I Had a Dream, Which Was not All a Dream: Viewpoint Metaphors in Personal Experience Narratives on War
I Had a Dream, Which Was not All a Dream: Viewpoint Metaphors in Personal Experience Narratives on War

Summary/Abstract: The article makes a case for a particular kind of conceptual metaphor, the viewpoint metaphor.The viewpoint metaphor is argued to be a tool employed by narrators in personal experiencenarratives in order to render their irregular perception mode. The viewpoint metaphor allowsmapping on the narrated real experience the perception characteristics of other experiencessuch as watching a movie or having a dream. The research material consisted of a sample of 50personal experience narratives (25 in English and 25 in Ukrainian) produced by theparticipants or witnesses, military and civilian, of hostilities mainly in Ukraine in 2014-2023and in some other conflicts. It was found that two basic and most prominent viewpointmetaphors in this kind of discourse is EXPERIENCING THE EVENT is DREAMING OF THEEVENT or WATCHING A MOVIE OF THE EVENT. These metaphors are often reinforced byother viewpoint metaphors and they tend to repeatedly occur in the narrative. The function ofthe viewpoint metaphor is expressing the subjective experientiality, emotional condition andembodied perception mode at the time of the experience narrated. Viewpoint is therefore arguedto be a part of the mental space’s construal. Studying the viewpoint metaphor allows to shedlight onto the conceptual structure of viewpoint. It was found that the elements mapped from thesource experience of watching a movie or having a dream include passive witnessing, reducedagency, hushed perception, unreality of events, timelapse, and slow motion.

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