Emergência e natureza da metáfora primária desejar é ter fome

Abstract

In this paper, the role of human bodily experience in the generation of metaphors in language and thought is investigated through empiric linguistic and psycholinguistic studies on the DESIRE IS HUNGER metaphor. Based on Grady’s hypothesis (1997), which suggests a direct link between the recurrence of universal particular bodily experiences and the generation of primitive conceptual metaphors, we investigated how American English and Brazilian Portuguese speakers metaphorically conceptualize desire in terms of hunger. Our results were congruent with Grady’s hypothesis, showing that what people know about their embodied experiences of hunger allows them both to predict which aspects of desire will, and will not, be thought of, and talked about, in terms of their embodied understandings of hunger, and to understand metaphorical expressions about human desires, such as politicians hunger for power or these children hunger for affection. Moreover, we analyzed the DESIRE IS HUNGER metaphor productivity, which was shown to be very high and was also shown to be employed in different discourse genres and in many areas of human knowledge, in both languages.