The semantic dimensions of metaphor within the framework of interactionist theory: an applied analytical study

Abstract

Abstract: Metaphor has long been a preoccupation for thinkers, rhetoricians, and critics. It has been an attractive field due to its role in conveying the text's meaning as a fundamental pillar of discourse. Therefore, the studies aimed to uncover its essence and understand its mechanisms of operation. Despite the differences in viewpoints and starting points, the foundations that traditionally governed the view of metaphor remained constant. Thus, it became associated in our minds as the domain of rhetoricians and writers, and as a linguistic phenomenon in which one word is used in place of another based on the similarity between its two parts. However, the new rhetorical perspective has made metaphor play a communicative role. We live, communicate, and interact with metaphors daily, even if we are unaware of it. Metaphor organizes our knowledge and behaviors, and reveals forms of interaction within society, allowing us to understand its structure and system. To achieve this, most researchers based their approach on the initial acknowledgment that interest in metaphor is, above all, an interest in the human self, as it encompasses the social, ideological, and cultural practices of the self. It reflects his thinking and gives him a framework for understanding things and how they work, because the matter here is deeper than being limited to mere verbal embellishment or a free means, as long as the metaphor is not only related to the verbal or linguistic aspect but is associated with the mind and with the intellectual and speculative relationships that each of the recipient or listener makes. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of interaction is the cognitive theorizing of metaphor, specifically the sum of human physical and environmental interactions with their world. Therefore, he resorts to it to achieve his goals. This aspect remained hidden for a period of time and did not crystallize until the emergence of interactionist theory, which was developed by "Georg Lakoff" and "Mark Johnson". "Especially with the publication of their joint book "Metaphors We Live By," which revolutionized the view of metaphor, its mechanisms, and its essential role in many aspects of our lives, as it made the system that controls us metaphorical by nature. Therefore, this research examines the dimensions of the language of metaphor within cognitive theory. Based on an approach that believes that metaphor is not a property of literature, but rather something that we communicate and live by, and that it is something that can be embodied through our actions and behaviors, we tried to demonstrate this by observing metaphors in interactionist theory, where the general principles of metaphor require going beyond the substitutional approach, so we considered it central to human life. It enables us to understand reality, to form concepts, and to adopt consistent, coherent paths for accomplishing actions, such as promising, threatening, reinforcing, and legitimizing. (1)