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Article published In: Language and Linguistics
Vol. 19:4 (2018) ► pp.549–576

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Metaphor in Hakka proverbs

Linguistic and cultural constraints

 | National Chengchi University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 10 October 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00020.lai
Abstract
This paper investigates metaphor in Hakka proverbs by examining a corpus of 933 couplets based on a refined analytic framework from Lakoff, George & Turner, Mark. 1989. More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar. For the source domain, the being of the state of affairs and the rhetorical relations of the two chunks are identified. For the target domain, the projected theme and the connotative tendency are examined. The results show that source domains significantly correlate with the rhetorical relations and target domains, respectively. Four metaphorical mapping mechanisms based on the generic is specific metaphor are proposed for the operation of the global construal. A mirror image mapping is demonstrated: whole-for-part metonymy in the source domain and part-for-whole metonymy in the target domain. Both the evoked knowledge schemas, encompassing real-life Hakka folk experiences, and the projected themes, including family values, individual characters, and evaluations or standards of life, are found to be culturally constrained. A coalescence of linguistic, cultural, and affective forces is claimed to represent the metaphors in Hakka proverbs. The study contributes to a better understanding of metaphors in proverbs by establishing a solid ground from their linguistic and cultural features, and to expanding the conceptual metaphor theory by building the conceptual universality with specific cultural information.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The analytic framework
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1The data
    • 3.2Coding
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Distribution of the categorizations
    • 4.2The mapping mechanisms for metaphorical interpretations
    • 4.3Knowledge schemas and cultural constraints
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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