A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF SOME LAKOFF AND JOHNSON'S METAPHORICAL EXPRESSIONS FROM LOVE IS A JOURNEY METAPHOR AND THEIR CROATIAN EQUIVALENT

A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF SOME LAKOFF AND JOHNSON'S METAPHORICAL EXPRESSIONS FROM LOVE IS A JOURNEY METAPHOR AND THEIR CROATIAN EQUIVALENT

Božić Lenard, Dragana

Many people would argue that metaphor is a characteristic of extraordinary rather than ordinary speech. However, Lakoff and Johnson (2003: 8) strongly disagree with that claiming that our conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical in its nature. Moreover, metaphors do not only shape our communication but the way we think or act. Occurring primarily in thought, metaphors are grounded in culture; hence serve as a valuable resource for a cross-cultural linguistic research. This paper aims at studying similarities and differences of English and Croatian perspective of love in terms of a journey. For the purpose of this research, Lakoff and Johnson’s 8 metaphorical linguistic expressions of LOVE IS A JOURNEY conceptual metaphor from Metaphors we live by (2003) were used in a survey and offered to 28 native Croatian speakers and former English language and literature students majoring in the field of translation studies being asked to provide their Croatian equivalents. After the conducted survey, the research has shown the great similarity of metaphorical linguistic expressions in English and Croatian language. However, it has shown that, in order to maintain the same effect, sometimes different tenses or voice perspectives have to be used. Furthermore, it has shown the existence of the same metaphorical expression in the respective languages, yet used within different conceptual metaphor. Moreover, the research has shown not only interliguistic but also intralinguistic differences, i.e. synonimical options Croatian language has due to a close geographical, historical, cultural and linguistic contact with Serbian language. In conclusion, it has been proved that even though two languages might share the same conceptual metaphor, the actual linguistic expressions underlying the conceptual metaphor may be coined on the basis of cultural-ideological differences, thus referring to metaphors being both cognitive as well as cultural entities. Keywords: metaphorical expressions, love, journey, cross-cultural linguistic comparison

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2014

3402