Animals are human cousins that inhabit the same world, share the same sunshine and breeze with man. They have many physical similarities and assumed resemblances with man. They also supply people with the earliest established experiences and thus often serve as the source domains of metaphorical mappings. In other words, non-animal, non-spatial abstracts are often metaphorized as animals.
1. Human Beings Animalized
As mentioned above, man and his animal cousins share many physical similarities and assumed resemblances, it is very convenient to make mutual mappings between man and animal. Animal-toward-human mappings are personification. Look at the following examples:
(1) The child flew into a rage and began scattering its toys about.
(2) The girl fluttered away.
(3) John hatched a clever scheme.
In the examples above, people are considered as animals and described as animals. The child in (1) is modeled on a bird, so is the girl in (2). In (3), John is experienced as a hen, which can hatch eggs into chickens. Of course, this sentence also involves a metaphorical mapping of the Object from a physical entity, an egg or a chicken, to an abstract notion, a clever scheme.
2. Plants Animalized
Plants can also be regarded as animals and thus adopt animal actions, behaviours and features. Here are some examples:
(4) Cinchona trees climbed higher and higher up the mountain.
(5) Leaves flutter past the window.
(6) Dead leaves were flying about.
Each of the sentences above involves considering plants as animals. The cinchona trees in (4) are patterned on animals which can climb, such as monkeys. The leaves or the dead leaves in (5) and (6) are modeled on birds, so they can flutter and fly.
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