Thus, each mapping is a set of corresponding concepts not a mere statement.
3.5.Schemas
Schema is one of the conceptual settings important for cognitive semantics studies. The factors of living, sleeping, walking, and eating in a specific place with some fixed limitations make us deal with the daily surroundings and its patterns. Understanding these embodied patterns leads to interaction of the body and patterns. The concepts made by our experiences are used to think about more abstract ideas. Metaphors are based on the schemas, constructing the relationships between physical experiences and cognitive modules such as language (Saeed, 1997, p. 308).
The schema theory was first developed by Johnson (1987). In his book entitled ‘body in mind’, he claimed that our embodied experiences in the conceptual system create schemas. The schemas come from experiences, resulting from our interaction with the surroundings. For instance, human beings can grasp the concepts of ‘up’ and ‘down’ due to their erected postures. This, in turn, will lead to the creation of schemas.
Traditionally speaking, metonymy used to be regarded as a figure of speech like metaphors. However, lakoff and Johnson(1980) considered metonymy as a conceptual entity and illustrated that metonymy must be considered as a mental or cognitive process.
3.6.Metonymy
Metonymy is based on Contiguity and Proximity. As an instance, lakoff and Johnson referred to customers in restaurants as table numbers. For instance, did you give the sandwich to table 5? (Rasekh mahand, 2010, p. 61).
3.7.Radial Categories
Brogman and Lakoff (1988) introduce lexical semantics in their study of lexical meaning. This theory was based on Lakoff’s view of categorization (rasekhmahand, 2010, ch. 5). The idealized cognitive model and the conceptual metaphor theory were formed. According to Lakoff, words have complex conceptual categories called ‘radial categories’. In these categories, different concepts are organized based on a core one. These categories are organized according to a complex prototype. Different items of the same category are linked to the prototype based on conventions. Accordingly, every word is stored in the lexicon with a complicated structural category. As for words, it is said that the prototype is situated in the center of the category and the marginal meanings are distant from the central ones. It must be emphasized that radial categories depict the inter-relations among concepts. In sum, the extension of meaning indicates the existence of radial categories.
3.8.Polysemy
Having different related meanings is one of the key phenomena in any language. Polysemy was first developed by the Greeks ( gratz and coycons, 2007, p.139). Bran (1997) introduced the polysemy phenomena in some parts of his research about meaning change for the first time.
Early in the twentieth century, structuralisms changed the studies of polysemy from synchronic semantics under the context of sociology and psychology. However, this group did not carry out any serious study on the polysemy.
In the second half of the twentieth century, generativism scientifically denied the existence of polysemy and instead provided a list of homonyms with overlapping features.