The other reason for the noncorresponding relationship between language and reality is that the human mind plays an active part in the cognition of the outside and inside worlds. Instead of using the normal literal way to express reality, people use figurative expressions, which are more colourful, more vivid and more effective. Such is the substitutional function of metaphor. This substitutional metaphor involves a different expression of a given meaning. For example, instead of saying Mary saw a wonderful sight, or A great many people protested, people may metaphorically say A wonderful sight met Mary's eyes, or Protests flooded in.
"Viewing metaphor as substitution is quite an ancient affair which can be traced back at least to Aristotle and which has been accepted part and parcel by traditional rhetoricians. According to this point of view, metaphor is a way of substitution for platitudinous expressions to achieve rhetorical and poetic value. This long-held point of view dominates the history of metaphor studies. Therefore, it is natural that metaphor has been taken as an exclusive domain for rhetoricians and literary critics.
It is true that most poetic metaphors are metaphors of substitution. Many metaphors are substitutional. However, designatory metaphor is as important as the substitutional in language, if not more important. First of all, it is a very important way for man to structure the outside world, and man's structuring of the outside world is an important step in his understanding and changing of the world. Second, it is an efficient way to model new experience on the old through recategorization and restructuring. Consequently, man's knowledge about the world accumulates day by day, but words and grammatical structures need not increase simultaneously. Third, designatory metaphor characterizes the nature of language. It is mainly because of this kind of metaphor that Lakoff and Johnson claim that language is metaphorical by nature. Without this sort of metaphor, a language would be totally inconceivable.
Though metaphor can be classified into substitutional and designatory, the classification is not something clearcut. In the treatment of a particular instance, it is harmful to be absolute and arbitrary, since there are instances which have changed from one kind to the other. For example, the sentences The earth is thirsty and He is an eagle, which are used by primitives, are originally metaphors of designation, since they are the only ways the primitives can represent the phenomenon. But as time goes on, our ancestors develop some abstract concepts and rephrase the two sentences as The earth is dry and He is brave. The original two sentences are no longer designatory metaphors. They become metaphors of substitution instead, because there are now more logical, more straightforward, more literal, more congruent ways to represent the phenomenon.
In conclusion, cognition functions in two ways in the creation of metaphor. One is the passive limitations of human cognition in understanding the world while the other is the active participation in the recategorization and restructuring of the world. Though they are different, they both involve understanding one thing in terms of another, which is a very important factor in the mechanism of metaphor creation.
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