It is undeniable that CMT has brought insight to metaphor studies and to metaphor translation. However, many scholars such as Deignan (2008b), for instance, have criticised it for prioritising the conceptual level of metaphor to the detriment of the linguistic one and for lacking methodological tools to back up the theory. The main criticisms of Conceptual Metaphor Theory are summarised in the following:
1. Prioritising thought over language: The cognitive approach to metaphor derives its main arguments from linguistic data despite the assumption that metaphor is primarily a conceptual tool that is realised through linguistic metaphors (Deignan 2008a; 2008b; 2009; 2010);
2. The way data is collected and analysed is questioned. The linguistic data that are used to support CMT are generally separate sentences or short paragraphs that lack context for interpretation and can be seen as invented data (Deignan 2008b). In order to remedy this issue, a number of linguists such as Deignan (2008a, 2008b; 2009, 2010) advocate the use of corpus-based approaches to give more consistency to their findings through large corpora which are researched and concordanced to explore pre-existing claims. For example, Deignan (2008b) reports that the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR can be researched in a corpus by concordancing lexical items of this metaphor linguistic expressions such as ‘attack’ and ‘defend’. She found that the linguistic evidence supports the claim that the target domain ARGUMENT is structured in terms of the source domain
WAR. However, the corpus demonstrates that some linguistic metaphors such as “attack” are not only used in the source domain WAR but in other source domains also such as
SPORT, ILLNESS and PHYSICAL VIOLENCE. This means that the same source domain can be mapped onto different target domains;
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3. One of the major problems that CMT has neglected is the procedure for metaphor identification. Deignan (2010) argues that conceptual metaphor theory suggests that “metaphor has an identity separable from people and that this identity is permanent and fixed as a shape or appearance of an object would be” (2010:47). Cameron pursues the same argument and contests the way metaphor is conceived in CMT as a “static and pre- existent object in the mind” (2010:85) and argues in favour of a new approach which she calls “a dynamic approach” where metaphorical meaning emerges from the interaction between different discourse participants as will be seen in the next section;
4. Domain delimitation: another methodological problem in CMT is the delimitation of the source and target domains and inferring conceptual metaphors from the linguistic data. Low and Todd (2010) warn against the dangers of overgeneralising on limited linguistic evidence. They also point to the need to establish a consistent procedure for the identification of conceptual metaphors;
5. Conceptual Metaphor Theory focuses more on conventional metaphors rather than on novel or creative metaphors (Cameron and Deignan 2006). This is due mainly to the fact that conventional metaphors explain better the embodiment of conceptual metaphors. The question of the conventionality of metaphors results on two methodological problems: firstly, conventional metaphors are easier to identify as several scholars have dealt with them in different studies. Kövesces (2010), for instance, provides a list of some well- established conventional metaphors. Secondly, from a translation perspective, conventional metaphors are thought to be easier to translate than creative or novel ones (Dagut 1976; Newmark 1988). As seen earlier in Chapter 3,the genre of popular science articles mixes metaphors fulfilling different functions. The main two functions are argued to be the terminological and pedagogical function which coexist with non-genre specific- metaphors termed here generic metaphors which can fulfil various functions. In terms of conventionality/ creativity, it is thought that generic and terminological metaphors are more conventional than pedagogical metaphors and hence will pose fewer problems in their translation than pedagogical metaphors, although some conventional metaphors in English as source language may become novel metaphors in the translated texts if there is a terminological gap in the TL or the translator is unaware of the TT term. Finally, a distinction between novel and conventional metaphors cannot be made without a
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diachronic study of metaphors as a metaphor can be novel at a certain time and becomes conventional later. In this study, the distinction between conventional and novel metaphors is defined broadly according to the frequency in use of metaphors.
CMT has developed in different ways to overcome these methodological issues summarised in this section. For instance, there are CMT based approaches in discourse analysis (Cameron and Maslen, 2010; Cameron and Low, 1999; Cameron et al., 2009; Charteris-Black, 2004), corpus linguistics (Deignan and Potter, 2004; Deignan 2008a; Deignan, 2008b; Deignan and Semino 2010; Deignan, Littlemore and Semino 2013), and metaphor identification procedures (Crisp et al., 2007; Dorst and Kaal 2012; Steen 2007; Steen et al., 2010a;2010b; 2010c).
Each of these approaches is reviewed in turn in the following sections starting with the discourse approaches to metaphor analysis in Section 0, moving to the corpus-based approaches in Section 0 and finishing with the metaphor identification procedures in Section 5.4. Each of these approaches has contributed to the elaboration of the methodology applied to the analysis of the A&A corpus in the current study that will be detailed in Chapter 6.