Conceptual Metonymy and the Physiological, Poetic Expression of Emotion

Abstract

This article focuses on the linguistic expression of emotion and emotional experience by way of conceptual metonymy, and will thus be centered on the physical and/or physiological, and perhaps, more tangible, aspects of emotion. The aim of this study is, primarily, to analyze the occurrences of conceptual metonymy related to emotion found in the Keatsian corpus upon which this research is founded. This type of analysis necessarily highlights the central role that the body holds in emotional experience and our linguistic expressions of said experience, and furthermore, how the verbalization of emotional experience necessitates consciousness of the emotional experience on the part of the agent. This allows for an examination of emotion in its multiple dimensions, all the while solidifying the parallelism between the body and the mind, or, the inherent embodiment of emotion.