Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Edit Gaál: Dictionaries and methaphors: a consideration of the presentation of methaphoric usages in a selection of dictonaries

number as a metaphor does often not involve a single semantic feature or 'tertium comparationis', but rather a complete situation, i.e. a prototypical scene. A similar opinion is given by Campbell (1975) when he writes "... I have preceded the various meanings of metaphors with "something like" or "meanings such as".". He also argues that there is no specifiable maximum number of meanings to a metaphor and bases this view on the Freudian concepts of "condensation", "displacement", and "over-determination". "Condensation" means that a symbolic form and its content can be abbreviated, that there can be a fusion of forms themselves by intersection, contraction, elision, suppression, and many other devices. "Displacement" means the substitution of one form or meaning or symbolic value for another, and "over-determination" means that the same form may have more than one import, that references that could be traditionally taken only as alternatives are simply co-present as the import. Wheeless (1971) argues that metaphor may be classified as "symbolization of complex-like thought for the individual or for a number of individuals participating in a particular culture and it contributes to concept development and eventual conceptualization". In metaphor two terms with accompanying images and/or attitudes are associated in such a way that a new meaning is elicited. Jean Aitchison (1994) claims that metaphors are an intrinsic part of a human's lexical ability, and postulates a prototypical metaphor in which "the items compared are likely to be dissimilar, in that they come from different semantic fields, and similar in that they share obvious, minor characteristics". One of her examples is 'His boss is a dinosaur', where boss and dinosaur are very dissimilar, one being a human, the other an animal, but the comparison mobilizes our additional knowledge of dinosaurs, namely that they are extinct and enormous. Lyons (1977) also states that metaphors are very frequent in language usage and creation and are not restricted to the formation of compound lexemes. In fact quite to the contrary many simple lexemes can be used metaphorically. Quite often, if particular extended usages have become conventional, they are classified as 'dead' metaphors. Lipka refers to the same phenomenon when he speaks about institutionalization, stating that it is "the integration of a lexical item, with a particular form and meaning, into the existing stock of words as a generally acceptable and current lexeme". 105