The Functioning of the CONTAINER Conceptual Metaphor in Doris Lessing’s "Children of Violence"

Nadzieja Monachowicz

The University of Bialystok, Poland

Abstract

This paper is based on the assumption that there is a system to conceptual metaphor and to its conceptualized linguistic expression. Conceptual metaphor is not a matter of arbitrary fixity. Individual basic metaphors and even generic-level metaphors are not isolated. There is a higher unity to metaphor that governs not only all basic and generic-level metaphors, but novel metaphors as well. When we understand a scene, including those described in literary texts, we naturally structure it in terms of conceptual mega-metaphors which may structurally unite the patterns of meaning throughout the whole of the text and find expression in various minor novel metaphors. As the subject matter of this analysis I have chosen the series of novels "Children of Violence" by the famous British writer Doris Lessing (1919-2013), the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 2007.

Keywords:

metaphor, conceptualizing, container, object, substance, environment, house, room, spaces, landlocked