Orð og tunga - 08.07.2019, Page 68

56 Orð og tunga
(3) a. His pent-up anger welled up inside him.
b. I suppressed my anger.
c. When I told him, he just exploded.
d. I gave vent to my anger. (Kövecses 1990:54−58)
When a hot fl uid starts to boil, it rises and creates pressure on the
container, and when the pressure becomes too high, the container ex-
plodes. Before the explosion, it is sometimes possible to release the
fl uid from the container. Such knowledge about hot fl uids is applied
to anger, and the examples in (3) are based on that understanding.
That is, (3a) shows that increasing anger is represented by the image
of a rising fl uid (when the intensity of anger increases, the fluid
rises), and as the anger becomes more intense, the pressure on the
container rises, as shown in (3b) (intense anger produces pressure
on the container). In (3c), the explosion of the container indicates
that the anger has become too intense (when anger becomes too in-
tense, the person explodes). Moreover, (3d) implies that anger can be
let out under control (anger can be let out under control). In these
ways, the fluid metaphor can represent diff erent aspects of the emo-
tion of anger and is therefore regarded as its central metaphor.
2.2 Emotion metaphors in diff erent languages
Recent studies have found that the fluid metaphor can be observed in
many diff erent languages. For example, Kövecses (1995, 2005) illus-
trates that anger is conceptualized in terms of heat (or a hot fluid)
in many languages such as English, Hungarian, and Japanese. The
following are instantiations of this metaphor in Japanese:2
(4) a. Harawata ga niekurikaeru.
intestine nom boil
‘The intestines are boiling.’
b. Ikari ga karada no naka de tagiru.
anger nom body of inside at seethe
‘Anger seethes inside the body.’
2 The glosses use the following abbreviation: nom = nominative.
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