Metaphor as a device for understanding cognitive concepts

Abstract

The paper addresses metaphor as a cognitive-semantic device which is able to reveal intuitive mechanisms of the thinking process, thus filling the gaps in the sphere of logically objective human knowledge and opening the possibility to describe abstract concepts of the human mind in terms. This paper substantiates the principal possibility of conceptual modeling of the metaphorization process and describes its baseline algorithm, identifies complex metaphors and establishes the cognitive-semantic features of their functioning. The main conclusion of the reasoning confirms the hypothesis that different image schemes have different strength of heuristic potential, which determines the fullness of metaphorical descriptions of concepts.

Keywords

• metaphor
• metaphorization process
• image schemes
• heuristic potential
• conceptual sphere
• meaning representation