Metaphoric self-awareness in reflexive constructions (PDF)

Academic Paper from the year 2017 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, University of Birmingham, course: English and Applied Linguistics, language: English, abstract: English speakers use metaphorical constructions to express their Self-Awareness unconsciously all the time, yet we barely think about what underlies these constructions. What does the phrase "find oneself" mean for example? Does a person "find oneself" in the same way one finds a coin on the sidewalk?

Dr. Barry Grossman investigates the underlying conceptual commonality of these types of metaphorical phrases. It is the concept of Self-Awareness that these constructions have in common, not simply in reference to a speaker's self-knowledge, but an acute meta-awareness of one's state or situation. Self-Awareness turns out to be an image schema and numerous metaphors are construed and predicated with this as its base.

This book combines syntax and semantics, as well as cognitive linguistic theory and corpus linguistic analyses to approach a contentious issue raised in the past by many, but explained sufficiently by few. It studies the cognitive reality of perceptual Self-Awareness as an image schema used to drive metaphoric construal within the reflexive construction.