The Linguistic Landscape of The Human Body

VOCABULARY, CULTURE, COGNITION
DANICA KARA
Zadar 2005
Chapter 1
THE LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE OF THE HUMAN BODY

1. INTRODUCTION In order to survive as living beings, we must interact with our environment. We develop patterns of interaction and these patterns are primarily based upon our bodily capacities (senses), our culture and our language. First, I will try to give some basic information about our primal experience since it has profoundly influenced our evolution, body 1 structure and language. The human natural environment can be analyzed at many levels but it also has certain simple invariants. It consists of two halves, the ground and the sky, separated by the horizon, and gravity - a universal condition of all living beings. From sunrise to sunset our environment is exposed to the direct radiation of the sun. The suns radiation covers a wide range of wavelengths, from short to long. A certain proportion of light is reflected from a surface or transmitted by a transparent surface. A solid surface of low reflectance is linguistically categorized as black, and a surface of high reflectance is recognized as white. Light carries a vast amount of information about our reality and this information is channeled through the sense of sight. The world consists of objects that have properties and stand in various relationships independent of human understanding. In other
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The present text is an original contribution. Various aspects of this topic have been developed in previous works such as kara (2004)
words, there is a rational structure to reality, independent of the beliefs of any particular people. (See M. Johnson, 1987; X). Our natural environment offers us opportunities for sensory experience. We would like to point out that not all opportunities are grasped, not all information is registered by our senses. We can call this the development of selective attention or economical perception. James J. Gibson (1966; 286) defines it as the ability to concentrate on one thing at a time and yet to accomplish as much knowledge as possible. As a result, the information registered about objects and events becomes only what is needed, not all that could be obtained. This fact may help us to explain cross-cultural differences 2 in the perception of the same reality. For instance in different languages we categorize body parts in different way since our focal interest is not the same, e.g. Eng. arm, hand = Cro. ruka (one term). Eng. finger, toe = Cro. prsti There is no question that languages differ in the ways their vocabularies classify the conceptual world of those who speak them. The Hopi actually call insect, airplane, and aviator all by the same word, and feel no difficulty about it (see Burke, L., Crowley, T., & Girvin, A., 2001:118). For thousands of years men have been living in a physical environment having the same constants and the same cycles (day-night). All these sources have been stimulating human senses throughout history. This is clearly reflected in human languages as a common reservoir of information.
When Semitic, Chinese, Tibetan, or African languages are contrasted with our own, the divergence in analysis of the world becomes more apparent; and, when we bring in the native languages of the Americas, where speech communities for millenniums have gone their ways independently of each other and of the old world, the fact that languages dissect nature in many different ways becomes patent. (Burke, L., Crowley, T., & Girvin, A.., 2001:118) 3
Human beings orient themselves in many ways to different features of the environment such as gravity, or the sun, or a sudden noise. The whole body is structured to perform activities in such an environment. Our natural environment is often distinguished from the cultural environment. It refers to the total pattern of human learned behavior transmitted from generation to generation. Any particular language is a form of learned behavior and therefore a part of the culture. In this chapter we will try to shed some light on the human body and the way of its linguistic adaptation to the environment. Making sense of the human body and its senses should be our priority, since our perception of the reality is inseparable from our embodiment. Our world view radiates out from our bodies, which are equipped with sensory means (organs) such as eyes (sight), ears (hearing), skin, fingers (touch), mouth, tongue (taste), and nose (smell). Each of these five senses detects a feature of the environment and produces signals to carry this information to the brain. After integrating all of this information, the brain creates knowledge /understanding of the world. It is reasonable to believe that the powers of sensation or perception and thought are properties of a certain organized system of matter. (Chomsky, 2002:112). In the evolution of life, probably, the first senses were those which monitor physical conditions important for survival. But in a modern and changed society, the senses are no longer the only source of direct knowledge. Technical devices are quite often used as extensions of human senses (TV, telephone, Internet, etc.). This process of the extension of the body and bodily functions enables us to control the environment more efficiently. Edward T. Hall, an American anthropologist, said: Man is an organism with a wonderful and extraordinary past. He is distinguished from the other animals by virtue of the fact that he has elaborated what I have termed extensions of his organism. By developing his extensions, man has been able to improve or specialize various functions. The computer is an extension of part of the brain, the telephone extends the voice, the wheel extends the legs and feet.
Language extends experience in time and space while writing extends language. Man has elaborated his extensions to such a degree that we are apt to forget that his humaneness is rooted in his animal nature. (http://www.bartleby.com/66/39/26539.html) All images of the external world obtained by our bodily capacities are framed by linguistic models. Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. Through linguistic action human beings interact both with one another and with their environment. Language is a form of behavior which is part of the human genetic endowment. Actually, we are all born with an instinct 3 for language, not for any particular language, but for human language in general. According to J. F. Kess (1992: 299): Human language thus contains both a primary representation system, which provides a model of the world based on sensory input, categorization, and memory, as well as a secondary representation system which interacts with the first by putting it into a syntactic matrix for secondary modeling. The resulting system is a sophisticated way of representing, and thereby knowing, the external world, supporting the construction of complex knowledge systems which describe and perhaps even explain the world. The following schema shows the interrelationship of language and reality: environment, reality social and cultural conventions symbols or words message
Different linguistic means are at our disposal. a) The most basic or fundamental level of linguistic description of reality is that of literal terms. Literal concepts are those entities whose meanings specify truth conditions for the objects and events that exist
N. Chomsky claims that language is not just any cultural invention but the product of a special human instinct. (see N. Chomsky, 1986)
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objectively in the world. In the traditional analyses, words in literal expressions denote what they mean according to dictionary usage. We would like to point out that cognitive linguistics no longer maintain a strict distinction between literal and figurative language (see G. Fauconnier and M. Turner (2002: 69)). In other words, literal meaning is not a special sort of meaning; it is only the meaning we are most likely to assign to a word if we know nothing about the context in which it is to be used. b) But there is a growing body of evidence showing that figurative speech is a pervasive imaginative structure in human understanding of the world (see Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Cognitive linguistics notes that metaphors and metonymies are in fact pervasive. Metaphor is one of the most common figures of speech and many words have their origin in metaphor. Metaphors allow the unfamiliar (e.g. new technical devices) to be grasped in terms of the familiar (e.g. human metaphors). It is confirmed by many scholars that metaphors are particularly common when new technologies are introduced. According to J.F. Kess (1992:167) Metaphor, incidentally, is an intellectual path through which we humans explore new paths or analogize in order to better understand unfamiliar concepts; metaphoric extensions take advantage of the plasticity of the human mind, and much learning takes place through metaphor.
Metaphor is so widespread that it is often used as an umbrella term to include other figures of speech such as metonymies. Our use of the term 'metaphor' is, in many cases, intended to cover instances of metonymy also.
In cognitive treatments metaphor and metonymy are viewed as conceptual processes in which the notion of domains plays a crucial role. Jakobson argued ( see Jakobson & Halle, 1956, 90-96) that metaphor and metonymy, or selection and combination, are two basic axes of language and communication. Metaphor is a paradigmatic dimension (vertical, based on selection, substitution and similarity) and metonymy a syntagmatic dimension (horizontal, based on combination, contexture and contiguity).
The crucial difference between metonymy and metaphor is that in a metaphoric mapping two domains are involved (a source domain and a target domain), whereas in metonymy the mapping occurs within a single domain, e.g. Part refers to whole (pars pro toto): There are two mouths to feed. Give me a hand. Drink the whole bottle. It is common for people to take one well-understood or easily-perceived aspect of something and use that aspect to stand either for the thing as a whole or for some other aspect or part of it, e.g. the White House, the crown, etc. The association covered by the notion of metonymy is due to a more general cause analogy. Analogy involves the perception of similarity between some concrete object or process and some abstract concept or process. The basic meaning of a word is related to another meaning in such a way that by analogy there can be a transfer or extension of meaning from one to the other. We are fully aware of the fact that the distinction between metaphor and metonymy is important, but for the purpose of this work there is no need to define the strict line between a metonymic and a metaphorical interpretation since many cases in our sample are mid-way between metonyms and metaphors. Our prime target is the linguistic description of the human body and metaphors will be treated within such a framework. It is almost impossible to offer even a passing survey of the modern literature on metaphor. Therefore, we will focus our attention on those works which are the most appropriate for the discussed topic. Lakoff & Johnson (1999: 22) claim that metaphors are ultimately grounded in our experience of our bodies: human concepts are not just reflections of an external reality, but that they are crucially shaped by our bodies and brains, especially by our sensorimotor system. Preliminary results of our research, based on a sample of 500 body terms, show that our bodily structure (head, backbone, two hands, two ears, etc.) is the source of many metaphors. Our thoughts (inner world), non-
animate world, social and cultural virtues are often conceptualized on the basis of our body. 4 Widespread use of body metaphors probably results from the fact that human beings give central importance to their bodies from the very beginning of their existence. But modernity requires different attitudes towards the human body. It has to be dismembered, or cut to pieces, analyzed and transformed according to the needs of the modern society. (See Hillman & Mazzio, 1997). This inspection of the human body symbolizes the dawn of the science of anatomy and Western views. At the same time, it includes the rise of new metaphorical projections, new word linkages. This new approach makes clear that body parts have individual functions, and accordingly, they can become symbolic models of stable meanings, e.g. head= the seat of the intellect; director, leader; heart = the center of bravery, courage; love. The body uses its own parts as a general system of symbols for the outside world.
Symbolism is the systematic use of symbols to represent or allude to something. In a narrower sense, symbolism is the use of iconic figures with particular conventional meanings. Many cultures have complex symbolic systems which assign certain attributes to specific things.
Reading the symbolism of the body in parts allows us to acknowledge that we use the body to define a huge portion of our daily experience. The biggest group of body parts terms has been used to conceptualize the inanimate (outside) world, e.g. - an arm of the sea - an arm of a chair - the leg of a table, - the foot of the mountain - the foot of a page - footlights - a foot note
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This view is supported by many previous works such as Johnson, M. (1987), Gibbs, R. (1995), etc.
head of the table/a sail/a queue/a nail/ a letter /a river/steam/a coin the neck of the bottle the eye of the typhoon/needle/potato in the eyes of the law an ear of grain/ corn artichoke hearts the hands of a clock the heart of a lettuce the tongue of a shoe a neck of land a banana skin/ tomato skin / sausage skin the face of cloth /leather/a coin/a mountain/a clock/a watch a kneeling bus
- an elephant ear - etc. Many different languages seem to share the same conceptual framework referring to body parts and the outside world. Eng. the leg of a table/bed Cro. noga od stola/kreveta It. la gamba del tavolo Eng. the foot of the mountain Cro. podnoje brda
It. il piede della montagna Eng. the neck of the bottle Cro. grlo boce It. il collo della bottiglia Eng. the heart of a lettuce Cro. srce od salate It. il cuore della insalata Not only the inanimate world, but some physical units derive from dimensions of the body: a foot (= the length of an adult foot) a yard (= a single stride) an ell (=an elbow > a former English unit of length equal to 45 inches)
John ONeal (1985;34) claims that among the Fali of northern Cameroon, we also find that the world is organized as a body and that every creatures place and functions are described on the analogy of the body parts, functions and relationships (). Among the Tinguelin, then, the worlds body looks something like the following: North (lower limbs), South (right arm/left arm, East (head), West (chest, stomach). The beginnings of our numerical system are rooted in the parts of the human body. Our decimal system is based on it, and Roman numerals, unquestionably, first represented human fingers. The words digit and digital are based on the Latin word DIGITUS=finger. Then origin of the word WINDOW shows close relationship with eyes. It derives from O.N. VINDAUGA, from VIONDR (wind) + AUGA (eye). It O.E. it was EAGBYRL, lit. eye-hole, and EAGDURU, lit. eyedoor.
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The following words pertaining to human beings and actions are used to discuss computers: virus, bug, office, window, cookie, superhighway, surfing, net, etc. Because of the above mentioned claims it is our aim to describe the ways in which the body is represented in language. A significant portion of the linguistic data gathered for the purpose of this work are proverbs and idioms dealing with the human body. Their meaning is firmly grounded in common cultural belief and conventional mental images shared by the majority of speakers. They might be considered as primary metaphors hidden in our long-term memory. We will consider a cluster of metaphors centered on human senses and the main parts of the human body. This research is based on a sample of 500 words and phrases. We assume that we can gain some knowledge of the complex world by studying the simple structures of embodied meaning.
2. WHAT IS THE HUMAN BODY? The human body is not a thing or substance, given, but continuous creation. The human body is an energy systemwhich is never a complete structure; never static
Norman O. Brown (1913- ) an American philosopher
The cultures of all times and places have always been vitally concerned with the body. In recent years there is an increase of interest in notions of embodiment which coincides with enormous changes in modern society caused by the rapid development of high technology. The body has usually been understood as an object of knowledge for the various physical sciences. Through the development of new technologies we have modified our environment so radically that we must modify our bodies and our language in order to exist in this new reality. It seems that the human
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body continues to be the main source of reference in this process of social and cultural changes and adaptations. New words, intended to define technical devices, are borrowed, mostly from the human field of reference (e.g. windows, cookies, offices, viruses, etc.). In other words, our perception of the world of high technology is shaped according to the models close to our understanding (human metaphors). What follows is a selection from the inventory of key metaphors referring to the human body.
2.1. Basic image schemata of the body Human beings orient themselves in many ways to different features of the environment such as gravity, or the sun, or a sudden noise. The orientation of the head, ears, eyes, mouth, nose and hands depends on the orientations of the body as a whole to the earth as a whole. The primary kind of orientation is to gravity and the surface of support (vertical and horizontal axes of space). Our head contains the organs of orientation and the center of the nervous system. Our body has its own axes of reference, closely connected to gravity and equilibrium: head-to foot, right-left, and frontback. Metaphorical projections of the body posture differ in different languages. We could say that the upright position consists of keeping the bodily frame coincident with the gravitational frame. According to Gibbson (1966:) What is re-emphasized here is the fact that the pointing or directing of these perceptual organs depends on the upright posture of the head and the body. Before any further linguistic description of the body parts, lets see the reference point of the word body itself. It seems that the word body in English is of larger signification than the word man. It is a source of patterned symbolism. Many concepts are defined in relation to the body, e.g.
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- a legislative body (a group of individuals organized for some purpose) - the body of the discussion (the main, central, or essential part) - a body blow (something that causes serious problems) - body clock (the bodys natural needs to sleep, eat, etc. at particular times) - body language (non-verbal communication, gestures) - the body politic - a body of water The main parts of the body are built around a bony skeleton which is jointed so that our body has the advantage of both mechanical rigidity and flexibility (bowing, kneeling). The parts of the body form an organized system. The bones are linked by joints to the spine and the head. The trunk branches into four limbs and each limb branches into five fingers/toes. 2.1.1. The body as a container The view of the body as a physical object presupposes its 3dimensional form (container, box) in space and time. A container schema has its structure: an inside, a boundary, and an outside. We conceptualize the interior of the body as one kind of space or container which consists of many entities: mind, soul, words, emotions, thoughts, etc. These entities are described within air or water activities: deep in his mind, stream of consciousness, clear thoughts, deep thoughts, words fly, etc. In traditional speech we reach our inner part through our eyes: Eyes are the window of the soul. It is generally believed that what is inside (mind, soul) is more important than the physical body (outside): Beauty is only skin deep. In Western discourse, the physical body has been constructed traditionally as the negative other of mind. This view dates back to philosophy of the ancient Greeks and to the Christian religion. The human body is bounded by its skin. This view generates metaphors such as: to jump out of ones skin, to get under someones skin, to
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be in somebody elses skin. Skin is perceived as something which can be thought of both as part of the body and as a boundary between the body and the outside world. This spatial conception of the body generates many metaphors based on the form of the following image schemata: IN-OUT, FRONT-BACK, UP-DOWN, LEFT-RIGHT. Similar schemata are confirmed by many scholars. 2.1.2. In-out orientation The IN-OUT schema which applies prototypically to spatial orientation is often metaphorically projected into the cognitive, abstract domain. Abstract entity (e.g. mind, love, sight, idea, thought) is often transformed into a concrete object. Such concept (abstract > concrete) provides for one entity a possibility to be contained, entered, floating. This was the only way that we could make sense of these abstract entities, e.g. strong mind, broad mind, to open ones heart, deep in thought, to have rocks in ones head, to be in love, Ideas were floating inside his head, I find it hard to get my mind around something, minds eye. An example of IN-OUT orientation can be seen in the projection of the human mind functioning as a container (physical space). The mind is represented as an open container: open-minded person. It has its own frame of mind. Accordingly we can easily keep that in mind (= memory) or Something can run through your mind/head. Similar examples are the following: He is out of his mind. In the back of ones mind To put an idea into someones mind Mind is often associated with a group of people embodying mental qualities (the public mind). It is confirmed by many scholars (Fauconnier and Sweetser, 1997; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999.) that this equation of the physical self and inner self is pervasive in many languages. Actions in real space are taken over
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analogically into the space of mind: to reach their understanding, slow minded person, to be touched by ones actions, etc. Our mental activities get more transparent or cognitively accessible if translated into the language of embodied meaning. M. Johnson (1987:21) claims that We are intimately aware of our bodies as three-dimensional containers into which we put certain things (food, water, air) and out of which other things emerge (food and water wastes, air, blood, etc.). 2.1.3. Front-back Our experience of space is firmly based on the FRONT-BACK schema. The posture of our body is such that we see in front of us, move forward rather than backward, and interact with people and our environment using the front part of our body. Our senses are dominantly directed forward (eyes, nose, and mouth). Many speakers project fronts into the future, progress, dignity, frank behavior, seeing, e.g. to ones face (=frankly), He was afraid to lose face (=dignity), Lets face it (= to see), the whole future is in front of him. Such perception supports the view, expressed in many metaphors that one who is in front seems to be most likely to succeed. The front part is the conscious, clear and rational part of the mind oriented towards the future: with an eye to the future. Quite to the contrary, in the back of ones mind means the remote part of ones brain where thoughts are stored and forgotten. The front part is closely connected with the face, and the face is perceived as a 3 dimensional form where emotions are stored (fear, dignity), e.g. in the face of danger. Faced with danger and fear we quite often turn away in order not to see them. Such experience associates the back side with negative feelings and helps the following metaphorical projections of the BACK to arise: to stab someone in the back. (= to betray) to have ones back to the wall (= to be in a defensive position) Get off my back! (= stop bothering me) behind ones back (= in secret)
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These embodied linguistic patterns do not remain the private property of the person who experienced them. They become shared cultural and linguistic models of experience. Because of the fact that many European languages share a common cultural background, common metaphorical projections are likely to appear. Speakers of European languages project truths into the future, progress. At the same time some non-Western languages put the past in front and the future behind. Obviously, their metaphorical projections are fundamentally different and based on their own cultural values. 2.1.4. Up/ high down/under The verticality schema derives from our tendency to employ an UPDOWN orientation in categorizing meaningful structures of our experience. We grasp this structure of verticality repeatedly in thousands of perceptions we experience every day: the sense of standing upright, climbing Due to the backbone or spine we can achieve standing position. Such an experience generates the conceptualization of the backbone as strength, bravery, e.g. They have been the backbone of the local golf club for years. The new prime minister isnt showing much backbone so far. Someone who is spineless lacks determination and the willingness to take risks. Activities viewed positively are expressed as UP: a higher value, an improvement. A person who is up and coming is likely to achieve success. In most languages the object of respect is UP or HIGH, e.g. - We value him highly. - to hold ones head up - to get up enough nerve to do something (= to get brave enough) Similarly, to be on ones feet means to be in a standing position or recovered state, and, on the other hand, to be on ones knees means to be in a state of submission or defeat. In Roman times thumbs up meant: Let him live. Quite often people use the word DOWN in the meaning of South, and UP as North. It is religious belief that the Gods live up in heaven
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while evil doers went down to hell or to the infernal parts. The term infernal derives from the Latin INFERNUS=underground. Metaphorically, if someone is DOWN/UNDER it means a weak, desperate position, e.g. - She has been really down and depressed since her husband died. - The computer will be down for an hour. - to get someone under ones thumb (= to get control over someone) - to throw oneself at someones feet (= humiliating behavior) It is quite evident that the above-mentioned metaphorical projections are not arbitrary but are highly constrained by our bodily posture and our experience of it. 2.1.5. Balance-symmetry (left-right)
Man is all symmetrie Full of proportions, one limbe to another, And all to the world besides (George Herbert) The human body is perfectly symmetrical and balanced. It can be folded over in the middle into left and right halves (vertical axis). There are two sides of the body with parts that are in balance (eyes, hands, legs, ears). Modern usage, particularly in biology, uses symmetry almost entirely to mean bilateral symmetry, or mirror symmetry, where one half of an object is the mirror-reflection of the other half. The posture we regard as typical of the body in all societies is upright. Being upright seems a general convention of thought about being human. From the symmetry of this erectness we derive our categories of direction: up-down, left-right, before-behind, over-under. The left-right axis is closely related to our body balance and symmetry. The experience of balanced posture or physical equilibrium within our bodies gives rise to the following metaphors: balanced personalities, balanced views, the balance of power, balanced judgment, inner balance, balanced news, etc.
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Balancing behavior is evident from the following expression: On the one hand we can appeal for peace and on the other declare war. (hand=side) The institutions of justice are founded upon a basic notion of balance. In proverbs and phrases, based on tradition and the Bible, balance is promoted: An eye for an eye Our cultural ideal is a balanced personality. We have to balance our emotions in order not to violate the constraints of our cultural norms. Lets look at some examples of how our bodys vertical axis (leftright) organizes the way we talk. Metaphors generated by LEFT-RIGHT experience of the body posture (the right hand is stronger in most people) support the view that left is clumsy, awkward, insincere, e.g. left-handed compliment (a remark that seems to say something pleasant about a person but also could be an insult). In American English if someone is out in left field they are completely wrong. In general, right is law, morals, the holy and the strong; left is sinister, profane, weak and often feminine. But this view is not necessarily universally accepted. According to our sample it is valid in Croatian, English, and Italian language. This view finds support in the Biblical perception of the right hand. It is said that the Lords right raised hand points to heaven while his lowered left hand points the path towards hell. In view of this symbolism the left side in politics is considered to be undesirable among many speakers. Metaphorically, right acquires the meaning of the word right in our sample (suitable, morally acceptable, correct, true, authentic, and conservative), e.g. - to get off on the right foot (to make a successful part) - right-hand man (= the most trusted or reliable) - right-minded thinking (=having sound principles) - right conduct (=being in accordance with what is just, good, or, correct) - upright (= honest and just)
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- time proved her right (= acting or judging in accordance with truth or fact 2.1.5.1. Emotions Many contemporary evolutionary theorists think that our emotional states have evolutionary roots that are triggered by cultural conditions. According to C. Barker (2003:142) There is no single emotional system in the brain. Rather, there are series of different systems or modules that deal with particular emotions and which have evolved over long periods of time (...). They have stayed with us because they have contributed to the survival of the species. That is, emotions deal with fundamental life tasks. In order to bridge different explanations we can define emotional behavior as an outcome of a set of bodily responses and culturally modified cognitive mechanisms. We can understand emotion as brain biochemistry plus cognitive classificatory functions. (see C. Baker, 2003:144) In a great many metaphorical formulations, the body functions as an emotional container. Emotions are experienced on a model of hot fluid within container (See Kvecses, 1990), and words connected with emotions are: explode, boil over, erupt, overflow, hot-headed - She was just about to burst out in tears. - We felt deep sorrow. - She exploded in anger. - flood of emotions Controlling emotions is a model behavior in many cultures and it also enables us to reach an inner balance. In order to make sense of an extremely subtle experience, we frequently use body parts as a physical object of reference. Perhaps the most dominant conceptual formula is the one which puts emotions in the HEART. Metaphorically, it refers to a persons character, or the place within a person where their feelings or emotions (sadness, surprise, fear, love) are considered to come. It is also the center of bravery/courage: - You are doing really well-dont lose heart now. (=courage),
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- a Valentine card with a big red heart on it. (=love) - Dont be so heartless. (=cruel) - His heart bleeds for the children who have lost their parents. (=sympathy) - I almost had a heart attack when I found out how much the book cost. (=surprise/shock) - From the bottom of ones heart (=sincerely) - to break someones heart (=to cause emotional pain) - to follow ones heart (=to act according to ones feelings) - to have a heart (=to be compassionate) The situation with the interrelationship of the heart and emotions is quite complex. In order to categorize emotions we have to bring them into the light, or to expose them to the process of seeing. This approach is based on the following belief: Seeing is believing. Besides the heart, the most prominent words (body parts) used to describe emotions are: eyes, face, blood, chest, breast, stomach, throat, and head, e.g. - I could see fear in his eyes. - to make someones blood boil (=to make someone very angry) - in cold blood (=no emotions) - She felt pain in her chest. - I had spent two months worrying about it and I was glad to get it off my chest. (= to free yourself of your secret worries) - A feeling of love surged in his breast. - He had no stomach for such an argument (= inclination, desire) - to be out of ones head (=delirious) - Even the sense of taste helps us to organize our emotional states: - to have a bad taste in someones mouth ( =bad emotions) - to have a lump in ones throat (=to find it difficult to speak because of a strong emotion (love, pity or sorrow)) - to have the words stick in ones throat (= not to be able to say something owing to distaste, pride, etc.) It seems that hard-wired emotions, such as sadness, anger, love and fear, are constrained by the conventions, norms and habits.
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3. HUMAN SENSES
The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present. (Karl Marx)
As has already been said, our grasp of the world is mediated through our sense-impressions, and accordingly, our projections of the world are inherently limited by our senses. If we cant see, touch, smell, hear or taste, we cant organize it into knowledgeable structure. We also organize our behavior according to the information immediately available to the eyes and other senses. By sensory experience we get a cognitive map of our environment. Information gathered by our senses still needs to be processed by the human brain considered to be the centre of the nervous system. This network of nerves allows the brain to communicate with all senses. We could assume that an intelligent brain could hardly have developed without senses. The following proverb, based on folk wisdom, tells us more about the strong bonds between our senses and our intellectual activities: - The eye is the mirror of the mind. - This interrelationship is evident from the fact that we often equalize the term SENSE with knowledge or ability to reason. - In Websters New World Dictionary (2002) the term HUMAN SENSES is defined as: any faculty of receiving impressions through body organs: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. Metaphorical projections of such activities are seen as sharply functioning mental ability (judgment, rationality). A senseless person is unconscious or stupid. - a man with a good sense of (= an ability to understand some quality; sound judgment) - a sense of danger, a sense of shame, a sense of humor, a good sense of balance, a sense of insecurity.
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- There is no sense in sending him a postcard. (= purpose) - He finally came to his senses. (= conscious awareness or rationality) - Common sense tells me its wrong. (= everyday experience of the sort that everyone has, not requiring special schooling) First the senses are perceived by many speakers as the sole basis of knowledge and the elements of all awareness, and second they are the channels of our selective perception. According to Ruth Hubbard, US biologist, without words to objectify and categorize our sensations and place them in relation to one another, we cannot evolve a tradition of what is real in the world. (http://www. Bartleby.com/66/71/29171.html)
3.1. Eye/sight Sight is our most prominent sense since it informs us of our primary experience of the world. It gives us far more information than any of the other senses. The visual system combines with all others and overlaps with all of them in registering objective facts. Information about the world can be obtained with any sensory system alone or with any combination of senses working together. The following proverbs express a view based on traditional belief dating back to Greek times: - One eyewitness is worth ten ear witnesses. - Keep you mouth shut and your eyes open. - See all, say nothing, and hold yourself content. (Latin equivalent: Audi, vide, tace) The human eye is like a camera. It provides the brain with detailed snapshots that form the bases for our rich experience of the world. Vision plays a crucial role in our acquisition of knowledge. In the Bible the eye is described as the lamp of the body. Many researchers identify a basic metaphorical understanding of vision with intellectual activity. This coordination of sight and knowledge is evident from the fact that we can see in spite of closed
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eyes. Information obtained by sight is stored in our mind, e.g. in ones minds eye. physical sight = knowledge, mental vision - I see what you mean. - Seeing is believing. - Our eyes are the mirror of the soul. vision = physical touching Eyes are conceptualized as limbs and vision is achieved when the object seen is touched. - to catch someones eye - to give someone the glad eye - to keep an eye on - eye-contact - to meet ones eyes - undressing someone with his eyes - to set eyes on someone sight = container - He went out of my view - Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. - In my view - Out of sight, out of heart. - To see the fear in his eyes eyes = an ability to judge - to have an eye for (=an ability to notice) eye = center, sympathy - the apple of someones eye - the eye of the typhoon
eye=deceiver
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- Appearances are deceiving. - Thats all my eye (=thats not true) We can distinguish our sense of sight by its need for the medium of light. Light is a ray that runs through all the important aspects of experience. Conventional metaphors for light are numerous: sight = light=knowledge - crystal clear - to shed some light on - brilliant mind - lucid person - He is bright. In comparison to other senses, the sense of sight is frequently used covering the largest field of reference. It seems that other senses are less important in the conceptualization of reality. The results of the analyses of the sample of body parts terms, show quite a low percentage of metaphors dealing with the senses of smell, touch, and taste. We could conclude that in the twentieth century, we have not only continued the historical attitude of giving preference to sight but allowed sight to dominate. Vision is the dominant sense supported by new technology augmenting the power of vision (TV, computer). Although this hegemony of vision is very old and certainly traceable to Platonism, it appears to have adopted a different configuration in modernity. For modernity, vision has become supervision. In Foucaults modernity (see Levin, 1993:282) The hegemony of vision is the hegemony of power. It seems that we are partly deprived of other senses like touch. We can easily see and hear the sound of distant events but we cannot use our sense of touch. The consequences of such an attitude are quite visible in language, as the vocabulary referring to other senses (touch, taste), is quite limited. 3.2. Hand/touch
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The sense of touch refers to the tactile sensation received by the skin, enabling the organism to detect objects in contact with the body. The lips and hands (fingertips) are two of the most sensitive areas. Touching also provides us with sensations such as spatial depth and the threedimensional shape of material bodies. Yet touch has to be in direct contact with things to sense their shape, depth and distance. The vocabulary of touch is generally used for metaphorical projections of emotional sensations: - an appeal that touched us deeply. (=provoked emotions) - The newspaper article touched a raw nerve. (= provoked unpleasant feelings) Hand The hand is usually re-conceptualized in our experience as power/control: - to have someone in ones hands (to have control) - He left the matter in her hand (= control, supervision) - to take the law into ones own hands (= to attempt to administer the law) Different other segments of our experience are framed by the hand: - the hands of a clock (indicator or pointer on a dial) - to lend a hand (= assistance or aid) - He employed over a hundred hands (=persons, workers) - with an iron hand (= with great severity) Finger Metaphorical projections of our fingers coincide with our abilities, interests, and emotions. - to have a finger in the pie ( = interest) - all thumbs (= clumsy) - thumbs up (= approval) - a green thumb (= a talent for growing plants)
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- I gave him the finger. (= to show in an offensive way that you are angry) - We are keeping our fingers crossed. (=hoping strongly) 3.2. Mouth/tongue /taste The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000) defines taste as: the sense that distinguishes the sweet, sour, salty and bitter qualities of dissolved substances in contact with the taste buds on the tongue. Besides its literal meaning taste also means mental ability to judge what is aesthetically appropriate, e.g. a room furnished with superb taste. It also defines emotions, personal preference or liking, ability to judge and appreciate what is good: - an experience that left a bad taste in my mouth (=an unpleasant memory) - a taste for adventure (= personal preference) Some other taste-expressions are used to define emotions: bitter tears, a bitter sense of shame, sweet love, a project gone sour, a bitter smile, a sour smile, to put salt on someones wounds, How sweet it is!
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Mouth The mouth is both a perceptive and an action oriented organ. We use the mouth for all sorts of purposes (production of speech, eating), not just one (taste). Tongue - to have a forked tongue (=to speak deceitfully) - with tongue in cheek (=in a humorously ironic way) - tongue-tied (=speechless from amazement) It is evident that our organs of speech and taste are often used to conceptualize our emotional states: unhappy, deceitful, and nervous. The nose and mouth may be justly regarded as distinct organs, but they enter into combinations to make a system of information. 3.3. Nose/smell The sense of smell enables an organism to perceive and distinguish the odors of various substances. The sense of smell is not as strongly developed in humans as in the animal world. Smell also has fewer metaphorical connections with the mental domain than the other senses. If it is used to frame a mental domain (e.g. to have a very good sense of smell). We smelled trouble ahead.) it has definitely negative associations, e.g. to smell fishy, to smell blood, to smell a rat. Smelly means unpleasant. Nose - He has a nose for gossip (= the ability to detect) - Nosing around looking for opportunities. (=to inquire) Smell is elevated to the status of a dual sense for both sniffing the air and savoring the food. The word savor includes both taste and smell. 3.4. Ear/ hearing
Friends, Romans and Countrymen, lend me your ears(W. Shakespeare: Mark Anthonys speech from Julius Caesar)
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An ear is a sense organ which transmits vibrations from the air and converts them into nerve impulses. The senses of sight and hearing are not ambivalent as touching, tasting and smelling, e.g. we use hands to perform an action, but also to experience the sense of touch, mouth=eating and tasting, nose=smelling and breathing. Eyes and ears are used only as pure sense organs. They are highly specialized in their function. Hearing is conventionally conceptualized in terms of capability, emotions, and mental activities: - On its ear (=in a state of amazement, excitement) - You will get a flea in your ear ( = an annoying or angry remark) - He has an ear for foreign languages (=ability) - I am all ears! (= attentive) - to turn a deaf ear (= to ignore) - to give (lend) ear(= to give attention) - In one ear and out the other(= it is immediately forgotten) - Up to ones ears (deeply involved) We use the sense of hearing to conceptualize the minds activities and emotions: the voice of reason, an inner voice, a desperate voice, a calm voice, a sad voice, etc. Our voice is frequently perceived as an object which could easily be recognized as a soft voice, a warm voice, and a cracking voice. We could even lose our voice.
4. CONCLUSION Our orientation to the world involves sensual experience and tactile familiarity. Objects in our environment are made more familiar through metaphorical projections and imagination. Through metaphor, we make use of patterns that obtain in our physical experience to organize our more abstract understanding. The world of the unknown is quite often described with familiar, well- known words based on the human body.
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Linguistic description of the human body and its senses tells us that there is an extensive subsystem of body metaphors which are used to describe a huge portion of our experience of the physical world and the mental/inner world. The key points of the analyses are the following: It seems that man unconsciously projects himself into the external world, describing it in terms of his own measures. In our sample the body parts are used to conceptualize the following: the non-human world (outside), e.g. foot of the mountain, eye of the typhoon, kneeling bus, etc. Our mental structures are meaningful by virtue of their connection to our body parts (external and internal): heart, head, face, etc. There is a general tendency to conceptualize mental (inside) activities and emotions in terms of outside, physical experiences based on our senses (hearing, sight, touch, smell, taste), e.g. the voice of reason, I see what you mean, He was deeply touched, to smell a rat, an experience that left a bad taste in my mouth. Metaphorical projections (synesthetic metaphors) between senses are frequently made. Touch words generally transfer to taste (sharp taste), to sound (soft sounds). Taste words transfer to smell (sour smell) and sound (sweet music, sweet voice), sight (color words) shift to sounds (bright sound) and touch (eye contact, to catch ones eye). Smell doesnt seem to contribute to other senses. The most important sense organ, with the biggest accompanying vocabulary, is eye/sight. In general, we take an important part of our logic of knowledge from our logic of vision. This coordination between the visual and mental activities is well defined in metaphorical projections. There is an assumption that in modern society eye becomes even more prominent sense. Nose, mouth and hand are multi-functional organs. Eyes and ears are mono-functional, specialized organs. The senses of taste and smell register information with invariant combinations of nervous input. We often use the words referring to the sense of taste to
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define the sense of smell (Have you tasted our wine? includes both meanings)
It is evident that the human body and its structure (symmetry/balance, left/right, up/down, etc.) directly influence what and how things can be meaningful for us. Man is the measure of all things. Our own body is one of the most important objects of knowledge. The continuity of anthropomorphic thought in the West from the preSocratics to the Renaissance and in Eastern as well as African and Amerindian societies justifies us in preserving a universal mode of thought essential to our humanity. The body, indeed, is analogous to a landscape, explorable but not exhaustible.
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Chapter 2
THE WORD ASSOCIATION NETWORK: CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

1. INTRODUCTION The main purpose of the cross-linguistic study presented in this chapter is to find similarities (universals) and differences (specifics) in word association networks in different languages and cultures. We assume that concepts which might have equivalents in all languages should be looked for among words for natural phenomena (sun, moon, stars, sky, sea, colors, etc.) and among words for parts of the human body and its senses (head, see, etc.). This idea took as its premise the assumption that universal human concepts are probably determined by the universal conditions of human life, above all by the universal features of the human environment. In this chapter, we will discuss the word association network related to basic words found in our reality. The sample consists of 20 words, and the word association test includes speakers of 7 different languages.
2. WORD ASSOCIATION NETWORK My vocabulary dwells deep in my mind and needs paper to wriggle out into the physical zone. (Vladimir Nabokov, http://www.bartleby.com/66/62/41162.html) Our language is one of several means of representation. A system such as language is capable of representing not only our reality but
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things and events which cannot be seen, e.g. a unicorn. In general, language is used as a medium through which we convey different types of messages about our environment and our emotions. It is a mediator and a cognitive organizer. The information that we receive through our senses has to be interpreted according to certain rules. What we see in the world around us depends in a large part on the principles we have encoded in our language. Our initial assumption is that language doesn't reflect the world directly. It reflects human conceptualization and culture-specific interpretation of the world. We can take color words as an example since color words are frequently used to express something other than a perceptual dimension, e.g. whiteness often metaphorically stands for honesty or purity. We also assume that there is one segment of our language which is universal due to our biological predispositions and common cultural background. We consider word association tests as a convenient methodology to find out more about the interpretation of our reality and the culture specific conceptual configurations. The idea that our associative processes are basic to the understanding of thinking has a long tradition in our intellectual history. The laws of association of the Greek philosophers (Plato, Aristotle) were developed out of an attempt to explain the sequence of ideas occurring in our thoughts. The British empiricists thought that a thorough understanding of associations would result in an understanding of thinking. This approach to the study of cognitive processes has been continued by Osgood (1953) and others. Deese (1965:4) states: 'We study associations in order to make inferences about the nature of human thought.' A similar view is shared by Glucksberg, S., & Danks, J.H. (1975; 59): Word associations are undoubtedly produced by mental operations that depend upon both knowledge of the language and knowledge of the world.
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Considering the large number of investigations which have recently been conducted in this area, one might reasonably ask why so many people have been interested in the study of word association. Associationism is viable today because it has been used to explain semantic networks or the store of words and interrelations between them in a speaker's mental lexicon. The renewal of interest in word association in large part reflects an increasing interest in the studying of cognitive processes. This interest is based on the belief that associations per se reflect something basic about the nature of the mind. Associations and cultural conventions related to words are of utmost importance to foreign language learners. For example a Japanese speaker could hardly understand the English sentence, I feel blue unless he knows associations related to the word blue. In comparison to other theories, word association networks (word association dictionaries) give foreign students an opportunity to get insight into the specific mental structure and collocational restrictions of the target language. Such access to word meaning may also be much more productive than looking up words in a traditional' type of a dictionary, since words are best defined in relation to each other. In general, associations are used to explain the additional meanings words can convey as a result of being associated with particular social, pragmatic or cultural contexts.
2.1. Word association test - choice of stimuli The vocabulary of a language is not merely an inventory of arbitrary labels referring to objects and events. The words have many layers of meaning, including concrete reference to objects and events and metaphoric or symbolic references. Because of the symbolic aspect of language, it is difficult to understand the full range of meanings expressed by speakers of different cultures. In order to gain insights into people's world view or
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system of values, it is necessary to ascertain the cultural symbols embedded in their words. We consider the free association test, among other means, an appropriate approach to gain such an insight. There have been many diverse attempts to categorize associations. Our purpose is to use a sample of the vocabulary of different languages referring to 3 principal domains of our reality: nature (sun, moon, stars, sky, sea), colors (black, white, green), and parts of the human body and its senses (head, eye, etc.). All human beings know from their own experience the sun, the moon, and the stars. All human beings are familiar with their own body. Our aim is to explore word association responses related to the common human experience. Within the free-association method the following procedure of continuous association will be applied. A stimulus term is presented; the subject uses this word as a point of departure for a chain of associative responses. The following form of questionnaire is used in our research. What is the first word that comes to your mind when you hear the word soul/earth/light/day/brown/stars/moon/green/yellow/blue/red/white/black /sky/sea/sun/nose/ears/eyes/head/body)? We will be concerned with only a few of the many possible research questions dealing with word associations. Our study is primarily designed to determine cultural similarities and differences between Western languages (German, English, Croatian, Spanish & Italian) and Eastern languages. (Japanese, Chinese). We distinguish between culture-specific and individual associations on the one hand, and universal associations relevant for the majority of included languages, on the other. There is a clear distinction between a strong and weak associative connection. A strong associative connection means multiple representation of that response in the domain, e.g. according to the statistics the word black often evokes the word death in many languages. We will take into consideration only strong associations (high frequency) since strong associations easily
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become part of the stable semantic structure of the word. Here we deal with conceptual (associative) complexity and the frequency of occurrence. In further discussion word association responses will be categorized into several types: concrete responses (direct referent, e.g. brain) abstract responses (abstract referent, e.g. mind) mental sensation (emotions), bodily sensation (sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing), others All words will be analysed on the basis of these factors. This specific approach is chosen because of our prime interest in cross-cultural mental images. But we will certainly use all other relevant results which might be useful for our analysis (e.g. structural analyses by Deese, 1965). The final purpose of the test is to define the components of the semantic structure of the terms and to establish differences and similarities in their meanings. This research includes 30 informants from different languages (Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, German, English and Croatian).
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2.2. The results of the word association test COLORS Lets see what happens in the word association experiment dealing with colors. How do we get associative responses? When a stimulus word (e.g. red) is presented, different words are activated (e.g. bull, anger, blood), and the most frequent, stable response is seen as the outcome of the interaction between factors such as sensual experience, culture, and language. Associative meaning enters into the cognitive domain as it functions on the level of connotations and images. The stimulus conveys information for both what it is physically (direct reference, e.g. red object) and what it stands for (indirect reference, symbolic value, e.g. anger, blood). red Because of the above mentioned claim it is to be expected that word association anger responses will help us to paint the semantic framework of colours included in blood this research.
BLACK AND WHITE
Black and white stimulated the following associations: Concrete nouns frequently associated with black are: cat, coal, hand, witch, hair, eyes. The number of abstract nouns is bigger than the number of concrete nouns: night, elegance, power, death (Western languages), mystery, evil, etc. Emotions frequently associated with black are mostly negative: mourning, sadness, fear, unhappiness, pain. Black is closely associated with our sensory experience via the following terms: white, dark, night, cold.
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Concrete referents associated with white are: snow, lily, ice, teeth, etc. Quite a high percentage of abstract terms are used: purity, simplicity, cleanliness, peace, innocence, youth, marriage (Western languages), death (Eastern languages), emptiness, Christmas, ghost, nothing. White is identified with our sensory experience of light, moonlight, black (as an antonym). The equation of light with white seems to be frequent. Referring to two basic color terms, black and white, our free association test shows that in the majority of European languages black is associated with dark, mystery, evil, night, etc. Dominant associations are negative. Black and white are perceived as two extreme sides: positivenegative, light-dark, warm and cold. Dark and cool colors are: black, green and blue. Warm and bright colors are: white, yellow, red. Luminosity is very important in color perception and it is constantly used in word association responses. It seems that it is of vital importance whether something is dark or light in our environment. We clearly express it with word associations. In reality colors belong to the level of the sense of sight. But, we use our multi-sensual experience (the sense of sight and touch) in order to define the word black. Its focal attributive association is dark, cold. In many languages euphemisms are used instead of the word black since it is color with strong associations of evil and misfortune. It is confirmed that Egyptian Arabic shows a strong associations of the color white with good and prosperity, and of the color black with evil and mourning, e.g. his heart is white he is good-hearted (Borg, 1999:115). Black is the color of mourning in most European languages. The color white in Japanese culture evokes funeral, mourning. In the previously mentioned schema, white signifies positive, black negative and red ambiguous (+/-) associations. According to Berlin and Kay (1969) black, white and red are the first colors to be normally distinguished in all cultures. The basic three color categories (black, white, red) might be considered as the primordial classification of reality that is common to all human beings because it is rooted in psychological
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experience (Turner, 1966:81). These three colors are the most prominent in word association tests, too. They have the largest scale of reference. It seems that white lacks strong emotional associations. Whiteness is commonly attributed to objects characterized by transparency or luminosity. In his work A Piece of Chalk, in Tremendous Trifles (1909), the British author G. K. Chesterton wrote: White is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as blackGod paints in many colours: but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.
RED AND YELLOW (WARM COLORS)
Red Next to black and white comes red with the largest frame of reference. Almost equal number of concrete (blood, fire, roses, apple, bull, wine, etc) and abstract terms (energy, power, war, strength, danger, life, caution, and violence.) are included. Red is associated with the most intense emotions and states which vary from positive (love, passion, excitement, desire, beauty, sex) to negative and unpleasant (aggression, anger danger, shame, envy, pain, embarrassment). Its sensory associations are heat, bright, hot, warm, spicy, burning, and colourful. It seems that we perceive red with almost all our senses (touch, sight, smell). Its meaning and associations are ambiguous and context-dependent. The majority of languages consider blood, sunset, rose, apple, heat, danger, and love to be the best symbols of the red color. Associations of red and rose are more frequent in poetry than in oral speech. Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days! (William Butler Yeats, To the Rose upon the Rood of Time) Red and gold are widely considered lucky colors in Asian tradition. In China the color red is perceived as a symbol of celebration and luck, used in many cultural ceremonies. In India red is associated with purity
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and it is used in weddings. In Arabic countries it is considered as the color of children. In European cultures among many other common associations red is connected with sexual experience (e.g. red light district), and Communism (Reds). Our schema shows that red is closely related to yellow, and in some cultures it is used interchangeably. Japanese informants regularly associate red with the sun, rice, celebration, danger, and fire. Europeans think of fire in terms of orange or yellow. There is also a hesitation between yellow and red in Bedouin vocabulary. It reflects fuzzy boundaries between these two terms. Red is conceived by all nations as a color which attracts attention (positive and negative). The symbolic use of red is quite complex. It seems that the focus of the red symbolism is the color of blood. The dual status of blood (to shed blood, to save life) presumably facilitates a dual symbolic perception of red and bi-polar associations. It is a magic color, with power for good and evil. Yellow has rich, diverse and conflicting associations. Concrete: gold, banana, lemon, flowers, sun, egg, etc. Abstract: illness, hope, dishonesty, deceit, optimism, etc. Emotional: joy, coward, crazy, jealousy, etc. Sensory: blue, green, bright, smelly, sunlight, etc. Besides its positive meaning (hope, joy, optimism) it has a negative association: illness, cowardice, etc. Perhaps because of its associations with gold, yellow has been reserved for the highest ranked people in Asia. In ancient times, only the Emperor was allowed to wear yellow in China. For years yellow ribbons were worn as a sign of hope as women waited for their men to come home from war. This habit is not forgotten and it was recently used in the US during the war in Iraq. In front of many houses yellow ribbons were tied as a sign of welcome to their solders. In Eastern languages yellow is never paired with the sun. It is connected with the moon. It is evident that yellow is very rich in sensory and emotional associations.
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GREEN AND BLUE (COLD COLORS)
Blue is a natural color from the blue of the sky. Its most frequent association in all included languages is the word sky. An American songwriter, Irving Berlin, wrote a song Blue Skies: Blue skies smiling at me Nothing but blue skies do I see. Its concrete associative responses are: sky, water, ocean, eye, sea, boy, mountains, etc. Abstract: peace, stability, truth, security, loyalty, wisdom, honor, confidence, sincerity, aristocracy, endlessness. Emotions expressed with blue are quite stable in many languages: calm, sadness, depression. It is perceived as a cold color. Specific Western associations are: depression, obscenity. Japanese people associate blue and green interchangeably. Very often they do not see the distinction. In some Arabic dialects there is no word for blue. Blue and green are both subsumed into the category axdar (=green). The absence of a blue color category in many ancient cultures is not a rare example. According to Berlin and Kay (1969:19) the color blue appears at stage V (after the green) and normally emerges from the green area. In the Croatian language (similar to Russian) we use the term sinje more for the blue sea, but sinje can be used only in relation to the sea. Borg, (1999:118) reports that 'The color blue also has strong associations with evil and misfortune in Egypt and dialects of Arabic. It appears interchangeably with the color black'. In general, colors with a dark hue (blue, green, gray, brown) are often associated with negative feelings as equivalents of black.
Green Green comes from blue, but it surpasses the blue. (Chinese proverb)
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The color green is increasingly associated with the environment, renewal, and fertility. Its negative meaning refer to: jealousy, and envy. It is also the color of Islam. Green was the sacred color to the Egyptians representing the hope and joy of spring. Its concrete referents are: grass, plant, tree, finger, hills, leaf, eyes. Abstract referents are frequently evoked: nature, environment, fertility, growth, luck, health, spring, youth, and inexperience. Associative responses dealing with emotions are ambiguous: positive (calm) and negative (envy, greed). The associative link with the word of sensory domain is stable: light. Green is the universal symbol of nature and freshness and the contemporary symbol for ecology. Japanese people do not think of green in association with eyes.
2.2.2. Universal, primal associations of colors A universal standard of colors is the following: X is white = x is white (light) because it is thought of as the color of snow/milk/teeth/lily X is black = x is black (dark) because it is thought of as the color of coal/night/crow X is red = x is red because it thought of as the color of blood/apples X is yellow = x is yellow because it has the color of gold/egg yolk X is green = X is green because it has the color of grass X is blue = x is blue because it has the color of sky If asked what is the color of grass, or of the sky, we might reply that grass is green, and the sky is blue. In saying this, we do not mean that this is their color under all conditions. We mean that this is their color prototypically. Colors are sometimes used to describe contrasts, but these are based on convention rather than observation. Typical contrasts are white and red, white and black. In Japanese culture red and white are associated with celebration, while yellow and white go with funerals.
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It is obvious that color words have associated meanings that presuppose culturally shared symbolic meanings. Colors are closely connected with sensory associations and emotions: hot, heat, warm, anger, love, aggression, passion, etc. Word association responses dealing with our senses are mostly related to the color red, white, yellow (because of strong associations with light), and blue. 2.2.3. Nature Words dealing with nature show quite a high level of cross-cultural similarity in associative responses. The results of the analysis show that the word association network based on nature and the human body might be defined in terms of the following structure: Concrete referents mostly categorize position (e.g. above, under), function (e.g. earth-growth, farming), form of the stimulus (earthround). Associative responses frequently evoke contrastive pairs (e.g. moon-sun), and whole-part relations (e.g. space, universe-earth). Abstract referents dealing with emotions are quite rare as far as nature is concerned. Only the moon and stars evoke emotions (stars-happiness, romance). Bodily sensations are mostly based on light-dark opposition (e.g. sun-light, moon-dark). Earth Earth is closely associated with the house, land, sun, moon, and planet. Most associations are of abstract origin: world, growth, mother, environment, etc. Its concrete referents are: water, plants, house, etc. The most frequent responses from the domain of sensory experience are: brown, light. Its focal, prototypical meaning would be: the planet we live on (home, roots, farming, and mother); land as distinguished from sea, and sky; its position in relation with other planets (sun, moon); round in form; its function: heat, warmth and energy. This definition, which comes as a result of word association responses, shows a high level of similarity with the definition given in any reliable dictionary, e.g. Websters New World
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Dictionary, Compact School and Office Dictionary, Fourth Edition, New York: Hungry Minds, 2001. Earth, like other terms, may be presented as a term which describes the content of the speakers visual imagination and the speakers perception of the direct referent.
Sky We perceive the sky as something above us, background of the clouds, sun, moon and stars. The blue color of the clear daytime sky results from the selective scattering of light rays. The rays with longer wavelengths (the reds and yellows) pass through most readily, whereas the shorter rays (the blues) are scattered. (The Columbia Encyclopaedia, Sixth Edition. 2001, httt://www.bartleby.com/65/sk/sky/.html). Its associative referents show its position in relation to human perspective: (e.g. above, stars, clouds) function (e.g. fly, birds, and planes), form (limitless), contrastive pair (earth), whole-part relationship (universe). Sensory referents are: blue, light, dark, azure, black. There are no emotional associations with the word sky, while at the same time the word heaven is loaded with emotions. Its stable cross-cultural association is blue. Sea Our mental map of the sea shows strong associative connections with concrete referents such as: water, boat, salt, sand, coast, fish, horse, land, ship. We perceive it as limitless (infinity); its function is to surf, swim, sail (ships, yacht); in our sensory experience we connect it with green, blue, the smell of salt; emotional experience: calm (pleasant), rough (fear). Semantic framework of the word sea, based on word association responses, would be: a large body of salt water partially enclosed by land, limitless in quantity, might be calm or turbulent, used for sailing, swimming, diving, usually of green or blue color.
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In many languages the sea is perceived as blue or green and it proves the previous claim that these two colors are interchangeable. It is obvious that word association test reveals basic semantic features of an object which might be found in any good dictionary. Associative responses help us to capture the intuitive essence of the concepts.
Star Star stimulated the following associations: sky, moon, bright, night, astronomy, galaxy, planets, shine, dark, dream, romance, sensation, earth, heaven, light, milky way, sun We can categorize associations stimulated by the word star as concrete (e.g. earth) and abstract referents (e.g. dream). They also show the position of the star in relation to other objects (e.g. planets, earth); sensory associations are quite important (e.g. light, bright, shine, dark). Emotional reaction appears as a frequent response (e.g. romance, sensation). It seems that all these words are important in our perception of a star and they should be included in its semantic presentations. Common cross-cultural associations are: sky, night, shine. Moon Our mental image of the moon is closely related to the following words: sun, shine, light, night, stars, crescent, satellite, ship, sky, space, yellow (Japanese), darkness, planet, romance, round, cold, moonlight, white, blue (European languages). The moon has been the basis for many amorous legends and love associations. Common associations reveal its position and relationship with its environment (sun, stars, sky, and planet). Responses based on sensory experience are diverse in different languages: light, shine, yellow, white, darkness, blue. Emotional reaction is romance, love. In European literature the moon is commonly perceived as white, e.g. D.H. Lawrence said: The moon is a white strange world, great, white, soft-seeming globe in the night sky, and what she actually communicates to me across space I shall never
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fully know. () the moon that touches the lunatics, she is not the mere dead lump of the astronomist. (The Posthumous Papers of D.H. Lawrence, pt. 4, ed. E. McDonald (1936). Introduction to the Dragon of the Apocalypse by Frederick Carter. London Mercury, 1930.). Blue moon is used as a symbol of sadness and infrequent events, e.g. once in a blue moon.
Sun Sun evokes numerous and positive associations: moon, shine, bright, shade, yellow, glare, heat, light, bath, cloud, day, golden, happiness, joy, ray, rise, sky, tan, warm. Its focal associations are: light, heat, joy and sunset. It evokes words which denote its position and relationship (moon, cloud, sky). Sensory words are the most important since the light is the basis for sight (e.g. bright, shine, glare, light, golden, warm). Words dealing with emotions are also notable: happiness, joy, emotional rise. We suggest the following semantic framework of the word sun which is based on our associative responses: the large bright yellow object that shines in the sky during the day; it gives us light and heat. Its contrastive pair is the moon. As it has already been mentioned, cross-cultural differences in the perception of the sun are obvious. In European literature sun is associated with yellow and golden color, e.g. O yellow eye, let me be sick with your heat, let me be feverish and frowning. Anne Sexton (1928-1974), The Sun At the end of the analysis of associative responses dealing with nature we could say that cross-cultural differences are not notable as it has been expected. We differ in the perception of the sun and the moon (Japanese: moon =yellow, sun =red; European languages: moon = white, blue, sun =yellow, golden.
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2.2.4. Human body Words within the domain of the human body are united by similarities and contrasts. Body associations reveal not only direct referents but cultural values too, e.g. head=most important, principal (headmaster, head quarters). The parts of the body are so interrelated in our mind (as a part of a whole body) that they must inevitably be defined in terms of one another, e.g. eye-tooth. Eyes stimulated the following associations: blue, nose, ears, see, believing, bright, sore, mouth, seeing, ball, beauty, blind, brows, closed, color, glasses, green, black, brown, hands, light, needle, open, sight, smart, knowledge, tears, importance. The most frequent and focal associations valid for the majority of languages are: sight, seeing, light, believing. In Eastern languages eyes are commonly associated with black or brown while in European languages eyes are frequently associated with green, blue, black and brown. In English we can associate the word eye with needle due to the phrase the eye of the needle (eye of a butterfly or eye of a hurricane) but in some other languages we associate ear with the needle (Croatian: uica igle). Collocational restrictions and contextual factors are quite evident in word association responses. Head: neck , master, shoulders, body, man, brain, chief, feet, hair, bed, big, boss, capital, end, face, ideas, light, mind, thoughts, top, important person, etc. The head is perceived as the part of the body which can be thought of as being above the body, sometimes interchangeable with the body, person or man (e.g. head of the state). The head is defined in relation to other parts of the body: mouth, eyes, nose, hair, face (its constituents), feet (its opposite). Neck and shoulders are included since they are perceived as the part of the body which joins the head to the trunk. The most frequent associations are: brain, mind, idea, thought, mind, important person.
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Soul stimulated the following associations: music, spirit, God, heaven, heart, body, man, death, Jesus, life, singer, existence, ghost, lost, religion, sin. Soul is commonly associated with abstract referents (music, spirit, God, death, life, existence, ghost, religion, sin). There are no associative connections to solid referents in our reality which might help us to visualize the soul. The only concrete referent is body as its contrastive pair and heart as a seat of the soul. Total number of different associations is smaller than in other words. In Slavic languages the word dua (soul) is used as a semantic equivalent of heart, mind, character, e.g. Cro. On je prava dua. (Eng.: He is a sweet heart.) Cro. On ima dobru duu. (Eng.: He has a good heart.) Its associations are much wider in Slavic languages than those in other Western languages. It refers to virtually all aspects of a human personality: feelings, thoughts, character, etc.
3. CONCLUSION Our survey shows differences and similarities in word association responses in different cultures. But in general, we could conclude the following: The universal associations are highly frequent in the domain of nature, colors and body parts. Cross-cultural analysis of the limited sample of associative responses (20 stimulus words) shows a high number of equivalent answers (60%). The universal associations are important since they show a stable and regular reaction to the term and therefore they serve as a significant component of the semantic structure of the word. Specific or cultural associations are significant between Eastern languages (Japanese or Chinese) on the one hand and some European languages on the other. Differences between European languages exist, but they are not very significant, probably due to the common cultural background.
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Abstract references are dominant in all languages. It seems that we use color words, words from nature and body words to conceptualize various other objects and ideas from our reality. This claim is in accordance with the views advocated by Lakoff & Johnson (1980). They claim that in metaphorical speech we often use familiar words in order to conceptualize unknown and unfamiliar objects. In comparison to other domains colors stimulated the largest amount of associations, as it was expected, since the sense of sight is the most important source of information about our reality. It is often identified with knowledge itself Among colors, red stimulated the largest number of different associative responses. Next to red is yellow and blue/green. These three colors (blue and green are often interchangeable, or recognized as one color) have the largest map of reference in all languages included in this research. Since this is a cross-cultural phenomenon it might be considered as the primordial classification of reality that is common to all human beings because it is rooted in our experience. These results lead to the theory of Berlin and Kay (1969) and the importance of biological predispositions and physical stimuli. In the realm of color, there appear to be some basic constraints that limit the way in which this aspect of our experience is coded in the language. Wierzbicka (1980:43) suggests that the relative stability of the foci of color concepts discovered by Berlin and Kay (1969) may be explained by the presence in peoples experience of some standard and probably universal points of reference with fairly clear typical manifestations. The results show that we use our body to conceptualize outer and inner reality more than we conceptualize the body itself (e.g. head=knowledge). Emotional associations show inclinations towards some colors; red, blue, yellow, and black are dominant.
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Americans have very strong associations of color with races and they are more sensitive than Oriental and European speakers to the color of eyes, hair, and skin, since they have more variety than any other country. Eastern/Western cultures primarily differ in the perception of the following words: Stimulus word Western Eastern white wedding, moonlight, mourning, death moon, purity green eyes, fingers, Ireland yellow sun, sunlight, gold, egg, nobility, imperial cowardness, joy Blue eyes, aristocracy, hills, often confused with green blood, moon, in Japan, immortality (China) Red sun, rice, celebration (China), wedding (India), red and white = joy. black mourning, death Sun Yellow, golden Red moon white, blue, silver Yellow Brightness and contrast are very important factors in color associations. Colors with a dark hue (blue, green, gray, brown) are often associated with negative feelings as equivalents of black. It is quite evident that our associations are structured. We can use different approaches to classify them. Our classification reveals basic semantic features of stimulus words: concrete (position and relationship within its environment, function, form, contrastive pair), and abstract referents, sensory and emotional associations.
We can conclude that besides differences in associative responses in different and distinct cultures there are many similarities which confirm that our language is part of our biological endowment, but it is also an important part of our cultural identity and our own interpretation of the world.
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CHAPTER 3
COLOR CATEGORIES LANGUAGE
IN
THOUGHT
AND
Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.

(Pablo Picasso)
1. INTRODUCTION Colors are important in mankinds perception of the world. Consequently it is not surprising that colors will find their way into language in the form of color metaphors. Given the importance of color in human sight, color metaphors are quite frequent. The study of color cognition has exercised the minds of many scholars involved in different disciplines: psychology, physics, linguistics, etc. In this work we will use relevant information coming from different areas of research in order to fulfil the needs of an interdisciplinary approach. A description of colors used in physics might help us to explain linguistic categorization of colors. We will use the following definition to specify the term color: Color is a property of light that depends on wavelength. When light falls on an object, some of it is absorbed and some is reflected. The apparent color of an opaque object depends on the wavelength of the light that it reflects, e.g., a red object observed in daylight appears red because it reflects only the waves producing red light. The color of a transparent object is determined by the wavelength of the light transmitted by it. An opaque object that reflects all wavelengths appears white; one that absorbs all wavelengths appears black.
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The Columbia Encyclopaedia, Sixth Edition, 2001. (http/www.bartleby.com/65/co/color.html) Besides their physical characteristics we have to point out that colors have a direct and powerful influence on people and their interpretations of the world. This might be the reason why so much attention has been given to the domain of color terminology. There are two questions that dominate the discussion about color terminology. Two different views are recognized as pertaining to universalists and relativists. On the one hand scholars like Wierzbicka (1980) and others, strongly stand behind the idea that each word is loaded with cultural and historical meanings, associations. Other researchers like Berlin and Kay (1969) use physical stimuli and the possible universality of linguistic and cognitive processes in their theory. They claim that focal meanings of basic color terms are substantially similar in all languages, suggesting a universal color system based on direct physical stimuli. Our research shows that there is a large body of evidence, especially in the field of phraseology and metaphors, which shows that color terminology is not based only on observation, stimuli, but more on symbolic, cultural meaning, e.g. a black box. In reality a black box is not necessarily black. It is usually orange or yellow. Green finger is not green. It simply means that we have a gift to seed the plants. Obviously, these phrases (green finger, black box) are not supported by our direct sensual experiences. The meaning of colors often depends not only upon our sensual perception (the sense of sight), but on our ability to interpret it within the context of our emotional and cultural realities. Therefore, we maintain that language is not a mere mirror of our reality. Our sensual experience is cognitively modified in our neural area and the final result is a combination of our neural responses and social and cultural constraints. Accordingly, we expect similarities and differences based on the fact that we are biologically equally 'wired' (sensory experience), we share common cultural background, and differences are due to our cultural specifics/constraints. It is generally confirmed that color in general is able to evoke certain kinds of abstract, sensory and emotional associations which are quite stable in many languages, e.g. Eng. red > anger, passion, Cro. ljutnja (=anger).
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Color has long been used as a symbol of various cultural models of behaviour. A well-known use of the symbolism of color is in the liturgical colors of the Christian church, e.g. purple=Advent and Lent, white = Easter, red= feasts of the martyrs. Many other religions evoke color symbolism, too. Symbolic meaning is of a different order from perceptual meaning. The relation of symbols to their referents is an extrinsic one of social agreement.
2. Binary model In previous works about color terminology, binary modelling hasnt been pointed out. The results of our analysis, combined with physical characteristics, gave us enough information to claim that the world of basic colors is also open to binary modelling or binary opposition. We would like to point out that our hypothesis roughly follows the evolutionary sequence proposed by Berlin and Kay (1969): white and black red green or yellowgreen and yellow blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, gray. Berlin and Kay (1969) also found evidence suggesting that there is a standard order in which basic color terms are added to languages. If a language has only two color terms, they refer to dark and light colors. If a third basic color term is added, it refers to red. The next color terms to enter a language refer to yellow and green. If there are six basic terms, the sixth one is always blue, etc. The following schema divides colors into two contrastive pairs. This view is based on the word association responses, cross-cultural analyses, physical description of colors and binary modelling.
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BLACK Negative (-) dark/cold
cold colors/dark short wavelength BLUE (+/-) GREEN (+/-) warm colors/light long wavelength RED (+/-) YELLOW (+/-)
WHITE positive (+) light/warm
First binary model. Second binary level ..Third binary level
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BROWN YELLOW + BLACK
ORANGE YELLOW + RED
PINK RED + WHITE
PURPLE BLUE + RED
GREY BLACK + WHITE
Fourth binary level (complex colors) Our first binary level includes two colors, black and white, considered to be two extremes (antonyms): light/dark, positive/negative. One color evokes strong emotions (black) and the other is quite neutral (white). Strictly speaking, black is a color that absorbs all light falling on it, so that it is the perceived effect of zero reflection from a given surface. White, on the other hand, is the color perceived when a surface reflects a selection of colors from the spectrum which combine to give the effect of brighteness but zero color. The distinguishing semantic component of white is, roughly, + light, whereas of black it is light. The second binary level refers to two interchangeable colors: red and yellow. Both colors are considered to be warm, and their associated words are heat and light. They differ from the first level colors as they are interchangeable and they include ambiguous associations: positive and negative. In different cultures one color might be used instead of the other, e.g. sun red (Japanese culture), sun yellow (in the majority of European cultures). Third level colors (blue-green) are perceived as cold, interchangeable pair of words. In many languages speakers do not make a clear distinction between these two colors. In Sudanese Arabic axdar (=green) meant both light blue and green. In Japanese culture it is used interchangeably. Fresh vegetables are defined as blue, and the traffic lights are seen as blue. Sometimes these two
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colors overlap referring to the same reality, e.g. Navajo speakers merge blue and green into one word. Fourth level colors refers to complex colors or combination of two colors, e.g. orange (yellow+red) Our binary model of colors is based on physical characteristics of colors (the length of waves), e.g. green and blue are products of short light-waves, and thus appear darker. The feature of darkness (short light waves) connects these two colors. The colors red and yellow are perceptual products of long light waves and they are perceived as warm and light. Black and white are not generally considered true colors; black is said to result from the absence of color, and white from the presence of all colors mixed together. They are an antonymous pair of words. Maybury-Lewis and Almagor (1989) claim that binary classification, in general, is a powerful, cognitive device when human beings attempt to create social and conceptual order. We assume that colors are an important part of human life and therefore they are presumably structured on a binary model.
The results of our research corresponds to the results proposed in a series of papers in which Hurvich, L.M. and Jameson, D. (see Hardin, C.L. & Maffi, L.: 1997) advanced a quantitative opponent-process theory. This theory has been established by Hering E. (see Hardin, C.L. & Maffi, L.: 1997) who claimed that red-green and blue-yellow are opponent pairs and that we never experience these hues together in a single color. According to Wandell, B.A. (1995:318) we never experience a hue that is simultaneously red and green. No do we experience a color sensation that is simultaneously blue-yellow. These two pairs, red-green, and blue-yellow are called opponent colors. Our sample supports this claim since we have no example of opponent colors being interchangeable referring to the same reality. The opponent colors organization has drawn considerable attention with the discovery that many neurons carry opponent signals, increasing their response to some wavelengths of light and decreasing in response to others. (Wandell, B.A. (1995:338)
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According to Davidoff, J. (1991:154) our failure to see red-green combination or yellow-blue tells us that there are some constraints on color judgements that are biological rather than linguistic.
3. COLORFUL METAPHORS AND PHRASES A metaphor is the bridge to reality. (Arabic saying) The language of seeing is rooted in human experience and its basic frame of reference is provided by the universal alternation of nights (darkness) and days (light) and by the fundamental and visually salient features of the human environment: the sky, the sun, vegetation, fire. Our visual categories are translated into accessible models and these models constitute basic models of reference in human color talk (day, snow often perceived as white; night often black, sky often blue, sun often yellow; grass typically green). We describe ourselves and our behavior using colors. When we are happy we are tinkled pink and greet the world with flying colors. Envious people turn green, and cowards are yellow in the face of danger. Sometimes we see pink elephants or we might be in a brown study. We call our language blue when we speak in a profane way. In political rhetoric color is often used to convey a message. The color spectrum is an objective fact: it is out there waiting to be dealt with cognitively. All of the colors that we see are a combination of six basic colors: red, yellow, green, blue, white and black. Metaphors dealing with colors and phrases make an interesting field of research. It is obvious that color terms in phrases and proverbs have additional meaning besides their reference to the color itself. Words dealing with colors are connected to other words by shared features. There is a network of associated words for each color item based on perceived similarity and general memory information. The activation of a single word spreads its network of culturally shared associations. The boundaries of color words are fuzzy. To some scholars the meaning of every color term can be identified in terms of physical
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properties of light such as wavelength. According to A. Wierzbicka (1996; 293) color perception is the same for all human beings (common human biology), but color conceptualization is different in different cultures. Blue means what people mean, or have in mind when they use it. The names of colors very often have a symbolic connotational value based on folk concepts or collective memory. Cultural connotations result from the interaction between linguistic meanings and other symbolic cultural codes. Phraseology is a domain of linguistics which illustrates the correlation between language and culture. The following examples of phrases and proverbs are taken from Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms, (website: http://dictionary. Cambridge.org.) 2.1. BLACK Black is the achromatic color of least lightness characteristically perceived to belong to objects that neither reflect nor transmit light. The symbolic value of black 5 is found in many proverbs and phrases. Symbolically, black is most often seen in its cold and negative aspect. Black as sadness, grief, deep mourning, pessimisms, anguish, misfortune, evil, unconscious state, and death a black deed ( thoroughly sinister or evil) a black soul (immoral character) black (1. without hope, e.g. The future looked black. 2. bad or evil, e.g. a black-hearted villain a black comedy (a film, play, etc. that looks at the amusing side of things we usually consider very serious, like death and illness) black despair (very sad, gloomy, or calamitous) a black economy (business activity and income which people do not record in order to avoid paying tax on it) a black eye (an eye where the skin around it has gone dark because it has been hit), e.g. He had a fight at school and came home with a black eye. black Friday (marked by the occurrence of disaster) black hole (an imaginary place in which things are lost)
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black humour (an amusing way of looking at or treating something that is serious or sad) a black look (when your face is full of anger and hate), e.g. She gave me a black look. black magic (a type of magic that is believed to use evil spirits to do harmful things) to be in a black mood (a very unhappy feeling), e.g. She was in one of her black moods today. black sheep (a person who has done something bad which brings embarrassment or disrespect to their family) e.g. He's the black sheep of the family. the Black Death (a disease that killed an extremely large number of people in Europe and Asia in the 14th century) the Black Hole of Calcutta (an unpleasantly full and hot room), e.g. One guest at the crowded reception was heard to mutter "It's like the Black Hole of Calcutta in here." to black out (to become unconscious suddenly but for a short period) to blacken sb's name/image/reputation, etc. (to spoil someone's reputation), e.g. The financial crash blackened the image of investment for many small investors.) Proverbs: A black hen lays a white egg. Two blacks don make a white. The devil is not as black as he is painted. The pot calls the kettle black. After black clouds, clear weather. 2.2. WHITE The origin of the word white dates back before12th century. It derives from Old English hwIt; akin to Old High German hwIz (white) and probably to Old Church Slavonic svetu (light), Sanskrit sveta (white, bright). Symbolic values of white in Western cultures are evident from the following proverbs and phrases.
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1.3.
White as purity, innocence, chastity, recognition, cowardice, defeat a white wedding (a symbol of purity) (as) white as a sheet (If someone is (as) white as a sheet, their face is very pale, usually because of illness, shock or fear.) lily-white (having a perfect character with no bad qualities) one of the white days of his life (favorable, fortunate) see things in black and white (to have a simple view of what is right and wrong or good and bad) snow-white (pure white) to show the white feather a white elephant (something that has cost a lot of money but has no useful purpose) white flag (a flag that is waved to show the acceptance of defeat or a lack of intention to attack), e.g. The soldiers lay down their guns and walked towards the enemy camp, carrying a white flag. white hair (old person) white handed (an honest man) white hope (a person or thing which people hope will be very successful in the near future), e.g. This new car is seen as the great white hope of the British motor industry. white horses (waves which are white at the top) white knight (a person or organization that saves a company from financial difficulties or an unwanted change of ownership by putting money into the company or by buying it) white lie (a lie that is told in order to be polite or to stop someone from being upset by the truth) white magic (magic which is used only to do good things) white noise (a mixture of sounds or electrical signals which consists of all sounds or signals in a large range) white wedding (a traditional Christian marriage in a church, at which the woman who is getting married wears a white dress), e.g. She wants a proper white wedding. candidate (Lat. candidus=white, pure, sincere) GREEN
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In Merriam-Webster dictionary (http://www.m-w.com/cgibin/dictionary.) green is defined as a color whose hue is somewhat less yellow than that of growing fresh grass or of the emerald or is that of the part of the spectrum lying between blue and yellow. In our binary schema its binary pair is blue. Its etymology goes back to Old English (before 12th century) grEne; akin to Old English grOwan = to grow. To elucidate the English concept of the word green, we can draw on the stock of common English phrases and proverbs. green as vegetation, youth, envy, jealousy, freshness and permission. to be green about/around the gills (to look ill, as if you are going to vomit), e.g. He was out drinking last night, was he? I thought he looked a bit green about the gills this morning. to be green with envy (to wish very much that you had something that another person has), e.g. Sharon's going off to the south of France for three weeks and we're all green with envy. to give sb/sth the green light (to give permission for someone to do something or for something to happen), e.g. They've just been given the green light to build two new supermarkets in the region. to get the green light (As soon as we get the green light from the council we'll start building.) to have green fingers (American have a green thumb (to be good at keeping plants healthy and making them grow), e.g. I'm afraid I don't have green fingers. I've killed every plant I've ever owned. I was just admiring your beautiful plants, Helen. You must have a green thumb. the green-eyed monster (the feeling of being jealous), e.g. Do you think his criticisms of Jack are valid or is it just a case of the green-eyed monster? the rub of the green mainly British (if you have the rub of the green, you have good luck, especially in a sports competition), e.g. This player hasn't had the rub of the green in the last few tournaments. Proverb: A green wound is soon healed. 1.4. BLUE
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Blue is a color whose hue is that of the clear sky. Etymology: Middle English, from Old French blou, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German blAo (blue). It dates back to 13th century. blue as nobility, aristocracy, sadness, depression, something unexpected, rare, truthful, sexual be between the devil and the deep blue sea (to have two choices but both of them are equally unpleasant or inconvenient) a bolt from/out of the blue (something completely unexpected that surprises you very much), e.g. The news of his marriage was a bolt from the blue. scream/shout blue murder (to show your annoyance about something, especially by shouting or complaining very loudly), e.g. He'll scream blue murder if he doesn't get his way. once in a blue moon (rarely), e.g. My sister lives in Alaska, so I only see her once in a blue moon. out of the blue (If something happens out of the blue, it is completely unexpected), e.g. One day, out of the blue, she announced that she was leaving. until you are blue in the face (If you say or shout something until you are blue in the face, you are wasting your efforts because you will get no results), e.g. You can tell her to tidy her room until you are blue in the face, but she won't do it. true-blue (completely loyal to a person or belief), e.g. They want control of the company to remain in true-blue hands. blue ribbon 1 (the highest prize in a competition or event), e.g. He won the men's blue-ribbon event, the 100 metres freestyle. blue law (a law that limits activities which are considered to be immoral for religious reasons, such as shopping or working on Sundays) blue pencil (If a person goes over a piece of writing with a blue pencil, they remove or change some of the words to improve it or make it acceptable.) blue-eyed boy (a boy or man who is particularly liked and is treated well by someone, especially someone in authority) blue-chip (A blue-chip company or investment is one that can be trusted and is not likely to fail)
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blue-blooded (describes someone who has been born into a family which belongs to the highest social class) blue-black (a very dark blue that sometimes looks blue and sometimes black) blue (feeling or showing sadness), e.g. He's been a bit blue since he failed his exams. blues (a type of slow, sad music, originally from the southern US, in which the singer typically sings about their difficult life or bad luck in love), e.g. Billie Holiday was famous for singing the blues. blue (showing or mentioning sexual activity in a way that offends many people), e.g. a blue joke, a blue movie/film, His humour is a bit too blue for my tastes. blue in the face (extremely exasperated) Proverb: Blue eyes, true eyes.
3.5. YELLOW In Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary yellow is described as a color whose hue resembles that of ripe lemons or sunflowers. Its etymology dates before 12th century. In Middle English it was yelwe, (yellow), from Old English geolu; akin to Old High German gelo (yellow), Latin helvus (light bay, Greek chlOros (greenish yellow), Sanskrit hari (yellowish). yellow as cowardice, jealousy, and false information yellow looks (jealousy) to be yellow (afraid) yellow journalism (writing in newspapers that try to get people's attention or influence their opinions by using strong language or false information) e.g. The paper is practising yellow journalism at its worst with its scandalous stories about the Governor and his family. 3.6. RED A color whose hue resembles that of blood or of the ruby is that of the long-wave extreme of the visible spectrum. Etymology of the word dates back to 12th century. It derives from Old English rEad; akin to Old High German rOt (red), Latin ruber & rufus, Greek erythros.
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RED as fire, blood, love, spirit, beauty, strength, health, energy, joy, sex, success, anger, courage and patriotism to paint the town red (to go out and enjoy yourself in the evening, often drinking a lot of alcohol and dancing), e.g. Jack finished his exams today so he's gone out to paint the town red. red-hot (very exciting or successful), e.g. British athletes are redhot at the moment. Their divorce is the red-hot story in this morning's press. red-blooded (a red-blooded man has a lot of energy and enjoys sex very much), e.g. He's a normal, red-blooded male - of course he wants to sleep with you! the red-light district (the part of a city where many people offer sex for money), e.g. A prostitute was found murdered in the city's red-light district last night a red-letter day (a day that is very important or very special), e.g. The day our daughter was born was a real red-letter day for us. to catch sb red-handed (to discover someone doing something illegal or wrong), e.g. I caught him red-handed trying to break into my car. to see red (to become very angry), e.g. When he laughed in my face, I just saw red. to roll out the red carpet (to give an important person a special welcome), e.g. The red carpet was rolled out for the President's visit. to be like a red rag to a bull (if a statement or an action is like a red rag to a bull, it makes someone very angry), e.g. Some people believe that bulls become very angry when they see the color red. For Claire, the suggestion of a women-only committee was like a red rag to a bull. to be in the red (to owe money to a bank), e.g. Accountants often write amounts of money that are owed in red ink. Many of the students were in the red at the end of their first year. a red herring (something that takes people's attention away from the main subject being talked or written about), e.g. About halfway through the book it looked as though the butler was the murderer, but that turned out to be a red herring.
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red tape (official rules which do not seem necessary and make things happen very slowly), e.g. My passport application has been held up by red tape. to go beetroot (red) (to become very red in the face, usually because you are embarrassed), e.g. A beetroot is a small, round vegetable that is a very dark red/purple colour. Whenever the kids asked him about his girlfriend he'd go beetroot. Proverb: Red sky at night, shepherds delight; red sky in the morning shepherds warning.
3. CONCLUSION The results of the research show that mainly basic, focal colors are used in metaphors; some colors are used more frequently than others. In our sample of proverbs and phrases black, white and red are the most frequent colors with the largest map of reference. Color terms are used not only in reference to the outside world, but also in expressions dealing with human emotions (to turn blue/red with fear or anger; to turn green because of fear, jealousy or sickness) and other experiential domains. Our perception of color depends not only upon our ability to see the color, but also on our ability to decode it within a framework of our cultural constraints and associations. Metaphorical projections of colors are more frequent then their direct references. Languages of different cultures do not all have the same vocabulary for describing sensory qualities. Thus what we call blue and green may be called by one single name in some other language. Roschs experimental work on Dani color system (see Hardin, C.L. 1997:21) showed that two term systems contain, not terms for dark and light shades regardless of hue, but rather one term covering white, red, and yellow and one term covering black, green, blue, that is, a category of white plus warm colors versus one black plus cold colors. Our research results support the theory of binary structure of colors and it partly corresponds to the theory of Berlin and Kay (1969). It also
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confirms the concept of opponent colors advocated by Hering E. (See Hurvich, L.M. and Jameson, D., 1964). Binarism is viewed as consisting of two partially independent chromatic channels (warm and cold), organized in a sequence, which is based on the following model: white/black red / yellowgreen/ blue, and complex colors like brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray. It is quite evident that an area of color naming is a complex problem, and it has to be discussed within broader theoretical perspectives. We would like to point out that the work of color term researchers, recognized as the Universalists and the Relativists, should be reconciled and reevaluated. The color problem asks for interdisciplinary approach based on cross-cultural model. A similar view is shared by Wyler S. (1992:17): From the linguists point of view it seems important to observe that research by Relativists and Universalists () has always been undertaken in what may be called linguistic isolation . Color terms are interrelated within a lexical field as a spider web and they should be analyzed in relations to each other. Binarism as a structural framework is based on the assumption that the meaning of one word contributes to the meaning of the neighboring word. The occurrence of oppositional pairs on account of color distinction is widely used in language: black magic-white magic , etc. Some colors are hardly ever used in a figurative sense. Wyler S. claims (1992:143): Thus the group of color terms that freely generates figurative phrases and idioms is formed by five color terms: red, blue, green , and the two a-chromatic color names white and black. The results of our research correspond to Wylers claim. We can conclude that color perception offers a rich source of colorful metaphors.
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Chapter 3
COMPUTERS, HUMANS AND METAPHORS

Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines. (Eric Hoffer, US philosopher, in The Columbia World of Quotations, 1996), http://www.bartleby.com/66/52/28552.html
1. INTRODUCTION In a period of rapid development of high technology, every language changes in resonance with the development of its environment. Along with these changes there is a huge expansion in the lexicon of the language; new concepts are introduced, accompanied by new and old word forms. The vocabulary of each language develops according to the priorities and needs of its culture. If we want to uncover these prorities we have to examine its vocabulary. We consider computer terminology an important part of our linguistic reality. Therefore, we will focus our attention on the interlationship of words dealing with computers and the the human body. What we are doing here is symbolic of the 'peaceful coexistence' of the body and the computer. In the last decade these two semantic domains have come to be bridged with common vocabulary based on metaphorical grounds.
Source domain: HUMANS 66
Target domain: COMPUTERS
The source of the sample of words used in this study is hacker's jargon and 'The NetLingo Pocket Dictionary' (Website: www.netlingo.com/pocket.html). We have collected 200 terms from the field of computing.
2. METAPHORS TECHNOLOGY
AND
THE
DEVELOPMENT
OF
HIGH
Metaphors and other figures are intrinsic to all languagers. The 'metaphor-as-language' approach can be traced back to ancient history since all language began with metaphors. Our alphabet/writing system grows out of pictures of an animal or person or other object. The pictures turned into symbols. In ancient Phoenicia the letter A was called aleph and meant ox. It was represented like a V, seemingly for the horns of an ox. The Greeks later turned it upside down. And B in Phoenician was called beth and beth meant a tent or house (Bethlehem=the house of food). It is evident that metaphors are deeply embedded in our writing system. Human behavior is symbolic behavior transmitted via language and its metaphors. With the aid of metaphors we render experience intelligible to a degree, and by means of them we adjust to our environment. It is our way of dealing with experience. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) assume that metaphor is pervasive imaginative structure of human understanding of the world. The coming of electronic media and technology have generated new descriptions of the world which stand in opposition to existing cultural descriptions of reality, e.g. a mouse is not only an animal. The frame of reference of the word mouse (animal) is expanded and the word acquires a new meaning (a technical device). This semantic shift, expansion
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demonstrates the importance of the polysemy which flourishes in our new linguistic environment.
mouse
In an environment abounding in stimuli, such as modern Western society, with sights and sounds all around introduced by new electronic media, the individual cannot register everything at once and his perception must therefore be selective. In the face of this situation, a perceiver develops a highly economical strategy of perception and linguistic action. No language can have a separate word for each and every concept a speaker might wish to convey. It would be an enormous burden on our memory. In order to save our mental energy, we often use a word with an enlarged reference as is shown in the example of the word mouse. We push our discourse towards the metaphoric pole. (Gozzi, 1999:4). Using metaphors becomes an efficient and economical means of explanation of reality. This is an example of cognitive economy, or 'economical percept' (Gibbson, 1966). The minimum principle in the organization of perception is one of the goals of Gestalt theory, too. In language usage, metaphor crosses over such categorial divisions as animate/inanimate, cosmic/biological, human/animal. Synesthetic metaphors are quite frequent, e.g. a color is warm, a noise is sharp, a vision is painful. In the world of metaphors, high technology devices easily become part of the human body domain. Criss-crossing different semantic domains, new metaphors trigger a vast range of distant associative links that have never been in contact. According to Lakoff & Johnson (1980: 5) 'The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another.' These two
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authors provide a range of examples illustrating how our conceptual system works on the basis of metaphors which are capable of generating related metaphors based on cross-domains. The new globalization process enables cross-cultural shift and a new word network. The conceptual blending supported by Turner and Fauconnier (1995) differs slightly from Lakoff and Johnson's concept (1980) of overlapping. They claim that two domains blend into a separate conceptual space which takes on aspects of both domains and has an emergent structure of its own. Many scholars agree that metaphors do more than call our attention to some already existing similarities. According to Beck, B. (1987, 11) 'They force the mind to construct a higher-order linkage between the entities referred to'. In this work we tend to support the view given by Turner and Fauconnier since it offers better insight into the explanation of expanded meaning of many new words. Let's take as an example the word cyberspace. According to Gozzi (1999: 58) the metaphor cyberspace is a conceptual blend. 'It blends the notion of a computer network with the notion of physical space, producing something that is a combination of both but having distinct new properties of its own.' The most frequent kind of conceptual blend happens between the human body and the new technical devices. A brief overview of computational metaphors shows that the human body and its environment are the main source of a huge number of metaphors dealing with computers. These metaphors enable us to evoke human characteristics in describing this new, unfamiliar segment of our experience. In this study we would like to expand previous considerations of the embodied relationship between computers and humans. 2.1. Metaphorical conceptualization of the human body and high technology devices
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(Web: It is confirmed by many scholars that our metaphorical understanding is often grounded in non-metaphorical and preconceptual structures that arise from everyday bodily experience (see Lakoff&Johnson, 1980; Gibbs, 1994). The point of Johnson's work (1978) and many other recent works is that our metaphors are ultimately grounded in our experience of our body. The human body is often used as a measure of the non-human world, as has been claimed in the first chapter of this book, e.g. foot of the mountain, head of the department. There is quite an extensive expansion of the human-body domain which is used to describe new tecnical devices. Computers have memory, brains, intelligence, languages, viruses, keys, windows, architecture, etc. These metaphors change our linguistic behavior and cognitive maps. Computers become human beings and human beings act like computers. This mutual exchange of features between these two domains makes meanings more fuzzy and fluid so that these distinct words can be easily interrelated. Metaphors acquire an important role in this process of crossover. 'Through metaphorical extensions of terms, and through giving the new objects and actions the names of something else, metaphor starts to exhibit a subtle but pervasive power. (Gozzi, 1999: 5) In order to shed light on such an important segment of our experience we have analyzed a sample of metaphorical projections of body parts and computers. We will try to define how the abstract or
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unknown domain of computing is conceptualized in terms of the concrete domain of the human body and vice versa. 2.1.1. Bodies as computers The word body itself is used in transferred meaning in computer terminology. Body can mean one of several things. For example, it is the part of an e-mail message that contains the actual message itself (without the address and server information). In HTML, a body tag designates the section of a Web page that contains the text and graphics you see in a browser window. Generally, body refers to the content within a document, as in, the body of a text. cyborg a fictional being that's half machine half human, and made of bionic flesh Cyborg
cyber tourist a person who only goes online at the weekends or holidays
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cybrarian a person who makes a living doing online research and information retrieval Cyber Angels - an organization that assists victims of Internet crimes (such as online stalking, cyber fraud, credit card theft, etc.). android - a robot that looks like a real person. It might refer to a real person with a robot-like behavior, e.g. You are like an android/robot. grabber hand -the hand icon that replaces the mouse cursor when you move selected text or graphics from one place to another.
Internet backbone - The super fast network spanning the world, from one major metropolitan area to another. net head - a nickname for any person who is so passionate about the Internet that he or she knows how to operate almost all of the programs and uses them for business or pleasure on a daily basis. There are a lot of heads hanging around, including bellhead, chiphead, gearhead, gopherhead, modemhead, and Web head. thumbnail -the name for a graphic purposely made smaller in order to display multiple images on a single Web page. Using thumbnails is popular on the Web because users can review a bunch of images at once, choose the image they like, and click on it to see a larger version. nipple the small, red, spongy ball in the middle of a laptop's keyboard palmtop - the generic name for a PC that fits in the palm of one's hand
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boot to start a computer or turn it on handshake when two modems are trying to connect etc. In these examples we have seen semantic migration, or conceptual blending of body parts and computers.
Exhanges of characteristics between man and machine are getting more and more frequent in modern society. This merger leads to reconceptualization of the human body, e.g. sensory apparatus, genetic mechanism, nervous breakdown, killing machine (solders), to be wired to, etc. Our language is hardwired, one shoud not compute a non-litaral interpretation, etc. 2.1.2. Computers as human beings Computer as man (the embodied computer) In modern languages computers are presented as living beings with a complex nervous system, surrounded by animals (mouse, bug), home facilities, offices, etc. They have their own language, brain, memory, generation; we can travel/surf with them through the Internet, they have their own webpedia, and global fever. They are intelligent, smart; they can learn and remember. Computers can be infected by virus. They are personalized and personalization means to customize your computer screen or a Web site so that it reflects something about your individual tastes. This merger is an on-going process in almost all modern languages The computer assumes an organic function and the body is redesigned through the use of new technologies. Let's analyse the computer environment, within human cultural constraints:
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The human environment as computer environment Virtual reality or cyberspace (webspace) means a total sensory immersion in the artificial environment. Such reality offers the following concepts: site, ghost site (the name for a Web site that is no longer maintained, in analogy to a ghost town), home, windows, Internet Cafe, traffic, e-mail address, architecture (the physical structure of a computer system and its components), Information Superhighway, gateway (a system of exchanging information across a network), mail box, tool (a helpful program), etc.
Animals and parasites as computer programs, or technical devices Processes in computing are seen as animate phenomenon. They are often conceived as the typical activity of various animals: The names of the following animals are used: mouse, web bug, worm, bats (butterypowered, ultrasonic transmitters), bear paw (the fivekey keyboard combination that resets the graphics subsystem and the window manager), techno puppet (Tamagotchi), mocking bird (software that intercepts communication between users and hosts), virus, etc. Citizen as netizen A computer lives in a society like all other human beings and this society has its netizens (a citizen of the Internet; one who spends a significant amount of time online). It has its motherboard or the main circuit board of a computer. Netizens are cybernauts, cyborgs, hackers, cyber-criminals, cyber tourists, cybrarians, cyber terrorists, cyber angels, nerds, computer nuts, info-addicts, techno-junkies, etc. Brain/knowledge as software This bondage of man and machine is so strong that we not only use body parts to define computers but even transfer body metaphors to computers. We conceptualize our knowledge and information as water and food, e.g. brain drain,
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the flow of information, information leaked, a hunger for learning. Since our computer is equated with the brain and knowledge, we associate the same words with computers. We also use surfing and navigating referring to the web. Our brain is calculating, it works and cracks like a computer. Human senses and emotions as computer activity Human senses and emotions are used to conceptualize some computer activities, e.g. hot potato routing, cybersex, sniffer (a virus that usually comes in the form of an e-mail attachment). An emoticon is a sequence of typed characters that creates a rough picture of something such as a facial expression, e.g. . In tech talk, vanilla means the standard version of a hardware device or software program, with no extra bells-and-whistles. It is commonly used to describe something plain. Flavor is a distinctive quality of a hardware or software, and it generally means version with regard to the feature set, e.g. This software comes in two flavors. Food/menu as a data or a list of items Computers have their own menu (a list of items you can select) and food, e.g. hotdog (a tool for Windows 95). Cookies is a funny name for a small piece of information about you (about your computer, actually). It is a small file that a Web server automatically sends to your PC when you browse certain Web sites. To feed the computer with data is a common expression used in tech talk. Western, culture-bound concept as computer program An Easter egg is a hidden element written into a program or placed on a Web site. Basically, it is a special feature that is not otherwise made obvious, but when "clicked on," it offers something special. Programmers often "bury" Easter eggs in their programs to add a certain extra depth to the program and to challenge their users to find it. The
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meaning of this expression is based on the folklore of European Christian countries: the custom of hiding Eastern eggs. In order to explain the motivation of this metaphor, it is essential to draw on cultural knowledge. The main source of the above mentioned examples is 'The NetLingo Pocket Dictionary' (Website: www.netlingo.com/pocket.html) The results of the analysis of the sample shows that we have equated man and machines in such a way that we do not know whether we speak about a human being or machine, e.g. He is a real robot. As part of an attempt to make computers more friendly, words from everyday experiences are applied to them with new computer-specific definitions. Equivalence between the computer and the man causes further changes in all languages exposed to it. This strategy has really enhanced our understanding of computers , because it invites us to project all sorts of human qualities into these machines. But, Gozzi (1999) warns of the possible consequences of these changes of vocabulary. He assumes that so many terms will be recognized as computer terms that it might diminish the possibility of describing human beings. 'By attributing human qualities to machines, especially computers, we loose sense of what is human, have less understanding of how humans differ from machines, and construct an image of powerful machines and frail humans' (Gozzi; 1999; 152). 2.2. The human-machine dualism The problem of the relation between body and soul has occupied philosophers and scientists since the dawn of thought. This dualism of the soul/body in modern society has almost been replaced by another dualism of the body/machine, which is based on widespread technological development and restructuring of the natural human body.
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According to S. Turkle, US sociologist and psychologist: 'One thing is certain: the riddle of mind, long a topic fro philosophers, has taken on new urgency. Under pressure from the computer, the question of mind in relation to machine is becoming a central cultural preoccupation. It is becoming for us what sex was to the Victorians-threat and obsession, taboo and fascination.' (http://www.bartleby.com/66/65/61865.html) When the human body was fractured into functional parts it was the dawn of the new conceptualization of the world. The widespread technological refashioning of the natural human body and bionic organs (mechanical replacements, cosmetic surgery, genetic alteration) made it harder to distinguish people from machines. Humans are de-integrated, dissolved or broken down into distinct parts like machines. The implications of this process are enormous. Humans are blended with machines. Human brains are described as computers, and human thought as calculating. The very line between living and non-living beings became even more problematic. The human body becomes less organic and more artificial, increasingly machine like. Descartes refers to animals as machines because they have no souls. In modern society his premises are changed: human beings are machines. Because more areas in the economy are becoming computerized, there has been a steady attempt to make them more user-friendly, human-like.. In advertisments computers are defined as warm, soft, friendly (userfriendly icons) and humanoid (smiley-face icons). In tech speech computers are born and they die. Computers can also be too fat and are most desirable when they are slim. Some articles about computers go even further by making the analogy of a romantic relationship of the user and his computer. Computers have their personal names given by their owners.. Cybersex is a matter of law dispute in the US and a real life problem in some families. New computer programs have recently been designed to alleviate the negative emotions people harbor about computers. Microsoft has
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developed a program called Bob. The program features animated characters to show people how to work , including a crazy cat and a dog. Bob as a humanoid character relates to people as a friend. With the appearance of each new common word, a new border is crossed in the perception of the human body and its counterpart, a computer. The results of the analyses show that we have begun to use a uniform terminological frame of refrence for both domains: the human body and computers. It becomes our new, almost universal frame of reference. This attitude sets the stage for an exceptionally powerful process of remapping and reimagining the boundaries of human bodies. 2.3. Cross-cultural perspectives of computer metaphors New words are now in use announcing the birth of a new kind of society (network society) due to the consequences of modern communication. Globalization is now a major source of dynamism, it reorders time and space, imposes global metaphors. The dominant use of English in the electronic media suggests the extension of American power. Consequently, the world of computers and the human body in different languages is swamped with American metaphors. In a cross-cultural perspective, computer metaphors show quite a high level of similarity despite cultural differences. We are faced here with a collective electrically-based global consciousness and global metaphors. A new global identity is going to be constructed (netizen). In order to show similarities and differences in different languages, we can take as an example the sign @. There is a high degree of similarity since many languages associate the form of the sign with an object from reality, e.g. pig's tail, worm, sea shell, etc. The ground of comparison is based on visual factor: German: spider monkey Danish: pig' tail Dutch: (little) monkey's tail Finish: cat's tail or 'the miaow sign'
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Croatian: monkey Thai: worm-like character Hebrew: rolledup apple sweet Italian: sea shell Japanese: attomaaku (monkey) In the Japanese language this sign is simply adopted from the English language and it has no additional associations. The word mouse goes through a similar adaptation: Eng. mouse = Jap. mausu (only technical device) .
3. Conclusion According to White, L. (1969: 367) 'Our biological evolution is a movement toward greater organization, greater differentiation of structure, increased specialization of function, high levels of integration...' Man is like all other living beings. In order to adapt himself to his environment and to exercise some control over it, he uses signs, words. He often uses one area of experience to define an other. During the evolution of human languages, well known areas are used to explain less known areas of experience (e.g. land animals are used to name the invisible underwater animal world, e.g. catfish, sea horse, sea lion, etc. Another example refers to celestial bodies which were named in terms of animals and spiritual beings. Let's take just a couple of examples: galaxy is the milky way (gr. Galaxias =gala=milk); Saturn is a Roman god, Mars is a Roman god, too; Uranus is the Greek god Ouranos. At that time the human body was not used as the model structure. With the rise of modern society and complex relationships within it, we quite often use the human body as a model to describe the external world, since the human body is studied and conceptualised as a complex system of different functions. Since then, the body metaphors become a pervasive means in our conceptualization of the new reality.
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We assume that there is a general tendency in modern languages to use body metaphors to conceptualize the world of unknown or abstract notions. Our study shows that human beings are interrelated with machines on such a level that they quite often exchange their roles. There is a huge dispute whether computer metaphors undermine human identity or just help us to understand one part of our reality. It seems that metaphorical bonding goes in both directions. There are two tendencies in language: One which supports novelty, creativity, crisscross bonding, and the other tendency which tries to preserve the existing order. It is widely known that this eternal conflict is the basis of any development. We assume that identical metaphors valid for human beings and computers are not likely to harm any language in such way that it will become a non-human, artificial, computer language. Such a gloomy perspective is not to be expected. It is rather a process in the development of language based on bodily perception of our environment. It seems that the complex structure of our body is the best frame of reference of complex cultural and social relations. There is no doubt that the future development of the language will find the way to avoid this merger of terms. Word specialization is likely to happen. Languages always answers the needs of its speakers.
Chapter 4
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GLOBAL LANGUAGE - GLOBAL METAPHORS 6

1. INTRODUCTION Globalization is widely viewed as one of the most powerful forces shaping the modern world. It is both a cause and a consequence of the information revolution, often recognized by many scholars as modernity. The key word for modernity is NEW. Recently coined words mirror the importance of this word: new century, new technology, New Age, New World Order, new democracy, New Millenium, New Europe, etc. The discoveries, inventions, and ideas which arise in one society often spread to others. When new ideas conflict with old ones, change may result as a consequence of efforts to reconcile them with existing ones. The factors that promote change are many, complex, and interelated. We often associate globalization with American language since it is not only at the forefront of technical knowledge but also leads in new cultural and linguistic behavior acting daily as a lingua franca or international language. We are all exposed to it and it becomes part of our mental structure. It activates certain bilingualism, biculturalism in our mind, a collaboration of a native and foreign culture. It seems that western standards and methods were the models to be imitated, and the supply of the needed factors (technical devices, textbooks, etc.) would have to come from the West. What is perceived as American culture is passed through the filter of the multi-cultural audiences in the US. The numerous immigrants who helped to build up the US represented many languages, countries, cultures, races, and religions. Everyone brought their own identity to the
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A revised version of this paper has been published under the title: 'The Interpretation of American Images in Southeaster Europe: Transmission of global metaphors', The Institute for European Studies, Working Papers, Cornell University, pp. 1-16.
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new land. In that melting pot/ mosaic/ salad bowl everybody can find his/her own identity. It might be the reason why American culture is easily accepted as global culture since it reflects different cultures. Americanization through language or the rhetoric of liberation attached to the information industry, provides a wealth of symbols, images, and opens new road maps for the importation of culture. In previous works on this topic, the role of language was rather neglected in favor of high technology and its impact on society. But, our starting point is that without a deeper insight into the role of language we won't be able to answer some questions relevant to the globalisation processes or Americanization. The role of language in identity construction is becoming even more important in the process of globalization as other traditional markers of identity are being blurred (state, nation) or changed. It seems that in a world of global communication language becomes a matter of huge dispute or the pillar of cultural resistance. In order to understand the role of American culture in the world global market we need to focus on the globalization process in general, as it is considered as the main carrier of American cultural practices.
2. THE CONCEPT OF GLOBALIZATION In general, globalization implies an incredible spread of knowledge and information around the whole world mediated via the Internet or 'information superhighway'. At present, the Internet carries AmE services into nearly every country. Users in other countries find that if they are to communicate in cyberspace, they must do it in AmE as the world is wired for sight and sound based on American language and culture. The role of AmE as an international means of communication is firmly established. Recently, the globalization issue became the focus of interest of many scholars who try to explain it from different perspectives. According to
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P. S. Aulakh & M.G. Schechter (2000; 3), globalization can be seen as a form of cross-national or supranational interconnectedness/interdependence. According to P.J.M. Nas & A.J. Houweling (1998; 221-232): 'One of the consequences of these new communication technologies is that the ideas which are not expressed in the global arena of sound, image and text are being localized and marginalized'. The consequences of the information revolution are impossible to predict, but they will change the world profoundly with both good and bad consequences. The first bad thing is, according to M. Castells (19972000), that despite the rapid diffusion of the new technologies, mainly the uneducated part of the world population is excluded from these technologies. This might be an important source of international inequality. This statement is in accordance with the feeling of peoples in the developing countries/emergent nations. They are quite aware of the fact that they lack the power to use international communication for presenting their cultural images. They believe that their voice can't be heard, that their values are underestimated. But on the other side there is a tendency in the developed/advanced countries of Europe (Sweden, Norway...) to introduce programs in their local language. We can call it re-localization or 'glocalization'. 2.1. Borderless world/spatial and cultural compression Another aspect of globalization is that boundaries between countries, nationalities or cultures are in certain respects eradicated. Until recently, the essential reference of citizenship was the territory with precise boundaries. Today the citizen can travel everywhere via Internet and his new special dimension becomes the net (netizen). As a netizen one can live in many cultures simultaneously. Virtual reality offers us new possibilities of traveling. The information superhighway leads one to a desired place. Our sight and hearing have become multifunctional senses as they substitute all other senses like touch, smell, and taste.
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In such a borderless world our cultures will be increasingly exposed to one another. This might evoke opposite feelings. From the point of view of national identity it is quite hard to perceive globalization as a positive change, especially in some European countries. People in non European countries consider that globalization almost excludes the experience of most non-European peoples in the world. According to Mohammadi (1977:2) The evidence shows more news and images come from the Western World and the access to non-Western culture in terms of information, knowledge, entertainment and images becomes scarcer. 2.2. Globalization and national identity The whirlwind of globalization is triggering defensive mechanisms around the world, often organized around the principles of territorial identity. The crucial question quite often associated with anti-American or anti-global attitudes is the following: Are national cultures endangered because of globalization? The topicality of similar questions about national character and identity isnt limited to small transitional, underdeveloped countries, but the debate is quite active in some countries where the feeling of vulnerability to American influence is especially strong (France, Sweden, Norway, Italy, etc.). In the past few years weve witnessed numerous public attacks on the globalization of culture. It is called linguistic and cultural imperialism, Coca-colonization, McDonaldization, Anglo mania (in France: linguistic bastardization, cultural Chernobyl...). People are also concerned with the content and images of the flow directed from one center (America). With such claims the argument becomes passionate. In some respects the dispute is not so much against Americanization as against the development of technical civilization supposed to be a direct menace to humanistic (European) civilization. However, the trend towards the global is not uni-directional. It has a counter effect known as particularism; unification almost always provokes dissolution, reinvention of differences. The last quartercentury has also witnessed a worldwide surge of movements of
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collective identity. The traces of it are seen in the rise of right-wing political movements in Europe (e.g. Austria, Italy) in recent times, and quite traditional forms of identity, religious fundamentalism (e.g. Muslim countries), etc. It also seems that in a borderless world religion is gaining more importance as a kind of identity marker or substitute for a nation or classical borders. According to G. Hofstede (1999), the changes in national cultures may be slower than some people assume, but they are inevitable. We also assume that the process of globalization is not going as fast as it might seem because of its ties with two opposite forces. Because of the ever present tension between continuity (traditional values) and change (caused by the globalization process) the result is the limited actual progress of globalization. Because of its present role in the world community American English deserves special attention. According to D.Graddol (1997;14): 'In the 20th century, the role of the US has been more important than that of Britain and has helped ensure that the language is not only at the forefront of scientific and technical knowledge, but also leads consumer culture'. AmE is used by a huge number of non-native speakers for easy communication between peoples of different cultural and language background (lingua franca). The widespread use of AmE affected other languages in the form of linguistic borrowing. Present evidence shows that AmE intrudes on all languages that it comes into contact with. At the same time mutual exchange of words within other European languages (e.g. ItalianGerman) is almost unnoticeable. Italian, French, German, Croatian and other European languages borrowed many American words especially in the field of music, high technology, sports, medicine, and computers. Not only direct loans (e.g. Croatian: tenisa, korner, long-plejka) are used but also semantic loans as brain wash (Cro. ispiranje mozga), mouse (Cro. mi), etc. Some words are borrowed from Anglo-American culture directly, and others are considered as internationalisms. Numerous Greco-Latin words are used from a common European pool of words. Many of them are revived by
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global AmE: computer < lat. computere = to count, sum up; globalization < lat. globus = something spherical or rounded; a celestial body. To some observers the term Americanization has a threatening significance: vulgarization, loss of traditional values, and loss of national identity. According to them, American 'linguistic imperialism' has been so pervasive that some measures should be taken against 'Anglo mania'. Such measures, which are likely to be unsuccessful, reflect an anxiety that essential traditional and linguistic values are at risk. In Eastern Europe ambivalent emotions are expressed: cultural imperialism, a dream world (an idyllic place where there are no problems; a release from everything connected with suffering; a total ideological universe, virtual reality). In many countries America is perceived as a metaphorical place in their dreams. Information superhighway helps them additionally to find the golden road to the American Dream. Their home country is real and back in time. How could it compete with a dream world? The Global Village offers them nothing but new mythology based on new symbols (the Statue of Liberty, Disneyland...). Americanization is istelf a central myth. After the fall of the iron curtain the image of the US was almost mythical, and it belonged more to the projected virtual reality than to the real country. The wish to leave the real world behind in search of a virtual community (recognized in American society), quite understandably intensifies at a time when the space and time of everyday life in this region have become so uncertain, unpleasant and dangerous. The flight into the virtual is motivated by a real life situation. Global metaphors are widely used as a framework for their model society. Daniel J. Boorstin said: 'America has been a land of dreams. A land where the aspirations of people from countries cluttered with rich, cumbersome, aristocratic, ideological pasts can reach for what once seemed unattinable. Here they have tried to make dreams come true...Yet now..we are threatened by a new
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and particularly American menace. It is not the menace of class war, of ideology, of povery, of desease, of illiteracy, or demagoguery, or of tyranny, though these now plague most of the world. It is the menace of unreality. ' The Columbia World of Quotations, 1996, (http://www.bartleby.com/66/88/7788.html)
3. GLOBAL METAPHORS Every language is constantly renewing itself, changing in accordance with changes in its environment. In a period of rapid growth of science and technology and globalization processes, a new meta-language appears, based on global metaphors and global perception of the world. The use of global metaphors reveals not only changed currents of our thoughts but also the structures of a radically modified society. There is a huge gap between our new experience and language. New metaphorical projections try to bridge that gap. In the last decades the primary source of change has been technological change. Technology produces new experiences which need to be named, codified and described in the language. Lexicographers agree that the English vocabulary has changed more in the twentieth century than at any other time in its history. New concepts are introduced, old forms are semantically extended, and new word connections are established. Technological change has changed our experience, in ways the language is still struggling to describe. Todays concept of star wars would not have been understood a few generations ago. The increasing complexity of the culture can be seen through its new vocabulary. By studying new words, we can tell where the culture has newly focused its attention. Narratives of globalisation include the play of metaphors. Nature is painted in some discussions as a network of interelations and in this regard it is fused with the image of a technologically wired planet.
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Technical devices are named after animals (bug, mouse...). This fusion of nature and technology is still in progress. Reference to the globe, as well as to the planet, as our common home is seen in new terms: global village, information superhighway, global market, humanitarian intervention, political archituecture of the world, world crisis... New words epmhasize the need for the development of the global sensitive mind. Our further research includes a limited number of new terms used in American English. The database for this study is found in the book New Words and a Changing American Culture by R. Gozzi, Jr. (1990). This source confirms the following: Many names have been suggested for the new society that was emerging: global village, technetronic society, cyberculture, postmodernism, virtual reality, etc. In such a society addiction becomes a metaphor for much experience in the consumer society: computer addicts, junk food addicts, etc. Rapid growth of high-tech language is quite evident in many areas of our experience: smart missiles, air bags, bionic organs, cyborgs, ROM, hackers, electronic mail, artificial intelligence, machine languages, black holes, time reversal, etc. This has been the era of fast food and junk food, and take-out. There are a lot of anorexics and bulimics. The counterculture substituted vegeburgers for hamburgers, Natural foods and health foods became popular. Western countries became fitness conscious, and it causes appearance of many new words like the following: jogging, aerobics, body-building, Jacuzzi, hot tub, etc. A great number of sexually related words entered the dictionary: gay liberation, homophobes, AIDS, bisexuals, hard-core movies, etc. TV spread rapidly and it became known as the tube, box with its reality shows, situation comedies, etc. The outlines of a new world economy became visible. Corporations became multinationals; and some countries are called
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Western, industrialized, developed, non-Communist nations, in contrast to the developing, emerging nations, and underdeveloped nations. This consumer technology promotes the American life-style (a plastic, disposable, throwaway culture) all over the globe: shopping malls, eating habits (McDonalds and its hamburgers), recycling, etc. As science and technology occupied a privileged position in the new global culture, the boundaries were being extended beyond the limits of present day imagination. The universe itself became more puzzling. Black holes are likely to exist, and there were theoretical reasons to predict time dilation. Even time reversal was widely discussed. New words from a changing American culture are widely spread in a global village. We will try to identify some of these words acting as global metaphors. 3.1. Identifying Key Metaphors Global village is a metaphor for an idealized future state. It is formed through conceptual blending of two distinct concepts (village+globe). This word is commonly used in other world languages. M. McLuhan (1962:31) said: The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.
Reference to the globe, as well as to the planet, as our common home is seen in new terms: information superhighway, global market, political architecture of the world, New World Order, world policeman,
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we are all in the same boat together. New words emphasize the need for the development of the global sensitive mind in all countries of the world. Network society networks are appropriate instruments for a capitalist economy based on innovation, globalization, and decentralized concentration. A network-based social structure is a highly dynamic, open system, susceptible to innovating without threatening its balance. Computer terminology offers a rich source of global metaphors transplanted all over the world. As computers became common, many words changed their meanings because they could conveniently be used to refer to aspects of computing. You can open two windows on your screen, select computing operations from a menu, use hyphenation tools from your tools menu, select a hyperlink, paste a section from one document into another, look at something called a clipboard which is neither clipped on nor a board, you find the bug in your program, you surf the net, and so on (see R. Stockwell and D. Minkova, 2002: 150.). Computers are defined as human beings and vice versa. They have their own language, gate, chat, key, memory, boot, cookie, bug, office, windows, viruses, garbage, etc. Technical devices are often named after animals (bug, mouse...).Equivalent metaphorical expressions are used in the majority of world languages. By attributing human qualities to machines, we have less understanding of how humans differ from machines. This fusion of nature and technology is still in progress. Technology has altered our mental landscape. Accordingly, the language which accompanies this technology is likely to influence the changes in our mental landscape. The very existence of the term AmE as International, global language implies some shared system of concepts. War metaphors. During the recent war in Afghanistan the following terminology was used on CNN and widely accepted in the majority of European countries: Americas enemies are
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characterized as the enemies of God and Western civilization, the axis of evil, lunatics, criminals. The USA and its allies are faced with a brutal enemy and its satellites. War is perceived as a military operation, peace campaign, counter force attack, limited action, peacekeeping action, selective response, self defense. It is war which takes place at the level of images. According to J. Brook & I.A. Boal (1995:107): 'Through the long lens the enemy remained a faceless alien'. Quite an interesting attitude is found in Southeastern Europeans. They perceive American war almost as a computer game (the way it was presented on CNN), and their own war as a real war in the sense of the physical clash of bodies and arms, bombing and spilling blood. In the rhetoric of American policy, the US is much more than a geographical region, or a large number of people sharing language, culture, and history. It is the manifestation of Truth, Justice, and Freedom, a melting pot, a moral and spiritual center rising above all other nations: world policeman, global leadership, the Free World, the New World. In anti-American Iran, the evil imperialist-exploiter is also labeled as the Great Satan. The relationship between the New World and the New Europe is recently established in contrast to the Old Europe and its antiAmerican attitudes during the War in Iraq. In place of Cold War, America offered the world technical assistance, a team of experts. It may be defined as a soft domination. Sickness metaphors are often used in global rhetoric to define an enemy: lunatic, madman, paranoid suspiciousness, insane, bloody dictator, etc. A medical field of reference is often used to justify actions with bad associations: military operation, surgical strike, etc. Our perception of color depends not only on our ability to see that color, but also on our ability to interpret its symbolic values. An interesting phenomenon, which may be partially due to the Webs proliferation throughout the world, is that some of the cultural connotations of color are becoming less intense and evident for
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younger generations. Culture specific associations begin to merge into global associations, and global visual design. Web designers often speak about the globalization of color, e.g. in the US all paper money is green. As a result of global influences of American English, the term for money in colloquial Croatian is: zelemba. When it comes to American concepts that invade foreign languages, these invaders are often resented as a sign of American dominance in international communication. Some scholars, like R. Philipson (1992), consider this style as global control of mental pictures. R. Kothari (1987; 284) expresses a similar view when he says that globalization, in general, threatens to overwhelm mankind with a monoculture of the mind.
It is evident that people are generally concerned about the core freedom of any individual and that is freedom of thought/consciousness (linguistic human rights). Global metaphors are part of it. Parallel to these negative perceptions of the globalization process, the world is moving towards political unity reinforced by new imagery and new metaphorical projections.
4. CONCLUSION It seems that we are all concerned about our future in a globalization process and information revolution. The issue of Americanization is an issue regarding social changes primarily, caused by the information revolution. It would be wrong to think of globalization only in terms of 'linguistic and cultural imperialism'. The results of global influences might be seen in the form of new local traditions, new values, and new word meanings. In general, we can call it changes. But at the same time we can
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not deny the fact that we are faced with warfare for conceptual dominance. Being removed from direct contact with sense reality, via media and the Internet, we can expect deep changes in our linguistic and cultural behavior. In such a situation it is difficult to cope with reality that is so vast and hence is mediated to us through virtual realities and global images. Who controls our sight owns the power since seeing is believing. Words and their new meanings are extremely important. They influence us and our opinion, decisions, and attitudes. The point of the new rhetoric is to convince audiences to imagine themselves as part of our integrated planet. The new words from the changing American culture prevail in the world arena and they play a major role in this adjustment. The main concern of the non-Western World is that American English will impose its own linguistic and mental models based on American values, and goals. On the other hand, American English used as lingua franca across the globe is, more than other languages, exposed to all kinds of influences. The reality is that through the development of high technologies we have changed our environment so radically that we must change our language framework in order to exist in this new reality. American culture is going to be part of that reality, because of its present leading role in the world community.
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Chapter 5
VOCABULARY AS A MIRROR OF SOCIAL AND CULTURAL REALITIES

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. (L. Wittgenstein,
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1961:115)
1. INTRODUCTION We are daily exposed to different situations in our life. Our language offers us a theoretically unlimited range of possibilities for describing our experience, our knowledge of the world and mental life. Some experiences are too sensitive to be discussed, e.g. death, sexuality, illness. Euphemisms are convenient labels we quite often use to work with difficult situations in our reality. In this paper we aim to define the field of reference of a restricted sample (300) of euphemisms found in the modern English language. Relatively little research has been done on euphemisms in comparison to other areas of figurative language. We will try to shed some light on euphemisms functioning as a mirror of social and cultural realities. Euphemisms have proven not only to be an efficacious and economical means of description but have also displayed the potential for projecting world-views. The motivation behind euphemism is tightly bound to cultural, political and pragmatic concerns. This paper examines how very personal linguistic choices are actually products of social and cultural pressures, e.g. to have sex with = to sleep with, race=diversity, fat=fully figured or husky. Terms used in legal terminology are carefully chosen. During a trial, the lawyers might take advantage of different connotations of terms, e.g.
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The fetus was aborted. The baby was murdered Words such as fetus, abortion, and termination assume a medical frame of reference, rather than criminal one (e.g. murder). These words are of foreign origin without any association with the unpleasant referent. The above mentioned sentences refer to the same external reality, but very different moral points of view are encoded, and different assumptions about offence and guilt are implied. It seems that euphemism recognizes the magical and dangerous potentialities of words. Strategically chosen lexical items can be especially important in political debate. Philipson (1992; 38) analyses the terms underdeveloped, developing countries, emergent nations, which describe countries from a Western point of view and which characterize postcolonial discourse. If we agree that language can be a source of power, investigation of its vocabulary ought to be our priority. Examination of a vocabulary can reveal a good deal about a culture. The lexicon of a language is, to a degree, a mirror of its speaker's attitudes and ideas. They can be used as a shield or a weapon. According to an old saying: Words cut more than swords. -
2. THE POWER OF WORDS A very significant issue is the interplay of language and power. Language also might be connected with an ideology, e.g. the racist discourse against immigrants in the British and Dutch press showed that the most frequent subjects were immigrants seen as criminals, immigration seen as an invasion. Since the purpose of political rhetoric is persuasion, or the manipulation of the public, figurative speech is often used. We have
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chosen to focus on a small number of specific verbal hygiene practices: euphemisms and metaphors used in political speech.
2.3.
Metaphors
The successful use of metaphor is a matter of perceiving similarities. (Aristotle)
Metaphors are very powerful and natural cognitive processes, which help us to understand the complex issues in nature and society. Metaphors can be described as mediators between the human mind and culture. New metaphors change both the ordinary language we use and the ways in which we perceive and understand the world. Within a framework of a cognitive approach to metaphor, it has been described in terms of transfer from one cognitive domain (donor) to another (recipient) domain: Life is a battle. People tend to draw upon experiences in one area of life in order to give fresh insights and understanding to experiences in another.
Life
battle
We use them to experience one kind of thing in terms of another, creating new conceptual realities. Life has its own frame of reference, and so does a battle. If life is a battle, it is legitimate to fight for it. Metaphors cause the audience to see things in a new light. There is much evidence to show that the language of journalists and diplomats frequently promotes war as a legitimate way of regulating international relations. Their choice of words often creates the kind of enemy image essential to provoking and maintaining hostility that can justify war, e.g. Saddam Hussein has been often described as a war criminal, lunatic, bloody dictator and his regime as an outlaw regime, or part
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of the axis of evil. Given such a view, Americans have a task of high justice to prepare Operation: Iraqi freedom. The president of the US says that the US is in the gulf to protect freedom, protect the future, and protect the innocent. On the other hand terrorists strike at the heart of America's commerce and government. In politics, the explanatory function of metaphors is often subjected to the goal of manipulation, which means that metaphors are often primarily selected for their emotional and strategic effect. Blaise Pascal, French scientist and philosopher, said: Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects. (Encyclopedia Britannica, Chicago, 1952. Penses, no.23 (1670), tran. J.M. Dent & Sons, London (1931)). Prime candidates in political speeches in general are metaphorical links with familiar words, e.g. WIND (e.g. the new breeze, wind of change), ILLNESS metaphors. Our country can be healthy, it has friends, allies and enemies. There is a growing body of evidence showing that the war has been justified, worldwide, on the basis of a metaphorical system of thought. Many of these metaphors are recognized as euphemisms (lie=economical truth), e.g. A British government spokesman in the 1980s admitted to having been economical with the truth.
2.2
Euphemisms
A euphemism is a metaphorical or metonymic use of an expression in place of another expression that is offensive. The term euphemism means primarily the substitution of the words. This phenomenon is caused by psychological reasons or social or cultural conventions. The purpose of a euphemism is to present a situation or an object in a more agreeable or politer light. They are often used to deliberately cloud an issue or to misdirect attention. Most euphemisms are used to make a
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concept less offensive and more acceptable, e.g. physically challengedhandicapped, disadvantaged poor, diversity - race. According to G. Leech (1990:45): 'Euphemism (Greek:'wellspeaking') is the practice of referring to something offensive or indelicate in terms that make it sound more pleasantThe technique consists of replacing a word which has offensive connotations with another expression, which makes no overt reference to the unpleasant side of the subject.' Euphemism is defined in dictionaries as a rhetorical device: a mild, comforting, or evasive expression that takes the place of one that is taboo, negative, offensive, or too direct. The word euphemism is first recorded in English in Thomas Blounts Glossographia (1656), where it is defined as a good or favorable interpretation of a bad word. The question is why do people use a euphemistic phrase in place of another, more direct mode of speech? Euphemism has been used since pre-literate times and is present in all human languages. It is closely connected to the primitive sense of taboo. Speakers of many IE languages used to avoid the real name of certain animals, particularly those considered to be harmful, e.g. English BEAR (the brown one), Croatian MEDVJED (honey eater), and Lithuanian LOKYS (licker). In previous times, the mere mention of supernatural entities, harmful animals or the dead was feared to bring about the wrath of such beings, and therefore, alternative words were used to avoid it, e.g. Span. diablo=malo, enemigo; Eng. devil=the horned one; Cro. vrag =rogati, neastivi. This is attested by the proverb Speak of the devil and he will appear, Lat. Lupus in fabula. Avoidance of words springs from a belief that by doing so the concepts denoted by them seem to be less intrusive. In contemporary Western society, the motivation for euphemism is not fear. It seems that politeness must be a major motivation behind modern usage of euphemism which, aims to avoid offence, e.g. aged people=senior citizens. In political and military double-talk, euphemism is mostly designed to deceive or to improve our mental image of offensive reality. Such an
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attitude provokes conceptual engineering which easily changes an invasion into a rescue mission, killing is called neutralizing an enemy, bombing = surgical strikes, killing of civilians= collateral damage, heavy casualties, and bombs=daisy cutters, etc. Military euphemisms glamorize death, e.g. They are always in our thoughts. Solders have fallen in battle. For any politician to talk about the poor countries of the world might offend those countries, therefore they become the emergent nations, or the developing countries. Here we have rhetorical strategy or verbal hygiene and its prime target is to provoke positive connotations. As this strategy changes our perception of the reality we can speak of semantic engineering, e.g. Hitler had a final solution for the Jewish problem. Like cosmetic surgery, political euphemism tries to hide the ugly face of political deeds, and seeks to be a major means of reality control. It is generally believed that a politicians words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience. The results of the analyses of the sample of euphemisms (300), collected from American mass media (CNN, Fox, daily newspapers, etc), show that the following semantic fields are loaded with euphemisms. The first area is that of WAR and DEATH. War
Militaries at war frequently do kill people, sometimes deliberately and sometimes by mistake; in doublespeak, the first may be called neutralizing the target and the second collateral damage.
Expressions based on the domain of war and fighting all express negative value. When at war, to shield the public from upsetting detail, concentration camps easily become pacification centers, and bombing raids become surgical strikes. If our side has to take a military action, we land on someone's territory, but if our opponents do, they invade. The same group of people might be referred to as terrorists or freedom fighters. The Pentagon names military action in the Gulf:
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Iraqi freedom, a legitimate target, Showdown Iraq According to D.J. Enright (1985: 217): Improved methods of killing have left their mark on language as well as on life, chiefly in the form of bureaucratic abstractions and disembodied metaphors, e.g. WAR = preventive initiatives, strategic bombing, the management and application of controlled violence. operation enduring freedom, military operation, a battle of good and evil, armed struggle, appropriate response, peace campaign, struggle for national existence, active defense, conflict, confrontation, counter force attack, intervention, limited action, defensive measures, peace keeping action, selective response, self defense, surgical strike, anti-terror campaign. NUCLEAR MISSILE-strategic weapon Most of these words consist of attempts to diminish people's awareness of the degree of violence being used somewhere. According to Leech (1990: 46) 'The choice of term embodies a point of view, a political argument () it is a label chosen with strategic tact, to pick out the optimistic and progressive aspect of the phenomenon labeled' Death, illness Death is one of those emotionally weighty concepts that attract endlessly to themselves new expressions including euphemisms. We are all afraid of illness and death, and we often try to replace these words with some euphemistic terms to soften harsh reality.
The English language contains numerous euphemisms related to dying, death, burial. Most commonly, one is not dying, rather, fading quickly because the end is near. Death is referred to as having passed away or departed. Sometimes the deceased (likewise a euphemism) is said to have gone to a better place.
death, to die = pass away, pass on, go to sleep, meet ones maker, go to rest, kick the bucket, the big D. We lose our relatives. In many languages
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a common way of saying If I die is If anything happens to me. Our pets are put to sleep, put away. graveyard = church yard> cemetery>memorial park Our uneasiness about mentioning death conflicts with the military need to talk about it. Death must be mentioned in their training, e.g. A nuclear explosion may cause heavy causalities among your leaders. To take part in an activity with the enemy. In many languages, expressions for sicknesses are often replaced by less offensive and more acceptable terms, e.g. cancer = long incurable illness, the big C, temporary insanity = balance of the mind disturbed, insane = mentally handicapped, mentally deprived. In Roman times, epilepsy was attributed to the influence of the Gods, and it was called MORBUS SACER (the sacred disease). Japanese have a good reason for avoiding room number 4 in hospitals: four=shi, is identical in sound with the word for death. The verb to die has its substitute, for instance, kakureru, to set, as the sun does, to go into the shadows.
Euthanasia also attracts euphemisms. One may put him out of his misery, or put him to sleep, the latter phrase being used primarily with nonhuman animals. It might be considered as mercy killing.
Body Words take on the semantic features of good (+) or bad (-) according to how a particular culture feels about their frame of reference. Let's take an example: FAT. The word fat is negatively evaluated in modern Western culture (fitness; body cult). This poses a problem for clothing stores. We are not expected to say: clothes for FAT folks. We often use the following terms: pretty plus = girls,
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husky plus = boys, queen size, full size = women, below medium height = women of unusually short stature etc. Mental and moral defects give rise to many euphemisms: invalid=disabled, physically challenged, persons with a disability deaf people = people with hearing impairments blind = persons with a visual impairment, visually challenged, visually impaired Everyone avoids, as far as possible, mention of natural bodily needs = a call of nature. Many euphemisms are associated with the TOILET: privy, washroom, lavatory, comfort station, rest room, lounge, powder room, and cloakroom. Gender issue The very fact that so many words for unpleasant talk have a formal feature of + female on them (Cro. ubojica, varalica suffix -a) tells us a good deal about how women are valued in this society. The choice between positive and negative terms reveals the presence of prejudices toward the subject. Attitudes toward women are clearly revealed in our vocabulary and confirmed by differences in male/female speaking practices. A person who is gabby, talkative, and gossipy, a nag or a chatterbox must be a woman. Similar examples are the following: master/mistress > Master of Science, (*mistress of science) Comparing the metaphorical usages of master to the metaphorical uses of mistress provides an illustration of what typically happens to gendered terms in English. When a male term develops metaphorical meanings, these tend to be positive, and if the female term develops metaphorical meanings, they tend to be pejorative. The following words are not equally treated in their semantic extension:
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Sir /madam, e.g. madam >a woman in charge of a brothel. We would never call a pimp a 'sir'. King/queen, e.g. queen> male homosexual who acts like a woman. A female who acts like a man is not called a king. Rather, she becomes a bitch. Lady/Sir > Look, lady! Look, Sir! Different associations are connected with these two words. The usage of euphemisms is described by Postman, N. (1982, 262): 'Euphemism are a means through which a culture may alter its imagery and by doing so change its style, its priorities, and its values'. The editors of the magazine Time express their concern about the usage of euphemisms: 'The persistent growth of euphemism represents a danger to thought and action, since its fundamental intent is to deceive'. (See Postman, N., 1982:256). Euphemisms are certainly motivated by the desire not to be offensive, but they are more than just linguistic fig leaves.
Aging Mention of age and the aging seems to have been unpleasant from time immemorial and, under certain conditions, has required euphemisms. old person = the elderly, senior citizens, advanced in age, golden years, not in his/her first youth, of mature years, etc. Poverty Since poverty is often considered humiliating, harsh reference to it must be constantly softened with euphemisms, e.g. poor>underprivileged, deprived, disadvantaged. Law The language of the law welcomes the euphemism. To depersonalize the law, judges refer to themselves as the bench.
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In the USA, prisons are correctional facilities and prison wardens are institutional superintendents. According to Penelope, J. (1990; 206) 'In a society that boasts of the wealth only a few actually enjoy, poor people are a repugnant embarrassment. Many people believe that whatever they refuse to talk about doesn't exist or is less real and euphemism is one device for avoiding whatever realities they wish to deny'. Because of that the poverty-stricken turned to the economically disadvantaged, deprived, and underprivileged. Race The most general aim of this political correctness movement is to enforce a set of views on class, race, and minorities, etc. black>colored>Negro=African American. race = diversity Lying In lying the ultimate goal of the speaker is to deceive the audience, that is, to communicate to the audience a proposition the speaker believes to be false. Lying violates Western cultural constraints. It has many euphemistic substitutes: to avoid the truth, to be economical with the truth. In his love affair, President Clinton was primarily accused not because of his deeds but because of his words. He lied, and that is what matters in modern American society. Evidently, euphemisms are concerned principally with certain socially sensitive areas such as sex, race, illness, death, poverty, mental illness, death, etc.
3. CONCLUSION
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When informing might hurt people, speakers might resort to withholding information or even lying or using metaphors or euphemisms. The above analysis tells us more about cultural and moral values in Anglo-American culture sanctioned via words. It is evident that in Western culture in general people reluctantly speak about gender, race, sex, disability, war, death, etc. Deliberate departures from conventional usage are meant to bring new relations of words. New relations are expressed in the form of metaphors and euphemisms. We often use these forms in order to avoid direct reference or to voice our opinion without being strictly accountable for it. According to Hughes G. (1988: 29): Today it is fashionable to see language changes as virtually inevitable, a fact of life. But it is important to distinguish between changes which are natural, evolutionary and symbiotic with social changes, and those which are artificially contrived or cynically imposed by an oligarchy. What makes an utterance metaphorical is the fact that it is intended to make someone notice a likeness between objects ordinarily considered to be different. Metaphors allow us to make connections across domains and to find coherence between unrelated or not necessarily similar events, e.g. invasion=operation. Euphemisms are close to metaphor. We use euphemism to avoid stressful reality, connecting one term with negative associations to the other which is positive. Where there is an unwelcome truth to be hidden from others, euphemism flourishes. According to the results of our analyses common causes of euphemisms are: to make a difficult or emotional situation more tolerable; to minimize the painful impression on the listener, to soften tragic news, e.g. death = pass away, breathe ones last, etc.
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respect for the person addressed, or a desire to make a favorable impression, to lend social acceptability: e.g. garbage collector> sanitation engineer, mortician> funeral director. to provoke positive connotations, e.g. war on Iraq > freedom operation, liberation of Iraqi people to deceive (conceal the truth), political double-talk, e.g. slum > culturally deprived area to deal with social or moral taboos, e.g. to go to the toilet > to powder ones nose, to wash ones hands to deal with superstitious taboos and religious terms The word is God; speech has a mysterious power; the name evokes the thing. These three points of view explain many ancient and modern euphemisms: e.g. cancer>long and incurable illness, the big C, Good luck! >Break your leg. Mention of certain diseases has often been avoided by many persons. In many European languages speakers avoid using words such as devil (Cro. crni, neastivi, Sp. malo, enemigo) for reasons of superstitions (e.g. Speak of the devil). The most frequent fields of reference of euphemisms used in English language are the following: war, death, illness, body, gender issue, aging, poverty, race, lying, etc. The occurrence of euphemisms reveals areas which the society finds distasteful or alarming. Often a foreign word is substituted for the native, taboo word. Since for the speaker a foreign word normally bears few associations, e.g. (unborn child = fetus) A fetus was aborted.
We can conclude with the words used by Penelope, J. (1990; 208) 'Sometimes speaking obliquely is harmful, sometimes it's not. But it is always dishonest, even when it is a defensive tactic for avoiding emotional conflict and physical violenceusing nicer words doesn't produce a nicer world'.
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The Linguistic Landscape of The Human Body

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VOCABULARY, CULTURE, COGNITION

VOCABULARY, CULTURE, COGNITION

VOCABULARY, CULTURE, COGNITION