4 - Domains, Schemas, Frames, or Spaces?

Summary

Metaphor researchers, including myself (see chapter 3), working within the framework of cognitive linguistics use a number of different terms to refer to the conceptual structures that they assume to constitute conceptual metaphors. The most commonly employed term is that of domain (as in source and target domain), but several others are also in circulation, including image schemas (e.g., Lakoff, 1990, 1993), frames (e.g,, Lakoff, 1996; Kövecses, 2006)), scenes (e.g., Grady, 1997a, b), mental spaces (e.g., Fauconnier and Turner (2002), schemas (e.g., Lakoff and Turner, 1989), and scenarios (e.g., Musolff, 2006, 2016). There are more terms in use (such as model), but the list is sufficient to indicate some terminological confusion among the practitioners of conceptual metaphor theory. But more importantly, the terminological chaos is a reflection of a serious, deep-seated theoretical-conceptual dilemma; namely, the difficulty of identifying the appropriate conceptual unit, or structure, that participates in the formation of conceptual metaphors. The present chapter is an attempt to offer a way of handling this issue .