Stephan Kessler Book order

These conference proceedings present fourteen contributions to the Baltic languages, i. e. Latvian and Lithuanian. Their temporal horizon is both modern and historical: the present-day matters of word formation as well as mistaking agreements are complemented by synchronic investigations of the syntactic usage of cases, conjunctions and verb categories; nevertheless, word origins, the development of inflections, and the processes of depalatalisation have been researched by a diachronic approach.

Interest in literary and linguistic research on metaphor and imagery has increased over the past thirty years. However, theoretical studies dealing with the functioning of metaphor are still rare. Scholars often develop their theoretical approach to metaphor suiting their special goals of analysis only. In addition, a few explanatory models are ubiquitous, such as substitution, analogy-theory, elliptical simile, transferred meaning, the theory of interaction, and conceptualism. In his theoretical sketch Stephan Kessler gives a discursive criticism of the existing models of metaphor and offers a review of conceptualism. What has once been denoted 'rhetorical metaphor' has been changed completely by conceptualism: `Metaphor' itself has become a metaphor. Here, the well-known models of metaphor have led Kessler to dedicate deeper pragma-linguistic thoughts to the functioning of tropes. In Kessler's study, conceptualism is perceived through the eyes of its most prominent supporters, Lakoff and Johnson.