Speaking With Forked Tongue: A
Comparative Study of Metaphor and
Metonymy in English and Malay
Phraseology
Jonathan Charteris-Black
Department of Linguistic, Cultural & International Studies
University of Surrey
In this article, I employ a cognitive semantic approach to compare figurative uses of 3
oral body parts (“mouth,” “lip,” and “tongue”) in English and Malay phraseology to
establish whether either language shows an orientation toward metaphor or
metonymy. The main finding is that where figurative language is being employed for
the similar discourse function of offering an evaluation, though each language shows
evidence of both figures—as well as blends between them—English has a tendency
toward metonymy whereas Malay has a tendency toward metaphor. This is explained
with reference to cultural differences in attitude toward facial expressions and in sty-
listic preferences; in English for hyperbole and in Malay for euphemism. This is be-
cause of cultural pressures toward the more encrypted style of metaphor in Malay. A
better knowledge of the linguistic characteristics of figurative phrases provides a rich
source of insight into cultural differences.
In this article I will investigate whether English and Malay consistently show a
preference for metaphor as compared with metonymy. This will be done by com-
paring the phraseology of a particular source domain—that of the oral body parts
“mouth,” “lip,” and “tongue.” I will investigate whether reliance on metaphor or
metonymy can be explained by culturally driven stylistic preferences for euphe-
mism or hyperbole. I will briefly illustrate this as follows: Both English and Malay
have similar metaphors in the expressions “fork-tongued” and “lidah bercabang”
METAPHOR AND SYMBOL, 18(4), 289–310
Copyright © 2003, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Jonathan Charteris-Black, English Language Institute, Uni-
versity of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH United Kingdom. E-mail: J.Charteris-Black@sur-
rey.ac.uk

(tongue forked) “hypocritical” that convey the same negative evaluation. They also
both have the expressions “lidah mannis” (“tongue sweet’) and “a silver tongue”
to convey positive evaluation of someone who speaks in a charming or attractive
way. However, English appears to have very few such adjectival uses in its phrase-
ology and more typically uses metonymic expressions such as “to keep one’s
mouth shut,” and “to bite one’s tongue.” In these cases, a physical action refers to
the result “not talking.” Reference to the physical action has this sense because in
our experience we are aware of the contiguous relation between placing physical
constraint on a speech organ and the outcome of not speaking. However, the ques-
tion arises as to whether hyperbole of this type is characteristic of English and
whether Malay phrases in this domain would show a tendency toward other types
of figure such as metaphor.
METONYMY, METAPHOR, AND EVALUATION
Given that this article is exploring preferences between languages as regards the
selection of metaphor or metonymy or both, in this section I will summarize
some of the current views on the cognitive and linguistic differences between
them. I will then consider some of the views on the relation between the two
types of figure in relation to oral body parts and the types of evaluation that they
convey.
Warren (1999) explains the distinction between the two figures as follows, “The
difference between metaphor and metonymy is traditionally said to be that meta-
phor is based on resemblance relations whereas metonymy is based on contigu-
ity”(p. 130). As a result, because metaphor is based on resemblance there are two
separate conceptual domains whereas only a single conceptual domain is involved
in metonymy. This is summarized by Lakoff (1987, p. 288) as follows, “A
metonymic mapping occurs within a single conceptual domain….” whereas “met-
aphoric mapping involves a source domain and a target domain.” Other semanti-
cists agree with this point of view:
….metaphor is a mapping between two domains that are not part of the same matrix…
in metonymy, on the other hand, the mapping occurs only within a domain matrix …
We will call this conceptual effect domain highlighting, since the metonymy makes
primary a domain that is secondary in the literal meaning. (Croft, 1993, p. 348)
Because two domains are involved with metaphor there is a case for arguing that it
is less direct than metonymy; as Pauwels (1999, p. 256) explains, “The central ele-
ment differentiating metaphor and metonymy seems to be the greater cognitive
distance (to put it in spatial terms) between the concepts involved in metaphor.”
290 CHARTERIS-BLACK