Kövecses Zoltan. Metaphor and emotion. Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. — 224 p. — (Studies in emotion and social interaction). — ISBN: 0-511-03637-X (eBook).This book is about metaphors of emotion, conceptualization of emotion and cultural variation in that conceptualization. Many researchers claim that emotions arise either from human biology (i.e., biological reductionism) or as products of culture (i.e., social constructionism). Are human emotions best characterized as biological, psychological, or cultural entities? Zoltan Kovecses demonstrates how cultural aspects, metaphorical language, and human physiology are part of an integrated system. This book challenges the simplistic division between the body and culture by stressing how human emotions are to a large extent "constructed" from individuals' embodied experiences in different cultural settings. Emotion concepts are composed of a number of parts: metaphors, metonymies, related concepts, and cultural models (see, for example, Kövecses, 1986, 1988, 1990). Given these parts, a number of questions arise, including the following: (1) What are emotion metaphors, metonymies, related concepts, and how are they all related to each other? (2) Is there a master metaphor for the emotions? (3) Are emotion metaphors unique to the emotions? (4) How do emotion metaphors differ from metaphors for other related domains, such as human relationships? (5) What is the precise role of metaphors, metonymies, and related concepts in the cognitive construction of particular emotion concepts? (6) Are emotion metaphors universal?