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The Language Of Transformation In A "Conversation For Possibility": A Metaphor Analysis, Deborah Jean Gabbert

Dissertations and Theses

Metaphor allows us to understand and experience "relatively abstract or unstructured subject matter in terms of more concrete, or at least m~re highly structured subject matter" (Lakotf, 1993, p. 245). Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) and Lakoffs (1993) contemporary theory of metaphor contends that: metaphor is fundamentally conceptual; metaphoric structuring is the basis for the organization and functioning of much of the ordinary human conceptual system; and metaphorical language found in everyday speech is a surface manifestation of underlying conceptual metaphors. The metaphors most salient in a culture's discourse will reveal something about what is thinkable, knowable, and doable in that …