that knowledge from the source to the target domain.” [16]
Lakoff’s analysis also shows conceptual metaphor is helpful in distinguishing idioms similar in meaning. For example,“crack up”and“break down”,both are used to describe people’s psychological state, but it is still confusing to distinguish. “Crack up”is governed by the metaphor THE MIND IS A MACHINE, as if the mind has an on-off state. That is to say, when a machine breaks down, it simply ceases to function. If someone is unable to function for psychological reasons, we would like to say“crack up”,while“break down”is governed by the metaphor THE MIND IS A BRITTLE OBJECT, that is to say, when a brittle object shatters, it flies into pieces that may cause dangerous consequences, such as hurting people around. When someone goes crazy, wild and violent, he or she may hurt somebody else, then we would like to say“break down”.
3.2 Gibbs’ study
Gibbs’ research contributes greatly to the psychological studies on idiom comprehension and offers us valuable inspiration for the study of idioms. Gibbs’ view is similar to Lakoff’s. His research proves that idioms are not dead metaphors and they have more complex meanings that are motivated by conceptual metaphors linking the idiomatic phrases to their figurative interpretations; the meanings of idioms are not arbitrary but motivatedly people’s tacit knowledge of conceptual metaphors as suggested by Lakoff. Gibbs has carried out a series of experiments, the feature of which is the use of mental imagery. The subjects were asked to form and describe their mental images for different idiomatic expressions and then they were asked a series of detailed questions about their images regarding the causes and effects of different events within their images. The result showed that the participants demonstrated great consistency in their responses to the questions for the idioms with similar figurative meanings despite the differences in their surface forms.
3.3 Other scholars’ study
Lakoff and Gibbs have made great contribution to the studies on the relationship between metaphors and idioms. Also based on Lakoff’s study, Kovecses and Szabo summed up the conceptual metaphors on FIRE, which contributes to the construction and comprehension of the idioms related to fire. These conceptual metaphor serve
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as a bridge linking two independent domains, a domain of fire and a domain of an abstract concept. ANGER IS FIRE He was spitting fire. LOVE IS FIRE
The fire between them finally went out. IMAGINATION IS FIRE
The painting set fire to the composer’s imagination. CONFLICT IS FIRE The killing sparked off riots. ENERGY IS FUEL OF FIRE
He was burning the candle at both ends.
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4. Metaphorical features of idioms
4.1 Ontological metaphors and idioms
Ontological metaphor is one of the three types of metaphors, and is usually
described as “ways of viewing events, activities, ideas, emotions, etc, as entities and substances”. [16] As long as we are able to identify our experiences as identities or substances, then we can refer to them, categorize them, group them, and quantify them, and, by this means, reason about them. The most important characteristics of ontological metaphor is to view abstract things as concrete things. For example:(1)we need to combat inflation (2)That was a beautiful catch. In (1), the abstract noun inflation is regarded as concrete person. In (2), the act of catch is regarded as a concrete thing. The following are the most obvious types of ontological metaphors.
4.1.1 Personification
The most obvious ontological metaphors are those where the physical object is further specified as being a person. Personification is considered to belong to ontological metaphors.
First, let's look at the two examples. A: Life has cheated me.
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B: Anger has pinned us to the wall.
If we look closer to the above two sentences, we are able to find out that both of the two sentences enable us to see nonhuman as human. It allows us to understand a wide variety of experiences with nonhuman entities in terms of human motivation, characteristics and activities. The most obvious ontological metaphor are those where the physical object is further specified as being a person. In the second sentence, anger is personified. It gives us a vivid picture about how anger acts. In this sentence, anger seems to hurt us, attack us and kill us. So we can understand that personification is a general category that covers a wide range of metaphors, which allows us to make sense of phenomena in the world in human terms. This kind of sentences are: Disease finally caught up with him; His religion tells him that he cannot eat pork; Inflation has given birth to a money-minded generation.
4.1.2 The container metaphor
The container metaphors are the other representation of ontological metaphors.
As we know, rooms and houses can be considered to be containers as they have boundaries, moving from room to room or house to house is moving from one container to another, that is, which is also true to our physical beings. Each of us is a container, with a bounded surface and in-out orientation. A clearing in the woods is seen as having a boundary surface, and we can view ourselves as being in the clearing or out of the clearing, in the woods or out of woods. There are different kinds of boundaries: concrete or abstract; definite or indefinite, surface, line or point. 1) The boundary of the tenor is a surface. a. The boundary is clear and concrete.
This kind of tenor, which can be understood as the target in a sentence, is concrete, such as the human body, which we can actually see with our eyes. Let's look at the following examples:
(1)I was filled with anger. (2)He poured out his hatred on us. (3)She is a warm and caring person inside.
The human body can be regarded as a container, so can every part of human body: (1) Her eyes filled with tears. (2) My stomach is empty.
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(3) Your head is full of good ideas. b. The boundary is obscure or abstract.
In this way, the boundary of the tenor is generally unseen or untouchable, such as water, light and air; a type of society or culture; the ideas or feeling of a human. There are some phrases in English, such as \sun\
(1) He was lost in thoughts. (2) He fell into depression.
(3) I didn't take this responsibility into account. 2) The boundary of tenor is a line.
Some objects with plane structure can also be mapped onto containers, for they also have boundaries which are made of lines. (1) There is a lot of land in Kansas. (2) What can you see in this picture? (3) The boundary of tenor is two points.
The concept of container is pervasive. It can be mapped into a three-dimensional space, two-dimensional plane and even one-dimensional line. The concept of one-dimensional is mostly seen in the concept of time, for the time is durable and going to the future constantly. The time can be viewed as container because time has the boundary, that is ,the beginning and ending. The beginning and ending are definite in special times.
(1) He is trapped in his past. (2) He did it in three minutes.
4.1.3. A case study of ontological metaphor
Both Lakoff and Johnson paid attention to the role of the body in Linguistic
expressions and maintained that these expressions reflect and influence our thought in many ways. A group of English idioms containing \contribute to different meanings, and the finger in English is frequently conceptualized as the actual \thing\\ (1) get one' s finger into something(participate in something)
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