JAVIER HERRERO RUIZ

Universidad de La Rioja

Conceptual metaphors in fairy tales. The cases of: ACQUIESCENCE IS SWALLOWING, INTELLIGENCE IS LIGHT, A CHILD IS HOPE OF CHANGE AND RENEWAL, DARKNESS IS A COVER, and POWERFUL IS WITTY

Psicolingüística / Psicolinguistics

This paper studies how several metaphors (namely: ACQUIESCENCE IS SWALLOWING, INTELLIGENCE IS LIGHT, A CHILD IS HOPE OF CHANGE AND RENEWAL, DARKNESS IS A COVER, AND POWERFUL IS WITTY) are able to account for the basic meaning and interpretation of various popular tales and myths. Besides, we offer the possibility of classifying tales according either to the basic metaphor they contain or to the combination of metaphors that may comprise them. Additionally, the paper explores in what ways the metaphors under scrutiny allow us to explain some of the uncanny elements of tales. Finally, we suggest that these metaphors, because of their strong experiential grounding, may have contributed to an easier transmission of many fairy tales (as it would be easier to memorise their basic patterns), and also to make tales alike in different socio-cultural settings.

In order to substantiate these points, we have worked with a computerized corpus of analysis containing 386 fairy tales written by Andrew Lang (1844-1912). The tales, which are representative of various cultures, have been entirely downloaded from the Project Gutenberg online library. The work of identification of underlying metaphors has been carried out with the help of the (encyclopedic) information provided in the Berkeley Framenet Project. This information has allowed us to make an exhaustive and systematic analysis of the lexical patterns of the metaphors. Then, we have made use of WordSmith and its tool Concord in order to find examples of key words and phrases that we expected to underlie metaphorical usage in the texts. This has allowed us to observe if a given metaphor applies in a given tale or not. Also, we have made use of complementary Google searches in order to further substantiate our analysis of the metaphors in every day usage.

KEYWORDS: conceptual metaphor, experiential, uncanny, culture, fairy tales, myths.




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