=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1347/paper37
|storemode=property
|title=Love in the time of the corpora. Preferential conceptualizations of love in world Englishes
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1347/paper37.pdf
|volume=Vol-1347
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/networds/Diaz-Vera15
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==Love in the time of the corpora. Preferential conceptualizations of love in world Englishes==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1347/paper37.pdf
Love in the time of the corpora.
Preferential conceptualizations of love in world Englishes
Javier E. Díaz-Vera
Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha
Departamento de Filología Moderna
13071 Ciudad Real, Spain
JavierEnrique.Diaz@uclm.es
Davies, 2013), I will demonstrate here that the
1 Introduction varieties of world English under scrutiny show
significant differences in the conventional use of
According to Gibbs (2006) “there is still insuffi- figurative expressions. Thereafter, these findings
cient attention paid to the exact ways that cul- will be related to the cultural background of each
tural beliefs shape both people’s understandings speech community.
of their embodied experiences and the conceptual
metaphors which arise from these experiences.” 2 Research questions
For example, the conceptual metaphor EMOTIONS
ARE FLUIDS WITHIN THE BODY seems to underlie Through the fine-grained analysis of the data
a wide variety of metaphorical expressions used described below, in this paper I will address the
by speakers from different linguistic and cultural following research questions: (a) How do speak-
areas all around the world. The geographical dis- ers from different parts of the English-speaking
tribution of these metaphorical expressions is so world conceptualize love? (b) What do these
general that numerous researchers have pro- conceptual preferences tell us about these Eng-
claimed their universal character, in so far as lish varieties from a sociolinguistic perspective?
they are based on our common, embodied ex- (c) To what extent can social and cultural factors
perience (Kövecses, 2000). However, the appar- account for these processes of conceptual varia-
ent ubiquity of this metaphorical mapping in tion?
contemporary emotional expressions does not
necessarily imply that speakers from different 3 Methodology
linguistic or dialectal areas understand (or, of
As indicated above, the data used for this analy-
course, experience) emotions in the same identi-
sis has been collected using the GloWbE, which
cal way (Díaz-Vera and Caballero, 2013).
contains 1,9 billion words. This corpus is illus-
In this paper, I deal with the analysis of con-
trative of the different ways English is used by
ceptual variation in the metaphorical construc-
speakers living in 20 different countries. The
tion of love in a group of dialectal varieties of
texts included in this corpus represent the genre
contemporary English. Differently to earlier
‘personal blog’ (Miller and Shepherd, 2009);
studies of love metaphors in English (Quinn
these texts come from 1,8 million web-pages
1987; Baxter, 1992; Kövecses, 1998), my main
compiled in December 2012 using a highly
aim here is to analyze the socio-cultural dynam-
automated production process.
ics of conceptual metaphor through the recon-
The present study is limited to the analysis of
struction of the preferential conceptualizations of
data extracted from four different national sec-
love by speakers of a series of dialectal varieties
tions within the GloWbE, illustrating two very
of the same language, as spoken in culturally
different sociolinguistic contexts: the inner circle
diverse regions. Through the analysis of the
(i.e. countries where English is the primary lan-
socio-cultural dynamics of conceptual metaphor,
guage) and the outer circle (i.e. countries where
I intend to contribute to the field of Cognitive
English plays an important ‘second language’
Dialectology by addressing the question whether
role in a multilingual setting; Kachru, 1988). The
cultural and conceptual differences can be de-
four sub-corpora under scrutiny here are UK (in-
tected language-internally, not just across lan-
ner circle), India, Pakistan and Nigeria (outer
guages.
circle). In doing so, I will try to describe the dif-
Based on textual data extracted from the Cor-
ferent ways speakers from radically different cul-
pus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE;
tural, social and religious regions conceptualize
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
161
love. I am especially interested in determining • Space-related source domains: The first
whether, and to what extent, these extra- category includes very general spatial
linguistic factors can account for the conceptual metaphors, such as LOVE IS A BOUNDED
differences illustrated in my quantitative analysis REGION and LOVE IS A CONTAINER.
of love expressions. • Force-related source domains: The sec-
In order to identify the metaphors for love ond category includes most of the source
used in the corpus, I have adopted the meta- domains typically used in the conceptu-
phorical pattern analysis (MPA) as proposed by alization of emotions in English, such as
Stefanowitsch (2004, 2006). This method, which EMOTION IS A NATURAL FORCE, EMO-
takes the target domains of the figurative expres- TIONS IS INSANITY or EMOTION IS FIRE.
sions as the starting-point of the analysis, con- • Relationship-related source domains:
sists in choosing one or more lexical ítems refer- The third category includes a set of spe-
ring to the target domain under scrutiny and ex- cific source domains for human relation-
tracting a significative sample of their occur- ships in English, such as HUMAN RELA-
rences in the corpus. To start with, I have located TIONSHIP IS A PLANT, HUMAN RELA-
all the instances of the noun love in the four cor- TIONSHIP IS A JOURNEY or HUMAN RE-
pus sections (GB, IN, PK and NG). As can be LATIONSHIP IS ECONOMIC EXCHANGE.
seen in Table 1, the absolute and relative distri-
butions of this noun are highly irregular. For ex- Based on the above classification of specific
ample, whereas only the GB section of the cor- source domains, I will assume here that speakers
pus scores a per mil frequency for this noun be- from different parts of the English-speaking
low the general GloWbE corpus average (217.98 world construe love via conceptual metaphor in
‰), the IN and the NG sections show much different ways. Through the quantitative and
higher frequency rates. qualitative analysis of the set of figurative love
expressions collected in the GloWbE corpus, it is
SECTION FREQ PER MIL possible to determine the speakers’ relative pref-
GB 69392 179.02 erences to talk about love as a state, as an emo-
IN 26355 273.30 tion or as a relationship. Through the compara-
PK 13114 255.30 tive analysis of the figurative expressions used in
NG 12179 285.58 the four corpus sections under scrutiny, I will try
GloWbE 410815 217.98 to illustrate how these conceptual preferences
might be embedded in different cultural back-
Table 1: Absolute and relative frequencies of the noun grounds. The results from each corpus section
‘love’ in four corpus sections.
are discussed in turn in the following sections.
In order to be able to compare the four corpus
sections with each other, I have selected and ana-
4 Findings and discussion
lyzed only a random sample of 1,000 love ex-
pressions in each sub-corpus (4,000 expressions As indicated above, the data used for this analy-
in all). After collecting 1,000 instances incorpo- sis has been collected using the GloWbE. The
rating the key term love in each corpus section, I texts included in this corpus illustrate the genre
extracted the expressions where the emotion was ‘personal blog’; furthermore, as indicated above,
discussed in metaphoric terms, and sorted them these texts where compiled during a relatively
according to the general source domains motivat- short period of time (December 2012). Conse-
ing the figurative expression (e.g., NUTRIENT, quently, they are highly homogeneous not only
JOURNEY, UNITY OF PARTS, FIRE, etc.). These in terms of their genre, but also in terms of their
were then further tagged paying attention to the date of production.
more specific source and target domains in- As described above, in the first stage of this
volved in the metaphors (e.g., LOVE IS MADNESS research I have located all the instances of the
within the more general metaphor LOVE IS IN- noun love in four corpus sections (GB, IN, PK
SANITY scenario). Thereafter, the resulting con- and NG). Thereafter, I have classified these ex-
ceptual metaphors were further classified into pressions into two large groups: literal and figu-
three broad classes on the basis of their source- rative expressions. According to this part of my
domain orientation (Kövecses, 2000: 110): analysis (see Table 2), the four corpus sections
analyzed here show relatively similar rates of
162
literal and non-literal love expressions. Whereas deeply is frequently used in these examples in
the highest amount of figurative expressions is order to indicate intensity of the emotion. The
found in the GB section (43.6%), the lowest notion of change is viewed as motion into (as in
number of metaphors corresponds to the PK sec- ‘I am falling in love’) or out of (as in ‘I am fal-
tion (34.7%). ling out of love’) this emotional state, conceptu-
alized as a container. Within this group, I have
SECTION LITERAL FIGURATIVE found several expressions where love is concep-
GB 564 436 tualized as a nest, and lovers are birds in the nest.
IN 568 432 According to the GB data, there is a strong
PK 653 347 preference among British speakers to use the
NG 596 404 noun love in expressions conveying the meta-
TOTAL 2,381 1,619 phors LOVE IS A BOUNDED REGION (83 instances)
and LOVE IS A CONTAINER (94 occurrences). The
Table 2: Distribution of literal and figurative ‘love’ relative frequency of these metaphors is much
expressions in four corpus sections. lower in the other three corpus sections. As can
be seen in Table 4, only in the NG section we
However, as can be seen in Table 3, major dif- find a similar relative frequency of the metaphor
ferences arise if we compare the relative fre- LOVE IS A CONTAINER.
quencies of the three broad categories of source
domain described above (i.e. space, force and
SECTION REGION CONTAINER TOTAL
relationship). In spite of the very similar total
GB 83 94 177
number of instances of each category, the geo-
IN 65 75 140
graphical distribution of these occurrences
PK 42 66 108
clearly points towards a preference for force-
NG 68 96 164
related source domains in the PK (42.0%) and in
TOTAL 258 331 589
the IN (37.0%) sections, in clear contrast with
the neat preference for space-related source do- Table 4: Distribution of space-related source domains
mains in GB and NG (41.0%). in four corpus sections.
SECTION SPACE FORCE RELATION
GB 177 129 130
4.2 Force-related metaphorical patterns
IN 140 159 133
PK 108 146 93 Force-related metaphors are frequently used by
NG 164 142 98 English speakers in order to express their emo-
TOTAL 589 576 454 tions. According to this view, love can be con-
ceptualized as a NATURAL/PHYSICAL FORCE, as
Table 3: Distribution of space-, force- and relation- an OPPONENT IN A STRUGGLE, or as FIRE/LIGHT,
ship-related source domains in four corpus sections. among others. Broadly speaking, these concep-
tual mappings indicate that the person in love is
Furthermore, according to the data presented
passively affected by a force (either external or,
above, whereas relationship-related source do-
less frequently, internal), which produces either
mains occupy a secondary position in the four
resistance or loss of control (or both). Preference
corpus sections, their relative frequency is espe-
for these metaphorical expressions points to-
cially low in the PK (27.0%) and in the NG
wards a stronger presence of the passionate ideal
(24.0%) sections.
of love that characterizes the earliest stages of
the relationship (Luhmann 1996; Schröder 2009:
4.1 Space-related metaphorical patterns 105).
Within this group, I have analyzed the distri-
Space-related metaphorical patterns represent the bution of 17 love metaphors in the four corpus
most general and neutral option as regards the sections. The results of this part of the analysis
expression of states and emotions. According to can be seen in Table 5.
these EVENT STRUCTURE metaphors, states in
general are conceptualized as physical locations
or bounded regions in space. Speakers use sen-
tences such as ‘I am in love’ to indicate, in a very
neutral way, their emotional state. The adverb
163
SOURCE GB IN PK NG chines) or to interactive cooperation (as in, for
FLUID/CONTAINER 32 8 45 11 example, economic exchange, hidden object or
INSANITY 25 18 21 8 journey). The overall distribution of the 7 con-
NATURAL FORCE 15 15 14 16 ceptual mappings included within this category
OPPONENT 14 12 4 3 in each corpus section (Table 3 above) indicates
WAR 14 10 4 4 that relationship-related source domains moti-
FIRE/LIGHT 10 12 20 12 vate a relative low number of metaphorical ex-
NUTRIENT 7 18 8 15 pressions in the four sections. This is especially
HIGH/RAPTURE 7 9 4 6 true in the case of the PK (27.7%) and the NG
HEALING 3 2 3 1 (24.0%) sections, both of which yield a high
SPORT/GAME 2 6 2 8 number of examples of force-related mappings.
BOND - 8 5 5
DEITY - 19 3 22 SOURCE GB IN PK NG
ART/SKILL - 5 3 6 VALUABLE OBJECT 43 36 19 11
CAPTIVE ANIMAL - 8 9 8 LIVING ORGANISM 25 9 9 8
WARMTH - - - 4 HIDDEN OBJECT 24 26 13 27
MAGIC - - - 5 ECON. EXCHANGE 20 36 34 32
AIR - - - 1 UNION OF PARTS 9 8 4 5
TOTAL 129 159 146 142 JOURNEY 6 11 9 9
BUILDING 3 7 5 6
Table 5: Distribution of force-related source domains TOTAL 130 133 93 98
in four corpus sections.
Table 6: Distribution of relationship-related source
domains in four corpus sections.
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 5 Conclusion
of examples in this corpus section portray love The findings of my research of love expressions
either as a SUBSTANCE INSIDE THE EXPERIENCER in a variety of world Englishes shows that there
(32 instances) or as INSANITY (25 instances) and, exist important differences in the conceptualiza-
hence, are compatible with views of other emo- tion of love, from the more passional force-
tions (such as anger or happiness; Kövecses related expressions to the more rational relation-
2000). The other three sections yield not only a ship-related ones. Based on this distinction, I
higher frequency rate of force-related metaphors have analyzed the distribution of each set of
(IN: 259; PK: 146; NG: 142), but also a more metaphors in four GloWbE sections. Whereas
varied articulation in terms of source domains overseas Englishes show a preference for force-
within this category. In fact, many of the expres- based mappings, GB English is relatively neutral
sions analysed here instantiate the metaphors (as in the general LOVE IS A STATE metaphor).
LOVE IS A DEITY, LOVE IS WARMTH and LOVE IS
Further, whereas the idea of romantic love (em-
MAGIC, all of which are completely absent from
phasis on the collaborative relationship between
the part of the GB section analysed here. two partners, typically Western love ideal; No-
vak 2013) is more frequent in the GB section, the
4.3 Relationship-related metaphorical pat- other corpus sections show a greater tendency to
terns talk about love as an emotion, accentuating the
moment rather than the future.
This category includes those metaphorical ex-
pressions where love is portrayed by speakers as
a romantic relationship between two individuals, Acknowledgments
who cooperate with each other in order to reach a
common goal. These metaphors are frequently This research has been supported by the Re-
found in reference to other types of human rela- gional Government of Castilla-La Mancha (“The
tionship (such as friendship), and are normally Expression of basic Emotions in English: Dia-
related either to the handling of complex physi- chronic and Sociolinguistic Variation” PPII-
cal objects (such as plants, buildings or ma- 2014-015-A).
164
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