The Conceptual Metaphor and the Need to Identify It in the Albanian Literary Corpus

Abstract

In Albanian pre-university and university literature, a cacophony of viewpoints can be observed regarding the concept of literary figuration in general and the metaphor in particular (especially in the pre-university system, where we encounter some of the strangest definitions). In this paper, we have focused on the concept of metaphor in Albanian tradition studies first, approaching these concepts contrastively. Then we have dealt with the concept of conceptual metaphor, an approach from a psycholinguistic point of view (more precisely neurolinguistic recently), which has taken place even in the most representative manuals of stylistics and which, in our opinion, offers several advantages in the identification of conceptual metaphor in literary text (and not only). The concept of conceptual metaphor and the reflection of the most recent treatments of it will be the main aim of this unit. We intend to do this since there is a lack of treatments related to conceptual metaphors in Albanian literature. Such a fact has created a gap in the prescription of the mental and cohesive identification of primary and conceptual metaphors in everyday life, as well as in literature. We consider the fact that it is a theory that has its origin and the largest number of treatments connected with the metaphor of everyday life, that is, of ordinary discourse, since it is seen as an important part of the conceptual and structural formatting of man. The article will provide examples of the Albanian corpus, specifically of ordinary speech, idioms, and the literary corpus. 

Received: 16 July 2023 / Accepted: 7 October 2023 / Published: 5 November 2023