Linguistic Approaches to Literature - Assignment 15 James Madison University

[This assignment will be marked only as an acceptable or unacceptable effort.]

• Find two examples of (at least relatively) conventional metaphoric expressions. Write them down and say where you found them. Then, think about your examples and decide what seems to you to be the most likely SOURCE DOMAIN and TARGET DOMAIN for each one. Explain your choices.


• There are many fairly conventional metaphoric expressions based on the conceptual metaphor that has been labelled PEOPLE ARE MACHINES. Here are a few exaxmples: He had a breakdown. Her ticker is weak. I wonder what makes him tick. Fuel up with a good breakfast. I feel all run down. He's wound up tight as a spring.
  The SOURCE DOMAIN here is machines (sometimes, it seems to be more specifically clocks) and the TARGET DOMAIN would more accurately be loosely characterized as people/human bodies/ bodies in general.
  Come up with an element from our domain knowledge that is not normally mapped into our understanding of people/bodies. What is that element? Next, write down a creative utterance based on using this element as an EXTENSION of the original CM.
  As a little experiment, now ask a friend what your utterance means. Was he/she able to come up with a way to interpret it?


• Consider the utterance "Love is a quietness?" Can you think of any existing SOURCE DOMAIN for love that this reference could come from? In other words, does this feel like it is an expression based in some way on one or more existing conceptual metaphors we have for love? If so, which one(s)? What would be the term to describe the kind of metaphoric expression "Love is a quietness" is if it is not using, elaborating on, extending, or questioning (challenging) any existing CMs?