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Zoltan Kövecses, Where Metaphors Come From: Reconsidering context in

metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xiii-197. ISBN 978-01-
9022-486-8

Article · December 2016

DOI: 10.29302/jolie.2016.9.3.11

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BOOK REVIEW

Zoltan Kövecses, Where Metaphors Come From: Reconsidering context in

metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xiii-197. ISBN 978-01-
9022-486-8

Reviewed by Teodora Popescu, 1 Decembrie 1918 University of Alba Iulia

The latest book by Zoltan Kövecses brings forth the issue of the influence of
context on how metaphors are created, perceived and used. Kövecses further
refines his previous theories concerning the interrelatedness between language and
culture, by strengthening the fact that the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) has
gained solid ground lately, and that at this moment it is undoubtedly acknowledged
that “the human conceptual system is heavily metaphorical in nature and that we
use metaphors spontaneously and with ease in the course of everyday
communication” (Kövecses 2015:ix). However, he explains that despite its having
been worldwide embraced, there exist some critical reactions to the CMT,
especially due to the fact that it lacks the integration of context and its dynamics
into its model of metaphorical meaning making, as it happens in the case of
pragmatics or other social sciences. There have been attempts at demonstrating the
importance of context (Gibbs 1987, 1994, 2012, in particular) in repositioning the
conceptual metaphor theory (CMT).
The main aim of the book is thus to revise the research carried out so far on
context in general, and to respond to critical perspectives on CMT, by providing a
personal framework of analysis which integrates the “dependence of the
metaphorical mind on the surrounding physical, social, and mental environment”
(Kövecses 2015:xi).
The book is structured into four thematic units (introduction into the
figurative mind; the relationship between metaphor production and understanding
and context; the impact of processes and concepts on metaphorical
conceptualisation; the interplay of metaphorical conceptualisation and contextual
factors, all four further divided into 10 chapters.
Chapter 1, Metaphor, Embodiment and Context deals with the issue of
metaphorical meaning construction, which is not simply the result of metaphorical
mappings and the implied entailments of conceptual metaphors; it is actually
dependent on two context-based perspectives, one of “the person who tries to
comprehend a metaphor in context (conceptualizer 2)” and the other of “the person
186 Teodora POPESCU

who produces or creates a metaphor in context (conceptualizer 1)” (Kövecses

2015:1).
The second chapter, Meaning Making tackles the roles played by cognitive
(or construal) operations, i.e. building or acquiring a conventional conceptual
system to help us conceptualise experience (meaning-making mechanisms), and
second, interpreting and conceptualising new experience which contributes to
further changes in our conceptual system. Out of the construal operations (as
classified by Langaker 2008) only those which are directly linked to abstract
concepts are described: schematisation, abstractisation, attention, perspective
(subjectivity – objectivity), metonymy, metaphor and conceptual integration.
Chapter 3, The Conceptual System brings forth the issue of embodiment in
the construction of the conceptual system, for both perceptual / modal /
experientialist (embodied) and the “amodal” / “non-perceptual” dimensions.
Further on, Kövecses analyses three means of creating abstract concepts:
abstraction, metaphor and subjectivity and shows that all three generate concepts
which are based on perceptual experience, in other words, they are embodied.
Moreover, the author posits that our conceptual system relies on the environments
of communication, out of which it extracts most of its conceptual resources.
The fourth chapter, Contextual factors concentrates on the creation of
metaphorical concepts, which do not appear as a result of pre-stored mappings in
the conventional conceptual system, but rather from different contextual factors in
real situations of discourse, both immediate (local) and non-immediate (global)
context in which metaphorical conceptualisation is engendered. Such contextual
influence on conceptualisation occurs concurrently and competitively with that of
entrenched embodiment.
Chapter 5, Metaphor and Culture deals with the conceptualisation of
culture from a linguistic perspective, which lends an “enhanced” angle on culture,
as well as on context. The previous two-dimensional conception of context can be
applied to culture, i.e. culture seen as our meaning making system, and a more
specific cultural dimension lent to metaphorical conceptualisation in a given
communicative situation. Kövecses postulates that the understanding of culture
from a cognitive linguistics perspective help us understand the similarities and
differences with the way in which other scientific branches (e.g. constructivism)
perceive culture.
The sixth chapter, Context and Metaphorical Creativity is devoted to less
tackled issues in the cognitive metaphor theory, i.e. metaphorical creativity.
Kövecses analyses the different types of context that affect metaphorical
conceptualisation: a) global contexts, e.g. the physical environment, the social
setting, the cultural setting, the differential memory, and the differential concerns
and interests, and b) local contexts, e.g. the immediate physical setting, the
knowledge about the main entities in the discourse, the immediate cultural context,
the immediate social setting, and the immediate linguistic context.
Chapter 7, Context and Poetic Metaphor focuses on metaphorical creativity
in poetry and on contextual factors that influence the creation of poetic metaphors,
 Book review 187

i.e. the physical environment, knowledge about the author, the audience, and the
topic, the cultural and social setting, and the linguistic context. Out of these,
Kövecses concentrates on two in particular, the “previous discourse” (other
preceding literary works) and intertextuality, which often generate novel metaphors
in subsequent works.
The eighth chapter, The Conceptual Context of Linguistic Humor contends
that linguistic humour commonly stands on how particular meanings operate in a
larger conceptual context. Kövecses argues that cognitive operations, such as
metaphor, metonymy and blending cannot alone account for humour, therefore it is
suggested that it is the concept incongruity that we should look at in this case.
According to the author, there exist “clearly identifiable types or kinds of
incongruity that appear to be responsible for humorous effects, including ‘real vs.
imagined,’ ‘possible vs. impossible,’ ‘socially neutral/expected/acceptable vs.
socially unacceptable/stigmatized/taboo,’ ‘elevated vs. mundane’, etc.” (Kövecses
2015: 154)
Chapter 9, Happiness in Context treats the subject of the conceptual system
seen as the mental representation of all our experiences. By way of illustration, the
concept of happiness is explored in three different historical and cultural contexts:
contemporary everyday English, the Declaration of Independence and the New
Testament. Various cultural contexts engender different conceptualisations leading
to various cognitive models (or frames) of happiness.
The last chapter, Metaphor and Context provides an overview of meaning-
making in context, based on the investigations presented in the previous chapters.
He starts by a general description of communication and of metaphorical
communication as part of the former. Aspects such as the notions of relevant
context, referential scene, joint attention, joint action, and common ground are
considered significant for a theory of metaphor creation in context.
In the end, the author reiterates the challenging and though-provoking
question of the title “Where do metaphors come from?”. Given the fact that in
actual communicative situations speakers/conceptualizers form their metaphors out
of four large types of experience: the situational, discourse, conceptual-cognitive,
and bodily contexts, it follows that the body represents just one of the many
contexts from which metaphors can emerge albeit the most important one.
Cognition is therefore, also grounded in the “situations in which people act and
lead their lives, the discourses in which they are engaged at any time in
communicating and interacting with each other, and the conceptual knowledge they
have accumulated about the world in the course of their experience of it”
(Kövecses 2015:200).

References

Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M. (2008). Rethinking metaphor. In Raymond Gibbs (Ed.), The
Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor. 53–66. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press.
 188 Teodora POPESCU

Gibbs, Raymond W. 1987. Mutual knowledge and the psychology of conversational

inference. Journal of Pragmatics, 13: 561–588.

Gibbs, R.W. (1994). The Poetics of Mind. Figurative Thought, Language, and
Understanding. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Gibbs, R.W. (2012). Metaphors, snowflakes, and termite nests. In F. MacArthur, J. L.

Oncins-Martínez, M. Sánchez-García, and A. M. Piquer-Píriz (Eds.), Metaphor in Use.
Context, Culture, and Communication, 347–371. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Lakoff, G., & and Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.

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