Book Review: Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Abstract

Metaphors We Live By, in which conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) was proposed by Lakoff and Johnson, marked the beginning of systematic studies of metaphor in cognitive linguistics. Zoltán Kövecses' new monograph Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory offers an approach that updates CMT by elucidating many issues that researchers have raised against the theory. The book consists of eight chapters, with the first being the starting point at which the "standard" version of CMT is introduced, including the views in the pioneering work of Metaphors We Live By and the works that confirmed, added to, and also modified the original ideas. The subsequent five chapters characterize the new view as "extended CMT, " each beginning with a thought-provoking alternative question that responds to one issue with the "standard" CMT. Chapter 2, "The Abstract Understood Figuratively, the Concrete Understood Literally, but the Concrete Understood Figuratively?, " responds to the idea that there is such a thing as literal meaning by focusing on the assumption that there may be no literal language at all. The author holds that both concrete and abstract concepts have embodied content ontology and figurative construal and that we can profile the ontology part in some cases and the figuratively construed part in others. Chapter 3, "Direct or Indirect Emergence?, " responds to the debate concerning whether the primary metaphor that is the foundation of CMT emerges directly or through a metonymic stage. The author illustrates the claim that metonymies are, to some degree, more primary than primary metaphors. It is suggested that correlation-based metaphors emerge from frame-like mental representations through a metonymic stage. Chapter 4, "Domain, Schema, Frames, or Space?, " responds to the difficulty in identifying appropriate conceptual structures to participate in the formation of conceptual metaphors. By proposing the "multilevel view of conceptual metaphor, " the author argues that each conceptual metaphor is characterized by four levels, with the highest being that of image schemas, the lowest, that of mental spaces, and in between, that of domains and that of frames. Chapter 5, "Conceptual or Contextual?, " addresses the neglect of context within CMT. The author elucidates the assumption that conceptual metaphors are not simply conceptual but are necessarily contextual by drawing heavily on his 2015 book Where Metaphors Come From. Chapter 6, "Offline or Online?, " responds to CMT's inability to account for meaning in actual occurrences of metaphorical language in real discourse by explicating the assumption that conceptual metaphor is both an offline and online phenomenon simultaneously. These five main chapters are followed by two integrative summary chapters. The former addresses the components of an emerging new theory and sketches its general framework, and the latter assesses the responses to the five questions discussed above, together with a rough comparison of this newly proposed paradigm with its sister theory, i.e., the view of metaphor as dynamic systems proposed by Gibbs (2017).