A COGNITIVE STUDY OF DRINK EXPRESSIONS IN ENGLISH PROVERBS

Conceptual Metaphor Theory represents the output of a cognitive process by which readers can understand one domain in terms of another. This study aims to investigate the use of drink proverbs in English from a cognitive point of view and investigate the role of metaphor in communication as an unconscious process in everyday life. Also, it aims to identify metaphor as a systematic process that does not occur randomly. It is considered as a problematic task for learners to understand, interpret, and render the exact conceptual meaning of English proverbs. The procedures of this study are as follows: Presenting a theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics and adopting the model of the conceptual metaphor theory which is Lakoff and Johnson's “Metaphor We Live by” (2003) to analyze proverbs of drink in English. Another two models are used to support the first one which are Newman's (1997) “Eating and Drinking as a Source of Metaphor in English” and Quirk et al (1985) “A Comprehensives Grammar of the English Language”. The study hypothesizes that the source and target domains in conceptual metaphors have a crucial role in understanding the meaning of drink proverbs in English. Concerning the levels of analysis, the present study deals with the semantic and grammatical levels. The data are collected from dictionaries that are associated with drink proverbs. Six samples are chosen for the analysis. In each sample, more than five items have been analyzed metaphorically and grammatically. The present study concluded that conceptual metaphors do not occur randomly and they are unconscious processes through conversations.