Metaforhjemmesiden ved Carlo Grevy - ny e-mail

[ Metaphors ]

Nyt - antologi om metaforer, metaforteori, kognitiv semantik og fagsprog

Scholars in literature, rhetoric and cognitive semantics often see metaphors as creative, innovative aspects of language. Studying about 6000 metaphors in an innovative environment (computer periodicals) and in other fields, I will show that all metaphors are part of a final structure. Every metaphor we use, have used, or will use is a part of this structure. This means that we are not able to say something new with metaphors, but always will say something old -- and this also means that metaphors are not creative, or perhaps more correctly, that metaphors are not more creative than other parts of language.

I will not only give an overview of the structure of metaphor; I will also focus on the container metaphor, and other physical metaphors, where we talk about artifacts, abstractions, and technology in terms of the concrete. I will relate these uses of metaphors to the personalization metaphors, where we talk about the same topics but in the abstract. In my conclusion, I will discuss whether it is appropriate to say that the language is in us, or whether it is more appropriate to say that we are in the language.