“AMAZING GRACE THAT SAVED A WRETCH LIKE ME”. CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS FOR GRACE IN CHRISTIAN DISCOURSE (ON THE BASIS OF JOHN HENRY NEWMAN’S SERMONS)

Marcin Kuczok

Instytut Języka Angielskiego Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach


Abstrakt

Although Amazing Grace has become a popular song associated with the Englishspeaking
culture, the notion of GRACE itself remains mysterious and vague.
The problem is that being an abstract notion, grace is difficult to understand and describe
even for theologians. This problem may be overcome by conceptual metaphors which
help us conceptualize and understand the abstract reality [Lakoff, Johnson 2003/1980/;
Kövecses 2010/2002/]. John Henry Newman’s Parochial and Plain Sermons [1834-
-1843] constitutes a set of eight volumes of sermons preached in the years 1828-1845
in St. Mary’s Church in Oxford by an outstanding Anglican philosopher, theologian,
writer, and academic of the Victorian era, who later converted to Roman Catholicism.
The article focuses on the cognitive-linguistic aspects of identification and classification
of the various conceptual metaphors for GRACE in Newman’s sermons. The metaphors
are illustrated with examples of the lexical correlates found in the analyzed material.
In his sermons, Newman conceptualizes grace metaphorically either as different kinds
of INANIMATE THINGS: A CONTAINER, AN INSTRUMENT or MEANS, A GARMENT,
A TREASURE and A GIFT, as A TRADED COMMODITY, A LIQUID, FOOD AND DRINK,
and A BUILDING, as A PLANT, or as A PERSON: A KING, AN INHABITANT of a human
being or the Church, as AN OPPONENT or ENEMY, as A GUIDE IN A JOURNEY,
and as A PARENT. Additionally, GRACE is metaphorically viewed in the studied work
as POWER, as A WAY IN A JOURNEY, and as LIGHT.


Słowa kluczowe:

grace, conceptualization, metaphor, Christian discourse, John Henry Newman


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Opublikowane
2017-06-01

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Kuczok, M. (2017). “AMAZING GRACE THAT SAVED A WRETCH LIKE ME”. CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS FOR GRACE IN CHRISTIAN DISCOURSE (ON THE BASIS OF JOHN HENRY NEWMAN’S SERMONS). Acta Neophilologica, 1(XIX), 257–267. https://doi.org/10.31648/an.686

Marcin Kuczok 
Instytut Języka Angielskiego Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach