This study applies the discourse concept of metaphor to the structure of YI-Sang’s works. The structural theory of metaphor regards metaphor not as word-metaphor but as statement-metaphor, within a larger structure of a given thought system.
It ta...
This study applies the discourse concept of metaphor to the structure of YI-Sang’s works. The structural theory of metaphor regards metaphor not as word-metaphor but as statement-metaphor, within a larger structure of a given thought system.
It takes Paul Ricoeur’s theory of metaphor as discourse proposed in his La M e taphore Vive as its theoretical background. Metaphor as discourse follows the Semantic approach, departing from the level of sign, identifying the basic unit of meanings with the level of discourse. It is based on the theory of Emile Benveniste.
Semiotics limited distinctive features signifier and signified, giving them the same value as phoneme and morpheme. Within this Semiotic approach, metaphor is defined as a sign on word level. In this respect, metaphor is represented as a confusing element of the order of words, like deviation or substitution.
This kinds of metaphor, when it recovers its original meaning, finishes its function and falls into the ornamental state and cannot create new meanings.
On the other hand, Semantics addresses the discourse level, attending to an extra-linguistic entity unidentifiable with phoneme or morpheme. On this discourse level, metaphor is seen as transcending the deviation of the category mistake in its deviant relation to the pre-existing logical order. Because the discourse concept, postulates an extra-linguistic reality, metaphor is thought to be a deliverer of new information. Here Ricoeur adopted I. A. Richards’ interaction theory of context between “tenor-vehicle”, Max Black’s interaction theory of focus and frame, and Monroe C. Beardsley’s self contradictory connotation theory and systematize the metaphor discourse theory.
Following him, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson adopted Richards’ theory and insisted that the metaphor is not a talent of genius but a universal ubiquitous power of language, and that not only language but also the system aticity of our thinking and acting is by nature metaphoric.
Benjamin Hrushovski further developed Ricoeur’s Semantic theory and Max Black’s focus-frame theory into the field of Reference(FRS) which is the interaction between a text and its frame of reference.
It is opposed to the theory, prevalent since Aristotle, that metaphor is a substitution, epiphora and deviation. They disagree with the notion that metaphor is limited only to resemblance and analogy.
Through this structure of metaphor, the network of meaning in YI-sang’s entire ouvres is revealed as a basic structure, hitherto unrevealed by previous YI-sang scholars. The three basic structures are: (1) Echonomic language(Man is Money), (2) Mechanical language(Man is Thing), (3) Chain of Being language(Man is a Link in the Food Chain).
In echonomic language (A) bankruptcy metaphors and (B) exchange metaphors are representative. The characteristic bankruptcy metaphor is, for exaple, shown as a past, present, and future life a man legally declared incompetent, and deprived of poetry”, in “1933. 6. 1”. While this is a bankruptcy of a social man, the bankruptcy of the decendants of anoble family is characteristically shown in “Moon-beol” where a skeleton in a tomb, ancestors, and father, family member appear as creditors and accusers to the persona Yi-sang. The bankruptey of home is characteristically shown in “Ga-Joung”, where the position of husband is meta-phorized in the echnomical language of income and expenditure.
The outstanding poem of mechanical language is “Si Che 13 Ho.” With the plant in the pot wich departs from the natural state, the candlelight in buidings, and the mechanical functionalization of disembodied arms, its metaphorical system is shown through the A. denaturalization of plants, B. Archite ctural language, C. mechanical language.
These two metaphoric structures share the common ground of capitalist materialism in that they change people into money or mechanical things. The metaphor system shows the innstrumental idea of people as means.
Third, in chain of beig, language, the metaphor of Nothingness which nulifies human life, and the metaphor of Exixtential Nature which directs toward intellectualization of all beings are presented, the food chain of “Mankind ⊂Animal⊂Plant⊂Things⊂Existence” is revealed as the chain of life with the main component rotationships: individual and individual, individual and group, state and state. The food chainis shown as the chain of history. The to metaphoric structure above shown the transference of the human being into an instrumental being, losing its original nature through the materialization and mechanization.
But this third, chain of being metaphoric structure shows the transference into Non-Usage, Non-action to get rid of the instrumental treatement.
This analysis reveals Yi-sang as a pivotal figure in the articulation of the Modernist challenge to the Korean thought-world of the 1930s.