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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 23, No. 0, pp.448-460
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 30 Jan 2023
Received 13 May 2023 Revised 12 Jun 2023 Accepted 16 Jun 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.23..202306.448

SELF Metaphors in the Picturebook Hey, Al

Youngju Choi
Professor, Dept. of English Language and Literature, Chosun Univ., Tel: +82-62-608-5132 ychoi1@chosun.ac.kr


© 2023 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Lakoff (1996) claims that a person is conceptualized as two different entities, SUBJECT and SELF. In the expression I am not myself today, the subject I and the self myself are expressed as two different entities. Lakoff’s claim has been further investigated in English, Japanese, and other languages, but it has not been pursued in other modalities. In this paper, in order to determine whether the same metaphors are observed not only in verbal but also in other modes, the picturebook Hey, Al is analyzed, exploring the DIVIDED PERSON metaphors and other SELF metaphors. The analysis reveals that, around its main theme, finding one’s true identity, the picturebook Hey, Al demonstrates diverse SELF metaphors, such as the DIVIDED PERSON metaphor, the OBJECTIVE-SUBJECT metaphor, the INNER SELF metaphor, the SPLIT SELF metaphor, the ABSENT-SUBJECT metaphor, the TRUE-TO-YOURSELF metaphor, the SELF-AS-COMPANION metaphor, the LOSS-of-SELF metaphor, and the TRUE-SELF metaphor.

Keywords:

DIVIDED PERSON metaphor, SELF metaphors, picturebooks, Hey, Al, visual and verbal texts

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