Abstract
Abstract Spatial metaphors of affect display remarkable consistencies across languages in mapping sensorimotor experiences onto emotional states, reflecting a great degree of similarity in how our bodies register affect. At the same time, however, affect is complex and there is more than a single possible mapping from vertical spatial concepts to affective states. Here we consider a previously unreported case of spatial metaphors mapping down onto desirable, and up undesirable emotional experiences in Mlabri, an Austroasiatic language of Thailand and Laos, making a novel contribution to the study of metaphor and Cognitive Linguistics. Using first-hand corpus and elicitation data, we examine the metaphorical expressions: klol jur ‘heart going down’ and klol khɯn ‘heart going up’/klol kɔbɔ jur ‘heart not going down’. Though reflecting a metaphorical mapping opposite to the commonly reported happy is up metaphor, which is said to link to universal bodily correlates of emotion, the Mlabri metaphors are far from idiosyncratic. Rather, they are grounded in the bodily experience of positive low-arousal states, and in that reflect an emic view of ideal affect centered on contentment and tranquility. This underscores the complexity of bodily experience of affect, demonstrating that cultures draw on the available sensorimotor correlates of emotion in distinct ways.
Highlights
Talking about emotion in spatial terms feels natural
This underscores the complexity of bodily experience of affect, demonstrating that cultures draw on the available sensorimotor correlates of emotion in distinct ways
Following a brief introduction to Mlabri, a Khmuic (Austroasiatic) language of Northern Thailand and Laos (Section 2), we present linguistic evidence on heart-based emotion metaphors in Mlabri (Section 3) and focus on the metaphorical expressions klol jur ‘heart going down’, mapping onto desirable, and klol khɯn ‘heart going up’/klol kɔbɔ jur ‘heart not going down’, undesirable emotional states
Summary
Talking about emotion in spatial terms feels natural. Phrases such as You’re in high spirits, I’m feeling up or He’s really low these days and My heart sank are common everyday expressions with seemingly intuitive meanings, whereby spatial. The preference for HAP states among Westerners is echoed in the metaphor literature in the discussions of spatial metaphors of affect: “a happy person is ‘high on life’” (Casasanto and Bottini 2014: 140), “we witness the physical expression of HAPPY IS UP when a football player, after scoring a goal, throws up his arms and jumps for joy” (Radden 2003: 414–415), “when we are joyful, we tend to be up, moving around, be active, jump up and down” (Kövecses 2008: 55) These examples are strikingly non-neutral when it comes to arousal. In line with the Mlabri perceptions of happiness and well-being, but contrary to English speakers’ perceptions (Tsai 2007), these phrases reflect a view of ideal affect prototypically associated with low-arousal positive states such as contentment and tranquility We examine closely these metaphorical expressions by looking at their use in discourse, supplementing the analysis with observations from co-speech gesture (Section 4), suggesting Mlabri speakers represent the relevant emotional states on the vertical axis, as expected based on the linguistic metaphors. We end with an ethnography-based exploration shedding light onto the Mlabri emic views of ideal affect (Section 6) followed by a Discussion (Section 7) and Conclusion (Section 8), highlighting the sociocultural background in which these metaphors arose and underscoring the complex socially constructed nature of emotions
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