ANGER, LOVE and SADNESS revisited

Differences in Emotion Metaphors between Experts and Laypersons in the Genre Psychology Guides

Résumé

Metaphors conceptualizing emotions (Kövecses 1986, 1988, 1990, 1995, 2000) represent a well researched area in the framework of a cognitive theory of metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 1999). The present paper investigates from an onomasiological (Jäkel 1997, 2003) point of view metaphors in the target domains of ANGER, LOVE and SADNESS. The study is based on an English corpus of psychology guides freely available on the internet. The main aim is to tackle prevailing metaphorical models underlying the discourse between experts and laypersons in order to shed light on the ubiquity of conceptual metaphors. The paper, furthermore, attempts to deal with the implications of expert metaphors and their rhetorical surplus in the context of a psychological counseling discourse.