Abstract

The authors analyze the metaphorical representation of love basing their observations on dictionary data. The object of the study is the metaphorical lexicon of love (249 items, 37% of the total amount of words related to the semantics of love). The subject of the study is the regular metaphorical mappings of the feeling of love and their categorization in relation to the source domain, which serves as a basis for further classification of metaphorical models (M-models). The goal of the study is to identify metaphorical mappings of the feeling of love, to define the structure of denotative ideographic spheres and groups that fill the position of the source domain and form the metaphorical representation of love. The authors suggest an analysis algorithm that consists of the following steps: 1) collection of the corpus of love metaphors; 2) categorization of the words with metaphorical meanings; 3) identification of the core M-models and regular metaphorical mappings; 4) statistical description of the M-models in the “field” format; 5) interpretation of the metaphorical representation of love. The authors conducted paradigmatic analysis of the thematic groups serving as the source domain of the metaphors of love and identified 10 metaphorical mappings on the supercategorical level and 44 M-models on the level of basic categories. As a result, the structure of the metaphorical space has been arranged with regards to the priorities of the metaphorical mappings, and the inventory of the M-models has been itemized. The metaphorical space of love is demonstrated to be polycentric, with the bulk of it being formed by the lexical groups belonging to the denotative spheres of “Concrete Physical Activity”, “Inanimate Nature”, “Public and State”, “Animate Nature”, “Supernatural”. The lexical content of the M-models demonstrates the priorities of filling specific fragments of the metaphorical representation of love.

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