Importance Of Metaphors

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Register to read the introduction… There are various stylistic devises that perform different functions in the written or spoken texts; however all of them influence readers’ subconsciousness on one or other level, creating colourful images and new views on the particular subject.
From this traditional approach to the definition of metaphor we can conclude that metaphor expresses the unfamiliar through the familiar. Metaphors are used in order to create an emotional response in the target audience, to show obvious things from entirely different perspective. However, two famous linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their work Metaphors We Live By published in 1980 introduced an entirely new approach to the idea of metaphor comprehension. The developed theory became known all over the world as the cognitive view of metaphor. According to this theory, the metaphor is defined as “a device for seeing something in terms of something else” the notions of linguistic and conceptual metaphors have been used to distinguish between text-surface metaphors and the underlying “metaphorical concepts” which partially build up our conceptual system3
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- is systematic and pervasive - is more than just a linguistic feature, as it structures human thoughts.

An epithet derived from Greek word ἐπίθετον – epitheton, meaning attributed, added. It is a descriptive term, word or phrase accompanying, or occurring in place of, a name, and having a common usage4 . In other words, an epithet is a word or phrase added to a noun in order to describe an actual or attributed quality. Epithets stand very close to metaphors, as they actually are the condensed versions of metaphors.

- “The outrage of legislators is a perverse mirror of the outrage that ought to be felt by constituents who were let down by their representatives’ inattentiveness.” 8 Metaphor “a perverse mirror of outrage” can be easily paraphrased to “reflects” or “shows reflection”. - “They say nobody rings a bell at the top or the bottom of a market, but for credit, there was a bell rung last Christmas Eve,” says Jeffrey Peskind, of Phoenix Investment Adviser, a distressed bond fund manager.”

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