Metafora a zjawisko chiralności

Abstrakt

Metaphor and the chirality phenomenon

The paper attempts to demonstrate that metaphor fits in A. Kudra’s theory of conceptual pairness, and that it is a chiral object which contains two levels of chirality represented by asymmetric juxtapositions: source domain – target domain (the source domain is a distorted reflection of the object, i.e. of the target domain, which causes a shift in the perception of the source domain), and literal meaning – metaphorical meaning (object – reflection). These features make metaphors an important means of constructing a distorted vision of reality, hence also a chiral object, represented by the sender’s linguistic image of the world. In the case of metaphor, it is important that the sender uses linguistic means, or illusion markers in J. Płuciennik’s terms, which indicate the metaphorical character of the utterance and make it easier for the receiver to realize that what they are dealing with is an asymmetric reflection of the literal meaning, and which allow the sender to distance him or herself from the metaphor if it is perceived as inappropriate.