Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

This historical paper has drawn inspiration from interdisciplinarity as it deals with the use of language in the urban morphogenesis of Baguio City in the Province of Benguet, Northern Luzon, Philippines, which is an American architectural wonder of the twentieth-century. The study examines how conceptual / cognitive / embodied metaphors extracted from written primary texts since the colonial period until today are an important frame through which people make meaning of the city’s history from its creation and popularization as a mountain (health/summer) resort to its development as a postcolonial city. Utilizing the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), this paper will survey some narrative configurations of the past from the snippets and vignettes of textual metaphorical extracts, including interpretive filters / representations of Baguio City that have already set up nest and become fixed points of reference in the meaning-constructions of the city. Textual analysis of the historical evidence was drawn from the various conceptual metaphors coined in this study, such as the following: nature metaphors, geographic metaphors, orientational metaphors, functional metaphors, mythic or fantastic metaphors, “engine of growth” metaphors, visual metaphors, and mixed metaphors.