Metaphor, Lexical Concepts, and Figurative Meaning Construction

// Journal of Cognitive Semiotics V (1-2), 2013: 73-107.This paper addresses the status and significance of conceptual metaphor as an explanatory theoretical construct in giving rise to figurative language (e.g., Lakoff 2008; Lakoff and Johnson 1999), I argue that conceptual metaphor is but one component, albeit a significant one, in figurative meaning construction. I contend that while conceptual metaphors inhere in the conceptual system, there is a class of metaphors—discourse metaphors—which emerge and evolve in and through language use, and inhere in the linguistic system. Indeed, the semantic units associated with discourse metaphors, and other linguistic expressions I refer to as lexical concepts. I also introduce LCCM Theory (Evans 2009, 2010), and suggest that lexical concepts provide access to non-linguistic knowledge representations, cognitive models, which can be structured in terms of conceptual metaphors.