Copyright © by the paper's authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes. In Vito Pirrelli, Claudia Marzi, Marcello Ferro (eds.): Word Structure and Word Usage. Proceedings of the NetWordS Final Conference, Pisa, March 30-April 1, 2015, published at http://ceur-ws.org
According to Gibbs (2006) “there is still
insufficient attention paid to the exact ways that
cultural beliefs shape both people’s understandings
of their embodied experiences and the conceptual
metaphors which arise from these experiences.”
For example, the conceptual metaphor EMOTIONS
ARE FLUIDS WITHIN THE BODY seems to underlie
a wide variety of metaphorical expressions used
by speakers from different linguistic and cultural
areas all around the world. The geographical
distribution of these metaphorical expressions is so
general that numerous researchers have
proclaimed their universal character, in so far as
they are based on our common, embodied
experience (Kövecses, 2000). However, the
apparent ubiquity of this metaphorical mapping in
contemporary emotional expressions does not
necessarily imply that speakers from different
linguistic or dialectal areas understand (or, of
course, experience) emotions in the same
identical way
In this paper, I deal with the analysis of
conceptual variation in the metaphorical
construction of love in a group of dialectal varieties of
contemporary English. Differently to earlier
studies of love metaphors in English
Based on textual data extracted from the
Corpus of Global Web-Based English
Through the fine-grained analysis of the data described below, in this paper I will address the following research questions: (a) How do speakers from different parts of the English-speaking world conceptualize love? (b) What do these conceptual preferences tell us about these English varieties from a sociolinguistic perspective? (c) To what extent can social and cultural factors account for these processes of conceptual variation? 3
As indicated above, the data used for this
analysis has been collected using the GloWbE, which
contains 1,9 billion words. This corpus is
illustrative of the different ways English is used by
speakers living in 20 different countries. The
texts included in this corpus represent the genre
‘personal blog’
The present study is limited to the analysis of
data extracted from four different national
sections within the GloWbE, illustrating two very
different sociolinguistic contexts: the inner circle
(i.e. countries where English is the primary
language) and the outer circle
In order to identify the metaphors for love used in the corpus, I have adopted the metaphorical pattern analysis (MPA) as proposed by Stefanowitsch (2004, 2006). This method, which takes the target domains of the figurative expressions as the starting-point of the analysis, consists in choosing one or more lexical ítems referring to the target domain under scrutiny and extracting a significative sample of their occurrences in the corpus. To start with, I have located all the instances of the noun love in the four corpus sections (GB, IN, PK and NG). As can be seen in Table 1, the absolute and relative distributions of this noun are highly irregular. For example, whereas only the GB section of the corpus scores a per mil frequency for this noun below the general GloWbE corpus average (217.98 ‰), the IN and the NG sections show much higher frequency rates.
SECTION GB IN PK NG GloWbE
In order to be able to compare the four corpus sections with each other, I have selected and analyzed only a random sample of 1,000 love expressions in each sub-corpus (4,000 expressions in all). After collecting 1,000 instances incorporating the key term love in each corpus section, I extracted the expressions where the emotion was discussed in metaphoric terms, and sorted them according to the general source domains motivating the figurative expression (e.g., NUTRIENT, JOURNEY, UNITY OF PARTS, FIRE, etc.). These were then further tagged paying attention to the more specific source and target domains involved in the metaphors (e.g., LOVE IS MADNESS within the more general metaphor LOVE IS INSANITY scenario). Thereafter, the resulting conceptual metaphors were further classified into three broad classes on the basis of their sourcedomain orientation (Kövecses, 2000: 110): • • •
Space-related source domains: The first category includes very general spatial metaphors, such as LOVE IS A BOUNDED REGION and LOVE IS A CONTAINER.
Force-related source domains: The second category includes most of the source domains typically used in the conceptualization of emotions in English, such as EMOTION IS A NATURAL FORCE, EMOTIONS IS INSANITY or EMOTION IS FIRE.
Relationship-related source domains: The third category includes a set of specific source domains for human relationships in English, such as HUMAN RELATIONSHIP IS A PLANT, HUMAN RELATIONSHIP IS A JOURNEY or HUMAN RELATIONSHIP IS ECONOMIC EXCHANGE.
Based on the above classification of specific source domains, I will assume here that speakers from different parts of the English-speaking world construe love via conceptual metaphor in different ways. Through the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the set of figurative love expressions collected in the GloWbE corpus, it is possible to determine the speakers’ relative preferences to talk about love as a state, as an emotion or as a relationship. Through the comparative analysis of the figurative expressions used in the four corpus sections under scrutiny, I will try to illustrate how these conceptual preferences might be embedded in different cultural backgrounds. The results from each corpus section are discussed in turn in the following sections. 4
As indicated above, the data used for this analysis has been collected using the GloWbE. The texts included in this corpus illustrate the genre ‘personal blog’; furthermore, as indicated above, these texts where compiled during a relatively short period of time (December 2012). Consequently, they are highly homogeneous not only in terms of their genre, but also in terms of their date of production.
As described above, in the first stage of this research I have located all the instances of the noun love in four corpus sections (GB, IN, PK and NG). Thereafter, I have classified these expressions into two large groups: literal and figurative expressions. According to this part of my analysis (see Table 2), the four corpus sections analyzed here show relatively similar rates of literal and non-literal love expressions. Whereas the highest amount of figurative expressions is found in the GB section (43.6%), the lowest number of metaphors corresponds to the PK section (34.7%).
SECTION GB IN PK NG TOTAL
However, as can be seen in Table 3, major differences arise if we compare the relative frequencies of the three broad categories of source domain described above (i.e. space, force and relationship). In spite of the very similar total number of instances of each category, the geographical distribution of these occurrences clearly points towards a preference for forcerelated source domains in the PK (42.0%) and in the IN (37.0%) sections, in clear contrast with the neat preference for space-related source domains in GB and NG (41.0%).
SECTION GB IN PK NG TOTAL
Furthermore, according to the data presented above, whereas relationship-related source domains occupy a secondary position in the four corpus sections, their relative frequency is especially low in the PK (27.0%) and in the NG (24.0%) sections. 4.1
Space-related metaphorical patterns represent the most general and neutral option as regards the expression of states and emotions. According to these EVENT STRUCTURE metaphors, states in general are conceptualized as physical locations or bounded regions in space. Speakers use sentences such as ‘I am in love’ to indicate, in a very neutral way, their emotional state. The adverb deeply is frequently used in these examples in order to indicate intensity of the emotion. The notion of change is viewed as motion into (as in ‘I am falling in love’) or out of (as in ‘I am falling out of love’) this emotional state, conceptualized as a container. Within this group, I have found several expressions where love is conceptualized as a nest, and lovers are birds in the nest.
According to the GB data, there is a strong preference among British speakers to use the noun love in expressions conveying the metaphors LOVE IS A BOUNDED REGION (83 instances) and LOVE IS A CONTAINER (94 occurrences). The relative frequency of these metaphors is much lower in the other three corpus sections. As can be seen in Table 4, only in the NG section we find a similar relative frequency of the metaphor LOVE IS A CONTAINER.
SECTION
GB
IN
PK
NG
TOTAL
Force-related metaphors are frequently used by
English speakers in order to express their
emotions. According to this view, love can be
conceptualized as a NATURAL/PHYSICAL FORCE, as
an OPPONENT IN A STRUGGLE, or as FIRE/LIGHT,
among others. Broadly speaking, these
conceptual mappings indicate that the person in love is
passively affected by a force (either external or,
less frequently, internal), which produces either
resistance or loss of control (or both). Preference
for these metaphorical expressions points
towards a stronger presence of the passionate ideal
of love that characterizes the earliest stages of
the relationship
Within this group, I have analyzed the distribution of 17 love metaphors in the four corpus sections. The results of this part of the analysis can be seen in Table 5. SOURCE FLUID/CONTAINER INSANITY NATURAL FORCE OPPONENT WAR FIRE/LIGHT NUTRIENT HIGH/RAPTURE HEALING SPORT/GAME BOND DEITY ART/SKILL CAPTIVE ANIMAL WARMTH MAGIC AIR TOTAL
GB 32 25 15 14 14 10 7 7 3 2 129
8 18 15 12 10 12 18 9 2 6 8 19 5 8 159
According to the data described in Table 3 and in Table 5, the GB section yields the lowest number of instances in which love is portrayed as a force (129 instances in all). The largest number of examples in this corpus section portray love either as a SUBSTANCE INSIDE THE EXPERIENCER (32 instances) or as INSANITY (25 instances) and, hence, are compatible with views of other emotions (such as anger or happiness; Kövecses 2000). The other three sections yield not only a higher frequency rate of force-related metaphors (IN: 259; PK: 146; NG: 142), but also a more varied articulation in terms of source domains within this category. In fact, many of the expressions analysed here instantiate the metaphors LOVE IS A DEITY, LOVE IS WARMTH and LOVE IS MAGIC, all of which are completely absent from the part of the GB section analysed here. 4.3
This category includes those metaphorical
expressions where love is portrayed by speakers as
a romantic relationship between two individuals,
who cooperate with each other in order to reach a
common goal. These metaphors are frequently
found in reference to other types of human
relationship (such as friendship), and are normally
related either to the handling of complex
physical objects (such as plants, buildings or
machines) or to interactive cooperation (as in, for
example, economic exchange, hidden object or
journey). The overall distribution of the 7
conceptual mappings included within this category
in each corpus section (Table 3 above) indicates
that relationship-related source domains
motivate a relative low number of metaphorical
expressions in the four sections. This is especially
true in the case of the PK (27.7%) and the NG
(24.0%) sections, both of which yield a high
number of examples of force-related mappings.
SOURCE
VALUABLE OBJECT
LIVING ORGANISM
HIDDEN OBJECT
ECON. EXCHANGE
UNION OF PARTS
JOURNEY
BUILDING
TOTAL
The findings of my research of love expressions
in a variety of world Englishes shows that there
exist important differences in the
conceptualization of love, from the more passional
forcerelated expressions to the more rational
relationship-related ones. Based on this distinction, I
have analyzed the distribution of each set of
metaphors in four GloWbE sections. Whereas
overseas Englishes show a preference for
forcebased mappings, GB English is relatively neutral
(as in the general LOVE IS A STATE metaphor).
Further, whereas the idea of romantic love
This research has been supported by the Regional Government of Castilla-La Mancha (“The Expression of basic Emotions in English: Diachronic and Sociolinguistic Variation” PPII2014-015-A).