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C. Müller, Metaphors Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking. A Dynamic View

C. Müller, Metaphors Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking. A Dynamic View

Publié le par Gabriel Marcoux-Chabot (Source : Site web de la maison d'édition)

MÜLLER, Cornelia, C. Müller, Metaphors Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking. A Dynamic View, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2008, 290 p.

ISBN 9780226548258

RÉSUMÉ

Traditional thinking on metaphors has divided them into two camps: deadand alive. Conventional expressions from everyday language areclassified as dead, while much rarer novel or poetic metaphors arealive. In the 1980s, new theories on the cognitive processes involvedwith the use of metaphor challenged these assumptions, but with littleempirical support. Drawing on the latest research in linguistics,semiotics, philosophy, and psychology, Cornelia Müller here unveils anew approach that refutes the rigid dead/alive dichotomy, offering inits place a more dynamic model: sleeping and waking.
Tobuild this model, Müller presents an overview of notions of metaphorfrom the classical period to the present; studies in detail howmetaphors function in speech, text, gesture, and images; and examinesthe way mixed metaphors sometimes make sense and sometimes do not. Thisanalysis leads her to conclude that metaphors may oscillate betweenvarious degrees of sleeping and waking as their status changesdepending on context and intention. Bridging the gap between conceptualmetaphor theory and more traditional linguistic theories, this book isa major advance for the field and will be vital to novices andinitiates alike.

BIOGRAPHIE

Cornelia Müller is professor of applied linguistics at EuropeanUniversity Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). She is coeditor of severalbooks and the author of Co-verbal Gestures: Cultural History—Theory—Cross-linguistic Comparison.