Edina Mohd Nasseri
Published : 30-6-2026
Abstract :
Romantic metaphors in English and Malay reveal how speakers conceptualize love through embodied schemas grounded in force, movement, and affective disturbance. Drawing on a bilingual corpus of 180 metaphors, this study examines how two linguistic systems map embodied experience onto the abstract domain of romantic emotion. Using Cognitive Metaphor Theory (CMT) as the primary analytic framework, the analysis demonstrates that English metaphors overwhelmingly realise the mappings Love Is Violence, Love Is Physical Impact, and Love Is Catastrophic Source, whereas Malay metaphors foreground Love Is Falling, Love Is Internal Affective Movement, and Love Is Pathology. These patterns reflect divergent conceptualizations of emotional causality: English tends to externalise romantic experience as imposed force, while Malay internalizes it within the hati (heart/ soul), which functions as a culturally salient affective locus. While sociocultural factors influence metaphor selection, the study shows that both languages rely on shared embodied foundations such as loss of balance, physical injury, and sickness. These convergences support the universalist claims of CMT, while the divergences highlight culturespecific elaborations of bodily experience. The study argues that crosslinguistic metaphor analysis illuminates how conceptual mappings organise emotional reasoning and structure the phenomenology of romantic experience.
Keywords: metaphor, cultural semiotics, language and power, cognitive linguistics.
Muat turun artikel disini : 2289-5051_iJACH_Vol 15_Issue 4_Jun 2026