Yp1-03(2) Idioms: Motivation and Etymology Dmitrij Dobrovol’skij and Elisabeth Piirainen Abstract

2.1. Metaphoric type of motivation

The motivational links that are relevant to metaphorically motivated idioms can most adequately be explained either on the superordinate level of the conceptual metaphor, i.e. on the level of the abstract metaphoric model (cf. Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1987) or on the basic level of categorization (following Rosch 1975, 1978) that is encoded in the lexical structure of an idiom. We call such “basic level cases” of motivation frame-based metaphors. Cf. (1–2).

(1) to throw dust in someone’s eyes

‘to mislead or betray someone willfully’

(2) to be a red rag to the bull

‘to be the cause for making someone very angry all the time’
Idiom (1) is motivated by the abstract conceptual metaphor deception is disturbance of seeing. Together with other figurative units (e.g. to pull the wool over someone’s eyes ‘to deceive, mislead someone’, to muddy the waters ‘to make things more confused by obscuring them’, to cover up something, etc.), it forms a well-developed metaphoric model. For idiom (2), no such metaphoric model can be found. This idiom can be best described within the theoretical framework of the cognitive modeling of idiom semantics, developed by Baranov and Dobrovol’skij (cf. Baranov and Dobrovol’skij 1996, 2000, 2008). Idiom (2) is motivated by fragments of world knowledge about the frame bullfight. The meaningful elements that are significant for the lexicalized meaning are slots of this frame: torero, bull, instruments used by the torero, although not all of them are explicitly expressed in the lexical structure of the idiom. So, the motivation is based here on the conceptual correspondence between the source frame bullfight and the target frame cause to get angry, rather than on a kind of superordinate conceptual metaphor. From a purely linguistic point of view, it is not important under which conceptual metaphor idioms like (2) should be subsumed. We take it that this is a classification task rather than being of theoretical significance.

It is, however, crucial to determine how the image component contributes to the actual meaning in each instance, and how it determines the contextual behavior of a given idiom. Thus, corpus examples containing the idioms hit the ceiling, go through the roof, blow your stack, flip your lid are not interchangeable in all contexts, though they are regarded as instantiations of the same conceptual metaphor, namely anger is hot fluid in a container, cf. also Gibbs (1993). It is one task of linguistic research to discover the relevant semantic differences and correlate them (where possible) with the image components, which we suppose to be encoded in the lexical structure on the level of concrete frames rather than on the abstract level of conceptual metaphors. Doing this seems more promising than constructing conceptual metaphors to cover groups of idioms whose image components have something in common. Compare also (Deignan 2006: 121) on this issue: “[...] it is time to work more directly with the individual linguistic metaphors from naturally-occurring texts, searching back for theoretical implications, rather than proceeding from the theory to find linguistic examples that are needed in order to support it.”

To this end let us analyze one example taken from Longman 1998. Idiom (3) is interesting because it shows that the image component is not necessarily identical with the idiom’s literal meaning.
(3) to throw in the towel (also to throw in the sponge BrE)

‘to stop trying to achieve something because it has been too difficult’

The present-day towel variant is a truncation from to throw the towel into the ring. This earlier form still exists in some loan translations in other languages (e.g. Dutch de handdoek in de ring werpen). The idiom derives from modern professional boxing and its rules, which were established at the end of the 19^th century. It was common practice for the contestant’s trainer to throw the towel into the ring as a signal during an ongoing round for the referee to stop the attack and in order to admit defeat and give up the fight. The (mainly BrE) version to throw in the sponge (originally to throw up the sponge) is not merely a lexical variant but, strictly speaking, refers to a different frame: This idiom goes back to the days of prize-fighting in the mid-nineteenth century. When a contestant had taken enough of a beating and was ready to admit defeat, his second admitted the defeat by tossing the sponge, otherwise used to refresh the fighter, into the air (Brewer 2005: 1383; Flavell and Flavell 2006: 278). According to conventional lexicographic practice, these two different mental images are combined into one entry.

From a cross-linguistic viewpoint, idioms using the sponge variant, e.g. French jeter l’éponge (which is probably a loan translation of the BrE idiom), are “fully equivalent” only to the British, not to the AmE version. However, the images behind both versions have lost their significance except for those who are knowledgeable about boxing. The contemporary motivation is based on the symbolic action of throwing a towel into the ring or possibly a sponge into the air. Idioms of this type can be regarded as borderline cases between metaphoric and symbolic motivation. On the one hand, the lexicalized meaning is based on a metaphoric mapping of a source domain (boxing or fighting) onto a target domain. On the other hand, the source frame contains a symbolically motivated slot, therefore towel and sponge themselves can be considered to be symbols of defeat (or, more precisely, concession of defeat) – however, only within the conceptual field of boxing or fighting. As a whole, the idiom’s lexicalized meaning came about in two steps. First, the physical action of throwing the towel or the sponge was metonymically reinterpreted as a symbolic action indicating the concession of defeat. Second, this conceptual structure was metaphorically reinterpreted in the sense of ‘abandoning further attempts to achieve something because it has been too difficult’.

This example shows that the linguistically relevant image component is neither identical with the literal reading of the underlying word chain nor with the etymologically reconstructed “primary” image. Only certain motivating traces of this image survive and are taken over by the idiom’s content plane. In the case of throw in the towel and throw in/up the sponge these traces are identical, so that the differences in the “primary” image do not play any role for the use of the idiom.