Conceptual Metaphors as Motivation for Proverbs Lexical Polysemy

This paper deals with the lexical polysemy of proverbs from the standpoint of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The thesis that proverbs take on many meanings is widely discussed and commonly accepted in the literature on proverb understanding and use at large (Milner, 1969; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1973; Lakoff & Turner, 1989; Honeck, 1997; Gibbs & Beitel 1995, etc.). Yet much attention has been paid only to the proverb discursive polysemy. On the premise that proverbs have stable meanings, there is every reason to believe that some proverbs are lexically polysemous because of their metaphorical structurings. That is, the lexical polysemy of proverbs is motivated by some given conceptual metaphors the interplay of which gives rise to a range of lexical meanings, which may serve, in turn, as bases for inferring eventual contextual meanings.