Conceptual Metaphors of Emotion in English and Colloquial Cairene Arabic: A Contrastive Study

Abstract

Metaphor was traditionally seen as a figure of speech and decorative device employed in literary works. With the advent of Cognitive Linguistics, the metaphor started to be studied as a cognitive tool, shaping our thought, language, and action (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Kövecses, 2010). They assert that metaphors are pervasive in daily communication and used by native speakers to express abstract concepts such as emotions. The emotions under investigation are happiness, love, sadness, anger, and fear. The present study aims at investigating and comparing how metaphorical expressions of these five emotions are employed in two unrelated dialects: American English and Colloquial Cairene Arabic. Moreover, the expressions are taken from corpora. The study is conducted through two basic phases of comparison. At the first phase, the expressions are categorized under their source and target domains. At the second phase, they are compared according to their conceptual metaphors and literal meanings. Then three patterns are identified in this phase: totally the same, partially the same, and totally different. The findings of the comparative analysis show that American English and Colloquial Cairene Arabic share many metaphorical expressions of these emotions that are based on common bodily experiences such as HAPPINESS IS UP, SADNESS IS DOWN, ANGER IS A FLUID IN A CONTAINER, etc. Consequently, the dominant pattern is the pattern of “totally the same”. The similarities can be attributed to the universality of cognitive metaphors. However, there are some differences observed and attributed to cultural differences.