METAPHORICAL LANGUAGE OF EMOTION IN COCA: A CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR ANALYSIS
Keywords:
American English, COCA, Conceptual Metaphor, Corpus Linguistics, Emotions, Metaphor AnalysisAbstract
This study examines how metaphorical language facilitates the gestation of feelings. By utilizing the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), this study examines language in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). It focuses on the five primary emotions: love, fear, anger, sadness, and happiness. This research explores and examines the most prominent metaphorical structures. It shapes the expressions of these emotions in American English. By collecting data from various genres, a total of 500 metaphorical illustrations is manually extracted. This data was extracted from COCA by using targeted keywords in searches. The data for this study includes fiction, spoken, news, and other academic texts. By using spreadsheet software, the data coding process has occurred. The reliability process is done by inter- coder agreement. This analysis repeatedly reveals certain conceptual metaphors, such as "Happiness is up," "Anger is heat," and "Fear is darkness." It expresses a powerful grounding to represent experiences. The use of metaphor was more productive in fiction and speech. The variations in the genre were also evidence of it. The findings of the analysis show that metaphor has a significant role in American English in shaping its linguistic representation and emotional cognition. To understand discourse on emotions, there is much contribution of this analysis to it. This study provides some suggestions for education and cross-cultural communication. It also enlightens the importance of corpus-based theories in this research on metaphors.
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