175 Conceptual metaphors of travel and stability including metaphors related to mobility and immobility that might otherwise go undetected if limiting the investigation to a few key words.576 Furthermore, a close-reading approach is useful as it allows for a better understanding of the narrative context in which a metaphor is used, and therefore for a better understanding of the meaning of the metaphor itself.577 This approach is therefore more suitable when aiming to uncover nuances in meaning, which this thesis has attempted to do throughout. The Life of Gregory of Decapolis will be taken as the focal point for analysis in this chapter, but the findings will be compared and corroborated with examples of metaphorical language use in the Life of Euthymius the Younger and the Life of Elias the Younger. In the previous chapter we saw that Ignatius, the hagiographer of the Life of Gregory, gave relatively little narrative space to explicit representations of Gregory’s motivations for all his journeys. However, we do find much metaphorical travel-language in this Life. By using a different approach to this text, we may uncover more layers in the use of the travel theme in this Life and more insights into perceptions of travel. Moreover, as we will see in section 4.2, conceptual metaphors reflect metaphorical thinking of discourse communities. They are therefore not unique to particular texts or thought patterns of individual authors. So a detailed analysis of three texts written by authors representative of comparable language users would not necessarily gain more insight into metaphorical thinking than focussing on a single text. This chapter will thus explore the potential of Conceptual Metaphor Theory to gain a deeper understanding of middle-Byzantine conceptions of mobility and immobility, as studied primarily in the Life of Gregory. 4.2 Conceptual Metaphor Theory Metaphor is understanding one thing in terms of another (e.g., doing a PhD is a roller coaster). As stylistic figures in language, metaphors may be used to communicate particular messages and to embellish texts and speech. Hagiographers were presumably aware of these communicative and rhetorical effects and may have used metaphors deliberately for these purposes.578 Metaphors, however, are more than rhetorical tools in a writer’s toolbox. Conceptual Metaphor Theory (hereafter CMT) holds that metaphors are figures of thought, besides being figures of language. Since its introduction by Lakoff, Johnson and 576 In my analysis I looked for all metaphors in the Life of Gregory that related to travel, mobility, movement, immobility and stability. This is a difference between my analysis and that of Mantova, who confined her study to metaphors specifically involving terms signifying a road (see the previous footnote). 577 Narrative context allows for a better understanding of how readers/listeners might have understood the metaphor, as research shows that both the direct narrative context as well as prior context (i.e. earlier parts in the narrative) affect metaphor processing. Gerrig and Shawver (2022), p. 49. 578 A communicative approach to metaphors focussing on the deliberate choices of the individual language user when choosing particular metaphors is taken by Deliberate Metaphor Theory, promoted by Gerard Steen. On the other end of the scholarly debate on metaphor theory, scholars hold that ‘metaphor works automatically and unconsciously’ and the possibility that metaphors can be deliberate is questioned. For this debate, see the articles by Steen and Gibbs in the same journal volume: Steen (2015); Gibbs (2015a); Gibbs (2015b). 4
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