Cognitive Metaphors of Love in English and Colloquial Cairene Arabic: A Corpus-Based Contrastive Study

Document Type : Original Article

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Abstract

Metaphor was traditionally seen as a figure of speech and ornamental device
employed in literary works. With the advent of Cognitive Linguistics, it started to be
studied as a cognitive tool, shaping our thought, language, and action (Lakoff &
Johnson, 1980; Kövecses, 2002). They assert that metaphors are pervasive in daily
communication and used by native speakers to express abstract concepts such as
emotions. The emotion under study is love. “Love” seems to be the most metaphorical
emotion among the other types of basic human emotions (Kövecses, 2004). The
present study aims to investigate and compare how metaphorical expressions of love
are employed in two unrelated languages: English and Colloquial Cairene Arabic.
The findings of this comparative analysis show that English and Colloquial Cairene
Arabic share many metaphorical expressions of love that are based on common
bodily experiences such as LOVE IS A FLUID/ AIR IN A CONTAINER, LOVE IS UP,
and LOVE IS SICKNESS. Consequently, the similarities can be attributed to the
universality of conceptual metaphors. However, there are some differences observed
and attributed to cultural differences

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