LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 16:1 January 2016
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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The Power of Metaphor in Madan Gopal Gandhi’s
The Enchanting Flute:
A Conceptual Cognitive Approach

Roghayeh Farsi, Ph.D.
Neyshabur University


Abstract

The present paper focuses on a detailed analysis of the power of metaphor in Gandhi’s collection of poems, The Enchanted Flute. Metaphor as the inherent dimension of language gains its functional role through the conceptual studies of language by Johnson and Lakoff. The present paper analyzes Gandhi’s use of metaphor in his highly imagistic poetry collection. However, there is also an eye on the political significance of his metaphoric language in this seemingly romantic collection. It is argued the power of the poet’s language arises out of the unsaid or untouched aspects in his metaphors. While the poet draws upon his conventional context to metaphorize his thoughts and emotions, he challenges them by taking them to their limits. This detailed analysis aims at unraveling such tensions and limitations.

Keywords: Madan Gopal Gandhi, The Enchanting Flute, metaphor and thoughts and emotions, language use.

Theoretical Background

Initially regarded as a poetic device for poetic imagination, metaphor used to be treated as a characteristic of language, rather than of action or thought. The conceptual cognitive linguistics of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson brought about a revolution in the so-called rift created between poetic and everyday language. These two thinkers contend that metaphor is not merely a poetic tool, nor a linguistic feature. They give it a conceptual basis and accord it a key role in linguistic communications in so far as they take human thought processes as basically metaphorical. Essentially, metaphor is nothing other than understanding one domain in terms of another domain. In their studies, they take the concrete domain, or source domain, as the means by which the abstract domain, or target domain, can be understood. Thereby, they believe “no metaphor can ever be comprehended or even adequately represented independently of its experiential basis” (1980, p. 20).

In Kovecses’s words, there is a systematic correspondence between the source and the target; such conceptual correspondences are called mappings (2010, p. 7). The process of mapping is monitored by cultural background and conventions of society; hence mappings are only partial. According to the findings of Lakoff and Jackson, all people’s speech can be nothing other than metaphoric. What distinguishes a poet’s diction from everyday language is the degree s/he deviates from, challenges, extends, questions, or even modifies the conventionalized metaphors in a linguistic community. Thus poetic creativity relies on the poet’s innovations applied to the metaphors well established and even clichéd in the cultural context. One of the objectives of the present article is to analyze Gandhi’s unconventionalization of metaphors in his poetry.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Roghayeh Farsi, Ph.D.
Neyshabur University
Iran
rofarsi@yahoo.com
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