Metaphorical Expressions and Culture: An Indirect Link

Abstract

Lakoff (1993) argued that basic level conceptual metaphors are grounded in human experience, and are therefore likely to be found widely across different languages and cultures. However, other mappings may not be shared. It is well documented that many metaphorical expressions vary across languages, and a number of researchers have argued cultural motivations for this. Possible reasons for cross-linguistic differences in metaphor are that different cultures hold different attitudes to metaphor vehicles, or that the source domain entities and events are more salient in one culture than another. However, the corpus data discussed here suggest that rather than being a synchronic reflection of culture, metaphorical expressions are to some extent a cultural reliquary, and an incomplete one.