Conceptual Metaphor in Japanese Idiom with the Word Mizu ‘Water”

Abstract

In Japanese, idioms are widely used to express feelings, ideas, and opinions. Idioms have a metaphorical meaning that contains the concept of Japanese people's thinking about something. This research examines the idiomatic forms of the word mizu based on the structure in Japanese. The research approach is qualitative. The research data are idioms which contain the word mizu with the kanji 「水」 which sources from the Japanese idiom dictionary, the book 101 Japanese Idioms and online dictionaries. The analysis stage is to categorize idioms based on conceptual metaphor theory. Then, identify the metaphorical meaning by comparing the lexical meaning using a dictionary. Next, categorize and analyze the types of metaphors. Then, identify the image scheme that underlies the concept of water and interpret the concept of mizu in a conceptual metaphor. Finally, categorize the idioms contained in the data based on the classification of idiom forms. The results showed that based on structure, there were three classifications of the idiom form of the word mizu which consisted of 4 noun, 2 adjective, and 4 verb idioms. This means that the dominant idiom is closely related to everyday experience because most of the memory of human cognition is obtained from water as a source of life which shows that the mizu 'water' metaphor is dominant in the work and efforts of Japanese people who are known as hard workers.