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LINGUA INGLESE, ESAME ORALE MODULO B For most of us, metaphor is a figure of speech in which one thing is compared with another by saying that one is the other, asinthe phrase “He is a lion.”. Or, as the Encyclopaedia Britannica puts it: *Metaphor is a figure of speech that implies comparison between two unlike entities, as distinguished from simile, an explicit comparison signalled by the word “like” or “as”. In this chapter we're going to analyse the metaphor in all its features. The idea of the conceptual nature of metaphor was discussed by a number of philosophers, including Kant and Locke, several centuries ago. But. 1 WHAT IS A METAPHOR? In the cognitive linguistic view, metaphor is defined as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain. A convenient shorthand way of capturing this view of metaphor is the following phrase: “conceptual domain A is conceptual domain B”, which is what is called a conceptual metaphor. A conceptual metaphor consists of 2 conceptual domains, in which one domain is understood in terms of another. A conceptual domain is any coherent organization of experience We have now to distinguish conceptual metaphor from metaphorical linguistic expressions. The latter are word or other linguistic expressions that come from the language of terminology of the more concrete conceptual domain. In that way, all the expressions that refers to life or the domain of the journey are linguistic expressions, whereas the conceptual metaphor that they make manifest is “life is d journey”. As we said, in the conceptual metaphor there are 2 domains: they have specific names. The first one, the one from which we draw the metaphorical expressions to understand the other domain, is called SOURCE DOMAIN. The second one is called TARGET DOMAIN, and it's the one that is understood by the use of the first one. So life, arguments, love and ideas are targets domains, while war, journeys, food are source domains. The target domain is the domain we're trying to understand through the use of the source domdin. BUT in order to be able to suggest the existence of conceptual metaphor, we need to know which linguistic metaphors point to their existence. In other words, we have to be able to distinguish linguistic metaphots from nonmetaphorical linguistic terms How? A group of researchers, called the Praggliejaz Group, designed the following metaphor identification procedure, also called MIP: 1. Redd the text to understand the general meaning of it; 2.Determine the lexical units in the text; 3a. For each lexical unit in the text establish its meaning in context; 3b. For each lexical unit, determine if it has d more basic contemporary meaning in other contexts that the one in the given context. 4. |f the unit has a more basic meaning, decide whether the conceptual meaning contrasts with the basic medning but can be understood in comparison with it. 5. If yes, mark the lexical unit as metaphorical. Let us take an example: “He's without direction in life”. This phrase is part of a text. We first determine the units: he / is / without / direction /in / life. Examine their meanings: he refers to a male person; is mean the existence; without means that he isn't having something; direction means his behaviour or attitude; in means a state; life is a state in which one is alive. Now 2 of these words have a more basic meaning than their contextual meanings: direction is the way an entity moves and in is more concrete than how it appears in the text Since these 2 contextual mednings contrast with their basic meanings, we can mark them as metaphorical linguistic expressions. This is just a small example of allthe possible linguistic expressions that spedkers of English commonly employ to talk about targets domains. An important generalization that emerges from these conceptual metaphors is that the conceptual metaphor typically employs a more 
