Open Access

Jürgen Ehrenmüller

• Dieser Beitrag möchte einerseits darstellen, wie im Gegenwartsdeutschen mit der konzeptuellen Domäne 'Spiel' Welt metaphorisch modelliert wird. Den Ausgangspunkt der Analysemethode bilden dabei die Theorie der konzeptuellen Metapher von Lakoff/Johnson (1980/2003) und deren Modifizierung um 'abstrakte Subkonzepte' (Baldauf, 1997, 2000). Anhand der Ergebnisse der Untersuchung soll andererseits auch gezeigt werden, inwiefern es sich bei der Spielmetaphorik in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache um kein peripheres, sondern ein zentrales Phänomen handelt, das die Wahrnehmung der Welt und die 'Sicht der Dinge' maßgeblich prägt.
• This paper intends to explain methods of forming the world in modern German metaphors with the help of the conceptual domain 'game' and to discover, whether metaphor is a phenomenon of the periphery or the center of modern German. The analysis is based on Lakoff/Johnson's (1980/2003) theory of the conceptual metaphor and its modification by 'abstract subconcepts' (Baldauf, 1997, 2000). It is possible to infer oral resp. written metaphorical subconcepts from a representative corpus of metaphors of a conceptual domain if these abstract 'units of experience' – which highly influence concepts like 'life', 'love', 'communication', etc. – are analysed as objects of metaphorical conceptualisation. Thus, 69 metaphorical subconcepts have been created from 320 metaphorical expressions taken from the domain 'game' in modern German to show which domains of experience are constituted as 'game', e.g. 'success/failure' or 'improvidence/irresponsibility'. The significance of the domain 'game' in modern German, be it for the perception or be it for the description of the world, arises from the fact that it is also used for the metaphorical conceptualisation of localisation and orientation. The results of the analysis show not only in which way 'the game' influences points of view in modern German but also that metaphor and especially the 'playful' metaphor is a central phenomenon in modern German.