The Metaphorical Motivation for Idiomatic Meaning

Adel Antoinette SZAB Universitatea Babe-Bolyai din Cluj-Napoca People should have strong conventional images for many idioms. Those images are constructed on the basis of the conceptual metaphors motivating the figurative meaning of idioms. Thus, idioms are not dead metaphors with their meanings being arbitrarily determined, in many cases their meanings being motivated by the speakers tacit knowledge of the conceptual metaphors underlying the meanings of these figurative phrases. Both in the English lexicology, and the Romanian one, idioms have been considered, for many years, as non-decomposable expressions, that is, the meaning of the whole phrase could not be deduced from the meaning of its components. ater studies proved that, on the contrary, idioms are decomposable. !he meaning of an idiom is not arbitrary, as the meaning of a word is, and its meaning can be derived from the meaning of its components. !his feature, namely, the analy"ability of idioms, is responsible for the lexical and syntactic flexibility, as well as for the semantic productivity of idioms. !he figurative meanings of idioms may very well be motivated by people#s conceptual $nowledge that has a metaphoric basis. !here are significant differences in the processing of literal and idiomatic expressions, due to the metaphoric nature of idioms. %lthough, in many instances idioms are considered dead metaphors, people ma$e sense of them because they tacitly recogni"e the metaphorical mapping of information from two domains that gives rise to idioms in the first place &'ibbs, ())*+. ,hen idioms are processed, people#s assumptions about how the individual components of idioms refer to the metaphorical concepts underlying their figurative referents result in different information than when literal language is used. !his is applicable particularly to idioms that have a higher degree of analy"ability, because it is easier for people to map their individual components onto different $inds of metaphorical concepts for these particular expressions. -or example, the idiom John spilled the beans maps the spea$er#s $nowledge of someone#s tipping over a container of beans . the source domain . onto a person revealing a secret . the target domain. -or English spea$ers spill the beans means /reveal a secret# because there are underlying conceptual metaphors, such as !0E 1234 25 % 673!%23ER, and 24E%5 %RE 809526% E3!2!2E5, that structure their conceptions of minds, secrets, and disclosure & a$off : ;ohnson, ()<=+. !he very existence of these conceptual metaphors does not necessarily predict that certain idioms must appear in the language. !he presence of these conceptual metaphors by which we ma$e sense of experience provides a partial motivation for why specific phrases, such as spill the beans are used to refer to particular events . the revealing of secrets &'ibbs, ())*+. Research has proved that idioms do not exist as separate semantic units within the lexicon but actually reflect coherent systems of metaphorical concepts. -or example, the conceptual metaphor, %3'ER 25 0E%!E4 - >24 23 % 673!%23ER motivates idioms such as? blow your stack, flip your lid, hit the ceiling, get hot under the collar, lose your cool, and get steamed up. !his set of idioms is one small set of conceptual mappings between different source and target domains that form part of our conceptuali"ation of anger. *@

!he hypothesis that idioms ma$e sense in the ways they do precisely because they are motivated by conceptual $nowledge that is metaphorical, has been explored by various studies. ,hy do some idioms li$e blow your stack, flip your lid or hit the ceiling refer to the idea of getting very angry in a way that phrases li$e run to the store or mow your lawn do notA !he dead-metaphor view does not explain why some idioms seem so rightly to have the meanings they do. 8sycholinguistic studies have investigated the metaphorical motivation for idiomatic meaning empirically. 7ne way to discover the spea$ers# tacit $nowledge of the metaphorical basis for idioms is through a detailed examination of spea$ers# mental images of idioms &'ibbs :7#Brien, ())=+. !a$e the idiom spill the beans, for example. %ny spea$er is able to form a mental image of this phrase, describe the image to himself and then as$ himself several Buestions regarding? - the place the beans were before they were spilledC - the si"e of the container, whether the beans are coo$ed or uncoo$edC - if the spilling was intentional or accidentalC - where are the beans once they were spilledC - if the beans are in nice neat pile, where should the beans beC - whether they are easy to retrieve after spilling &'ibbs, ())*+. 1ost people have definite answers to these Buestions about their mental images of idioms. 5ubDects of experiments that tried to prove this fact answered that the beans were in a pot that is about the si"e of a person#s head, the beans are uncoo$ed, the spilling is accidental, the spilled beans are on the floor and they are difficult to retrieve. 2f one assumes that idioms are arbitrary, this consistency in people#s intuitions about their mental images cannot be explained. !he only reasonable explanation could be that people#s mental images of idioms reveal some of the metaphorical $nowledge that motivates their meaning. !he consistency in people#s responses about the causes and conseBuences of actions in their mental images of idioms comes from people#s tacit $nowledge of idioms being structured by conceptual metaphors. !he general schemas underlying people#s mental images of idioms were not simply representative of the idioms# figurative meaning, but captured more specific aspects of the $inesthetic events with the images &'ibbs, ())*+. -or example, for the anger idioms, such as flip your lid, hit the ceiling, the participants to experiments in this direction, specifically imagined for these phrases some force causing a container to release pressure in a violent manner &'ibbs, ())*+. 3othing in the surface form of these idioms would impose any constraint on the mental images people have. But the participants# protocols in this study showed little variation in their images of idioms with similar interpretations. %lso, the participants# responses to the Buestions about the causes and conseBuences of the actions described in their images were highly consistent. ,hen imagining anger idioms, such as flip your lid, hit the ceiling, people reported that? - pressure, translated into stress or frustration, caused the actionC - one had little control over the pressure once it was buildingC - its violent release was done unintentionally, as in blow your stack - once the release had ta$en place - the lid flipped, the ceiling hit, the stac$ blown . it was difficult, if not impossible to reverse the action. !he only logical explanation for people#s consistency in their intuitions about the causes, manner, and conseBuences of the actions described in their mental images of idioms is that the conceptual metaphors that underlie idioms impose certain limits for the $inds of images people create for idioms. -or example, for anger people use their $nowledge about physical events, namely, the behavior of heated fluid or vapor building up and escaping from containers. !hese containers have *E

been reported to be most often the si"e of a person#s head. !his way, people#s metaphorical mapping of $nowledge from a source domain . the heated fluid in a container . onto a target domain . the anger emotion . helps them conceptuali"e in concrete terms what is understood about the target domain of anger &'ibbs, ())*+. !he metaphorical ways in which we partially conceptuali"e experiences li$e anger actually provide part of the motivation for why people have consistent mental images, and specific $nowledge about these images, for idioms with similar figurative meanings &'ibbs, ())*+. 7ne counterargument to this demonstration might be that any consistency in people#s mental images for idioms with similar figurative meanings may be due not to the constraints imposed by the conceptual metaphors but to the very fact that these expressions have similar meanings. 0owever, the literal interpretation of anger idioms, namely /get very angry#, by itself does not give too many information about the causes and conseBuences of the actions described in people#s mental images, therefore this alternative hypothesis does not carry much weight. %nother set of follow-up studies showed that $nowing the figurative meaning of an idiom &e.g. /getting angry#+ does not by itself explain why people have such systematic $nowledge of their images of idioms. % wide variety of mental images was produced by subDects when as$ed to imagine /to get very angry#, but with no consistency regarding the causation, intentionality, manner and conseBuences about the actions in their mental images of paraphrases of the idioms. !his system of mental images of idioms supports the idea that the figurative meanings of idioms are motivated by various metaphorical concepts that exist independently as part of our conceptual system. Experiments could not prove that people actually form mental images of idioms as a normal part of the process of understanding of idioms. !he data demonstrate only how people#s common metaphorical $nowledge provides part of the motivation for why idioms have the figurative meanings they do &'ibbs, ())*+. %naly"ing some Romanian and English eBuivalent idioms it is impossible not to notice that eBuivalent idioms in the two languages are, very often, motivated by the same metaphorical concept? blow your stack ! a"#i ie#i din fire flip your lid$blow ones top ! a"i s%ri capacele$ a"i s%ri supapa de siguran&% hit the ceiling ! a s%ri 'n sus p(n% 'n tavan get hot under the collar ! a"i s%ri &and%ra$mu#tarul lose your cool ! a"#i pierde s%rita are all motivated by the concept %3'ER 25 0E%!E4 - >24 23 % 673!%23ER. 2dioms such as )ump at his throat ! a s%ri la beregat% or bite hid head off F a sGri la cap are motivated by the concept %3'R9 BE0%H27R 25 %321% BE0%H27R. !he two languages are not genetically related, and the hypothesis of borrowings can also be excluded. ,hat could be the explanation for such a pu""ling factA 2t has been demonstrated by now that the meaning of idioms is not arbitrary. !heir meaning is motivated by the metaphorical mapping and certain mental images & a$off : ;ohnson, I===+. %ll these schemas refer to physical experiences, with the possibility of mapping these experiences onto other domains, such as communication or social relations. 6ognitive linguistics assumes that the metaphorical concepts, that motivate idioms as well, are concepts of out bodies in their interaction with the world, and not abstract concepts & a$off : ;ohnson, ()<=+. !he domains the imagistic schemas map onto belong to the bac$ground of the general $nowledge about the world, which is a representation that tacitly appears during speech acts. !his general $nowledge about the world of physical events should be common to many languages, especially to European languages, this being one of the main conditions of communication. %nother explanation of this fact might be the one given by Eugenio 6oseriu &I===-I==(+? !he linguistic $nowledge is, most of the times, a metaphorical $nowledge, a $nowledge through images, and which, most often is oriented in the same direction, a fact that ma$es us thin$ of a certain universal unity, beyond idiomatic, ethnic or cultural differences.

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