Revue Maghrébine des Langues
Volume 8, Numéro 1, Pages 161-176
2013-12-31

Metaphor Across Languages: A Case Study Of Algerian Students As Recipients Of Five English Metaphors

Authors : Benneghrouzi Fatima Zohra .

Abstract

It becomes nearly a norm that when recipients of metaphor belong to a different cultural enterprise, its reading can be significantly fashioned by the sum of the cultural considerations of its interpreters. Following this, what triggers my intellectual concern, is whether the option of intercultural easiness in metaphor comprehension is germane to the scale metaphors are entrenched in physical experiences. The present research has been in reality the immediate corollary of unprompted observations of the manner students interpret metaphors, more particularly those reportedly universal through relying heavily on their mother tongue’s reference frame by way of translation, getting sometimes to a distinct construal. In this sprit, this paper examines the way five English metaphors, ranging from notionally cross cultural ones to culture dependent, are interpreted by fifty Algerian students. In view of that, the works of (1) Lakoff and Johnson (1980; 1999) and Lakoff and Turner (1989), (2) Dobrzynska (1995), (3) Mandelblit (1995), and (3) Boers (2003) altogether sustain the platform on which this paper is founded. Within the confinement of this research, I come to conclude that the comprehension of English metaphors in default of their source context is fundamentally processed by Algerian students having recourse to their mother tongue’s frame exploiting it to its fullest potential, and recruiting the metaphors at work in this target context by way of translation, in the midst of many conceptual and linguistic mismatches. Surprisingly enough, even those physically entrenched metaphors, supposedly universal, are laden with cultural peculiarities. Eventually, the role of the source context is chief in piloting metaphors through the fitting readings. At this juncture, the recipients, after passing by conceptual ambiguities, have the opportunity to fine-tune their interpretations in an attempt to bring them off effectively.

Keywords

Metaphor - Languages - Algerian Students - Recipients of Five English Metaphors