“A TEACHER IS A GARDENER”: METAPHORIC CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF “TEACHER/ TEACHING” IN INTERNET MEMES AND METAPHOR NICHES

Abstract

This paper proposes a reflection on the argumentative effects of metaphor, from the overall perspective of Cognitive Linguistics. The focus is on the way in which a given cognitive-discursive orientation can be approached in this area of ​​study, which contemplates the interweaving between the cognitive and discursive dimensions of metaphorical language. To explore this goal, we have analyzed a corpus formed by internet memes and metaphor niches about teaching and education, in which figurative language is characterized by situated metaphors, intertwined with frames and conceptual metaphors. The analysis seeks to identify the elements of the online dimension of cognition (vehicles and situated metaphors) and those of the off-fline dimension: conceptual metaphors and underlying frames. The results seem to corroborate the hypothesis that the cognitive-discursive thread woven by the articulation between stable and unstable instances of cognition conducts, with clear rhetorical force, a certain way of looking at the target domain, according to the intended point-of-view