The Functioning of the CONTAINER Conceptual Metaphor in Doris Lessing’s "Children of Violence"

Abstract

This paper is based on the assumption that there is a system to conceptual metaphor and to its conceptualized linguistic expression. Conceptual metaphor is not a matter of arbitrary fixity. Individual basic metaphors and even generic-level metaphors are not isolated. There is a higher unity to metaphor that governs not only all basic and generic-level metaphors, but novel metaphors as well. When we understand a scene, including those described in literary texts, we naturally structure it in terms of conceptual mega-metaphors which may structurally unite the patterns of meaning throughout the whole of the text and find expression in various minor novel metaphors. As the subject matter of this analysis I have chosen the series of novels "Children of Violence" by the famous British writer Doris Lessing (1919-2013), the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 2007.