Metaphor and Meaning: A Cognitive Linguistic Study of Conceptual Domains in English

Abstract

This article presents a cognitive linguistic exploration of conceptual metaphors and their role in shaping meaning and cognition in contemporary English. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), the study investigates how abstract target domains are systematically understood through concrete source domains via cross-domain mappings. Key target domains analyzed include LOVE (structured as a JOURNEY, WAR, or PLANT), TIME (as MONEY, SPACE, or MOTION), ARGUMENT (as WAR), LIFE (as a JOURNEY), and EMOTION (particularly ANGER as HEAT or PRESSURE). Linguistic evidence from balanced corpora (e.g., COCA, BNC) and contemporary discourse sources demonstrates the pervasiveness of these metaphors in everyday language, revealing systematic entailments such as progress and obstacles in journey mappings, scarcity and value in time-as-money, adversarial strategy in argument-as-war, and physiological buildup in anger metaphors that generate coherent inferences and constrain reasoning in predictable ways. The analysis highlights the embodied foundations of these mappings, rooted in image schemas and primary metaphors, while addressing constraints like the Invariance Principle and unidirectionality. Findings affirm metaphor's centrality to meaning construction, abstract conceptualization, inference generation, and ideological framing, with implications for universality (shared embodied patterns) versus cultural variation in English usage. Applications extend to language teaching (enhancing vocabulary acquisition through metaphor awareness), discourse analysis (revealing hidden framings), lexicography, and AI/NLP metaphor detection. Critically, while CMT provides robust explanatory power, limitations regarding context-sensitivity and deliberate use suggest avenues for extension through multimodal and dynamic frameworks. This work contributes to ongoing refinements in cognitive linguistics by combining theoretical depth with empirical corpus evidence, underscoring metaphor's indispensable function in human thought and communication within evolving linguistic landscapes.

Keywords: Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Cross-Domain Mappings, Embodied Cognition, Source-Target Domains, English Metaphors, Cognitive Linguistics