Domain Mapping or Schematic Mapping?! How Source Domain in Metaphor Projects on Target Domain: Visual and Auditory Short-Term Recognition



Shafiei F¹ ; Ghassemzadeh H² ; Ashayeri H³ ; Safavimanesh F⁴ ; Pourmohammad M¹ Show Affiliations
Source: Language Related Research Published:2020

Abstract

The nature of metaphor, metaphoric understanding, and its functions have been recognized as three main issues in research and theoretical formulations on metaphor and metaphor processing. In general, metaphor is defined as understanding and experiencing one thing based on another. Metaphor can also be considered as an expression that has two conceptual domains in which one of the domains is experienced and understood according to the other. These two conceptual domains are known as target domain and source domain. In this study, we examine the relationship between conceptual metaphor and formation of a schema in short texts regarding target and source domains. The main tools of the study were the texts written in fluent Persian and divided into two categories of metaphorical texts and their equivalent non-metaphorical versions. Both texts have had a shared schema. Furthermore, the number of words were equal in both texts. For this purpose, 3 metaphorical and 3 equivalent non-metaphorical short texts were designed in Psychopy software in 2 visual and auditory versions and 47 people were exposed to the short-term recognition after reading/listening to it. There were eight texts including 3 metaphorical and 3 non-metaphorical ones plus 2 texts that were used as filler texts which were excluded from the final analyses. The texts were organized in such a manner that the metaphorical text played before its corresponding non-metaphorical text with an interval. At the next round, the non-metaphorical text was played before its metaphorical version. The sample was selected through convenience sampling which included 80 twenty to twenty-five-year-old students of Foreign Languages School and Management School of Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran. Since variations in memory capacity can affect the test results, they were given a Persian word recognition test to ensure relative consistency among all participants' memory capacity. The test processes in the visual and auditory tests were the same except in the method of presenting the texts on the screen or playing through the headphone. In this study, descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used for analyzing the data and providing tentative answers to the research questions. All the analyses were implemented SPSS V.23 software. To analyse the data in each of the visual and auditory tasks separately, Friedman non-parameter test was used. For comparing the data of the visual and auditory tasks, Mann-Whitney test was used. Results indicated that in metaphorical texts, there are traces of the non-metaphorical text`s main schema. This finding brings us closer to the assumption that it is source domain`s schema that projects on target domain in metaphors and makes it more understandable. © 2020, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.