In cognitive linguistics metaphors are not simply stylistic devices but processes which enable understanding through the mapping of source domains onto target domains [3872]
"The conception of metaphor in cognitive linguistics contradicts the conception of metaphor in literary studies in fundamental ways: Metaphor is not a stylistic device, but an experiential and cognitive process, in which we use properties, relations, and entities that characterize one domain of experience and/or knowledge (source domain) to understand, think, plan, and talk about a second domain (target domain) that is different in kind from the first. [7]
According to CMT [conceptual metaphor theory], source domains come from everyday bodily perception and movement. They are grounded in embodied experience (grounding hypothesis). Source domains are needed to make sense of target domains. By definition, a conceptual metaphor is a unidirectional mapping across cognitive domains. The mappings are tightly structured and structure from a source domain is (partially) mapped onto a target domain. The mapping is highly selective, as there are ontological correspondences according to which entities in the source domain (agents, objects, trajectories and so forth) systematically correspond to entities in the target domain. The point is, that we do not copy structure from SD [source domains] to TD [target domains], but we import whole sets of knowledge / inferences / entailments from the source domain into the target domain. The mapping does not work according to an arbitrary rule, but it is a tightly packed, highly selective and constrained process that allows us to reason about abstract domains. [7]"
(Alexandra Jandausch, 2012)
[link no longer active: http://sysmus12.oicrm.org/program/?lang=en]
[7] Lakoff, George (1997): "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind". Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jandausch, A. (2012). "Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the Conceptualization of Music". 5th International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology. Montreal, Canada.
Fig.1. The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, Passive Smoking: Shotgun [http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/the_roy_castle_lung_cancer_foundation_passive_smoking_shotgun].
[The source domain in the following image refers to the concept of a shotgun, which through its mapping onto the target domain of the cigarettes communicates the idea that smoking kills.]
http://www.academia.edu/1781269/Conceptual_Metaphor_Theory_and_the_Conceptualization_of_Music
http://sysmus12.oicrm.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Paper_SysMus12_AJandausch.pdf