On saying two things at once The historical semantics and pragmatics of Old English emotion words

Abstract

AbstractThe article analyzes some aspects of the literal and figurative conceptualizations of shame in Old English. Through the reconstruction and fine-grained analysis of the whole set of literal, metonymic and metaphoric expressions of shame recorded in a corpus of Old English texts, I show here that the embodiment model for the conceptualization of this emotion was not used in Old English until the arrival of Christianity and the new moral standards it brought. The slow but progressive introduction of embodied metonymies and metaphors in Old English is, I will argue here, a direct consequence of the adaptation of patristic texts into the vernacular. The pressure to spread the Christian concept of shame, where this emotion is presented as an internal and subjective experience, and the need to substitute the old, honour-based model favoured the emergence and evolution of new figurative expressions of shame, based on its physiological effects on the experiencer.