Red-hot faces and burnt hearts

Abstract

People from different languages draw from the knowledge they have from the domain of heat (source domain) and apply it to the domain of anger (target domain) through metaphor. This was also found to be the case with Amharic and Changana. Our study investigates how anger is metaphorically conceptualized in these two languages. Many similarities were found even though variations do exist cross-linguistically. It is suggested that the similarities between these languages in conceptualizing anger lie in the fact that human beings share the same bodily experience: (physiology) embodiment, even though variations may arise due to the differences in cultural embodiment (race, values and geographical localization, etc). The study seeks to demonstrate how these two dimensions contribute to the overall conceptual structure of anger is heat metaphor in these two (unrelated) African languages.