Similes and conceptual metaphors in the conceptualization of tertiary studies in spanish and english
| Autor | Lorena Pérez-Hernández |
| Cargo del Autor | Universidad de La Rioja |
| Páginas | 70-94 |
挑腸飯般腸挑
CAPÍTULO 4
SIMILES AND CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS
IN THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF
TERTIARY STUDIES IN SPANISH AND ENGLISH
LORENA PÉREZ-HERNÁNDEZ
Universidad de La Rioja
1. INTRODUCTION
Beyond their traditional roles as figures of speech, metaphors and simi-
les are powerful tools for conceptualizing reality which may influence
our understanding of the world and the choices we make.
This paper reports on the findings that arise from a corpus-based analy-
sis of those metaphors and similes that underlie the conceptualization of
doctoral studies in English vs. Spanish speaking countries. Additionally,
it investigates potential correlations between the conceptual mappings
at work in each cultural and the employability rates and salaries of their
doctors.
The remainder of the article is organized as follows. Section 2 describes
the theoretical framework, the state of the art and the objectives of the
research. Section 3 deals with methodological aspects, including data
sources and compilation. Section 4 reports the results of the study and
offers a description of the metaphors and similes of doctoral studies in
English and Spanish. Section 5 offers a comparison and a discussion of
the results, and section 6 summarizes the findings and suggests paths for
further analyses.
挑腸飯藩腸挑
2. OBJECTIVES
2.1. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
From the 1980s onwards, Cognitive Linguistics has provided ample ev-
idence about the role of so-called figures of speech (metaphor, meton-
ymy, hyperbole, similes, etc.) in our everyday life reasoning. What had
traditionally been considered rhetorical figures aimed at the embellish-
ment of literary language were shown to have a pivotal role in daily
conversations, enabling both the communication and the understanding
of abstract and complex notions (Lakoff, 1980; Lakoff, 1993; Lakoff
and Johnson, 1980).
This section offers a description of the theoretical tools underlying the
present investigation. To this end, it includes a brief definition and up-
dated bibliographical references about the notions of simile, resem-
blance metaphor and correlation metaphor.
2.1.1. Similes
The literature on cognitive operations has traditionally given pride of
place to the study of comparison (resemblance and correlation meta-
phors) and domain reduction/extension operations (metonymy) to the
detriment of other conceptual strategies such as similes. The latter were
traditionally considered a type of metaphor, even a weaker type of met-
aphor, hence deserving much less attention from researchers. Neverthe-
less, recent investigations have provided evidence of the conceptual in-
dependency and relevance of similes (Cuenca, 2015; Romano, 2017;
Ruiz de Mendoza, 2020).
Romano (2017) provides a definition of simile in terms of its seman-
tic and discursive dimensions as "a conceptual and discursive process
of analogy" and the author further argues in favour of its independ-
ence from close figures of speech like metaphor. Not all authors ac-
cept this view of similes as an autonomous figure. Traditionally, au-
thors dealing with these phenomena have situated themselves in one
of two opposed stances, namely, the equivalence view and the non-
equivalence view.
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