3 - Direct or Indirect Emergence?

Summary

Primary metaphors form the foundation of conceptual metaphor theory. They are foundational, in that they are seen as directly emerging from our most basic embodied experiences and, also, in that they constitute complex metaphors. I will ask: Do they really emerge directly or do they emerge through a metonymic stage? There is a debate between scholars who suggest that many metaphors are based on, or derive from, metonymies, versus those who do not see such connection between the two. “Resemblance metaphors” do not seem to have anything to do with metonymy. However, in the case of “correlation metaphors” (on these, see, e.g., Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, 1999; Grady, 1997a, b, 1999), several researchers argue that metaphors arise from, and are not independent of, metonymies.