Lecture 8. Metaphor and the cultural markedness of lexical collocations

8.1. Life and death: Eliciting cultural connotations from lexical collocations.

8.2. A case study: Cultural data in collocations that name emotions.

Objectives: to present cultural markedness of lexical collocations and a case-study: Cultural data in collocations that name emotions.

The study of restricted lexical collocations shows the important role of metaphor in the meaning of the collocator describing parameters of non-material objects.

The concept of voobrazhenie ('imagination' or 'the human ability to create mental images') has a parameter 'a high degree of activity', which in English collocations is conveyed metaphorically

as vivid/fertile/lively. These adjectives refer to colour, soil, and living organisms, respectively. In Russian, the same

conceptual parameter is described metaphorically by adjectives whose associative motifs correspond only partially to those

in English. English vivid in collocation with imagination can be translated into Russian as burnoe, lit. 'turbulent', zhivoe, lit.

'lively', or puilkoe, lit. 'ardent', 'fervent'.

Another example illustrates the metaphorical use of a verb as a collocator. In Russian, the process of forming a person's

character is signified by the collocation vuikovuivat' kharakter, lit. 'to forge some-

one's character'. The association is with a blacksmith hammering at a metal object to give it firmness and hardness. In

English, the collocation to mould someone's character is used, also associated with a firm object but emphasizing, at the

same time, the idea of giving shape to an originally shapeless mass. So, each language chooses its own mode of

metaphorical conceptualization, the 'nerve' of such specificity being the association underlying the figurative meaning. One

can perceive that for the Russian mentality the standard of character is represented in the image of armour, hard and firm

(cf. Lakoff and Johnson's kernel metaphor 'Life is War'), while for the English language such a standard can be associated

with the idea of a clear-cut shape as the ideal creation (it should be noted that the verb to mould in English is used in its

transposed meaning 'to create' not only in collocation with character -- cf. to mould something upon something, to mould

someone into something). These examples show that metaphorical collocators denoting conceptual parameters can be

used as clues to different approaches to conceptualization and verbalization in different languages -- that is, to cultural

data contained in, or associated with, the meaning of restricted collocations. Many more Russian examples are given in the

following section.

Now, one might ask: What is the driving force behind the activity of the metaphor as a linguistically creative mechanism?

The cognitive foundations of the phenomenon were formulated by Kant as the Als Ob principle (Kant 1994: 400-20). Kant

postulated, as inherent in the human mind, the tendency to interpret abstract categories in terms of sensuously

perceptible objects, relating the abstract to the concrete through analogy. As a result, abstract categories appear to the

mind and in the language as if they were concrete objects, material processes, or properties. The Als Ob principle has

been recognized in linguistics as the cognitive mechanism of linguistic metaphor (Black 1979; Apter 1982). Therefore,

everyday language and the everyday (naпve) concepts it contains tend to associate abstract notions with physical

phenomena. Consider, for instance, 'talent', a non-material concept. The Russian language conceptualizes its manifestations as iskra

talanta, lit. 'a sparkle of talent' (as if talent were fire). Similarly, morals are a social code of behaviour, but parameters of

the concept are figuratively verbalized as if it were a material object. Thus, the Russian collocation for the deterioration of

morals is padenie nravov, lit. 'morals fall', with the non-figurative meaning of the collocator referring to the downward

movement of a physical object in space. Thus, metaphor is crucial to the process of conceptualization, when concept

parameters are ascribed to a base.

Though conceptualization through figurative meaning does not guarantee that a lexical collocation is culturally marked (as

not all metaphors necessarily require a culturally oriented interpretation), there are a number of metaphorical collocators

whose non-figurative meanings involve concepts associated, one way or another, with categories of culture and cultural

patterns (standards, stereotypes, mythologies, ideologies, etc.) These patterns become the focus of metaphorical

associations and thus motivate the process of semantic transposition. Similarly, culturally marked metaphorical collocators

derived from cultural data give cultural markedness to the whole of the lexical collocation.

The difficulty with analysing linguistic metaphors for the cultural information they might contain lies in the fact that

culturally marked collocations differ in that their collocators may refer to different cultural patterns, calling for different

types of cultural interpretation. Thus, the collocator in zerno istinui, lit. 'a grain of truth', is loaded with cultural

associations: grain is part of the rite of sowing connected with the archaic concept of Birth and Rebirth. This cultural

connotation is activated in zerno istinui in its meaning 'a single and small but true and important idea, generating true and

useful knowledge or conclusions'. But these cultural data cannot be derived directly from either the literal or the

metaphorical meaning of the collocator. They represent cultural reflection activated through a metaphorical linguistic

image. On the other hand, in the collocation angel'skiy kharakter, lit. 'angelic character', also associated with the religious

tradition, the cultural seme constitutes part of the literal meaning of the collocator. So, metaphorical transposition changes

and complicates the relation between the contents of the collocator and the patterns of culture. In metaphor, consequently

in the whole of the collocation, the original (biblical) angel serves as a Christian cultural standard of virtue. 'Angelic'

features are singled out to become the focus of association and the core of the new metaphorical content. Thus, angel'skiy

kharakter relates to a person as if he or she were an angel (i.e. conforming to the highest standard of virtue in the

Christian world-picture). To interpret the concept, an associative motif needs to be correlated with the cultural pattern.

Metaphors deriving from mythological archetypes often require thorough investigation before the cultural patterns

underlying the connotation can be identified. For instance, the Russian collocation temnaya lichnost', lit. 'a dark

personality', denotes an unknown, suspicious, dangerous person (cf. Eng. a shady character), while svedaya lichnost', lit.

'a light personality', refers to an individual who is highly respected because of his or her excellent qualities, especially high

moral standards. Both collocations can be traced to the mythological opposition between light and darkness. Genetically

related to the same opposition is the concept of enlightenment (Fr. le Siиcle des Lumiиres, Russ. Prosveshchenie), in

which the concept of light is associated with a benign and cultivated world of Reason as opposed to the hostile darkness of

reactionary superstition (cf. obscurantism). Other examples of mythological archetypes in cultural connotations will be

given below.

Cultural markedness in lexical collocations can also depend on specificity of metaphorical conceptualization. Thus, from the

Russian standpoint, a donkey can be assumed to be a stereotype (a subconcept) of foolish stubbornness, as witness:

oslinoe upryamstvo, lit. 'donkey obstinacy', oslinaya glypost', lit. 'donkey folly'. For native speakers of English,

stubbornness seems to find its stereotype in a mule, hence mulish stubbornness. Such collocations form part of the

linguisticcultural thesaurus and usually stand out against the background of proverbs, sayings, and other verbal folklore.

Compare glup kak osel, lit. 'as silly as a donkey', and Osel na osle, durak na durake, lit. 'a donkey over a donkey, a fool

over a fool' (i.e. 'there are too many fools around'; cf. Eng. as stubborn as a mule).

Cultural patterns are a productive source of incessant linguistic creativity, a fund of metaphorical quasi-stereotypes that is

constantly replenished. Thus, Westerns produced the stereotypical image of the cowboy. This Hollywood image eventually

penetrated the Russian collective mentality, resulting in utterances like Reagan is a political cowboy and in the collocations

kovboyskoe nakhal'stvo, lit. 'cowboy insolence', and kovboyskaya bestseremonnost', lit. 'cowboy cheek'.

To sum up, interpretation of metaphorical collocations often requires reference to language-specific cultural patterns.

These make a linguo-cultural community perceive concepts as if through the prism of culturally associated images. Since

these cultural patterns parametrize concepts, they can be discussed not only in terms of the creativity of metaphor

according to Black (1979) and Apter (1982) -- but also in terms of its linguistic-cultural creativity.