A Study of Metaphorical Mapping Involving Socio-cultural Values : How Woman is Conceptualized in Japanese

A STUDY OF METAPHORICAL MAPPING INVOLVING SOCIO-CULTURAL VALUES: HOW WOMAN IS CONCEPTUALIZED IN JAPANESE Mari Takada� Kazuko Shinohara� Fumi Morizumi� Michiko Sato Georgetown� Tokyo University of� International Christian� International Christian University*� Agriculture and Technology� University� University *Department of Linguistics, ICC 480 Washington, D.C. 20057 USA Email: takadamggusun.georgetown.edu ABSTRACT The present study investigates a type of metaphor involving socio-cultural values in their mapping and interpretation. The linguistic data are Japanese metaphorical expressions that conceptualize women as plants or animals. First, the typology of metaphor based on previous research is discussed, focusing on conceptual, correlation, and resemblance metaphors, followed by our proposal to distinguish "socio- cultural metaphors" within resemblance metaphors. The main part analyzes the data to illustrate various characteristics of socio-cultural metaphors, which is divided into the following sections: 1) Women as Animals or Plants, 2) Some Mapping Gaps and Asymmetry, 3) Properties Involved in the Mapping, 4) Socio-cultural Codes, and 5) Social Structures and Interpretation of Woman Metaphors. The result of the questionnaire survey reported in 4) seems to suggest that interpretations and usage of some metaphorical expressions have undergone certain changes over the years. The study concludes by suggesting further research in socio-cultural metaphor in Japanese and other languages. 1. INTRODUCTION Since Lakoff and Johnson [1], the study of metaphor has made great progress in cognitive linguistics. It has been well established that there are inter-domain mappings of concepts in two different domains, and that the set of correspondences between them are called "conceptual metaphors." Research has also shown that in the most basic conceptual metaphors, the image-schematic structure of the source domain is preserved in the target domain. Up till now, the focus has been on the conceptual metaphors based on the image-schematic correlation. While such metaphors are important for the research in cognitive semantics, other kinds of conventional metaphors deserve more attention. Recent development in this field of study, however, has seen other conventional metaphors identified and classified in a more elegant way. One such example is the work of Grady [2] who has distinguished motivations for two kinds of metaphors, "correlation metaphor" and "resemblance metaphor." The present study makes a further distinction within resemblance metaphors, and proposes what we may call "socio-cultural metaphor." This is exemplified by Japanese metaphors that conceptualize women in terms of animals or plants. We present a model of socio-cultural metaphors illustrating how they are formed as a result of socio-cultural interpretations of the source and target concepts. 2. PREVIOUS STUDIES 2.1. Conceptual Metaphor Theory From the time of Aristotle, metaphor had been treated in the western tradition as a linguistic device used in rhetoric and literature. It was considered that all metaphors had literal meanings and were used by specialists for purposes such as to persuade people or to express an imaginary world. On the contrary, Lakoff and Johnson [1] claimed that metaphor is not just a matter of language, but that it governs our ordinary conceptual system. According to their view, "human thought processes are largely metaphorical" and the "human …

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