Image metaphors for hair with the animal and plant source domains

Abstract

This research is carried out within the framework of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and examines a group of image metaphors that map animal and plant images onto the image of the hair. The metaphors presented capture a range of attributive features of the target domain such as shape, color, thickness/ thinness, length, tidiness/ untidiness, curliness/ straightness, stiffness/ softness, etc. The study shows that several of the metaphors identified also function as the source of polysemy in English. According to the CMT, metaphor is first and foremost a conceptual phenomenon. The primarily conceptual nature of many image metaphors scrutinized is evidenced by the fact that they manifest not only linguistically, but also in the form of pictorial metaphors.