A Linguist's Quest for Love

Abstract

So far, love has not been studied from an explicitly linguistic point of view. The paper attempts to provide a systematic linguistic examination of romantic love. The approach is based on Kövecses's (1986, 1990) view of emotion concepts, which maintains that emotion concepts in general, and the concept of love in particular, can be seen as comprising four parts: a system of metaphors, a system of metonymies, a set of related concepts and a set of cognitive models (with one or more prototypical models in the centre). First the love metaphors, then the love metonymies and concepts related to love are identified, followed by a description of the ideal model of romantic love, as it emerges from these linguistic expressions. Finally, five major issues in the study of love are addressed in the light of the analysis: (1) the definition of love, (2) the nature of love, (3) the issue of how many different types of love there are and what these are, (4) the role of language in the study of love, and (5) the relationships between `folk' and scientific theories of love.