A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis of the Use of Metaphors in Lyrics

Abstract

Metaphors are one of the most prominent figures of speech used in every language and they can be seen in any professional domain(Lakoff, G. & Johnson, 1980). These figures describe situations, objects or actions by referring to others that are related to those (Lakoff, 1992).Despite this figure of speech being one of the most recurrent ones, there is a lack of studies regarding the use of metaphors in music. Therefore, the aim of this paper is twofold; first,to explore how oftenmetaphors are used in songsand, second, to analyse in which way the use of these metaphors may help the audience to understand the meaning of songs. To achieve this aim,the MIP method(Pragglejaz Group, 2007)has been applied. The materials analysed in this work consist of a selection ofsongs from Taylor Swift’s late discography, Folklore (2020) and Evermore (2020). These lyricshave been selected in order to analyse how metaphors work in her songs,since songwriters aremore prone to include different figures of speech in their tunes(Juslin, 2005).A great extent of metaphors has been found in the selected songs,showing that this figure of speech is relevant in music.