Over a long period, western culture perceived human faculties as organized in a hierarchical order according to which emotions were demoted and reason was viewed as superior. this brought about the misconception that reason alone is our guide to truth and that emotion should be excluded from decision-making and from any judgment. such a view was inherent in the philosophical school of stoicism, which perceived emotion as the enemy of reason. another widespread view in western culture is the idea of the separateness of emotion from reason. this stemmed from the cartesian philosophy which defined the mind as an entity separate from the body and emotions. oatley and jenkins (1996, p.122) argue that ‘emotions have traditionally been regarded as extras in psychology, not as serious mental functions like perception, language, thinking and learning.’ as a result, emotions have been banished from the study of semantics. lakoff (1987) argues that emotions are often considered to be feelings only, and as such are viewed as devoid of conceptual content. as a result, the study of emotions is usually not taken seriously by students of semantics. since the emergence of conceptual metaphor theory in the 1980s, many researchers have been concerned with the ways in which language reflects the underpinning conceptual structures that humans utilize to understand the surrounding world. thus, abstract concepts such as time and emotion are construed and understood in terms of more tangible and concrete concepts (lakoff & johnson,1980; kövecses, 2002). in their seminal book metaphors we live by, these writers show how concrete domains, such as money, objects, etc., are systematically utilized as source domains for the comprehension of more abstract and difficult concepts such as time, love, life, etc. (lakoff & johnson, 1980). researchers define emotion as a very subtle and complex phenomenon that is systematically understood through more tangible domains,such as (1) spatial orientation, as in ‘i am feeling down today!’; (2) natural forces, as in‘waves of passion overcame him’; (3) containment as in ‘she lives in fear;’ (4) struggle, as in ‘she was overcome by conceit; light, as in ‘her eyes were sparkling like diamonds,’ etc. the studies conducted on emotion metaphors have demonstrated that emotions are not mere feelings but have a conceptual content. emotion is defined as a multidimensional experience composed of various aspects. for example, an emotion can be experienced with disparate degrees of intensity. the emotion of anger can range from mild irritation to insanity. happiness can include light contentment or strong euphoria which makes the happy person feel as if ‘floating’ or ‘in seventh heaven.’ sadness can range from a downward posture to insanity. love is construed as unity between two complementary parts and as leading the lover to lose control as if s/he were under the effect of magic. pride can range from ‘ostentatious behavior’ to a struggle. an emotional experience has different degrees of intensity. kövecses (2000, p. 41) has made an attempt to give credit to the intensity aspects of emotion, as follows: intensity of emotion is amount/quantity (of substance in a container) intensity of emotion is heat increase in intensity of emotion is growth intensity of emotion is increase in effect (of force). the present book aims at analyzing and comparing conceptual metaphors for love, anger, sadness, pride and happiness in two unrelated languages, english and tunisian arabic, within the theoretical framework of cmt as proposed by lakoff and johnson (1980) and kövecses (2002). the choice of this topic as the subjectfor this book was motivated by several factors. first, despite the number of studies conducted within cmt on emotions, with the exception of z. maalej’s study (2004), very little has been conducted on emotion metaphors in tunisian arabic. second, comparative enterprises involving two genetically and geographically different languages, such as english and tunisian arabic, will uncover what is universal and what is culturespecificin metaphor, a result that could not beobtained from monolingual studies. third, this study will give evidence for the cmt claim that emotion is understood via more tangible, experiential and concrete domains by showing that the five emotions of love, pride, anger, sadness, and happiness are expressed and construed via more concrete domains. finally, this study will contribute to semantics by studying emotions. in fact, despite the growing interest in emotion studies, emotions have remained ‘notoriously difficult to pin down’ (kövecses, 1986, p. 61). for instance, talking about love, kövecses states that ‘various authors in various disciplines have expressed the view that love is a concept that is difficult to grapple with and define’ (p. 61). this study will contribute to the field by scrutinizing the metaphorical conceptualizations of five emotions: love, pride, anger, sadness and happiness, in two different linguistic communities.
