The Theory of Metaphor

As explained above, NCs are used not only for prototypical referents, but also for less prototypical referents. These referents are still in the category of ‘referents of the NC’. In addition to those referents, sometimes it is observed that NCs are also used for atypical referents, which are not members of that category at all. Out of context, those would be regarded as grammatically ‘incorrect’ matchings. However, the choice to use a certain NC with an atypical referent is generally made by the speaker not by mistake but on purpose. The second theoretical framework, the theory of metaphor, is employed to understand these two levels of extension: from prototypical referents to less prototypical referents, and from inside the category of ‘referents of the NC’ to outside the category, that is, to completely atypical referents.

In general, metaphors are often thought to be poetic, or literary expressions. However, metaphors are actually used extensively in everyday utterances and conversations. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) approached metaphor from the perspective of cognitive linguistics and their work summarises the idea of metaphors in the single sentence below.

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‘The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.’

(Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 5)

They further explain that we can use a simpler and more concrete term metaphorically to understand and experience something that is more complex and abstract. Simpler and more concrete terms are, in other words, something we can understand easily, such as through bodily experience. For example, in a sentence ‘He has been battling his disease with homeopathic medication’ and ‘The virus has invaded southern and central Europe’, vocabulary items related to war are used to talk about something much more abstract: disease. We know what the disease is, but we cannot directly experience the cause of the disease: microorganisms. Thus, vocabulary that relate to war, a more concrete experience, are used to conceptualise the disease (Hilpert, 2015).

The notion of metaphor used in this study needs to be differentiated from the notion of ‘conceptual’ metaphor. In Lakoff and Johnson (1980), they explain the theory of ‘conceptual’ metaphor as involving two domains: a source domain and a target domain. We use a source domain as the source of vocabulary to talk about or understand the target domain. For example, Lakoff and Johnson take up ‘war’ as a source domain and ‘argument’ as a target domain. Thus, ‘he attacked every weak point of my argument’ does not mean the person physically attacked visible or physical weak points of the speaker, but rather that ‘he raised objections’ to the argument. Source domains tend to be something we can bodily experience, such as space, force, and vision (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Thus, in the theory of ‘conceptual’ metaphor, the mapping is done between two domains (source and target). However, in this study, domains are not relevant. The types of metaphor involved when NCs are used simply relate a single source (here referred to as the ‘vehicle’ of the metaphor) with a single

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target. This is what Palfreyman and Zeshan (Forthcoming) refer to as ‘single-stage metaphor’. Therefore, the theory used in this study is simply referred to as ‘the theory of metaphor’ instead of ‘the theory of conceptual metaphor’.

In the process of using metaphor, a sentence involving a metaphorical expression may seem to have two possible meanings: a literal meaning and a metaphorical meaning (Fromkin et al., 2012). Regarding this issue, Searle (1993) claims that sentences and words have only one meaning, which means that both a literal meaning and a metaphorical meaning are not uttered in one, single instance. In cases where some metaphorical expression is used in a phrase or a sentence, the literal meaning is first computed in the listener’s mind, then, if the literal meaning seems unlikely to be what the speaker intended, the listener tries another interpretation, namely, a metaphorical meaning (Fromkin et al., 2012; Searle, 1993).54 _{In order to}

have the metaphor understood in the way the speaker intended, it is essential that both the speaker and the listener share the literal, original meaning of the term and the context in which the term is used. In addition to that, some shared-world knowledge or cultural knowledge may be required to interpret the metaphorical expression. For instance, the phrase ‘time is money’ can be understood in the context of a cash economy, in which people are paid by the number of hours they work (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).

In this analysis, the idea of metaphor is applied to explain an extension of meanings at two levels. Firstly, metaphorical extension is employed within the category of the referents of the NC. This approach has already been taken in previous studies. For example, as mentioned, Lakoff (1987) discusses the fact that telephone

54 _{Wilson and Sperber (2006) claim that literal interpretations do not always need to be tested before} seeking figurative interpretations. Based on the relevance theory, the lister has an assumption about the speaker’s utterance that will satisfy their expetations of relevance so that figurative iterpretations can be directly selected to be accessed first (Wilson & Sperber, 2006, p. 619).

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calls are counted by hon (long and thin) in Japanese. Telephone calls are not physically long, thin entities, but rather invisible events. Lakoff explains this use by applying the notion of metaphor: a telephone call is a way of communication, which comes through a conduit, and conduits are typically long and thin (Lakoff, 1987, p. 104).55 _{It is}

observed in this study, however, that not all less prototypical referents are counted by the NC due to metaphorical extension, as what determines prototypes is not only the meaning but also the frequency with which speakers encounter particular potential referents, particularly in a context in which they may need to be counted. For example, microorganisms are less prototypical referents of hiki, not because they do not satisfy the semantic components of hiki just as well as kittens and fish, but because they are not commonly counted. Therefore, metaphorical extension is used only where applicable within the category of each target NC to account for less typical referents.

Let us now turn to the question of how the notion of metaphor might relate to referents that are outside of the category of ‘referents of the NC’, in general. NC language speakers acquire (or learn in school) a ‘correct’ NC for each referent so that the matching is done almost automatically in everyday language. However, there are cases in which a ‘wrong’ NC is intentionally chosen by the speaker. In this kind of case, the use of the NC with an atypical referent is not automatically considered to be wrong. As claimed by Searle (1993), the listener would detect that the NC is not what they are expecting to occur in the sentence, and it is that grammatical incorrectness that triggers their mind to seek a metaphorical meaning. As long as the listener assumes that the speaker has good knowledge of the grammar of the language and they are genuinely intending to communicate, the listener consciously or unconsciously finds another interpretation of the meaning injected into the referent by the unusual NC.

55 _{It has been pointed out that the use of hon for telephone calls cannot be explained only by metaphor,} but more factors are involved. These arguments are described in 2.4.4.

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NCs in Japanese have tended to be thought to function in a sentence simply to satisfy grammatical rules: because they are grammatically required whenever a noun is counted and in order to indicate information about the referentiality of the noun. They are not considered to convey much in the way of meaning compared to other elements related to the noun phrase, such as numerals, adjectives, and nouns. However, as explained and further discussed in the analysis chapters, each NC actually has a number of semantic components, and these semantic components are all potential meanings of the NC. Therefore, the speaker can manipulate the normal use of an NC to draw on one or more of those semantic components to emphasise any of a range of aspects of, or to add subjective meaning to, the referent. Based on the assumption that the listener has good knowledge of both the referent and an NC, the speaker can expect that he/she can find a tertium comparationis, that is, something shared between these two things to compare. Thus, without the need for explanation, the shared meaning between two things is highlighted and emphasised through metaphor. Not only the meaning of the NC, but also the context in which it is used, and even real-world or cultural knowledge that is shared with the speaker can be interpreted by the listener. By simply pairing an ‘incorrect’ NC with a referent, the speaker can thus express their personal, subjective attitude towards the referent in a creative way.