The Conventionality and Novelty of Metaphorical Expressions in British and American Love Poetry: A Cognitive Approach

According to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), metaphors are pervasive in everyday life, and most novel poetic metaphors are developed from conventional metaphors. Several examples and explanations have been provided to support these assertions; however, there has yet to be a systematic investigation into the conventionality and novelty of metaphors in literature. To partly fill in these gaps, the present study aims to explore which conceptual metaphors of love are frequently employed in British and American love poems and how the poets adapt them to bring novelty to their works. Love, one of the most highly metaphorised concepts, was chosen as the topic of the metaphors in this study, for there is a considerable resource of love poems available to be explored. The findings of the study reveal that there are nine conventional conceptual metaphors of love employed in British and American love poems. The conventionality and novelty of metaphors in poetry were then analysed in their respective poetic contexts, focusing on how the poets have adopted four techniques (extending, elaboration, questioning, and combining) to create novel expressions from conventional language. This study indicates that the knowledge of conceptual metaphors can help a person, especially a learner of a foreign language, to interpret poetic metaphors in literary contexts.

Since the emergence of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), there have been several seminal studies that validate the pervasiveness of metaphors in everyday life (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980;Lakoff, 1993;Kövecses, 1986Kövecses, , 1988Kövecses, , 2000. However, the role of conceptual metaphors in creating poetic, metaphorical expressions and the mechanism for generating these novel expressions have not been fully investigated. To fill in these gaps, this research aims to examine the conventionality and novelty of metaphors in literature, specifically British and American love poems, by identifying common conceptual metaphors of love and exploring the techniques the poets have adopted to create novel metaphors from conventional metaphors in English love poetry. Within the limitations of this study, the researcher only focused on love metaphors in British and American love poems rather than poems with different topics. Love was chosen as the theme of the metaphors in the study, for love is believed to be the most highly 'metaphorized' emotion concept (Kövecses, 2000, p. 27), and it is also a great inspiration for several poets throughout the ages and across all cultures, which means that there is a considerable resource of love poems to be explored for this research. The aims of this study can be addressed through the following research questions: a. Which conceptual metaphors of love are frequently employed in British and American love poetry? b. How are conceptual metaphors adapted to create novelty in British and American love poetry?

Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)
The Conceptual Metaphor Theory was first developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their seminal study Metaphors We Live By, published in 1980. This approach has brought about a revolution in the theory of metaphor when challenging the deeply entrenched traditional view and pointing out its false assumptions by proving that (1) metaphor is a property of concepts, not words; (2) the primary function of metaphor is not simply to serve some artistic or esthetic purpose, but to better understand certain concepts; (3) metaphor is often not based on similarity; (4) metaphor is used effortlessly in everyday life by ordinary people, not just by special, talented people; and (5) metaphor, far from being a superfluous though pleasing linguistic ornament, is an inevitable process of human thought and reasoning (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980;Lakoff, 1993;Kövecses, 2010). Lakoff (1993) demonstrated that the working mechanism of a conceptual metaphor is a cross-domain mapping which is defined as 'a fixed set of ontological correspondences between entities in a source domain and entities in a target domain' (p. 245). A conceptual metaphor is expressed as TARGET-DOMAIN IS SOURCE-DOMAIN, or alternatively, TARGET-DOMAIN AS SOURCE-DOMAIN (ibid., p. 207). This mnemonic indicates that conceptual metaphors are mental categories and, thus, do not necessarily occur in a language but conceptually underlie all their metaphorical expressions. To be consistent with prior research on metaphor, this study also uses capitals for the statement of conceptual metaphors and italics for metaphorical linguistic expressions.
For example, the conceptual metaphor LOVE IS A JOURNEY underlies a variety of metaphorical expressions such as 'Our relationship has hit a dead-end street', 'Look how far we've come', 'We can't turn back now', 'We're at a crossroads', 'We may have to go our separate ways', 'The relationship isn't going anywhere', 'Our relationship is off the track', 'The marriage is on the rocks', etc. The LOVE-AS-A-JOURNEY metaphor is a mnemonic for a set of ontological correspondences that characterise a mapping, namely: SOURCE: A JOURNEY TARGET: LOVE (1) the travelers  the lovers (2) the vehicle  the love relationship itself (3) the journey  events in the relationship (4) the destination of the journey  the goal(s) of the relationship (5) the distance covered  the progress made (6) the obstacles encountered  the difficulties experienced (7) decisions about which way to go  choices about what to do (Kövecses, 2010, p. 9;Lakoff, 1993, p. 207) The mapping here is tightly structured, asymmetric, and partial. It includes ontological correspondences, according to which constituent elements in the domain of love (e.g., the lovers, their common goals, their difficulties, the love relationship, etc.) correspond systematically to constituent elements in the domain of a journey (the travelers, the vehicle, destinations, etc.). Such correspondences permit native speakers to reason about love by using the knowledge they use to reason about journeys, and this process usually takes place unconsciously, and the speaker and listener produce and understand the metaphorical expressions without any effort.
There is accumulating evidence that suggests that the metaphorical expressions can be novel, but the mappings are pre-existent and reside in the conceptual system. What makes poetic metaphors exceptional and phenomenal but still understood and accepted by the linguistic community is that the poets, when creating them, have skillfully manipulated the mechanisms of conventional and everyday thought in extraordinary ways (Kövecses, 2010). It should be noticed that everyday metaphorical expressions are normally subconsciously and unintentionally used by the speaker or writer, whereas novel metaphorical expressions are usually conscious extensions of ordinary conventionalised metaphors (Lakoff & Turner, 1989). The fact that the majority of literary metaphors are derived from conventional conceptual metaphors, however, does not deny the existence of a minority of highly novel metaphors (Kövecses, 2010). In fact, there are three kinds of novel metaphors: extensions of conventional metaphors, generic-level metaphors, and image-metaphors (Lakoff, 1993).
Within the scope of this study, generic-level metaphors and image-metaphors were not investigated. In other words, this study only focuses on the majority of novel metaphors that are extensions of conventional metaphors to clarify the powerful impact of conventional metaphors on the novel language and how poets can create novel metaphors from ordinary metaphors.

Poetic reworking of conventional metaphors
Poets regularly go beyond the boundaries of ordinary modes of thought and the automatic and unconscious conventional use of metaphors by adopting the four typical techniques, namely, extending, elaboration, questioning, and combining (Gibbs, 1994;Lakoff & Turner, 1989;Kövecses, 2010).
A conventional conceptual metaphor can be extended in a novel way by the addition of a new conceptual element to the source domain (extending). Another technique is elaboration, when the poet captures an already existing element of the source in a new, unconventional way by enhancing it with uncommon attributes. Additionally, poets can even call into question the very appropriateness of conventional conceptual metaphors (questioning). The last technique is combining, which activates several everyday metaphors at the same time and blends them together to create novel expressions.

Love metaphors through the CMT 2.3.1 Conceptual metaphors of love
By analysing data collected from native speakers' conversations, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Kövecses (1986Kövecses ( , 1988Kövecses ( , 2000 have found several conceptual metaphors of love: LOVE IS A PATIENT, LOVE IS A NUTRIENT, LOVE IS A JOURNEY, LOVE IS A FLUID IN  A CONTAINER, LOVE IS A CONTAINER, LOVE IS A UNITY OF PARTS, LOVE IS CLOSENESS, LOVE IS A BOND, LOVE IS FIRE, LOVE IS  AN ECONOMIC EXCHANGE, LOVE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY, LOVE IS A NATURAL FORCE, LOVE IS A PHYSICAL FORCE, LOVE  IS AN OPPONENT, LOVE IS A HIDDEN OBJECT, LOVE IS A CAPTIVE ANIMAL, LOVE IS A LIVING ORGANISM, LOVE IS WAR, LOVE IS  SPORT / A GAME, LOVE IS A DISEASE / AN ILLNESS, LOVE IS MAGIC, LOVE IS INSANITY, LOVE IS A SOCIAL SUPERIOR, and LOVE  IS RAPTURE / A HIGH. These previous studies provide this research with a theoretical framework to analyse poetic love metaphors  as extensions of conventional language. Since one of the main objectives of this study is to put the linguistic metaphors found in poetry into their suitable categories -the conceptual metaphors underlying them and compare their frequencies of occurrence with one another, these categories should be mutually exclusive to ensure the validity of the study's results. However, some of the conceptual metaphors of love presented above have similar characteristics to each other, or they are included in a superordinate metaphor, or one of them is a submetaphor of the other. This would lead to the result that one metaphorical expression can belong to two or more categories at the same time. To prevent this, these metaphors would be grouped into bigger categories. Thus, the list of metaphors is reduced from 24 to 17 metaphors, as follows: LOVE

Studies on conceptual metaphors of love
Though 'love is perhaps the most highly 'metaphorized' emotion concept' (Kövecses, 2000, p. 27), it has received relatively little treatment within the CMT, especially when applying conceptual metaphors to understand poetic metaphors. The review of recent studies shows that there are two major approaches to the topic of conceptual metaphors of love in poetry.
The first approach focuses more on identifying common conceptual metaphors in one long poem (Hamdi, 2022) or a collection of shorter poems written by one poet (Jaberi, Abdullah & Vengadasamy, 2016; Pratiwi, Sujatna & Indrayani, 2020; Cai & Gao, 2022) than exploring common techniques which poets deploy in manipulating conceptual metaphors to develop metaphorical creativity. Lan and Yin (2020) have overcome this shortcoming, to some extent, when mentioning the four techniques that were frequently used by poets to create unconventional expressions in Shi Jing (The Book of Poetry). However, the main aims of their research were to examine common conceptual metaphors underlying the metaphorical expressions in ancient poetry and the interrelationship between metaphors and cognitive and cultural patterns of those living in the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 B.C.); this is the reason why the techniques to create novel metaphors from conventional language was not thoroughly discussed in the article. In addition, these prior research studies have not investigated the frequency of each conceptual metaphor of love in poetry to find out the most commonly used metaphors in this special genre.
The second approach highlights the universality and variation of conceptual metaphors in love poems written in English and another language. Lv and Zhang (2012), as well as Li and Chi (2021), analysed love metaphors in Chinese and English poems from a cross-cultural perspective. The results show that love is generally conceptualised in surprisingly similar ways in both languages due to universal experiences and perceptions of love, although some variations are found at a more specific level. Similarly, Phan and Ho (2017) reported that there are considerable similarities in love metaphors between English and Vietnamese poems, though differences in cultures, lifestyles, and thoughts do bring about some variations between the two languages. Unlike Lv and Zhang (2012) as well as Li and Chi (2021), Phan and Ho (2017) did discuss the novelty of metaphorical expressions in English and Vietnamese poetry via the four common techniques, i.e., extending, elaboration, questioning, and combining. However, Phan and Ho (2017) have yet to specify how to distinguish between conventional and novel metaphorical expressions found in poetry, especially English poetry, from the perspective of non-native English speakers. Specifically, the two researchers are Vietnamese, and it is possibly hard for non-native speakers to assess the novelty of metaphorical expressions in English without a specific and appropriate procedure.
To contribute to the existing body of literature, this study has established a procedure for analyzing the conventionality and novelty of metaphorical expressions in poetry and found out the most common love metaphors used in British and American poetry. In addition, this article also demonstrates how poets make use of conventional language to create metaphorical novelty in a case study of the LOVE-AS-A-UNITY metaphor and their poetic instantiations.

Research design
The aims of this study are to discover which conceptual metaphors of love are usually employed in British and American love poems and explore how they are adapted to create novelty in British and American love poetry. This is qualitative research since the data collected are metaphorical expressions. After data collection, content analysis was applied for coding and categorizing the metaphorical expressions. Frequency and percentage were then calculated in each category, and this numerical information is the result of the study, not the data. In other words, the current study relies on textual rather than numerical data and employs meaning-based rather than statistical forms of data analysis.

Data source
The source of love metaphors in this study is A Book of Love Poetry, edited by Jon Stallworthy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was chosen because of three reasons. Firstly, the editor and publisher of the book are academically famous and widely acknowledged for having provided readers and researchers with reliable and valuable resources. Secondly, it is a thorough anthology of 337 great love poems written by more than 190 famous British and American poets (e.g., Shakespeare, Andrew Marvell, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, etc.), as well as some poets from other countries down through the ages. The last reason for choosing this anthology is its thematic poem arrangement which is a valuable aid for the reader's understanding of love poetry. The book demonstrates the process and philosophy of love, beginning with the first drawings of young love, developing with the revelation of love in all its different aspects and perversities, and then ending with the 'long look back' of the aged. Due to the scope of this study, only 232 poems (out of 337 poems) written by British and American poets were selected for data collection and analysis.

Metaphor identification and data collection
In order to explore which conceptual metaphors of love are usually employed in poetry, one needs to think of a reliable method to identify them first. In this study, to reduce the subjectivity of this process, metaphors were deductively identified by adopting the methods developed by Charteris-Black (2004) and the Pragglejaz Group (2007).

Deductive approach
There are two major approaches to identifying metaphor in discourse, i.e., the deductive (or top-down) approach and the inductive (bottom-up) approach. As regards the concept of love, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Kövecses (1986Kövecses ( , 1988Kövecses ( , 2000 have conducted meticulous research on daily speech and discovered 24 conceptual metaphors of love. This study made use of these conceptual metaphors of love to identify and analyse linguistic metaphors in poetry. In other words, this study adopted the deductive approach to locate metaphors since the aims of the study are to examine how these conventional metaphors are employed and adapted through extending, elaborating, or questioning to display the novelty in poetry. This means that no attention is paid to new conceptual metaphors of love or metaphors which are different from those listed in Section 2.3.1 (if any).

Linguistic metaphor identification
In order to know which conceptual metaphors among those discovered by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Kövecses (1986Kövecses ( , 1988Kövecses ( , 2000 were employed in love poetry, the linguistic metaphors, or metaphorical expressions, need to be identified first because they are the realizations of those conceptual metaphors. In order to reduce the degree of subjectivity involved in linguistic metaphor identification, two procedures proposed by Charteris-Black (2004) and the Pragglejaz Group (2007) were adopted.
In Charteris-Black's (2004) work, the identification of linguistic metaphors involves two main stages: the first consists of a close reading of the sources with the aim of identifying candidate metaphors of love. The second stage is the examination of the candidate metaphors with respect to specific selection criteria and therefore sorting out metaphors from non-metaphors. According to these criteria, a metaphor is a word or phrase that causes semantic tension -the 'abnormal' use of domains by reification, personification, and depersonification. Concerning the concept of love, a linguistic metaphor of love is any expression of love involving two different domains that cause a semantic tension resulting from reification or personification (because love is an abstract and inanimate concept, and it cannot be depersonified). Charteris-Black's (2004) method can generally help a researcher become more alert to metaphors when recognizing semantic tensions; however, as it still relies much on the intuition and experience of the researcher, the method appears to be rather subjective and unreliable if it is adopted as the only method for metaphor identification.
According to Kövecses (2010), the Pragglejaz Group's Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) is considered more reliable for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. The core of MIP is to compare contextual and basic meanings of lexical units that need to be checked for their metaphorical use. If the two meanings can be contrasted but can be understood in comparison to each other, the unit is metaphorically used. Typically, basic meanings tend to be more concrete [what they evoke is easier to imagine, see, hear, feel, smell, and taste], related to bodily action, more precise (as opposed to vague), and historically older. In order to move away from intuition-based analysis, MIP allows using dictionaries to check a word's basic meaning as compared to the meaning it has in its context of appearance. The problem is that a linguistic metaphor can be a word or a phrase, whereas MIP is employed only to identify metaphorically used words in discourse. In order to handle this problem, the first step that a researcher needs to do is to determine the main component, or the head, of the suspected phrase. After that, MIP is applied to the head of this phrase. If it is metaphorically used, the whole phrase, i.e., the head and its modifier(s), is a metaphor; otherwise, the phrase is not a metaphorical expression.
In a nutshell, the two methods were employed in the data collection procedure of this study. Charteris-Black's (2004) method generally helped the researcher become more alert to metaphors in recognizing semantic tensions. After that, MIP was applied to investigate the suspected metaphorical expressions, confirm the selections and reduce the degree of subjectivity involved in the metaphor identification as well.

Data analysis approach
This study adopted content analysis, or more specifically, conceptual analysis (also known as thematic analysis), to analyse qualitative data. Wilkinson (2003) suggested eight stages in the conceptual analysis process (p. 72). All these stages were taken in the order of this study. Firstly, the researcher decided on the levels or units of analysis in this study, which are metaphorical expressions in the form of words or phrases. Secondly, the researcher identified the concepts for investigation, which are the conceptual metaphors of love. These concepts were later defined as 17 conceptual metaphors, which were synthesised and explained in Section 2.3.1. After deciding to code for their frequency of occurrence, the researcher established the coding rules to ensure consistency and coherence when trawling through the poems to code metaphorical expressions and placing them into their category corresponding to their conceptual metaphors. The last step was to analyse the results. Once the data had been coded and categorised, the number of linguistic metaphors of each category was calculated and compared with the number of linguistic metaphors of other categories in order to find out which conceptual metaphors have high frequencies of occurrence in love poems. After that, the conventionality and novelty of metaphors in poetry were closely investigated.
The distinction between novel and conventional metaphors can lie in the deliberate or nondeliberate use of metaphors. Steen (2008) holds that the deliberate use of metaphors is characterised by explicit linguistic devices that aim to shift the attention of the recipient towards the source domain, as in the case of similes, 'A is B' metaphors and other novel metaphors. To put it differently, a metaphor is used deliberately when it is expressly meant to change the reader's perspective on the referent or topic that is the target of the metaphor by deliberately making the reader look at it from a particular conceptual source domain. In order to elicit such rhetorical effects, the writer usually makes it unconventional and, therefore, noticeable. In contrast, non-deliberate metaphors do not involve such conscious metaphor processing (Steen, 2011). They tend to be conventional and seemingly understood automatically by the reader. To put it simply, whether a metaphor is used deliberately or not can be an indicator of its degree of novelty.
As the researcher is not British or American, she needs to have a more objective and systematic method to identify novel and conventional metaphors. To minimise her subjective judgement, the researcher looked up the word in question in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (10th ed.) to find out whether or not the metaphorical meaning of the word is listed in the dictionary. If yes, it is concluded that the metaphorical expression has been conventionalised; if no, the expression is considered a product of the poet's creativity. It should be noted that to a metaphorical phrase, the novelty is not only determined based on its head but also based on its modifiers in its poetic context. Since most novel metaphors are created on the foundation of conventional language, one needs to have an understanding of the conventional language or, more specifically, in this case, the conceptual metaphors and their sets of mappings to recognise the unusual or extraordinary elements among conventional ones. This study took advantage of the mappings, explanations, and a variety of instances of conceptual metaphors of love collected in daily language that is demonstrated in several studies by Lakoff, Johnson, Kövecses, and other linguists and scholars. If the metaphors in the poems have no change or not much change from the set of mappings, they are considered conventional at the conceptual level. If they introduce new conceptual elements in the source domain or elaborate on an existing element of the source in an unusual way or question the appropriateness of the conceptual metaphor, or even combine with other metaphors, they are considered novel, for these are the four techniques that poets regularly employ to create novel unconventional language from the conventional materials of everyday language and thought (Kovecses, 2010).
In sum, this study adopted the conceptual analysis procedure to find out which conceptual metaphors have high frequencies of occurrence in love poems. As regards the conventionality and novelty of metaphors in poetry, the researcher followed a threestage procedure. In the first stage, after locating a metaphorical expression, the researcher reread the poem carefully and analysed the context to find out whether the metaphorical expression was used deliberately or non-deliberately by the poet. In the second stage, the researcher looked up the expression in question in a reliable dictionary to find out whether its figurative meaning was listed in the dictionary or not. To confirm the result and to analyse its conventionality or novelty, the researcher entered the last stage by exploring the conceptual metaphor underlying this linguistic metaphor. Reading extensively about the conceptual metaphor itself and its conventional instantiations helped the researcher understand how the conceptual metaphor is commonly expressed in daily language. This step is a foundation for the researcher to evaluate the level of novelty of the metaphorical expression via the four techniques (extending, elaboration, questioning, and combination) that poets tend to use to create novelty in their poetic language from conventional materials.

Conceptual metaphors of love employed in love poetry and their statistical numbers
After the identification process, a total of 251 metaphorical expressions describing love are found in British and American love poetry. This number only includes the metaphors that are the object of analysis, i.e., only those that refer to the concept of love. It should also be noted that the data collected for this study include both conventional and unconventional metaphorical expressions.
Among 17 categories of love metaphors established in Section 2.3.1, there are only 9 categories employed by the poets in British and American poems, as presented in Table 1. Findings reveal that the conceptual metaphor LOVE IS SPORT/WAR is the most frequently employed by the poets to create novelty in British and American love poetry (21.51%). There are three major reasons for the frequent use of this metaphor in English love poems. Firstly, its popularity may stem from the ideology that love is rare, valuable, and elusive; therefore, people have to struggle very hard to gain it, as in "Pious Selinda Goes To Prayers" by William Congreve. Secondly, the fight for a love that provokes intense feelings and reactions between the lovers serves as a source of inspiration for the poets. This fight can take place between two or more rivals to win the beloved's heart, between the two persons in love and the destructive outside force, or even between the two lovers themselves to achieve dominance and manipulation over the other in a love relationship. Among the three kinds of fighting, the last one seems to be favored by British and American love poets, at least based on the data collected in this study, maybe because the fight or the conflict between two persons in love provides an open field for powerful emotions, innermost feelings and insatiable desires for each other to display most clearly and strikingly, as shown in "Dialogue. After Enjoyment" by Abraham Cowley, "After the Fierce Pangs of Hot Desire" by Richard Duke, and so on. The last reason may lie in the experiential basis of conceptual metaphors. According to the CMT, metaphors are the 'mappings of the abstract world into the concrete world through human senses or experiences' (Luu, 2010, p. 80). Since many poets with their poems collected in Stallworthy's anthology lived in the time of war or even used to join the army, they had direct experiences of war, such as Sir John Suckling (1609-1642), Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), or Sir John Suckling (1609-1642. These poets had a tendency to use a variety of military terms as a source domain to describe the abstract concept of love.

The linguistic instances of LOVE IS A UNITY and LOVE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY / AN ECONOMIC EXCHANGE metaphors also
make up a large percentage of the total of the metaphorical expressions of love found in this study (19.52% and 18.72%, respectively). The reason for that may be explained in British and American culture. According to Kövecses (2010), these are the two metaphors that play a central role in the constitution of two major cultural models of love: 'ideal love' and 'typical love' (p. 223). The ideal version of love is mainly characterised by the UNITY metaphor reflecting more traditional ideas about love, whereas the typical version is mainly motivated by ECONOMIC EXCHANGE, which reflects more recent ideas. Stearns (1994) pointed out that, after the Victorian period, due to the influence of business and the rational organization of large corporations, rationality was given a prominent position in all walks of life, and romantic love ceased to be considered 'as the spiritual merger of two souls into one' (as cited in Kövecses, 2010, p. 223). By 1936, marriage manuals emphasised the idea of 'rational, cooperative arrangements between men and women. Soaring ideals and spirituality were largely absent […] Companionship, not emotional intensity, was the goal' (ibid.). In other words, love relationships tended to be regarded as 'exchange arrangements in which sensible partners would make sure that no great self-sacrifice was involved' (ibid.). However, the data in this study show that the idea of love as an economic exchange was shaped and conveyed through poetry even before or during the Victorian period, not only after this period, as Stearns argued. Some poems in the sample, such as Sonnet 61 by Michael Drayton (1563-1631), "At Her Faire Hands How Haue I Grace Entreated" by Walter Davison (1581-1608), "In the Orchard" by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), and so forth have proved that the conception of love as the economic exchange has been explored for such a long time. The findings of this study show that the total numbers of the metaphorical expressions reflecting LOVE IS A COMMODITY / ECONOMIC EXCHANGE and LOVE IS A UNITY are nearly equal. It means that metaphors have been widely used in British and American poetry for a long time.
The frequencies and percentages in this part, however, only provide a general overview of love metaphors' occurrences in British and American love poems; this section, in other words, cannot help to deepen the understanding of love metaphors and poetic reworking of ordinary metaphors to bring novelty to poetry. In order to know how conceptual metaphors of love really work in poems, one needs to analyse them in their respective contexts.

Metaphor analysis
Due to the length constraint of this article, the researcher only focused on one of the most common conceptual metaphors of love. The LOVE AS A UNITY metaphor was selected for analysis not only because this is a central metaphor of love but also because it was expressed in the poems relatively diversely and impressively compared to other conceptual metaphors. Its mappings in the ontology are as follows: Source: A UNITY Target: LOVE (1) The two physical parts  the two people in love (2) the whole physical object consisting of the parts  the love relationship (3) The physical joining of the parts  the union of those in love (4) The physical fit between the parts  the compatibility between the lovers (5) The physical functions of the parts in the unity  the roles the two lovers play in the relationship (6) the complementariness of the functions of the parts  the complementariness of the roles of the lovers (adapted from Kövecses, 2000, pp. 120-121) The following example demonstrates that union is the primary goal of those in love: (1) So to engraft our hands, as yet Was all the means to make us one (John Donne, "The Ecstasy," 9-10) This is a conventional metaphor. Love is represented as two complementary parts becoming one. The two physical parts correspond to the lovers, and the physical joining of the parts is correspondent to their union. Kövecses (1986) has provided similar examples of this metaphorical expression in daily language: 'We are one', 'We're as one'.
In Inseparable by Philip Bourke Marston, this conventional metaphor LOVE IS A UNITY is also employed but expressed in a novel way: (2) My name to thine in words they'll bind Of love inseparable.
(Philip Bourke Marston, "Inseparable," 47-48) This is a typical example of what Aristotle says, 'Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies', as cited in Paludi (2012, p. xvii). Originally, 'to bind' is to tie somebody/something with rope, string, etc., so that they cannot move or are held together firmly. In this poem, the concept of love is concretised as the unity of two physical parts, the lovers' names 'in words' (47). Their names mix together and become one new name. This is the case of elaboration. The conventional metaphor LOVE IS A UNITY OF TWO COMPLEMENTARY PARTS is employed and expressed in a more specific way. What is novel here is that love is specified as a unity of two names of the lovers, not two unidentified parts as usually seen in such everyday linguistic examples as 'She is my better half', 'Theirs is a perfect match', 'We fused together', and many others. In addition to elaboration, combining is also used here when these two lines combine at least three everyday conceptual metaphors: LOVE IS CLOSENESS, LOVE IS BOND, and LOVE IS A UNITY OF TWO COMPLEMENTARY PARTS. Blended together, the conceptual metaphors reveal the idea that when two people are in love, they are no longer separate individuals; they have such a close and strong attachment to each other that gradually they become one, a new person with a new name, a new identity. Kövecses (2000) argues that the UNITY metaphor is the central metaphor structuring love. This assertion is justified with a number of metaphorical entailments of lexical elaborations on such source domains as the UNITY OF TWO COMPLEMENTARY PARTS, BOND, and CLOSENESS. This leads to the grouping of these three metaphors into one category; LOVE IS A UNITY in this study. All the examples in this section except for (1) illustrate the powerful combination of the three conventional metaphors, which is partly attributed to the novelty of the metaphorical expressions in poetry.
Another metaphorical expression in this poem is inseparable, i.e., that cannot be separated. To separate, originally, is to divide, to disjoin, to pull things apart. Love here is defined as a concrete object formed by the union of things that are unable to be kept apart. This meaning of inseparable has appeared in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionaries (online version, 2022). This leads to the conclusion that the linguistic metaphor inseparable has been conventionalised.
The unity not only happens between two lovers or their names on the physical level but also takes place on the spiritual level, as in the following poem: (3) He-though he knew not which soul spake, Because both meant, both spake the same-Might thence a new concoction take, And part far purer than he came. …………………………………… Love these mix'd souls doth mix again, And makes both one, each this and that. If we must part, Then let it be like this; Not heart on heart, Nor with the useless anguish of a kiss; But touch mine hand and say: "Until to-morrow or some other day, If we must part." (Ernest Dowson, "A Valediction," 1-7) In the vaulted way, where the passage turned To the shadowy corner that none could see, You paused for our parting, -plaintively: Though overnight had come words that burned My fond frail happiness out of me.
(Thomas Hardy, "In the Vaulted Way," 1-5) From the dear man unwillingly she must sever, Yet takes one kiss before she parts forever: (Alexander Pope, "Epistle to Miss Blount, on Her Leaving the Town, after the Coronation," 5-6) Originally, the verb 'part' is used with a concrete entity to mean to divide into parts. With the use of this verb, the abstract concept of love is conceptualised as the physical joining of two lovers, and the end of love is their separation or parting. The metaphorical meaning of 'part' in these poems has been conventionalised as it is commonly used in daily life and is one of the basic meanings of this word in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (online version, 2022).
Though unity is the primary goal of the lovers, 'the course of true love never did run smooth,' and those in love have to encounter many obstacles that prevent them from their union (Shakespeare, 1983, p. 8 The poet has called into question the very appropriateness of the ordinary everyday metaphor LOVE IS A UNITYCOMPLEMENTARYLEMETARY PARTS. He points out that love, which is represented by the unity of two lovers, is impossible because Fate has kept them apart with her 'decrees of steel' (17) that turn them into 'distant poles' (18). The poles rotate around an axis upon which 'love's whole world on us doth wheel' (19). They themselves cannot meet each other because to do so is to collapse the whole world. Union seems impossible.
According to the traditional view of love shown in the metaphor, LOVE IS A UNITY OF TWO COMPLEMENTARY PARTS; people are incomplete beings and need to be completed by another half -their other half. Being in love is finding a part of oneself that is missing, and their union serves a purpose (or purposes) in life (Kövecses, 2000, p. 121). Contrary to this viewpoint, Andrew Marvell believes that each lover is a whole itself -'two perfect loves' and their union would not happen unless heaven falls and the earth is torn by convulsion (14). In other words, their union would serve no purpose in life which is totally different from the conventional viewpoint. As to the linguistic metaphor join, if two things or groups join, they come together to form one thing or group. Love is concretised as the union of two lovers -the 'two distant poles'.
In the following stanza, Andrew Marvell continues to articulate his philosophy of love through a variety of novel metaphors: (9) As lines, so loves oblique may well Themselves in every angle greet; But ours so truly parallel, Though infinite, can never meet.
(Andrew Marvell, "The Definition of Love," 25-28) The concept of love is concretised as the union of lines. In a map made from a planispheric representation of the earth, 'parallel' lines are latitudes while 'oblique' lines are longitude or meridians, which symbolise the natures of pure love and common love (Schmitter, 1961, p. 49). In Plato's (2001) Symposium, it is claimed that there are two types of love: a common love and heavenly love. Common love is merely based on physical beauty and attraction, the sexual desires between lovers; in other words, it is based on the body, not the soul. On the other hand, heavenly love -the pure form of love -relies upon an intellectual and emotional attraction as well as a virtue rather than physical charm or wealth.
In the poem, 'Loves oblique,' are pictured by the meridians, lines of longitude, which form angles when they cross at the poles. Berthoff (1966) explained that angles are 'imperfections' and thus symbolic of earthly love or common love (p. 25). Meanwhile, lines of latitude are not only parallel and therefore infinite, but they are also represented as circles, the perfect geometric form (Schmitter & Legouis, 1961). Thus, in Marvell's philosophy of love, an ideal love cannot be concretised as a unity but non-unity. The lovers -two parallel circles -love each other spiritually but 'can never meet' physically -the two circles would never be crossed or create an angle and therefore have perfect forms and never be destroyed by imperfections (28). Moreover, Berthoff (1966) asserted that 'parallel lines, because they are absolutely correspondent, have a kind of pure identity and thus symbolic of an incorruptible love' (pp. [25][26]. In a word, Marvell has questioned the conventional way of thinking about ideal love with his novel metaphor using the image of lines and his knowledge of geometry and cartography (questioning).
In Marvell's philosophy of ideal love, it is a fact that lovers cannot unite physically; however, the union of souls is still a question.
In the next stanza, love is defined in astronomical and astrological metaphors: (10) Therefore the love which us doth bind, But Fate so enviously debars, Is the conjunction of the mind, And opposition of the stars.
(Andrew Marvell, "The Definition of Love," 29-32) 'Conjunction' (31) and 'opposition' (32) are astronomical and astrological terms. 'Conjunction' means 'an alignment of two planets or other celestial objects so that they appear to be in the same, or nearly the same, place in the sky' (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, online version, 2022). 'Conjunction of the mind,' therefore, refers to the spiritual connection between the lovers though they are physically separated (31). The concept of love, in this case, is conceptualised as the unity of their minds; however, even this unity has some limitations because according to the definition of the word 'conjunction', the planets which represent the minds just appear to be in the same place in a line. Thus, it seems very hard for lovers to unite and become one, even only spiritually.
'Opposition' is 'the apparent position of two celestial objects that are directly opposite each other in the sky, especially the position of a planet when opposite the sun' (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, online version, 2022). It is clear that the lovers are physically apart, whether compared to the 'poles' (18) or the 'stars' (32). They are, in fact, star-crossed lovers. Their love may be 'perfect' (14) from Marvell's viewpoint, but they could not be happy (14). In this poem, Andrew Marvell has made a structured argument attempting to define the nature of his own personal love. Some may disagree with his view, but no one can deny the unconventionality of the variety of metaphorical expressions he has created mostly by (unconsciously) applying the technique of questioning the everyday metaphor of love.

Summary of key findings
The findings of this study reveal that the metaphor LOVE IS SPORT/WAR is employed the most frequently by the poets in British and American love poetry. The metaphor LOVE IS A UNITY representing ideal love, and LOVE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY / AN ECONOMIC EXCHANGE representing typical love also make up a large number of the total of metaphorical expressions found in this study. This study also discusses how the poets have made use of conventional conceptual metaphors to create poetic metaphors, including both conventionalised and novel metaphorical expressions, with the case study of the LOVE-AS-A-UNITY metaphor and their poetic instances. Thanks to the extending, elaboration, and combining techniques, the poets have expressively demonstrated that love is the physical and/or spiritual union of two lovers. In other words, people are incomplete beings and need to be completed by another half -their other half. However, even this deep-seated belief is called into question when a poet strongly recommends that those in love cannot and should not be united. With the technique of questioning, the poet has argued that each lover is already a whole itself -'two perfect loves', and their union could lead to imperfection and impurity that will finally destroy their love.

Limitations of the study
Like any other research, this study is not without limitations. Firstly, the data set of the study is limited. The number of 232 British and American love poems may not be large enough to make a generalisation of which conceptual metaphors of love are employed in British and American love poems. Secondly, this study does not establish specific criteria for the evaluation of the conventionality and unconventionality of love metaphors in poetry. Since the level of the conventionality of a metaphor is a continuum rather than binary, and its position on the continuum can vary due to the community's frequent use of them in different periods of time, a conventional metaphor in the present could be novel in the past and vice versa. Thus, the discussion of the conventionality of some metaphorical expressions in this study is only appropriate to some extent. Instead of analysing conventional metaphors, the study focuses on the analysis of potentially novel metaphors, which can be identified by the poet's deliberate use of metaphors and the techniques they employ to create novelty from ordinary language.

Implication for future research
Since 'metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language, but in thought and action' (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 3), learners of a foreign language should have some knowledge of that language's conceptual metaphors to improve their understanding of the foreign language as well as familiarise themselves with the different culture, a different mode of thought and different perception of the world that can be expressed through metaphors. To put it simply, the proper understanding of conceptual metaphors can enhance the learning of a foreign language. Throughout this study, one can find that the knowledge of conceptual metaphors of love in the English language can help one to understand British and American love poems. Because of such an important role of conceptual metaphors in learning English in a particular or foreign language in general, it would be practical if the study of conceptual metaphors could move from theory to practice, for example, by proposing ways of teaching and learning English metaphors in EFL class or how to interpret literary language via conceptual metaphors. Besides, learning the techniques that poets usually adopt to create novel metaphors from ordinary metaphors can help students to understand the intentions of the poets when choosing a particular method to convey their message to the reader. In order to evaluate the feasibility of teaching conceptual metaphors in literature, it is necessary to do research on the effectiveness of employing conceptual metaphors to understand literary metaphors.
This study has just focused on a minor part of the whole theory of conceptual metaphors. There are many other aspects of conceptual metaphors that need to be investigated in further research. It is hoped that this study will be a small contribution not only to the metaphor theory but also to the application of this theory to the understanding of literary language.
Funding: This research received no external funding.