An Idea Is a Life Form : An attempt to find evidence of the Conceptual MetaphorTheory by studying the Old English poem Beowulf

• Main Author: Burman, Anna-Karin
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för humaniora (HUM) 2014
• Subjects: metaphors; metonymy; conceptual metaphor; Old English; Beowulf; conventionalized metaphors; innovative metaphors; target domains; source domains; corpus studies; and experiential metaphors.; General Language Studies and Linguistics; Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-24265

This small study concerns occurrences of metaphor, metonymy and conceptual metaphor in the Old English poem Beowulf. The first 224 lines of Beowulf were searched for non-literal passages. Thefound passages were sorted into the groups conventionalized metaphor, metonymy and innovativemetaphor. The conceptual metaphors were in turn sorted into target domains and source domains and grouped within the domains. These were then compared to Modern English and Modern Swedish metaphors and conceptual metaphors with the help of dictionaries and corpus studies. Beowulf was also looked at as a small corpus. Words which were suspected to be used inmetaphorical senses were searched for in the full text and the results were examined and comparedwith modern language usage. It was found evident that Old English and Modern English, as well as Modern Swedish, have many conceptual metaphors in common both when in comes to experiential metaphors and culturally grounded metaphors.