War Lessons or How Metaphor Perception Depends on Professional and Personal Experience

Abstract.

The Conceptual Metaphor Theory says that metaphorical projections reflect the experience of human interaction with the surrounding realm. Therefore, having studied the content of these metaphorical mappings, we can draw conclusions about the nature of this interaction. The present study is devoted to the problems of intracultural variation of a conceptual metaphor, namely, the dependence of the conceptual metaphor perception on professional and life experience. The author introduces the idea of the variance of conceptual metaphor perception, which is understood as the difference in the perception of implicit and explicit layers of a metaphor. The implicit plan refers to a conceptual formula for metaphorical mapping (WAR is a GAME), while the explicit plan refers to a concrete implementation of a conceptual formula (to win a war). For the empirical material of the study was chosen a conceptual metaphor with the WAR target domain for which 6 most characteristic source domains were identified: GAME, THEATER, COMPETITION, CASINO, LESSON, DEATH. The study of the metaphorical models perception was conducted by interviewing respondents with different life and professional experience in the military sphere: military professionals, combat veterans, military personnel, and civilians. Respondents were supposed to correlate the proposed language implementations of metaphors and their conceptual formulas with their language and life experience. This technique makes it possible to identify the dependence of conceptual metaphorical mappings on one’s life and professional experience. In addition, the calculation of the variance of the conceptual metaphor allows us to identify the stability of a particular metaphorical transfer, enabling us to draw conclusions about the reflection of the objective realm in the minds of native speakers. The study showed a certain difference in the metaphor perception for people with different professional backgrounds, the difference being especially strong for groups of military professionals and civilians. Considering the variance of conceptual metaphors leads us to a conclusion that the metaphorical models WAR is A LESSON and WAR is DEATH are inconstant in the Russian socioculture. As a result, it was revealed that the main components of the WAR concept structure were GAME, DEATH and LESSON, with DEATH and LESSON being unstable in respondents’ consciousness, standing out on the surface cognitive level, but rather insignificant on the deep cognitive level.

Keywords: conceptual metaphor, metaphor adoption, metaphor variance, conceptual mapping, metaphorical modeling, metaphor variation