Metaphors of depressive emotions in psychopathological discourse: a cognitive linguistic analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26565/2218-2926-2017-14-08Keywords:
big data, cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor theory, depression, emotion, metaphor, psychopathological discourseAbstract
This paper addresses metaphor and focuses on the role of metaphor
in conceptualization of emotion experience of depression. The objective of this paper is two-fold. It aims (1) to appease the criticism of negligence with respect to big data and real discourses that conceptual metaphor theory is presently facing and (2) to expose and analyse with a cognitive linguistic methodology metaphorizations of depressive emotions in psychopathological discourse. In accordance with this objective, the investigation behind this paper is fuelled by big metaphorical data recruited from pieces of modern English psychopathological discourse on major and manic depression recorded in the form of two single-author depression memoirs. Metaphors of depressive emotions and their entailments organize within these pieces ramified metaphorical systems that reflect subcategorization of emotion experience by the depressive mind. Metaphors in these systems are of various types; they are based on bodily and cultural experiences, have different cognitive functions and may be archetypal in nature. Their targets are distinct emotion concepts. Their sources belong to diverse domains of human experience. Metaphorical meanings for the depressive emotions expose qualitative aspects of emotion experience of depression in its variation and subtlety. Metaphors of depressive emotions in the data encompass creative and conventional conceptualizations. The data allow an assumption that whereas conventional metaphors perform the function of understanding an emotion experience and naming it, creative metaphors expose in this experience its most elusive aspects and their cognitive function is augmented by the aesthetic one. Apart from implications for cognitive linguistics, the findings summarized in this paper are suggestive for research in phenomenology of depression, in clinical psychology and psychopathology and in cognitive poetics and literary theory and criticism. In prospect, this paper will grow into a larger-scale research on the issue of metaphorical creativity.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors, who publish with this journal, accept the following conditions:
The authors reserve the copyright of their work and transfer to the journal the right of the first publication of this work under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which allows other persons to freely distribute a published work with mandatory reference to the authors of the original work and the first publication of the work in this journal.
Authors have the right to enter into separate additional agreements for the non-exclusive dissemination of the work in the form in which it was published by this journal (for example, to post the work in the electronic institutions' repository or to publish as part of a monograph), provided that the link to the first publication of the work in this journal is given.
The journal policy allows and encourages the authors to place the manuscripts on the Internet (for example, in the institutions' repositories or on personal websites), both before the presentation of this manuscript to the editorial board and during review procedure, as it contributes to the creation of productive scientific discussion and positively affects the efficiency and dynamics of citing the published work (see The Effect of Open Access).
