The Saussurean architecture of meaning in Kövecses’s Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Ferdinand de Saussure’s lasting impact on modern linguistics has been extensively explored, particularly his structural semiotic model, a model where arbitrary signs gain meaning through relational differences within a socially constructed system. However, the connection between this model and recent approaches to figurative meaning remains underexplored. The present study addresses this gap by examining Zoltán Kövecses’s Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory (ECMT) through a Saussurean lens. The argument is that ECMT treats figurative meaning as motivated by bodily experience, yet not predetermined, remaining open to contextual and culturally shaped variation – thus retaining a role for a Saussurean notion of arbitrariness, but at the level of selection and interpretation rather than at the level of conceptual grounding. ECMT further reinterprets the langue-parole distinction in cognitive terms: rather than treating langue as an abstract linguistic system, it emphasises the existence of entrenched conceptual patterns that function as shared resources for meaning construction. Parole is recast as a dynamic, online semiotic process, whereby speakers construct mental spaces in real time, selectively activating and integrating these shared patterns to make sense of situated experience. Through repeated use in discourse, some locally constructed metaphors may stabilise and become entrenched, feeding back into the shared cultural conceptual repertoire.