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METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE
Pragmatics & Beyond
An Interdisciplinary Series of Language Studies

Editors:
Herman Parret
(Belgian National Science Foundation,
Universities of Louvain and Antwerp)
Jef Verschueren
(Belgian National Science Foundation,
University of Antwerp)

Editorial Address:
Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
University of Antwerp (UIA)
Universiteitsplein 1
B-2610 Wilrijk
Belgium

Editorial Board:
Norbert Dittmar (Free University of Berlin)
David Holdcroft (University of Leeds)
Jacob Mey (Odense University)
Jerrold M. Sadock (University of Chicago)
Emanuel A. Schegloff (University of California at Los Angeles)
Daniel Vanderveken (University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières)
Teun A. van Dij (University of Amsterdam)

VII:8

Zoltán Kövecses

Metaphors of Anger, Pride, and Love:

A Lexical Approach to the Structure of Concepts
 METAPHORS OF
ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE
A LEXICAL APPROACH TO THE
STRUCTURE OF CONCEPTS

Zoltán Kövecses
L. Eötvös University

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY

AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA

1986
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kövecses, Zoltán.
Metaphors of anger, pride, and love.
(Pragmatics & beyond, ISSN 0166-6258; VII:8)
Bibliography: p.
I. Metaphor. 2. Semantics. 3. Concepts. 4. Anger. 5. Pride and vanity. 6. Love. I. Title.
II. Series.
P301.5.M48K68 1986 40Γ.9 87-15788
ISBN 90 272 2558 3 (European) / ISBN 1-55619-009-3 (US) (alk. paper)
© Copyright 1986 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or
any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vii

1. GOALS AND METHODS 1

2. THE CONCEPT OF ANGER 11

2.1. Some questions 11
2.2. Metaphor and metonymy 12
2.3. The other principal metaphors 20
2.4. Some minor metaphors 27
2.5. The prototype scenario 28
2.6. Restatement of the prototypical scenario 31
2.7. The non-prototypical cases 32
2.8. Conclusions 36

3. THE CONCEPT OF PRIDE 39

3.1. Some additional issues 39
3.2. Some metonymies for pride 40
3.3. Some metaphors 43
3.4. Causes of pride 44
3.5. Scales, related concepts and the prototype 46
3.6. Self-esteem 49
3.7. Conceit 53
3.8. Vanity 56
3.9. Conclusion 59

4. THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 61

4.1. Some further aspects of a concept 61
4.2. The central metaphor 62
4.3. The object of love 67
4.4. Related concepts 74
VI CONTENTS

4.5. Intensity 82
4.6. Passivity, lack of control, pleasantness 88
4.7. The ideal model 93
4.8. Towards the typical model 96
4.9. The typical model 103

5. IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF CONCEPTUAL

STRUCTURE 107
5.1. The structure of a concept 107
5.2. Metaphorical aspects of concepts 115

6. IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF LEXICAL

STRUCTURE 121
6.1. Polysemy 121
6.2. Collocation 129
6.3. Semantic fields 136

REFERENCES 145
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The work presented here was conceived during a stay at the Linguistics
Department of the University of California, Berkeley, and was inspired in
particular by interactions with Wallace Chafe, Charles Fillmore, Paul Kay,
George Lakoff, Karl Zimmer, and others. I am greatly indebted to all of
them.
Thanks are also due to Ferenc Kiefer and Jef Verschueren for their crit­
ical comments on earlier versions of this work.
Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the two persons
who have helped me the most and in more than one way: George Lakoff and
László T. András.
Chapter 2, THE CONCEPT OF ANGER, was written jointly with
George Lakoff and is a slightly revised version of the paper that appeared in
the Berkeley Cognitive Science Report Series in May, 1983, under the title
The cognitive model of anger inherent in American English. A revised version
of this paper also appeared in D. Holland andN. Quinn (eds.), Cultural mod­
els in language and thought (published by Cambridge University Press) and in
George Lakoff, Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal
about the mind (The University of Chicago Press, 1987).
 1. GOALS AND METHODS

This study is an attempt to give an account of the structure of some

abstract concepts as these structures are accessible through the study of the
language we use to talk about the concepts. The concepts that I shall investi-
gate are 'anger', 'pride' and 'love'. Since lexical meaning is inextricably
bound up with concepts, the case studies to be presented (in chapters 2
through 4) will not only have implications for theories of conceptual structure
(see chapter 5) but also for theories of lexical structure (see chapter 6). The
force of my proposals is considerably weakened by the fact that the language
materials on which they are based involve only three concepts. Much more
research would be necessary to justify my claims.
On the lexical semantic side, let it suffice — for the time being — to say
that my investigations will not allow for a strict separation between sense and
reference and, if the distinction can be handled at all, certainly not for a
restriction of my approach to sense alone.
Since it would be impossible to have deep interviews with every member
of a speech community in the search for the structure of particular concepts
associated with particular aspects of the world, we have to resort to a more
practicable method. Although we cannot interview everyone, we can probe
the language used by everyone. Since the goal is to get at our conceptual sys-
tem, and the folk models within this system, through the lexicon of the Eng-
lish language, we can call such a method a 'lexical approach' (cf. Ver-
schueren 1985). The various folk models corresponding to various areas of
experience can in turn be called 'language-based' folk models.
This lexical approach to our conceptual system can be regarded as a con-
tinuation of some respectable traditions in the study of cognitive systems.
One tradition I have in mind is what is called 'linguistic analysis' as rep-
resented in the works of Wittgenstein (1963), Austin (1961), Ryle (1949) and
others. These philosophers use ordinary language for discovering subtle con-
ceptual distinctions among such philosophically interesting categories as 'ac-
tion', 'meaning', 'mind', 'emotion', etc. The other tradition comes from
ethnography and anthropology. Etnographers and anthropologists who are
2 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

interested in the cognitive systems of various peoples look at language as an

important tool in the job of learning about these cognitive systems. Resear-
chers in this area owe a great deal to the pioneering work of Sapir (1949) and
Whorf (1956). One of the most influential recent advocates of this methodol-
ogy, Charles Frake, sees the role of language in this connection in the follow-
ing way:
"The analysis of a culture's terminological systems will not, of course,
exhaustively reveal the cognitive world of its members, but it will certainly
tap a central portion of it. Culturally significant cognitive features must be
communicable between persons in one of the standard symbolic systems of
the culture. A major share of these features will undoubtedly be codable in
a society's most flexible and productive communicative device, its language"
(in Dil(ed.)1980:3).
Similarly, my assumption in this study will be that it is possible to uncover a
portion of our conceptual system by studying the way we talk about various
aspects of the world. However, there are also some major differences
between these traditions and the methodology that I am proposing.
One point of divergence concerns the goals that the methods are aimed
at. In the philosophical and anthropological approaches mentioned above the
goal of researchers is to discover the most important conceptual distinctions
that are coded into the language (especially into its vocabulary). That is,
these researchers are searching for the main dimensions along which concepts
can be shown to differ from each other. By contrast, my main emphasis will
be on how a single concept, like 'anger", 'pride' or 'love', is structured inter-
nally. In short, while the main aim of the former approaches is to point out
conceptual differences between items, my focus of interest is on the concep-
tual organization of a single item. This does not mean, however, that the lex-
ical approach I am working with does not lead to some interesting 'inter-item'
issues. It does, as will become obvious when such issues as 'related concepts',
collocations and semantic fields are discussed. But the main emphasis is on
'intra-item' structure. It seems to me that it is this difference in emphasis that
is mainly responsible for the, at least for me, impoverished view of meaning
as predominantly sense. Concentrating on differences between items results
in a skeleton of meaning for an item. On the other hand, I would like to believe
that if we focus on the detailed internal structure of an item the conceptual
features responsible for the differences will fall out as well and will do so in a
natural way.
Another difference between the approaches is closely related to the first.
 GOALS AND METHODS 3

In accordance with their goals as given above the philosophers and

anthropologists in question try to find those conceptual dimensions that pro-
vide systematic (preferably binary) contrasts that apply to a large portion of
the lexicon. The lexical approach as conceived of in the present study does
not seek such systematic contrasts. When it is proposed, for example, that the
feature 'Self views himself or herself as forming a unity with the beloved',
which characterizes love, is a part of the conceptual model of love, it is not
expected that this feature has a (binary or any other kind of) counterpart and
that it will show up in some other items in the lexicon. The idea of contrast is
simply irrelevant here. Nevertheless, as we shall see, these non-systematic
features play just as important a role as systematic sense components in the
explanation of certain semantic phenomena.
Finally, the philosophical and anthropological approaches are deficient
in an important respect. This is the fact that they do not seem to recognize the
special relevance of metomomy, metaphor and what will be termed 'related
concepts' to the make-up of some concepts. I do not wish to claim that these
are all relevant to each concept or that they are relevant to the same degree,
but I certainly wish to claim that the analysis of a large number of concepts
would be deficient without taking at least some of them into account. Since
the notion of metaphor as employed here has special significance in this con-
nection, I will say more about it in this chapter.
One reflection of our conceptual system is language. Thus the examina-
tion of the linguistic expressions that have to do with anger, pride and love
promises some success in the study of the conceptual model of anger, pride
and love. Since I am primarily concerned with the everyday conception of
anger, pride and love, — as opposed to scientific and artistic conceptions —
, I wish to concentrate on what might be viewed as everyday linguistic expres-
sions. The material on which this study is based is composed of those linguis-
tic expressions that are commonly used by and are familiar to most, if not all,
native speakers of English, that is, those expressions that do not belong to the
sphere of either scientific or artistic discourse. As a result, the expressions we
will be looking at will often be well-worn, clichéd or even hackneyed. How-
ever, this need not worry us in the least, since our goal is to 'dig up', or make
explicit our most everyday conception of anger, pride and love. I will be refer-
ring to expressions of this kind as conventionalized (or "standardized", as
Frake puts it (Dil, (ed.) 1980: 4)) linguistic expressions. Thus a twofold dis-
tinction is intended. First, I would like to draw a distinction between conven-
tionalized language and conventional language. In a sense, most expressions
4 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

of a language can be regarded as conventional (except, maybe, sound-imitat-

ing words). However, not all conventional expressions are also conven-
tionalized, that is, worn-out, clichéd, etc. This distinction will become clearer
as we go along. The second distinction is intended to capture the difference
between conventionalized expressions on the one hand and creative, novel,
unconventional or non-standardized expressions on the other. In the case of
love, for example, such expressions could be used by a good poet when he or
she writes about love. Let us continue with 'love' as an example. The number
of conventionalized expressions about love in many, but perhaps not all lan-
guages, is considerable. In English it is roughly about 300. Here are some
examples:
He was given new strength by love.
Love lasts forever.
You are the most wonderful person in the world.
We are one.
He was burning with love.
I am crazy about you.
She gave him her heart.
Don't ever let me go!
The magic is gone.
She pursued him relentlessly.
My claim is that implicit in these and similar linguistic expressions is a concep-
tual model of love, which we can make explicit if we examine the way in which
the expressions are related to each other and examine which aspects of love
they capture.
At this point at least two objections may be made. One is the doubt of the
socialpsychologist who can argue that even if it is possible to discover such a
language-based model of love, anger and pride nothing guarantees that
people actually conceive of love, anger and pride in terms of such models.
Admittedly, he is right. The methodology to be used in this study does not
enable us to decide what is the psychological validity of the conceptual mod-
els that arise from conventionalized language use. Consequently, it cannot be
my purpose to determine the social reality of these models. Secondly, the
sociologist and the sociolinguist, who believe in the social stratification of soc-
iety and language, might object that there are big differences in the social use
of some of the above expressions. They could reasonably insist that expres-
sions such as He was burning with love and / am crazy about you belong to
very different social layers of language use, and to pretend that there are no
 GOALS AND METHODS 5

differences beween them in this respect is to neglect important issues. One

such issue could be that the conceptual models we bring to light are limited to
particular social layers or social occasions. In response to this objection, I
would like to say that, although I agree that the expressions do belong to dif-
ferent layers, it is most probable that, at least on the level of passive recogni-
tion, every native speaker of English knows these expressions. This would in
turn mean that the conceptual models employed in understanding are at least
somewhat similar among speakers. But even if this doubt is justified, it seems
to me that it is more reasonable to consider our data homogenous at first,
rather than worry about social complexity at this stage.
Among the linguistic expressions that have to do with love, we can find
several metaphors. Let us take some examples from the sentences we have
used for illustration:
He was burning with love
She gave him her heart
We are one
As we shall see, metaphors play a very significant role in the conceptual
model of love. Now I will briefly introduce those ideas and technical terms
that we will rely on throughout this study.
By metaphor I will mean 'conceptual metaphor'. The term conceptual
metaphor comes from the work of Lakoff and Johnson (1980). Lakoff and
Johnson make a distinction between a conceptual metaphor and the linguistic
expressions that reflect, or make manifest, the conceptual metaphor. One of
the expressions on our list of examples was He was given new strength by love.
This expression makes us view love as some kind of nutrient, an idea which
gains expression in other examples as well. Let us take some of these (in what
follows, whenever necessary, concepts, either metaphorical or otherwise,
will be written in CAPITAL letters):
LOVE IS A NUTRIENT
She's starved for affection.
I need love.
He's love-starved.
I cant live without love.
He thrives on love.
She's sustained by love.
He hungered for love.
All you need is love.
6 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

The idea LOVE IS A NUTRIENT, which involves two concepts, will be cal-
led a conceptual metaphor. The italicized linguistic expressions are the par-
ticular linguistic examples of the conceptual metaphor. To be more precise,
we should say that we infer the existence of the LOVE IS A NUTRIENT con-
ceptual metaphor because we know that these conventionalized expressions
exist.
Although the metaphorical expressions in the sentences I can't live with-
out love and I need love do not directly reflect the NUTRIENT metaphor, I
take them as examples of this metaphor on the basis of subcategorization.
Subcategorization simply means that NUTRIENT is a concept which is sub-
ordinate to the concept of NEED. In such cases, following the practice of
Lakoff and Johnson, I will use the more specific concept (which is NUT-
RIENT in the present case) to represent the appropriate conceptual
metaphor.
Lakoff and Johnson depart from the traditional view of metaphor
according to which metaphor has merely an ornamental function. Instead,
they claim that the primary function of metaphor is to understand difficult,
complex, abstract, or less clearly delineated concepts. We do this by trying to
understand such a concept (LOVE, for example) in terms of another, less
complicated, physical, or more clearly delineated concept (for example,
NUTRIENT). The concept we try to understand (LOVE) is called the 'target
domain', and the concept which is used for this purpose (NUTRIENT) is cal-
led the 'source domain'. Thus in Lakoff and Johnson's view, metaphor has as
its primary function the cognitive role of understanding one concept in terms
of another. Representations such as LOVE IS A NUTRIENT are intended
to capture this aspect of metaphor.
The NUTRIENT metaphor focuses on only one aspect of love. It makes us
see love as a need. Very different aspects of love are captured by the LOVE IS A
JOURNEY metaphor. Here emphasis falls on the progress and the purpose of
the love relationship, and the difficulties involved. That we indeed try to com-
prehend these aspects of love in terms of the concept of a JOURNEY is shown
by the following linguistic examples taken from Lakoff and Johnson (1980):
LOVE IS A JOURNEY
Look how far we've come.
We're at a crossroads.
We'll just have to go our separate ways.
We can't turn back now.
I don't think this relationship is going anywhere.
 GOALS AND METHODS 7

Where are we?

We're stuck.
It's been a long, bumpy road.
This relationship is a dead-end street.
We're just spinning our wheels.
Our marriage is on the rocks.
We've gotten off the track.
This relationship is foundering.
It may be objected that most of these conventionalized expressions are not
limited to love relationships. For example, the expression go our separate
ways is equally applicable to a friendship, and the expression if's been a long,
bumpy road can just as well be used to describe a series of negotiations.
Indeed, these expressions are not specific to romantic love. But this only
shows that the concept of LOVE has certain aspects that are common to a
great number of concepts, and that LOVE is built out of elements and in ways
similar to other concepts.
But we still have to answer the question of why it is that we try to under-
stand the concept LOVE in terms of JOURNEY, rather than some other
concept or concepts. According to Lakoff and Johnson, each conceptual
metaphor has what they call an 'experiential basis'. This can be either physi-
cal or cultural. Furthermore, the experiential basis of a metaphor provides
only some motivation for the metaphor but does not make it completely pre-
dictable: In other words, an experiential basis justifies the creation and exis-
tence of a conceptual metaphor, but it does not predict exactly what other
concept (like JOURNEY) we will use in our effort to comprehend the
concept in question (like LOVE). The experiential basis of the LOVE IS
A JOURNEY metaphor seems to be that both love and the journey are situ-
ations or events that take place in this time. Obviously, it does not follow that
the concept LOVE can only be conceptualized as a JOURNEY, since several
other events could be used for this purpose. On the other hand, in the case of
concepts that have a time dimension the chances are that certain aspects of
these concepts will be conceptualized in terms of the JOURNEY metaphor.
Such concepts, in addition to LOVE, are LIFE and FRIENDSHIP.
It has been mentioned that the JOURNEY metaphor addresses certain
aspects of love: Namely, the progress of the relationship, the difficulties
involved, and the goal of the relationship. The examples in the JOURNEY
metaphor that indicate the aspect of progress are we've come a long way, go
our separate ways, etc. The difficulties of love life are expressed by such
8 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

examples as we're stuck, bumpy road, dead-end street. Before pointing out
the expressions that exemplify the aspect of goal in love however, I have to
make a short digression. We can make a distinction between 'ontological' and
'epistemic correspondences' that characterize a number of relationships
between a source domain and a target domain. Let us first take ontological
correspondences. These are correspondences that obtain between entities in
the source domain and corresponding entities in the target domain. We find
the following ontological correspondences between JOURNEY and LOVE:
Source domain: JOURNEY Target domain: LOVE
- the journey is love
- the travellers are the lovers
- the road covered is the progress of the love relationship
- the difficulties along the way are the difficulties of the love relationship
These are the correspondences that constitute the frame, the basis of the
LOVE IS A JOURNEY metaphor. This is why we call them ontological cor-
respondences. Epistemic correspondences are those that obtain between our
knowledge of the source domain and our knowledge of the target domain.
They arise as a result of a process whereby we carry over some of our knowl-
edge of the source domain onto the target domain. For example, we know
that journeys typically have a destination, a goal. This concept of GOAL
.appears in the JOURNEY metaphor when we say things like This relation-
ship isn't going anywhere. In other words, the concept of GOAL as it relates
to journeys, and which is implicit in this example, creates a GOAL concept
in LOVE as well. It is debatable whether love has an inherent goal which is
independent of the metaphor.
We have seen that the NUTRIENT and JOURNEY metaphors capture
various aspects of the concept LOVE. The main issue that the NUTRIENT
metaphor addresses is that love is a need, while the JOURNEY metaphor
elaborates the aspects of progress, difficulty and goal. That is, different
metaphors emphasize different aspects of a concept and at the same time they
hide or downplay certain other aspects of the concept. However, as we shall
see, overlaps between the aspects highlighted by different metaphors are also
possible.
At this point it could be asked why this particular theory of metaphor has
been singled out for the purposes of this study. Since the vast existing litera-
ture on metaphor contains a large number of rival theories, it requires some
justification if one gives preference to any one of these. It cannot be my pur-
 GOALS AND METHODS 9

pose here to survey all of these rival views (for an overview, see Fónagy
1982). It suffices to say that, broadly speaking, two main trends can be distin-
guished. One trend views metaphor as a linguistic means of describing certain
preexisting similarities between two things in the world. This can be called the
'traditional or classical view' of metaphor. The other major trend is the 'inter-
actional view' (Black 1962), which emphasizes that in many cases metaphors
are conceptual devices used for understanding or creating reality, rather than
merely describing it. The three case studies will provide overwhelming evi-
dence in favor of this latter view. Already in this chapter we have seen some
convincing examples. It would be difficult to find any preexisting similarity
between LOVE and NUTRIENTS or JOURNEYS. Rather, these latter two
concepts are best seen as being used for understanding or creating some
aspects of the concept of LOVE. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) work within the
interactionalist tradition. So the question now becomes: why have I chosen
their theory from among the other interactionalist theories as given, for
example, in Sacks (1978) and Ortony (ed.) (1979)? I have done so because
it is their theory which, at least to my mind, presents us with the clearest, the
most elaborate and comprehensive version in this tradition. They provide a
large amount of linguistic and non-linguistic evidence, they set up a detailed
and consistent terminological system (a part of which has just been intro-
duced), and link up their work in an explicit way with a large number of fun-
damental issues in linguistics and philosophy. But one could perhaps simply
say that the reason was that it was this approach that proved most useful as a
technique in the study of the three concepts under investigation.
So far we have surveyed the most important concepts that I will use in the
three case studies. These include conceptual models, folk theories, concep-
tual metaphors, epistemic and ontological correspondences, source and
target domains, etc. Mention has also been made of such conceptual tools as
metonymies and 'related concepts', which will be discussed in more detail in
the appropriate places in the case studies. However, there is a further notion
on which the analyses to be presented will draw a great deal. This is the notion
of prototype as it is used in the work of Berlin and Kay (1969), Coleman and
Kay (1981), Rosch (1973, 1975, 1977), Fillmore (1975) and Lakoff (1973,
1987). I will not try to defend the prototype view of categorization here
because I think this has been done successfully by these authors. The useful-
ness of the prototype approach will be assumed. Nevertheless, I hope that the
case studies will also demonstrate that the notion of prototype, augmented by
the other conceptual tools, can take us beyond traditional componential
10 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

analysis in the study of lexical meaning.

An account of reference depends on how we can give an account of the
knowledge (concept) that we need in order to pick out certain aspects of the
world. One of the major reasons for the neglect of the study of reference (as
opposed to that of sense) has been that we have had no reliable method with
which to investigate the structure of this knowledge (concept). Lyons writes
in this connection:
"Until we have a satisfactory theory of culture, in the construction of which
not only sociology, but also both cognitive and social psychology, have
played their part, it is idle to speculate further about the possibility of con-
structing anything more than a rather ad hoc practical account of the denota-
tion of lexemes". (Lyons 1977: 210)
The case studies that follow are intended to be the beginning steps in the con-
struction of just such a theory of culture. Lyons takes the notion of prototype
as relevant to this job, but, as we have seen in this section, in addition to this
notion several other conceptual tools are needed to accomplish the task.
 2. THE CONCEPT OF ANGER

2.1. Some questions

- Are emotions just amorphous 'feelings' or do they have a cognitive con-
tent?
- If they have a cognitive content, how can we find out what it is?
- When people speak about anger, are they invoking a coherent folk
theory? That is, are the conventionalized ways of talking about anger actually
based on some cognitive model of what anger is?
- Could a mere analysis of the language used to talk about anger actually
uncover something real about the way we understand anger?
At first glance, the conventional expressions used to talk about anger
seem so diverse that finding any coherent system would seem impossible. For
example, if we look up anger in, say, Roget's University Thesaurus, we find
about three hundred entries, most of which have something or other to do
with anger, but the thesaurus doesn't tell us exactly what. Many of these are
idioms, and they too seem too diverse to reflect any coherent cognitive
model. Here are some example sentences using such idioms:
He was foaming at the mouth.
You're beginning to get to me.
You make my blood boil.
He's wrestling with his anger.
Watch out! He's on a short fuse.
He's just letting off steam.
Don't get a hernia!
Try to keep a grip on yourself.
Don't fly off the handle.
When I told him, he blew up.
He channeled his anger into something constructive.
He was red with anger.
He was blue in the face.
He appeased his anger.
12 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

He was doing a slow burn.

He suppressed his anger.
She kept bugging me.
When I told him, he had a cow.
What do these expressions have to do with anger, and what do they have
to do with each other? One thing is clear: they are not random. There seems
to be a systematic relationship among these constructions, but it is not
immediately obvious what it is. How do we know, for example, that someone
who is foaming at the mouth has lost his cool? How do you know that some-
one who is looking daggers at you is likely to be doing a slow burn or be on a
short fuse? How do we know that someone whose blood is boiling has not
appeased his anger? How do we know that someone who has channelled his
anger into something constructive has not had a cow?
What we will try to show is that there is a coherent conceptual organiza-
tion underlying all these expressions, and that much of it is metaphorical and
metonymical in nature.

2.2. Metaphor and metonymy

Let us begin with the folk theory of the physiological effects of anger:
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF ANGER ARE INCREASED
BODY HEAT, INCREASED INTERNAL PRESSURE (BLOOD
PRESSURE, MUSCULAR PRESSURE), AGITATION, AND
INTERFERENCE WITH ACCURATE PERCEPTION.
AS ANGER INCREASES, ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS
INCREASE.
THERE IS A LIMIT BEYOND WHICH THE PHYSIOLOGICAL
EFFECTS OF ANGER IMPAIR NORMAL FUNCTIONING.
Given the general metonymic principle,
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF AN EMOTION STAND
FOR THE EMOTION
the folk theory given above yields a system of metonymies for anger:
BODY HEAT:
Don't get hot under the collar.
Billy's a hothead.
They were having a heated argument.
 THE CONCEPT OF ANGER 13

When the cop gave her a ticket, she got all hot and bothered and started
cursing.
INTERNAL PRESSURE:
Don't get a hernial
When I found out, I almost burst a blood vessel.
He almost had a hemorrhage.
Increased body heat and/or blood pressure is assumed to cause redness
in the face and neck area, and such redness can also metonymically indicate
anger.
REDNESS IN FACE AND NECK AREA:
She was scarlet with rage.
He got red with anger.
He was flushed with anger.
AGITATION:
She was shaking with anger.
I was hopping mad.
He was quivering with rage.
He's all worked up.
There's no need to get so excited about it!
She's all wrought up.
You look upset.
INTERFERENCE WITH ACCURATE PERCEPTION:
She was blind with rage.
I was beginning to see red.
I was so mad I couldn't see straight.
Each of these expressions indicate the presence of anger via its supposed
physiological effects.
The folk theory of physiological effects, especially the part that
emphasizes HEAT, forms the basis of the most general metaphor for anger:
ANGER IS HEAT. There are two versions of this metaphor, one where the
heat is applied to fluids, the other where it is applied to solids. When it is
applied to fluids, we get: ANGER IS THE HEAT OF A FLUID IN A CON-
TAINER. The specific motivation for this consists of the HEAT, INTER-
NAL PRESSURE, and AGITATION parts of the folk theory. When
ANGER IS HEAT is applied to solids, we get the version ANGER IS FIRE,
which is motivated by the HEAT and REDNESS aspects of the folk theory
14 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

of physiological effects.
As we will see shortly, the fluid version is much more highly elaborated.
The reason for this, we surmise, is that in our overall conceptual system we
have the general metaphor:
THE BODY IS A CONTAINER FOR THE EMOTIONS
He was filled with anger.
She couldn't contain her joy.
She was brimming with rage.
Try to get your anger out of your system.
The ANGER IS HEAT metaphor, when applied to fluids, combines with the
metaphor THE BODY IS A CONTAINER FOR THE EMOTIONS to yield
the central metaphor of the system:
ANGER IS THE HEAT OF A FLUID IN A CONTAINER
You make my blood boil.
Simmer down !
I had reached the boiling point.
Let him stew.
A historically derived instance of this metaphor is:
She was seething with rage.
Although most speakers do not now use seethe to indicate physical boiling,
the boiling image is still there when seethe is used to indicate anger. Similarly,
pissed off is used only to refer to anger, not to the hot liquid under pressure
in the bladder. Still, the effectiveness of the expression seems to depend on
such an image.
When there is no heat the liquid is cool and calm. In the central
metaphor, cool and calmness corresponds to lack of anger.
Keep cool.
Stay calm.
As we will see shortly, the central metaphor is an extremely productive one.
There are two ways in which a conceptual metaphor can be productive. The
first is lexical. The words and fixed expressions of a language can code, that
is, be used to express aspects of, a given conceptual metaphor to a greater or
lesser extent. The number of conventionalized linguistic expressions that
code a given conceptual metaphor is one measure of the productivity of the
metaphor. In addition, the words and fixed expressions of a language can
elaborate the conceptual metaphor. For example, a stew is a special case in
 THE CONCEPT OF ANGER 15

which there is a hot fluid in a container. It is something that continues at a

given level of heat for a long time. This special case can be used to elaborate
the central metaphor. 'Stewing' indicates the continuance of anger over a
long period. Another special case is 'simmer', which indicates a low boil. This
can be used to indicate a lowering of the intensity of anger. Although both of
these are cooking terms, cooking plays no metaphorical role in these cases. It
just happens to be a case where there is a hot fluid in a container. This is typ-
ical of lexical elaborations.
Let us refer to the HEAT OF FLUID IN A CONTAINER as the source
domain of the central metaphor, and to ANGER as the target domain. We
usually have extensive knowledge about source domains. A second way in
which a conceptual metaphor can be productive is that it can carry over
details of that knowledge from the source domain to the target domain. We
will refer to such carryovers as metaphorical entailments. Such entailments
are part of our conceptual system. They constitute elaborations of conceptual
metaphors. The central metaphor has a rich system of metaphorical entail-
ments. For example, one thing we know about hot fluids is that, when they
start to boil, the fluid goes upward. This gives rise to the entailment:
WHEN THE INTENSITY OF ANGER INCREASES, THE FLUID
RISES
His pent-up anger welled up inside him.
She could feel her gorge rising.
We got a rise out of him.
My anger kept building up inside me.
Pretty soon I was in a towering rage.
We also know that intense heat produces steam and creates pressure on the
container. This yields the metaphorical entailments:
INTENSE ANGER PRODUCES STEAM
She got all steamed up.
Billy's just blowing off steam.
I was fuming.
INTENSE ANGER PRODUCES PRESSURE ON THE CON-
TAINER
He was bursting with anger.
I could barely contain my rage.
I could barely keep it in anymore.
16 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

A variant of this involves keeping the pressure back:

I suppressed my anger.
He turned his anger inward.
He managed to keep his anger bottled up inside him.
He was blue in the face.
When the pressure on the container becomes too high, the container
explodes. This yields the entailment:
WHEN ANGER BECOMES TOO INTENSE, THE PERSON
EXPLODES
When I told him, he just exploded.
She blew up at me.
We won't tolerate any more of your outbursts.
In an explosion, parts of the container go up in the air:
WHEN A PERSON EXPLODES, PARTS OF HIM GO UP IN THE
AIR
I blew my stack.
I blew my top.
She flipped her lid.
I went through the roof.
When something explodes, what was inside it comes out:
WHEN A PERSON EXPLODES, WHAT WAS INSIDE HIM
COMES OUT
His anger finally came out.
Smoke was pouring out of his ears.
This can be elaborated in terms of animals giving birth, where something that
was inside causing pressure bursts out:
She was having kittens.
My mother will have a cow when I tell her.
Let us now turn to the questions of what issues the central metaphor
addresses and what kind of ontology of anger it reveals. The central metaphor
focuses on the fact that anger can be intense, that it can lead to a loss of con-
trol, and that a loss of control can be dangerous. Let us begin with intensity.
Anger is conceptualized as a mass, and takes the grammar of mass nouns, as
opposed to count nouns. Thus you can say:
How much anger has he got in him?
 THE CONCEPT OF ANGER 17

but not:
*How many angers does he have in him?
Anger thus has the ontology of a mass entity, that is, it has a scale indicating
its amount, it exists when the amount is greater than zero and goes out of exis-
tence when the amount falls to zero. In the central metaphor, the scale indi-
cating the amount of anger is the heat scale. But, as the central metaphor indi-
cates, the anger scale is not open-ended; it has a limit. Just as a hot fluid in a
closed container can only take so much heat before it explodes, so we concep-
tualize the anger scale as having a limit point. We can only bear so much
anger before we explode, that is, lose control. This has its correlates in our
folk theory of physiological effects. As anger gets more intense the physiolog-
ical effects increase and those increases interfere with our normal function-
ing. Body heat, blood pressure, agitation and interference with perception
cannot increase without limit before our ability to function normally becomes
seriously impaired, and we lose control over our functioning. In the folk
model of anger, loss of control is dangerous, both to the angry person and to
those around him. In the central metaphor, the danger of loss of control is
understood as the danger of explosion.
The structural aspect of a conceptual metaphor consists of a set of corre-
spondences between a source domain and a target domain. These correspon-
dences can be factored into two types: ontological and epistemic. Ontological
correspondences are correspondences between the entities in the source
domain and the corresponding entities in he target domain. For example, the
container in the source domain corresponds to the body in the target domain.
Epistemic correspondences are correspondences between knowledge about
the source domain and corresponding knowledge about the target domain.
We can schematize these correspondences between the FLUID domain and
the ANGER domain as follows:
Source: HEAT OF FLUID IN CONTAINER Target: ANGER
Ontological Correspondences:
- The container is the body.
- The heat of fluid is the anger.
- The heat scale is the anger scale, with end points zero and limit.
- Container heat is body heat.
- Pressure in container is internal pressure in the body.
- Agitation of fluid and container is physical agitation.
- The limit of the container's capacity to withstand pressure caused by heat is
18 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

the limit on the anger scale.

- Explosion is loss of control.
- Danger of explosion is danger of loss of control.
- Coolness in the fluid is lack of anger.
- Calmness of the fluid is lack of agitation.
Epistemic correspondences:
Source: The effect of intense fluid heat is container heat, internal pressure,
and agitation.
Target: The effect of intense anger is body heat, internal pressure, and agita-
tion.
Source: When the fluid is heated past a certain limit, pressure increases to the
point at which the container explodes.
Target: When anger increases past a certain limit, pressure increases to the
point at which the person loses control.
Source: An explosion is damaging to the container and dangerous to bystan-
ders.
Target: A loss of control is damaging to an angry person and dangerous to
other people.
Source: An explosion may be prevented by the application of sufficient force
and energy to keep the fluid in.
Target: A loss of control may be prevented by the application of sufficient
force and energy to keep the anger in.
Source: It is sometimes possible to control the release of heated fluid for
either destructive or constructive purposes; this has the effect of lowering the
level of heat and pressure.
Target: It is sometimes possible to control the release of anger for either
destructive or constructive purposes; this has the effect of lowering the level
of anger and internal pressure.
The latter case defines an elaboration of the entailment WHEN A PERSON
EXPLODES, WHAT WAS INSIDE HIM COMES OUT:
ANGER CAN BE LET OUT UNDER CONTROL
He let out his anger.
I gave vent to my anger.
Channel your anger into something constructive.
He took out his anger on me.
 THE CONCEPT OF ANGER 19

So far, we have seen that the folk theory of physiological reactions provides
the basis for the central metaphor, and that the central metaphor charac-
terizes detailed correspondences between the source domain and the target
domain — correspondences concerning both ontology and knowledge.
At this point, our analysis enables us to see why various relationships
among idioms hold. We can see why someone who is in a towering rage has
not kept cool, why someone who is stewing may have contained his anger but
has not got it out of his system, why someone who has suppressed his anger
has not yet erupted, and why someone who has channeled his anger into
something constructive has not had a cow.
Let us now turn to the case where the general ANGER IS HEAT
metaphor is applied to solids:
ANGER IS FIRE
Those are inflammatory remarks.
She was doing a slow burn.
What you said inflamed him.
He was breathing fire.
Your insincere apology just added fuel to the fire.
After the argument, Dave was smoldering for days.
That kindled my ire.
Boy, am I burned up!
He was consumed by his anger.
This metaphor highlights the cause of anger (kindle, inflame), the intensity
and duration {smoldering, slow burn, burned up), the danger to others {brea-
thing fire), and the damage to the angry person (consumed). The correspon-
dences in ontology are as follows:
Source: FIRE Target: ANGER
- The fire is anger.
- The thing burning is the angry person.
- The cause of the fire is the cause of the anger.
- The intensity of the fire is the intensity of the anger.
- The physical damage to the thing burning is mental damage to the angr * per-
son.
- The capacity of the thing burning to serve its normal function is the capacity
of the angry person to function normally.
- An object at the point of being consumed by fire corresponds to a person
whose anger is at the limit.
20 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

- The danger of the fire to things nearby is danger of the anger to other
people.
The corrrespondences in knowledge are:
Source: Things can burn at low intensity for a long time and then burst into
flame.
Target: People can be angry at a low intensity for a long time and then sud-
denly become extremely angry.
Source: Fires are dangerous to things nearby.
Target: Angry people are dangerous to other people.
Source: Things consumed by fire cannot serve their normal function.
Target: At the limit of the anger scale, people cannot function normally.
Putting together what we've done so fat, we can see why someone who
is doing a slow burn hasn't hit the ceiling yet, why someone whose anger is
bottled up is not breathing fire, why someone who is consumed by anger
probably can't see straight, and why adding fuel to the fire might just cause
the person you're talking to to have kittens.

2.3. The other principal metaphors

As we have seen, the ANGER IS HEAT metaphor is based on the folk
theory of the physiological effects of anger, according to which increased
body heat is a major effect of anger. That folk theory also maintains that agi-
tation is an important effect. Agitation is also an important part of our folk
model of insanity. According to this view, people who are insane are unduly
agitated — they go wild, start raving, flail their arms, foam at the mouth, etc.
Correspondingly, these physiological effects can stand, metonymically, for
insanity. One can indicate that someone is insane by describing him as foam-
ing at the mouth, raving, going wild, etc.
The overlap between the folk theories of the effects of anger and the
effects of insanity provides a basis for the metaphor:
ANGER IS INSANITY
I just touched him, and he went crazy.
You're driving me nuts!
When the umpire called him out on strikes, he went bananas.
One more complaint and I'll go berserk.
He got so angry, he went out of his mind.
When he gets angry, he goes bonkers.
 THE CONCEPT OF ANGER 21

She went into an insane rage.

If anything else goes wrong, I'll get hysterical.
Perhaps the most common conventional expression for anger came into Eng-
lish historically as a result of this metaphor:
I'm mad\
Because of this metaphorical link between insanity and anger, expres-
sions that indicate insane behavior can also indicate angry behavior. Given
the metonymy INSANE BEHAVIOR STANDS FOR INSANITY and the
metaphor ANGER IS INSANITY, we get the metaphorical metonymy:
INSANE BEHAVIOR STANDS FOR ANGER
When my mother finds out, she'll have a fit.
When the ump threw him out of the game, Billy started foaming at the
mouth.
He's fit to be tied.
He's about to throw a tantrum.
Violent behavior indicative of frustration is viewed as a form of insane
behavior. According to our folk model of anger, people who can neither con-
trol nor relieve the pressure of anger engage in violent frustrated behavior.
This folk model is the basis for the metonymy:
VIOLENT FRUSTRATED BEHAVIOR STANDS FOR ANGER
He's tearing his hair out\
If one more thing goes wrong, I'll start banging my head against the wall.
The loud music next door has got him climbing the walls!
She's been slamming doors all morning.
The ANGER IS INSANITY metaphor has the following correspondences:
Source:INSANITY Target: ANGER
- The cause of insanity is the cause of anger.
- Becoming insane is passing the limit point on the anger scale.
- Insane behavior is angry behavior.
Source: An insane person cannot function normally.
Target: A person who is angry beyond the limit point cannot function nor-
mally.
Source: An insane person is dangerous to others.
Target: A person who is angry beyond the limit point is dangerous to others.
22 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

At this point, we can see a generalization. Emotional effects are under-

stood as physical effects. Anger is understood as a form of energy. According
to our folk understanding of physics, when enough input energy is applied to
a body, the body begins to produce output energy. Thus, the cause of anger
is viewed as input energy that produces internal heat (output energy). More-
over, the internal heat can function as input energy, producing various forms
of output energy: steam, pressure, externally radiating heat, and agitation.
Such output energy (the angry behavior) is viewed as dangerous to others. In
the insanity metaphor, insanity is understood as a highly energized state, with
insane behavior as a form of energy output.
All in all, anger is understood in our folk model as a negative emotion.
It produces undesirable physiological reactions, leads to an inability to func-
tion normally, and is dangerous to others. The angry person, recognizing this
danger, views his anger as an opponent.
ANGER IS AN OPPONENT (IN A STRUGGLE)
I'm struggling with my anger.
He was battling his anger.
She fought back her anger.
You need to subdue your anger.
I've been wrestling with my anger all day.
I was seized by anger.
I'm finally coming to grips with my anger.
He lost control over his anger.
Anger took control of him.
He surrendered to his anger.
He yielded to his anger.
I was overcome by anger.
Her anger has been appeased.
The ANGER IS AN OPPONENT metaphor is constituted by the following
correspondences :
Source : STRUGGLE Target : ANGER
- The opponent is anger.
- Winning is controlling anger.
- Losing is having anger control you.
- Surrender is allowing anger to take control of you.
- The pool of resources needed for winning is the energy needed to control
anger.
 THE CONCEPT OF ANGER 23

One thing that is left out of this account so far is what constitutes 'appease-
ment'. To appease an opponent is to give in to his demands. This suggests that
anger has demands. We will address the question of what these demands are
below.
The OPPONENT metaphor focuses on the issue of control and the
danger of loss of control to the angry person himself. There is another
metaphor that focuses on the issue of control, but whose main focus is the
danger to others. It is a very widespread metaphor in Western culture,
namely, PASSIONS ARE BEASTS INSIDE A PERSON. According to this
metaphor, there is a part of each person that is a wild animal. Civilized people
are supposed to keep that part of them private, that is, they are supposed to
keep the animal inside them. In the metaphor, loss of control is equivalent to
the animal getting loose. And the behavior of a person who has lost control
is the behavior of a wild animal. There are versions of this metaphor for the
various passions — desire, anger, etc. In the case of anger, the beast presents
a danger to other people. (For some more discussion of the issue, see section
8 in chapter 4.)
ANGER IS A DANGEROUS ANIMAL
He has a ferocious temper.
He has a fierce temper.
It's dangerous to arouse his anger.
That awakened my ire.
His anger grew.
He unleashed his anger.
Don't let your anger get out of hand.
He lost his grip on his anger.
His anger is insatiable.
An example that draws on both the FIRE and DANGEROUS ANIMAL
metaphors is:
He was breathing fire.
The image here is of a dragon, a dangerous animal that can devour you with
fire.
The DANGEROUS ANIMAL metaphor portrays anger as a sleeping
animal that it is dangerous to awaken; as something that can grow and
thereby become dangerous; as something that has to be held back; and as
something with a dangerous appetite. Here are the correspondences that con-
24 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

stitute the metaphor.

Source: DANGEROUS ANIMAL Target: ANGER
- The dangerous animal is the anger.
- The animal's getting loose is loss of control of anger.
- The owner of the dangerous animal is the angry person.
- Sleeping for the animal is anger near the zero level.
- Being awake for the animal is near the limit.
Source: It is dangerous for a dangerous animal to be loose.
Target: It is dangerous for a person's anger to be out of control.
Source: A dangerous animal is safe when it is sleeping and dangerous when
it is awake.
Target: Anger is safe near the zero level and dangerous near the limit.
Source: A dangerous animal is safe when it is very small and dangerous when
it is grown.
Target: Anger is safe near the zero level and dangerous near the limit.
Source: It is the responsibility of a dangerous animal's owner to keep it under
control.
Target: It is the responsibility of an angry person to keep his anger under con-
trol.
Source: It requires a lot of energy to control a dangerous animal.
Target: It requires a lot of energy to control one's anger.
There is another class of expressions that, as far as we can tell, are
instances of the same metaphor. These are cases in which angry behavior is
described in terms of aggressive animal behavior.
ANGRY BEHAVIOR IS AGGRESSIVE ANIMAL BEHAVIOR
He was bristling with anger.
That got my hackles up.
He began to bare his teeth.
That ruffled her feathers.
She was bridling with anger.
Don't snap at me!
I was growling with rage.
He started snarling.
Don't bite my head off!
Why'd you jump down my throat?
 THE CONCEPT OF ANGER 25

Perhaps the best way to account for these cases would be to extend the
ontological correspondences of the ANGER IS A DANGEROUS ANI-
MAL metaphor to include:
- The aggressive behavior of the dangerous animal is angry behavior.
If we do this, we can account naturally for the fact that these expressions indi-
cate anger. They would do so via a combination of metaphor and metonymy,
in which the aggressive behavior metaphorically corresponds to angry
behavior, which in turn metonymically stands for anger. For example, the
snarling of the animal corresponds to the angry verbal behavior of the person,
which in turn indicates the presence of anger.
Aggressive verbal behavior is a common form of angry behavior, as
snap, growl, snarl, etc. indicate. We can see this in a number of cases outside
of the animal domain:
AGGRESSIVE VERBAL BEHAVIOR STANDS FOR ANGER
She gave him a tongue-lashing.
I really chewed him out good!
Other forms of aggressive behavior can also stand metonymically for anger,
especially aggressive visual behavior:
AGGRESSIVE VISUAL BEHAVIOR STANDS FOR ANGER
She was looking daggers at me.
He gave me a dirty look.
If looks could kill, ...
He was glowering at me.
All these metonymic expressions can be used to indicate anger.
As in the case of the OPPONENT metaphor, our analysis of the
DANGEROUS ANIMAL metaphor leaves an expression unaccounted for
— 'insatiable'. This expression indicates that the animal has an appetite. This
'appetite' seems to correspond to the 'demands' in the OPPONENT
metaphor, as can be seen from the fact that the following sentences entail
each other:
Harry's anger is insatiable.
Harry's anger cannot be appeased.
To see what it is that anger demands and has an appetite for, let us turn
to expressions that indicate causes of anger. Perhaps the most common group of
expressions that indicate causes of anger consists of conventionalized forms of
26 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

annoyance: insects, minor pains, burdens placed on domestic animals, etc.

Thus we have the metaphor:
THE CAUSE OF ANGER IS A PHYSICAL ANNOYANCE
Stop bugging me!
Don't be a pain in the ass.
Get off my back!
You don't have to ride me so hard.
You're getting under my skin.
He's a pain in the neck.
Don't be a pest!
These forms of annoyance involve an offender and a victim. The offender is
at fault. The victim, who is innocent, is the one who gets angry.
There is another set of conventionalized expressions used to speak of, or
to, people who are in the process of making someone angry. These are
expressions of territoriality, in which the cause of anger is viewed as a trespas-
ser.
CAUSING ANGER IS TRESPASSING
You're beginning to get to me.
Get out of here!
Get out of my sight!
Leave me alone!
This is where I draw the line!
Don't step on my toes!
Again, there is an offender (the cause of anger) and a victim (the person who
is getting angry). In general, the cause of anger seems to be an offense, in
which there is an offender who is at fault and an innocent victim, who is the
person who gets angry. The offense seems to constitute some sort of injustice.
This is reflected in the conventional wisdom:
Don't get mad, get even!
In order for this saying to make sense, there has to be some connection
between anger and retribution. Getting even is a form of balancing the scales
of justice. The saying assumes a model in which injustice leads to anger and
retribution can alleviate or prevent anger. In short, what anger 'demands'
and has an 'appetite' for is revenge. This is why warnings and threats can
count as angry behavior:
 THE CONCEPT OF ANGER 27

If I get mad, watch out!

Don't get me angry, or you'll be sorry.
The angry behavior is, in itself, viewed as a form of retribution.
We are now in a position to make sense of another metaphor for anger:
ANGER IS A BURDEN
Unburdening himself of his anger gave him a sense of relief.
After I let out my anger, I felt a sense of release.
After I lost my temper, I felt lighter.
He carries his anger around with him.
He has a chip on his shoulder.
You'll feel better if you get it off your chest.
In English, it is common for responsibilities to be metaphorized as burdens.
There are two kinds of responsibilities involved in the folk model of anger
that has emerged so far. The first is a responsibility to control one's anger. In
cases of extreme anger, this may place a considerable burden on one's 'inner
resources'. The second comes from the model of retributive justice that is
built into our concept of anger; it is the responsibility to seek vengeance.
What is particularly interesting is that these two responsibilities are in conflict
in the case of angry retribution: If you take out your anger on someone, you
are not meeting your responsibility to control your anger, and if you don't
take out your anger on someone, you are not meeting your responsibility to
provide retribution. The slogan 'Don't get mad, get even!' offers one way
out: retribution without anger. The human potential movement provides
another way out by suggesting that letting your anger out is okay. But the fact
is that neither of these solutions is the cultural norm. It should also be men-
tioned in passing that the human potential movement's way of dealing with
anger by sanctioning its release is not all that revolutionary. It assumes almost
all of our standard folk model and metaphorical understanding, and makes
one change: sanctioning the 'release'.

2.4. Some minor metaphors

There are a few very general metaphors that apply to anger as well as to
many other things, and are commonly used in comprehending and speaking
about anger. The first we will discuss has to do with existence. Existence is
commonly understood in terms of physical presence. You are typically aware
of something's presence if it is nearby and you can see it. This is the basis for
the metaphor:
28 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

EXISTENCE IS PRESENCE
His anger went away.
His anger eventually came back.
My anger lingered on for days.
She couldn't get rid of her anger.
After a while, her anger just vanished.
My anger slowly began to dissipate.
When he saw her smile, his anger disappeared.
In the case of emotions, existence is often conceived of as location in a
bounded space. Here the emotion is the bounded space and it exists when the
person is in that space:
EMOTIONS ARE BOUNDED SPACES
She flew into a rage.
She was in an angry mood.
He was in a state of anger.
I am not easily roused to anger.
These cases are relatively independent of the rest of the anger system, and are
included here more for completeness than for profundity.

2.5. The prototype scenario

The metaphors and metonymies that we have investigated so far con-
verge on a certain prototypical cognitive model of anger. It is not the only
model of anger we have; in fact, there are quite a few. But as we shall see, all
of the others can be characterized as minimal variants of the model that the
metaphors converge on. The model has a temporal dimension, and can be
conceived of as a scenario with a number of stages. We will call this the 'pro-
totype scenario'; it is similar to what De Sousa (1980) calls the 'paradigm sce-
nario'. We will be referring to the person who gets angry as S, short for the Self.
Stage 1: Offending Event
There is an offending event that displeases S. There is a wrongdoer who
intentionally does something directly to S. The wrongdoer is at fault and S is
innocent. The offending event constitutes an injustice and produces anger in
S. The scales of justice can only be balanced by some act of retribution. That
is, the intensity of retribution must be roughly equal to the intensity of
offense. S has the responsibility to perform such an act of retribution.
 THE CONCEPT OF ANGER 29

Stage 2: Anger
Associated with the entity anger is a scale that measures its intensity. As the
intensity of anger increases, S experiences physiological effects: increase in
body heat, internal pressure, and physical agitation. As the anger gets very
intense, it exerts a force upon S to perform an act of retribution. Because acts
of retribution are dangerous and/or socially unacceptable, S has a responsibil-
ity to control his anger. Moreover, loss of control is damaging to S's own well-
being, which is another motivation for controlling anger.
Stage 3: Attempt at Control
S attempts to control his anger.
Stage 4: Loss of control.
Each person has a certain tolerance for controlling anger. That tolerance can
be viewed as the limit point on the anger scale. When the intensity of anger
goes beyond that limit, S can no longer control his anger. S exhibits angry
behavior and his anger forces him to attempt an act of retribution. Since S is
out of control and acting under coercion, he is not responsible for his actions.
Stage 5: Act of Retribution
S performs the act of retribution. The wrongdoer is the target of the act. The
intensity of retribution roughly equals the intensity of the offense and the
scales are balanced again. The intensity of anger drops to zero.
The course of anger depicted in the prototype scenario is by no means
the only course anger can take. In claiming that the scenario is prototypical
we are claiming that according to our cultural folk theory of anger, this is a
normal course for anger to take. Deviations of many kinds are both recog-
nized as existing and recognized as being noteworthy and not the norm. Let
us take some examples:
- Someone who turns the other cheek, that is, who does not get angry or seek
retribution. In this culture, such a person is considered virtually saintly.
- Someone who has no difficulty controlling his anger is especially praisewor-
thy.
- A hothead is someone who considers more events offensive than most
people, who has a lower threshold for anger than the norm, who cannot con-
trol his anger, and whose acts of retribution are considered out of proportion
to the offense. Someone who is extremely hotheaded is considered emotion-
ally 'unbalanced'.
30 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

On the other hand, someone who acts in the manner described in the pro­
totypical scenario would not be considered abnormal at all.
Before turning to the nonprototypical cases, it will be useful for us to
make a rough sketch of the ontology of anger: the entities, predicates and
events required. This will serve two purposes. First, it will allow us to show
in detail how the nonprototypical cases are related to the prototypical model.
Second, it will allow us to investigate the nature of this ontology. We will
include only the detail required for our purposes.
It is part of our folk concept of a person that he can temporally lose con­
trol of his body or his emotions. Implicit in this concept is a separation of the
body and the emotions from the Self. This separation is especially important
in the ontology of anger. Anger, as a separable entity, can overcome some­
one, take control, and cause him to act in ways he would not normally act. In
such cases, the Self is no longer in control of the body (B). A fuller treatment
would probably also require viewing the mind as a separate entity, but that is
beyond our present purposes.
Since anger has a quantitative aspect, the ontology must include a scale
of anger, including an intensity (I(A)), a zero point (Z) and a limit point (L).
The basic anger scenario also includes an offending event (0) and a retributive
act (R). Each of these has a quantitative aspect, and must also include an
intensity, a zero point and a limit. In the prototypical case, the offending
event is an action on the part of a wrongdoer (W) against a victim (V). The
retribution takes the form of an act by an agent (A) against some target (T).
The ontology of anger also includes a number of predicates: displeasing
(D), at fault (AF), exert force on (F), cause (C), exist (E) control (CL),
dangerous (DR), damaging (DG), balance (B), and outweigh (OW). There
are also some other kinds of events: the physiological events (PE); the angry
behaviors (AB); and the immediate cause of anger (IC), in case it is not the
same as the offending event.
Summary of the ontology of anger
Aspects of the person:
Self: S
Body: Β
Anger: A
Offense and retribution:
Offending event: 0
Retributive act: R
 THE CONCEPT OF ANGER 31

Scales of intensity:
Intensity of Anger: I(A)
Intensity of Offense: I(0)
Intensity of Retribution: I(R)
End points:
Zero: Ζ
Limit: L
Predicates:
Displease: D
At Fault: AF
Cause: C
Exist: Ε
Exert force on: F
Control: CL
Dangerous: DR
Damaging: DG
Balance: Β
Outweigh: OW
Other events:
Physiological Reactions: PE
Angry Behaviors: AB
Immediate cause: IC

2.6. Restatement of the prototypical scenario

Given the above ontology and principles of the folk model, we can
restate the prototypical anger scenario in terms that will facilitate showing the
relationships among the wide variety of anger scenarios. We will first restate
the prototypical scenario and then go on to the nonprototypical scenarios.
Prototypical anger scenario:
Constraints:
V = S: Victim = Self
A = S: Agent of Retribution = Self
Τ = W: Target of Anger = Wrongdoer
IC = 0: Immediate cause of Anger = Offending event
AB = R: Angry behavior = Retribution
32 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

Stage 1: Offending Event

0(W,S): Wrongdoer offends Self
AF(W): Wrongdoer is at fault
D(0,S): The offending event displeases Self
OW(I(0),I(R)): The intensity of the offense outweighs the intensity of the
retribution (which equals zero at this point), thus creating an imbalance.
C(0,E(A)): The offense causes anger to come into existence.
Stage 2: Anger
E(A): Anger exists.
PE(S): S experiences physiological effects (heat, pressure, agitation).
F(A,S) SO THAT ATTEMPT(S,R): Anger exerts force on the Self to
attempt an act of retribution.
Stage 3: Attempt to control anger
F(S,A): S exerts a counterforce in an attempt to control anger.
Stage 4: Loss of control
I(A)>L: The intensity of anger goes above the limit.
CL(A,S): Anger takes control of S.
AB(S): S exhibits angry behavior (loss of judgment, aggressive actions).
DG(S): There is damage to S.
DR(W): There is a danger to the target of anger, in this case, the wrongdoer.
Stage 5: Retribution
R(S,W): S performs retributive act against W (this is usually angry behavior
directed at W).
B(I(R),I(0)): The intensity of retribution balances the intensity of offense.
I(A) = Z: The intensity of anger drops to zero.
NOT(E(A)): Anger ceases to exist.

2.7. The non-prototypical cases

We are now in a position to show how a large range of instances of anger
cluster about the above prototype. The examples are in the following form:
a nonprototypical anger scenario with its name, followed by an informal
description; an account of the minimal difference between the given scenario
and the prototype scenario, first in English, then in approximate formal nota-
tion; finallly, an example sentence.
Insatiable Anger: You perform the act of retribution and the anger just
doesn't go away.
In stage 5, the intensity of anger stays above zero and the anger continues to
 THE CONCEPT OF ANGER 33

exist.
Stage 5:I(A)>Z and E(A).
Example: His anger lingered on.
Frustrated Anger. You just can't get back at the wrongdoer and you get frus-
trated.
It is not possible to gain retribution for the offensive act. S engages in frus-
trated behavior. Option: S directs his anger at himself.
Stage 5: NOT POSSIBLE(R(S,W)). AB(S): ACTS OF FRUSTRATION.
Option: T = S , R(S,S).
Examples: He was climbing the walls. She was tearing her hair out. He was
banging his head against the wall. He's taking it out on himself.
Redirected Anger. Instead of directing your anger at the person who made
you angry, you direct it at someone or something else.
The target of anger is not the wrongdoer.
Stage 5: NOT (T = W).
Examples: When I lose my temper, I kick the cat. When you get angry, punch
a pillow until your anger goes away. When something bad happened at the
office, he would take it out on his wife.
Exaggerated Response: Your reaction is way out of proportion to the offense.
The intensity of retribution outweighs the intensity of offense.
Stage 5:OW(I(R),I(0)).
Examples: Why jump down my throat? You have a right to get angry, but not
to go that far.
Controlled Response: You get angry, but retain control and consciously direct
your anger at the wrongdoer.
S remains in control. Everything else remains the same.
Stage 4:CL(S,A).
Example: He vented his anger on her.
Constructive use: Instead of attempting an act of retribution, you put your
anger to a constructive use.
S remains in control and performs a constructive act instead of a retributive
act. The scales remain unbalanced, but the anger disappears.
Stage 4: CL(S,A). Stage 5: CONSTRUCTIVE ACT in place of R(S,T).
OW(I(0),I(R)).
Example: Try to channel your anger into something constructive.
34 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

Terminating event: Before you have a chance to lose control, some unrelated
event happens to make your anger disappear.
Anger doesn't take control of S. Some event causes the anger to go out of
existence.
Stage 4: NOT(CL(A,S)). There is an event such that NOT(e = R) and
C(e,(NOT(E(A))).
Example: When his daughter smiled at him, his anger disappeared.
Spontaneous cessation: Before you lose control, your anger just goes away.
Anger doesn't take control of S and the intensity of anger goes to zero.
Stage 4: NOT(CL(A,S)) and I(A) = Z.
Example: His anger just went away by itself.
Successful suppression: You successfully suppress your anger.
S keeps control and the intensity of anger is not near the limit.
Stage 4: CL(S,A) and I(A) IS NOT NEAR L.
Example: He suppressed his anger.
Controlled reduction: Before you lose control, you engage in angry behavior
and the intensity of anger goes down.
S does not lose control, S engages in angry behavior and the intensity of anger
goes down.
Stage 4: NOT (CL(A,S)) and AB(S) and I(A) GOES DOWN.
Example: He's just letting off steam.
Immediate explosion: You get angry and lose control all at once.
No Stage 3. Stages 2 and 4 combine into a single event.
Example: I said "Hi Roundeyes!" and he blew up.
Slow burn: Anger continues for a long time.
Stage 2 lasts a long time.
Example: He was doing a slow burn.
Nursing a grudge: S maintains his anger for a long period waiting for a chance
at a retributive act. Maintaining that level of anger takes special effort.
Stage 2 lasts a long time and requires effort. The retributive act does not
equal angry behavior.
Don't get mad, get even: This is advice (rarely followed) about the pointless-
ness of getting angry. It suggests avoiding stages 2 , 3 , and 4, and instead going
directly to stage 5. This advice is defined as an alternative to the prototypical
scenario.
 THE CONCEPT OF ANGER 35

Indirect Cause: It is some result of the wrongdoer's action, not the action
itself, that causes anger.
The offense is not the immediate cause of anger, but rather the cause of the
immediate cause.
Stage 1: NOT (O = IC) and CAUSE(0,IC).
Example: Your secretary forgets to fill out a form that results in your not get-
ting a deserved promotion. O = secretary forgets to fill out form. IC = you
don't get promotion. You are angry about not getting the promotion. You are
angry at the secretary for not filling out the form. In general, about marks the
immediate cause, at marks the target, and for marks the offense.
Cool anger: There are no physiological effects and S remains in control.
Anger with: To be angry with someone, S has to have a positive relationship
with the wrongdoer W, W must be answerable to S, the intensity is above the
threshhold but not near the limit. Perhaps the best example is a parent-child
relationship, where the parent is angry with the child.
Righteous indignation: O is a moral offense and the victim is not S. The inten-
sity of anger is not near the limit.
Wrath: The intensity of the offense is very great and many acts of retribution
are required in order to create a balance. The intensity of the anger is well
above the limit and the anger lasts a long time.
There appears to be a recognizable form of anger for which there are no
conventional linguistic expressions, so far as we can tell. We will call this a
manipulative use of anger. It is a case where a person cultivates his anger and
does not attempt to control it, with the effect that he intimidates those around
him into following his wishes in order to keep him from getting angry. This
can work either by fear or by guilt. The people manipulated can either be
afraid of his anger or may feel guilty about what anger does to him. This form
of anger is fairly distant from the prototype and it is no surprise that we have
no name for it.
Interestingly enough, there is a linguistic test that can be used to verify
that what we have called the prototypical scenario is indeed prototypical. It
involves the use of the word but. Consider the following examples (where the
asterisk indicates a semantic aberration):
- Max got angry, but he didn't blow his top.
- *Max got angry, but he blew his top.
36 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

- Max blew up at his boss, but the anger didn't go away.

- *Max blew up at his boss, but the anger went away.
- Sam got me angry, but it wasn't him that I took my anger out on.
- *Sam got me angry, but it was him that I took my anger out on.
The word but marks a situation counter to expectation. In these examples,
the prototypical scenario defines what is to be expected. The acceptable sen-
tences with but run counter to the prototypical scenario, and thus fit the con-
ditions for the use of but. The unacceptable sentences fit the prototypical
scenario, and define expected situations. This is incompatible with the use of
but. Thus we have a linguistic test that accords with our intuitions about what
is or isn't prototypical.
Each of the nonprototypical cases cited above is a case involving anger.
There appear to be no necessary and sufficient conditions that will fit all these
cases. However, they can all be seen as variants of the prototypical anger
scenario. Part of what makes the prototypical scenario prototypical is that it
is sufficiently rich so that variations on it can account for nonprototypical
cases.
The point is that there is no single unified cognitive model of anger.
Instead there is a category of cognitive models with a prototypical model in
the center. This suggests that it is a mistake to try to find a single cognitive
model for all instances of a concept. Kinds of anger are not all instances of the
same model; instead, they are variants on a prototypical model. There is no
common core that all kinds of anger have in common. Instead, the kinds of
anger bear family resemblances to one another.

2.8. Conclusions
We have shown that the expressions that indicate anger in American
English are not a random collection but rather are structured in terms of an
elaborate cognitive model that is implicit in the semantics of the language.
This indicates that anger is not just an amorphous feeling, but rather that it
has an elaborate cognitive structure. Moreover, if Rosaldo's (1980) account
of anger among the Ilongot is correct, it would follow that the cognitive model
of anger implicit in English is anything but universal.
However, very significant problems and questions remain.
- First, there are aspects of our understanding of anger that our methodology
cannot shed any light on. Take, for example, the range of offenses that cause
anger and the corresponding range of appropriate responses. Our methodol-
 THE CONCEPT OF ANGER 37

ogy reveals nothing in this area.

- Second, study of the language as a whole gives us no guide to individual var-
iation. We have no idea how close any individual comes to the model we have
uncovered, and we have no idea how people differ from one another.
- Third, our methodology does not enable us to say much about the exact
psychological status of the model we have uncovered. How much of it do
people really use in comprehending anger? Do people base their actions on
this model: Are people aware of the model? How much of it, if any, do people
consciously believe? And most intriguingly, does the model have any effect
on what people feel?
Certain things, however, do seem to be clear. Most speakers of Ameri-
can English seem to use the expressions we have described consistently and
make inferences that appear, so far as we can tell, to be consistent with our
model. We make this claim on the basis of our own intuitive observations,
though to really establish it, one would have to do empirical studies. If we are
right, our model has considerable psychological reality, but how much and
what kind remains to be determined.
 3. THE CONCEPT OF PRIDE

3.1. Some additional issues

In this chapter two issues will receive particular emphasis. The first issue
has to do with the causes of pride. In the discussion of anger, the 'causal
aspect' of the concept has not been dealt with in detail. All I have said was
that, typically, there is an offence which gives rise to anger. However, the
detailed study of this causal aspect of concepts (that have one) can be impor-
tant. Not only does it make the conceptual analysis of the concept more com-
plete, but it also has some significance for the lexical behavior of the word
corresponding to the concept. This issue will be discussed in the chapter that
deals with how this lexical approach can contribute to a better understanding
of some lexical phenomena. In this chapter, among other things, the most
typical causes that lead to pride will be examined.
The second issue can be presented in the following way. The conceptual
domain of PRIDE contains a variety of concepts. These include CONCEIT,
SELF-ESTEEM, JUSTIFIED PRIDE, FALSE PRIDE, VANITY, SELF-
ASSURANCE, and more. Our intuition that all of these concepts have
something to do with each other and PRIDE is supported by (or arises
because of) the fact that they can all be referred to by the word pride (if the
context requires, with some qualification like justified, too much, etc.). Dic-
tionary definitions also make abundant use of this. They tend to define the
various senses of pride by means of the other concepts which, in turn, are
defined by means of pride.
Thus our conceptual system seems to operate with a superordinate cate-
gory PRIDE that defines a conceptual domain with concepts like PROPER
PRIDE, CONCEIT, VANITY, etc. in it. The question arises: how is this
conceptual domain organized? And this question entails such further ques-
tions as: what is the exact relationship between these concepts, what concep-
tual organization each of these concepts has, and whether there is a concept
in this category of concepts which serves as a 'cognitive reference point' (i.e.
as a prototype) for the understanding of the other concepts that are related to
it? My answer will be that there is one and that it is what can be termed as 'ba-
40 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

lanced pride as an immediate response'; and my primary concern will be to

characterize this kind of pride and to give an account of how other forms of
pride can be systematically defined in relation to it. Indeed, my main argu-
ment for the existence of such a reference point is that while it is possible to
derive the other forms of pride from 'balanced pride as an immediate
response', the other forms could not serve this purpose in any natural, intui-
tively satisfying way.

3.2. Some metonymies for pride

Let us begin with the folk model of the physiological effects of pride.
This part of the folk model maintains that THE PHYSIOLOGICAL
EFFECTS OF PRIDE ARE REDNESS IN THE FACE, INCREASED
HEART RATE, INTERFERENCE WITH ACCURATE PERCEPTION,
AND INTERFERENCE WITH NORMAL MENTAL FUNCTIONING.
Given the general metonymic principle,
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF AN EMOTION STAND
FOR THE EMOTION
we get the following system of metonymies for pride:
REDNESS IN THE FACE:
He flushed with pride.
INCREASED HEART RATE:
His heart was throbbing with pride.
Her heart fluttered with pride.
INTERFERENCE WITH ACCURATE PERCEPTION:
He was blinded by conceit.
His conceit prevented him from seeing clearly.
She was blinded by her own glory.
Winning the class election turned his head.
INTERFERENCE WITH NORMAL MENTAL FUNCTIONING:
Success went into his head.
It is important to see that REDNESS IN THE FACE and INCREASED
HEART RATE apply to what is called justified or proper pride, whereas
INTERFERENCE WITH ACCURATE PERCEPTION and INTERFER-
ENCE WITH NORMAL MENTAL FUNCTIONING apply to conceit, and
that the latter two are more intense physiological effects than the former
 THE CONCEPT OF PRIDE 41

ones. Furthermore, INTERFERENCE WITH ACCURATE PERCEP-

TION and INTERFERENCE WITH NORMAL MENTAL FUNCTION-
ING are physiological effects that impair one's normal functioning. These
observations lead to further principles in the folk model of the physiological
effects of pride:
AS PRIDE INCREASES, ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS
INCREASE.
THERE IS A LIMIT BEYOND WHICH THE PHYSIOLOGICAL
EFFECTS OF PRIDE IMPAIR NORMAL FUNCTIONING.
The linguistically-based folk model of the behavioral reactions of pride
maintains:
THE BEHAVIORAL REACTIONS OF PRIDE ARE ERECT POST-
URE, CHEST OUT, BRIGHTNESS OF THE EYES, SMILING,
TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT ONE'S ACHIEVEMENTS, etc.,
HEAD HELD UNNATURALLY HIGH, CHEST UNNATURALLY
THRUST OUT, FORMS OF WALKING, OSTENTATIOUS
BEHAVIOR, THINKING ONE IS UNIQUE, AND BOASTING.
Given the general principle
THE BEHAVIORAL REACTIONS OF AN EMOTION STAND
FOR THE EMOTION
we get the following system of metonymies for pride:
ERECT POSTURE:
After winning the race, he walked to the rostrum with his head held high.
CHEST OUT:
After winning the race, he swelled with pride.
BRIGHTNESS OF THE EYES:
She was beaming with pride.
He was glowing with pride.
There was pride in his eyes as he looked at his son.
SMILING:
He was smiling proudly after winning the race.
TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT ONE'S ACHIEVEMENTS:
He ran home to tell his mother about his success.
42 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

HEAD HELD UNNATURALLY HIGH:

She's going around with her nose in the air.
Don't high-hat me again!
She's looking down her nose at everyone.
She said "No!", bridling up.
CHEST UNNATURALLY THRUST OUT:
He was bloated with pride.
He was going around with his chest out.
Why is he so puffed up?
John's so swelled up with pride that I think he'll burst.
He's inflated with pride.
You shouldn't be so chesty.
FORMS OF WALKING:
The manager strutted along the hall.
He swaggered down the street after winning the fight.
She's going around like a peacock.
He's walking around as if he owned the place.
OSTENTATIOUS/THEATRICAL BEHAVIOR:
She's giving herself airs.
The child was putting on airs.
You don't need to put on the dog.
He's just a show-off.
She's flaunting her new fur coat.
THINKING ONE IS UNIQUE:
He thinks he is it.
You needn't think your shit doesn't stink.
She thinks the sun shines out of her asshole.
BOASTING:
He's always singing his own praises.
Stop bragging.
Here he is blowing his own horn again.
He's always broadcasting his own achievements.
You like talking big, don't you?
Here, again, we should notice that ERECT POSTURE, CHEST OUT,
BRIGHTNESS OF THE EYES, SMILING, TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT
ONE'S ACHIEVEMENTS are behavioral reactions which characterize jus-
 THE CONCEPT OF PRIDE 43

tified pride, and that the rest of the reactions are typical of conceit. Also, the
reactions that characterize justified pride are less intense and less salient reac-
tions than the ones that typically go together with conceit. This is particularly
obvious in such comparable pairs as ERECT POSTURE vs. HEAD HELD
UNNATURALLY HIGH, CHEST OUT vs. CHEST UNNATURALLY
THRUST OUT, and TELLING PEOPLE vs. BOASTING. This gives us
another principle in the folk model of the behavioral reactions of pride:
AS PRIDE INCREASES, ITS BEHAVIORAL REACTIONS
INCREASE.

3.3. Some metaphors

After the metonymies let us now turn to some of the metaphors for
pride. The discussion of the metaphors will enable us to see the different
kinds of pride, the aspects of pride that they address, and the overall cognitive
organization of the different kinds of pride.
Pride also has its version of THE EMOTIONS ARE FLUIDS IN A
CONTAINER metaphor. The PRIDE IS A FLUID IN A CONTAINER
metaphor is partially motivated by the THE BODY IS A CONTAINER
FOR THE EMOTIONS metaphor. The experiential basis for the metaphor
PRIDE IS A FLUID IN A CONTAINER seems to be provided by the
physiological effects INCREASED HEART RATE (involving the heart as a
container with blood in it) and the behavioral reaction CHEST OUT (involv-
ing the chest as a container).
PRIDE IS A FLUID IN A CONTAINER
His good performance filled him with pride.
Pride welled up inside him at the sight of his garden.
He was full of pride after beating the former champion.
Her pride rose as she watched her children perform.
In this metaphor the container is the body. There is another metaphor, where
the container is the heart:
PRIDE IS (A FLUID) IN THE HEART
Her heart swelled with pride.
The news filled her heart with pride.
Pride swelled his heart.
These metaphors address a variety of issues concerning PRIDE. In particu-
lar, they highlight the aspect of intensity (full of, swell with), the change in its
44 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

intensity (rise), that it has a cause (good performance, sight of one's garden,
beating the champion, etc.), and that it has a beginning (well up, fill).
The FLUID IN A CONTAINER and HEART metaphors are consti-
tuted by the following ontological correspondences:
- the container is the body
- the fluid in the container is pride
- for the container to be full of the fluid is for pride to be intense
- for the fluid to move upwards is for the pride to become more intense
(cf. MORE IS UP)
- for the fluid to appear is for pride to begin to exist

3.4. Causes of pride

Now let us make a brief inventory of the causes that make people proud.
I will ignore many details and deal with the issues only in the depth that is
necessary for my purposes in this study. If we look at the kinds of things that
people typically mention as the causes for their pride, we get the following
groups:
1. ACHIEVEMENTS: winning the race, getting a good grade in a difficult
exam, writing a good book, solving a problem, etc.
2. POSSESSIONS: owing a Mercedes, having a lot of money, having a
diamond necklace, etc.
3. BELONGING TO A GROUP: the team you play for, the university
where you study, your hometown, your nation, etc.
4. APPEARANCES: good looks, having a pretty face, having a shapely
body, long dark hair, green eyes, etc.
5. PHYSICAL/MENTAL CAPABILITIES/SKILLS/PROPERTIES:
how high you can jump, how strong you are, how fast you can read, how many
things you remember, your health, etc.
6. MORAL QUALITIES: your honesty, that you cannot be bribed, that
you have never lied in your life, etc.
7. SOCIAL POSITION/STATUS/CLASS: you are the manager, you are a
well known singer, you are an aristocrat, etc.
And the list could no doubt be continued. But this much will do for the pre-
sent purposes. What makes the list relevant to our purposes is that the various
kinds of pride seem to go together with particular causes. For example, JUS-
TIFIED PRIDE seems to go together typically with ACHIEVEMENTS,
VANITY with APPEARANCES, HAUGHTINESS with SOCIAL
 THE CONCEPT OF PRIDE 45

STATUS/CLASS, etc. Of course, this does not mean that the various kinds
of pride are restricted to one particular cause. The claim is that a given form
of pride favors a particular kind of cause, but less typically can also take
others.
In order for a person S (short for the Self) to be appropriately proud, S
must be involved in some way in one of the states of affairs given in the above
taxonomy. That is, S must be the 'agent' in ACHIEVEMENTS, the 'owner'
in the case of POSSESSIONS, a 'member' of the GROUP, etc. in order to be
able to be proud of an ACHIEVEMENT, POSSESSION and GROUP,
respectively. In other words, I cannot be proud of a valuable book as such. I
can only be proud of it if I am the owner of the book. However, as we will see
below, this condition can be weakened in less prototypical cases of pride.
This is, however, not sufficient for S to be proud. For S to be approp-
riately proud of X (=something), X must have some value. The things that
can be the causes of pride either have built-in social values or the proud per-
son assigns individual values to them. Thus we have a scale of social values
and a scale of individual values. Things with built-in social values are, for
example, achievements, expensive goods, things considered beautiful in a
culture, honesty, being the manager of a company, etc. (Many of these things
are oriented UP: VIRTUE, SOCIAL STATUS, etc). The individual rates
things highly on the scale of individual values if in a given context it is difficult
for him to achieve X (something). In this case he can be justifiably proud of
X. Thus one can only be proud of X if X has a built-in social value or X can
be assigned a value by the individual (=S).
The difference between built-in social values and assigned individual val-
ues can be illustrated by a simple example. Under normal circumstances, it is
not an achievement to lift (in the sense of 'raise') an ordinary pen. That is, lift-
ing a pen does not have a built-in social value. If, however, S is a paralytic and
after a long period of exercising he is eventually able to lift a pen, he can be
justifiably proud of lifting the pen. For S, lifting the pen can be assigned a
value on the scale of individual values, and thus S will consider lifting the pen
as an achievement that forms a proper basis for his pride. In general, it can be
maintained that individual value scales are accepted to base one's pride on
when there are socially accepted extenuating circumstances for ignoring
social value scales. One such extenuating circumstance that is socially
accepted is one's illness.
We said that S can be proud of X if he has some direct role ('agent',
'owner', 'member', etc.) in one of the possible causes for pride in the above
46 METAPHORS OF ANGER. PRIDE, AND LOVE

taxonomy. However, in less typical cases of pride, this is not always the case.
We often hear people proudly say things like:
My son's got straight A's in school.
I know a man who can eat fifty eggs in one sitting.
Someone has an '86 Mercedes on our street.
In reporting these utterances, we could say:
He's proud of his son.
He's proud of someone he knows.
He's proud of someone living on his street.
What this suggests is that S (=he, in the example) can be proud of X not only
if he (S) has some direct role in the cause, but also if S is a relative of someone
(my son) who plays a direct role ('agent') in the cause; or if S knows someone
(I know a man) who plays a direct role ('agent') in the cause; or if S lives in
the vicinity of someone (someone on our street) who has a direct role
('owner') in the cause of pride. Thus it seems that, less typically though, S can
also be proud of X if S 'is a relative of Ρ ('someone other than S'), 'knows'
P, and 'lives nearby' P, provided Ρ plays a direct role ('agent', 'owner', etc.)
in X. Of course, we sense a lessening in the degree of acceptability as a cause
for pride between:
S 'plays a direct role' ('agent', 'owner', 'member', etc.) in X.
S 'is a relative of' Ρ who plays a direct role in X.
S 'knows' Ρ who has a direct role in X.
S 'lives nearby' Ρ who has a direct role in X.
It is very likely that S's playing a direct role in X produces a much better
example of pride than S's living nearby Ρ who has a direct role in X.

3.5. Scales, related concepts and the prototype

So far I have talked about only one scale: A value scale for actions, pos­
sessions, appearances, social positions, etc. This scale can be imagined as a
scale that is oriented UPWARDS, and that has a threshold associated with it.
The actions, possessions, appearances, social positions, etc. that are above
the threshold have (social or individual) value and therefore are proper
causes for pride, given that the other conditions are also met. The idea of this
scale gives us an explanation for the expression justified pride. One's pride is
justified if the cause of one's pride is above the threshold on the value scale.
And we have to allow for the possibility that opinions in judging what's above
 THE CONCEPT OF PRIDE 47

and below the threshold may differ.

Now consider a sentence like:
He's more proud of it than he should be.
This sentence implies not just one, but two scales. The two scales are a value
scale and a pride scale. In effect, what the speaker says is that S has more
pride than is justified by X (the cause of his pride); i.e. X occupies a certain
position above the threshold on the value scale and S's pride is at a point on
the pride scale that is higher than the point that corresponds to the point on
the value scale. Notice that this is not the same case as justified pride. In jus-
tified pride the issue is whether the cause of pride is above or below the
threshold on the value scale. If it is above, the pride is justified. In the case
under discussion, the issue is the measure of pride; i.e. whether S has or does
not have the amount of pride that he is entitled to, given the amount of value
on the value scale. That is, whether the pride is justified or not is not called
into question; what is suggested is that the pride is excessive relative to its
cause.
It is important to realize that the entire discussion of value in relation to
actions, states and properties is couched in metaphor. States of affairs (ac-
tions, states, and properties) are not commodities, they don't have values lit-
erally. Thus our thinking about states of affairs seems to be metaphorical to
a large extent, as the following metaphor indicates this:
STATES OF AFFAIRS ARE COMMODITIES
That was a valuable victory.
He had to pay a high price for his dishonesty.
Give her some roses in return for her kindness.
His paper isn't worth looking at.
Did your plan pay off?
The value of his work is tremendous.
Just watch out! I'll pay you back for this.
The analysis of the kind of pride under consideration ('pride as immediate
response') has to be augmented by what can be called 'related concepts' (for a de-
tailed explanation of this notion, see the chapter on love). It can be argued that
pride as characterized so far has JOY as an inherent concept. This would seem to
follow from at least the following linguistic evidence: First, there are certain
behavioral reactions (correspondingly, certain metonymies) that are shared
by both PRIDE and JOY. These include BRIGHTNESS OF THE EYES
and SMILING. Second, linguistic usage seems to indicate that, at least in the
48 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

kind of pride under discussion, one cannot be proud of something and not feel
joy:
?He was proud of winning the race, but he was not happy.
*He was proud of winning the race, but he was happy.
It has to be noticed that the cases where PRIDE entails JOY in the most
clear way are those where pride arises from achievements, rather than the
other causes. The reason perhaps is that, unlike achievements, social status,
appearance, possession, etc. are permanent states or properties, which do
not give rise to such immediate events as joy. It is partly this immediacy which
makes 'pride resulting from an achievement' a more prototypical form of
pride than the forms of pride that result from other causes. (Some other
reasons are discussed at the end of the chapter). And, thirdly, PRIDE and
JOY seem to appear together in such conventionalized expressions as one's
pride and joy, which can be taken as an indication that the two concepts are
closely related.
One can only feel joy if one is satisfied with what one has done, and an
achievement also presupposes that one is satisfied with what one has done.
Thus SATISFACTION is another inherent concept of PRIDE (of the kind
under investigation). Linguistically, in addition to the but-test, this is shown
by he fact that the following two sentences entail each other:
He looked at his son with pride.
He looked at his son with satisfaction.
In the light of what has been done so far, we can see the following pro-
totypical model of PRIDE emerge:
1. S does X.
S is directly involved in X.
S values X on a social value scale; X's value is high.
S perceives X as an achievement.
2. S is proud of X; the pride is intense (but not inappropriately so)
The pride scale is the same height as the value scale.
S experiences physiological effects: Redness of the face, increased heart
rate.
S exhibits behavioral reactions: Erect posture, chest out, brightness of
the eyes, smiling, telling people about the achievement.
Inherent concepts: Joy, satisfaction.
This model reveals pride not only as 'immediate response' but also as 'ba-
 THE CONCEPT OF PRIDE 49

lanced'. Many of the concepts within the domain of pride can be seen as deriv-
ing from this notion of pride.

3.6. Self-esteem
As some of the examples we have seen so far suggest, there is a form of
pride that comes about as an immediate response to a state of affairs that S
perceives as an achievement (cf. Winning the race filled him with pride). How-
ever, not all forms of pride are like this. Consider the following metaphor:
PRIDE IS A PERSON
His criticism hurt her pride.
They humbled his pride.
His pride revolted against the treatment he received.
His national pride was roused/awakened by the stupid comments.
Don't say anything that may wound his pride.
Her pride was deeply injured.
The pride in this metaphor is not an immediate response to a situation.
Rather, it is something that S has had for some time and that, on a given occa-
sion, can revolt, can be hurt, can awaken, etc. This seems to be the kind of
pride that one takes in one's possessions, one's country, one's success in a
field (but not in just one achievement, which is the pride as immediate
response), etc. By and large, in these cases self-esteem is a synonym for pride.
Most of the examples in the PERSON metaphor could be used with the word
self-esteem in place of pride (e.g. His self-esteem was injured).
The PRIDE IS A PERSON metaphor is constituted by the following
ontological correspondences:
- the person is pride
- the physical harm done to the person is emotional harm to S
- physical revolt against something is S's emotional revolt
- humbling the person is reducing S's pride
- for the person to awaken is for pride to begin or continue to function
The word self-esteem can be used as a synonym for the word pride in the
following metaphor as well:
PRIDE IS A SUPERIOR; THE SELF IS AN INFERIOR
His pride prevents him from doing anything dishonorable.
His pride did not allow him to accept the aid.
Pride did not let her do what she wanted to do the most.
50 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

The main focus of this metaphor seems to be how pride has an influence on
what we should, and in particular, on what we should not do. The issue of how
pride can determine our actions shows up in other metaphorical expressions
as well: swallow one's pride, pocket one's pride, and set one's pride aside.
These are expressions that are not instances of the PRIDE IS A SUPERIOR
conceptual metaphor. Nevertheless, the diversity of these expressions indi-
cates that this is an important aspect of pride for us.
Although in many of the examples self-esteem could replace pride, self-
esteem is, on the whole, different from pride. It has to do with one's overall
evaluation of oneself. Unlike the kind of pride exemplified by the CON-
TAINER and HEART metaphors (which have their particular causes), the
kind of pride represented by the following metaphor does not have particular
causes.
SELF-ESTEEM IS AN ECONOMIC VALUE (WHICH A PERSON
ESTIMATES HIMSELF TO HAVE)
He has low self-esteem.
She values herself highly.
Her achievements boosted her self-esteem.
Don't overestimate yourself.
She underestimates herself.
Don't let him lower your self-esteem.
This metaphor enables us to see self-esteem as something that can be rep-
resented on a scale: It can be low, it can be boosted, and it can be high. When
self-esteem is high, the person is proud of himself. That this is so can be seen
from the following two sentences that entail each other under normal cir-
cumstances:
She has high self-esteem.
She is proud of herself.
This close relationship between pride and self-esteem is likely to be the result
of the way we structure ourselves and our actions, possessions, appearances,
etc. (i.e. the causes pride) in metaphorical terms. Since we see our actions,
possessions, etc. and ourselves as having VALUES, we expect people with
actions, possessions, etc. that have HIGH VALUES to see themselves as hav-
ing a HIGH VALUE, that is, as having high self-esteem. Of course, implicit
here is a principle we use for understanding ourselves:
A PERSON'S SELF-ESTEEM IS DETERMINED BY HIS
 THE CONCEPT OF PRIDE 51

ACTIONS, POSSESSIONS, ETC.

But this takes place only indirectly, through pride. The particular actions,
states and properties that have HIGH VALUES result in pride, and the par-
ticular instances of pride give rise to self-esteem. Self-esteem is thus a
generalized form of pride that is not directly linked to particular causes of
pride: S is just proud of himself (i.e. values himself highly), and not of some
actions, state or property involving him.
To complete the survey of this form of pride, mention must be made of
another metaphor. The metaphor is PRIDE IS AN OBJECT.
PRIDE IS AN OBJECT
His self-esteem was shattered when he had found out the result.
He lost his pride and began to implore her not to leave him.
She managed to destroy my self-esteem.
He tore her pride to shreds.
He kept his pride in the face of all adversities.
The main focus of this metaphor is the existence of pride and how pride can
play a role in determining our actions. In the discussion of the PRIDE IS A
SUPERIOR metaphor, I said that our pride can have an influence on what
we do. Now we can see how this works. If S has his pride (i.e. has kept it), then
it does not allow him to do certain things, but if he does not have it (i.e. has
lost it), then S does certain things he would not do otherwise.
The ontological correspondences are:
- the object is pride
- the intact object is existing pride
- the destroyed object is pride out of existence
- having the object is having pride
The epistemic correspondence that accounts for keeping and losing one's
pride is:
Source: An object can only work for S if S has the object.
Target: Pride can only determine S's actions if S has the pride.
The word dignity could be a natural replacement for pride in the expres-
sions keeping pride and losing pride. This would seem to suggest that dignity
is that aspect of pride (or self-esteem) that plays a role in determining our
actions. This seems to have some basis in the fact that the most prevalent
metaphor for DIGNITY addresses just this issue:
52 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

DIGNITY IS AN OBJECT
He cast off his dignity.
He preserved his dignity.
She lost all her dignity.
His grey hair and solemn manner lent him dignity.
He set aside his dignity and accepted a menial job.
She descarded her dignity.
She kept her dignity in the face of all adversities.
He disposed of his dignity.
Similarly to a portion of the PRIDE IS AN OBJECT metahor, DIGNITY is
seen here as something which, if S has it, prevents S from doing certain things
and if he does not, then S does things he would not do otherwise. As can be
seen, we have quite a few expressions at our disposal to denote loss of pride,
and hence giving up the controlling effect of pride (i.e. dignity). These
expressions in the metaphor are: lose, set aside, cast off, discard and dispose of
dignity. However, there are some subtle differences between them. Cast off,
discard and dispose of carry with them a blaming of S by an outside observer
for S's not keeping his dignity. This is shown by the unacceptability of sen-
tences involving cases of justified self-esteem (pride).
*He cast off his pride and accepted a menial job, and I think he was right.
That this sentence would be acceptable when the kind of pride involved is
unjustified pride is another matter. What is at issue here is that it is inconsis-
tent for someone to express blaming (cast off) in one part of the sentence and
agreement (I think he was right) in another. Compare:
He set aside his dignity and accepted a menial job, and I think he was
right.
The implication of blame in cast off, discard and dispose of is possible because
they seem to draw on a special case of the OBJECT metaphor: DIGNITY IS
A WORTHLESS OBJECT. Since DIGNITY is considered as something
DESIRABLE, or VALUABLE, in our folk model of human qualities (we
have not justified this claim here), it is the idea of DIGNITY being a
WORTHLESS OBJECT that allows the expressions to function as expres-
sions of blame. Set aside does not have the implication of blame. Instead, the
setting aside of dignity is seen as justified because it is done for a larger pur-
pose. This is why the speaker can approve of it. And losing dignity is different
from setting aside dignity in that it is unintentional. It is seen as a consequence
 THE CONCEPT OF PRIDE 53

of other events, and not as something that is done for a purpose.

What has been said about SELF-ESTEEM yields the following pro-
totypical model:
1. S is directly involved in many X's.
S sees the X's as having high value.
2. As a result, S values himself highly.
S's self-esteem is high; S is proud (of himself).
The value scale and the pride scale are even.
S has dignity: It determines what S should not do.

3.7. Conceit
So far we have only considered cases where the value scale and the pride
scale are balanced. Now I will turn to cases where the pride scale is higher
than the corresponding value scale. First we will discuss CONCEIT, and then
VANITY.
Some of the behavioral reactions and physiological effects that are
assumed to accompany CONCEIT seem to form the basis of some of the
major metaphors for CONCEIT. In particular, the behavioral reaction
HEAD HELD UNNATURALLY HIGH seems to provide the motivation
for the CONCEITED PERSON IS UP/HIGH metaphor:
A CONCEITED PERSON IS UP/HIGH
He's been on his high horse ever since he was elected captain.
You don't have to be so stuck-up.
Don't you think he's a little bit uppish?
She became high and mighty when she won the prize.
It was another lofty speech.
Look at that uppity bastard.
It's time you got off your high horse.
And also, historically, superior and haughty.
And the behavioral reaction CHEST UNNATURALLY THRUST
OUT seems to motivate a related metaphor for CONCEIT:
A CONCEITED PERSON IS BIG
When the teacher made John the monitor, he became too big for his
boots.
He's big as you please.
54 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

He got a big head after winning the race.

She has a swollen opinion of herself.
She's had a swelled head ever since she got her Ph.D.
Both of these metaphors are concerned with greater than normal physical
size: Greater than normal height and greater than normal bigness, respec-
tively. This defines a scale with two points on it: A point indicating normal
size and a point indicating greater than normal size. There seems to be an
obvious link between this scale and the pride scale I have mentioned before.
The point indicating normal size would seem to correspond to an appropriate
amount of pride and the point indicating greater than normal size to more
than an appropriate amount of pride. An appropriate amount of pride is here
defined as a point on the pride scale that is on the same level as the corres-
ponding point on the value scale.
We have seen how the folk model of behavioral reactions captures the
increase of pride to a level which is inappropriate:
AS PRIDE INCREASES, ITS BEHAVIORAL REACTIONS
INCREASE.
Thus ERECT POSTURE becomes HEAD HELD UNNATURALLY
HIGH and CHEST OUT becomes CHEST UNNATURALLY THRUST
OUT. This same aspect of pride is also captured by the metaphors we use.
Thus cases of pride with an appropriate amount of pride seem to be expressed
by the FLUID IN A CONTAINER and HEART metaphors that confine
pride to a level within the body as a CONTAINER, while cases of inapprop-
riate amount of pride are captured by metaphors (greater than normal
HEIGHT and BIGNESS) that define a level of pride as being, as it were, out-
side the normal body.
The metaphor A CONCEITED PERSON IS UP/HIGH indicates more
than just 'a person with an inappropriate amount of pride'. It also indicates
that this person considers himself as superior to other people. It is important
to note, however, that it is often only in the judgement of an outside observer
that S considers himself superior. This attribution of superiority goes hand in
hand with the attribution, also by an outside observer, of more pride than is
appropriate.
The concept of SUPERIORITY may arise as a result of the way our
emotion concepts (and some related concepts) are structured metaphori-
cally. Since in this system THE OBJECT OF CONTEMPT IS DOWN/
LOW, it is easy for the metaphor A CONCEITED PERSON IS UP/HIGH
 THE CONCEPT OF PRIDE 55

to have the implication of SUPERIORITY. SUPERIORITY is thus an

inherent concept of CONCEIT. People displaying this attitude to others are
called haughty. As has been mentioned at the beginning, the principal causes
associated with HAUGHTINESS are SOCIAL CLASS/STATUS/POSI-
TION. This is not surprising in view of the fact that these are concepts which
are all oriented UP, just like CONCEIT. Thus the UP orientation of CON-
CEIT is maximally coherent with other parts of the metaphorical system.
There is another metaphor in our metaphorical system that is relevant to
our understanding of PRIDE. This metaphor is SIGNIFICANT IS BIG
(taken from Lakoff and Johnson 1980):
SIGNIFICANT IS BIG
He's a big man in the garment industry.
He's a giant among writers.
It's no big deal.
I was astounded by the enormity of the crime.
His accomplishments tower over those of lesser men.
He's head and shoulders above everyone in the industry.
Whereas with other forms of pride the proud person attaches importance to
the cause of his pride, in the case of CONCEIT he attaches importance to his
own person. This makes SELF-IMPORTANCE inherent in CONCEIT.
THE CONCEITED PERSON IS BIG metaphor can be viewed as a special
case of the SIGNIFICANT IS BIG metapor. Thus we have a case where a
metaphor is doubly motivated. Part of its motivation comes from the
behavioral reaction CHEST UNNATURALLY THRUST OUT and
another part from a more general metaphor in the system: SIGNIFICANT
IS BIG.
A third concept inherent in CONCEIT is SELF-LOVE. This is
suggested by the following expressions that can mean either CONCEIT or
SELF-LOVE or both, depending on the context:
He is full of himself.
She is entirely wrapped up in herself.
He is stuck on himself.
In the physiological reactions of CONCEIT, we have seen that there is
INTERFERENCE WITH ACCURATE PERCEPTION and INTERFER-
ENCE WITH NORMAL FUNCTIONING that are assumed to accompany
CONCEIT. That is, these physiological effects emphasize inability to func-
tion normally. The same idea is brought into focus by the following two
56 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

metaphors.
CONCEIT IS AN OPPONENT/SUPERIOR
He was completely overcome by conceit.
Conceit robbed him of the ability to judge things properly.
Conceit did not allow her to see things as they are.
The metaphor CONCEIT IS A DANGEROUS ANIMAL can be
regarded as a special case of the OPPONENT metaphor:
CONCEIT IS A DANGEROUS ANIMAL
She was swallowed up by conceit.
He was devoured by conceit.
These metaphors make us see conceited people as being unable to function
normally.
This discussion yields the following prototypical model for CONCEIT:
1. S is directly involved in S (or several X's)
S perceives X as having high value on the value scale.
2. S's pride scale is high; S is proud of X (or of himself).
In the opinion of an outside observer, the pride scale is higher than the
value scale.
S is unable to function normally.
S experiences physiological effects: Interference with accurate percep-
tion, interference with normal mental functioning.
S exhibits behavioral reactions: Head held unnaturally high, chest
unnaturally thrust out, forms of walking, ostentatious behavior, thinking
one is unique, boasting.
Inherent concepts: Superiority, self-importance, self-love.

3.8. Vanity
Let us now turn to VANITY. The central (i.e. the most productive)
metaphor for this concept appears to be the metaphor VANITY IS A
(SENSUAL) PERSON.
VANITY IS A (SENSUAL) PERSON
He is really wallowing in the praises of his new book.
What you said wounded his vanity.
Her vanity is just insatiable.
Her praises soothed his vanity.
 THE CONCEPT OF PRIDE 57

They tickled his vanity by praising his work to the skies.

It only fed her vanity.
Your words of appreciation pandered to his vanity.
Her vanity was eventually gratified.
His vanity was offended by your critical comments.
He tried desperately to cater to her vanity, but nothing satisfied her.
She indulged her vanity by looking at her hair in the mirror for hours.
We noted at the beginning that the typical causes for VANITY have to do
with APPEARANCES. ACHIEVEMENTS, POSSESSIONS, MORAL
QUALITIES, BELONGING TO A GROUP, and SOCIAL POSITION/
STATUS/CLASS are not proper causes for VANITY. However, as some of
the examples suggest, INTELLECTUAL CAPABILITY can also be a cause
for VANITY. These (unfortunately unexplained) facts would then explain
why some of the sentences below are acceptable and why some of them are
not:
She is vain of her long dark hair.
He is vain of his cleverness.
*He is vain of winning the race.
*He is vain of being an aristocrat.
In addition to this feature of VANITY, there are some other important
aspects of it that are focused on by this metaphor. Perhaps the most important
of these is the aspect which is captured by the expression insatiable vanity.
Here the question is what it is that VANITY has an appetite for. Let us call
this aspect the purposive aspect of the concept. The related aspect of VAN-
ITY is captured by such expressions as feed, cater to and, to some extent, also
pander to. The expressions suggest that it is mostly some FOOD that can
satisfy the person's VANITY. More generally, it can be claimed that there is
a DESIRE in VANITY that needs to be satisfied. The satisfaction of VAN-
ITY'S DESIRE can take various forms, of which FEEDING is one. Some
other forms are soothing and tickling, and the general forms gratify and
satisfy. But what, in turn, corresponds to the food in feed or cater to, the
cool(ing) fluid or air in soothe, and the gentle touch in tickle in the concept of
VANITY? As the examples suggest, the corresponding entity is praise or flat-
tery.
An obvious question to ask at this point is: Why does the vain person
need praises or flattery? One might say that he needs it because APPEAR-
ANCE, the typical cause for VANITY, and maybe also ABILITIES we are
58 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

born with, are things that we are not responsible for, cannot take credit for
and thus need confirmation of. These things are the opposites of ACHIEVE-
MENTS that are the typical things a person can take credit for, and thus be
proud of.
A further aspect of VANITY is that the vain person enjoys the praises
and flattery (wallow in praises). And not only does he enjoy them but actually
invites them. This would seem to follow from the use of such expressions as
He's always fishing for compliments. And since the vain person is out for com-
pliments and praises, it is only natural that he does not tolerate criticism.
The expression fish for compliments deserves some attention, for it
reveals a great deal about VANITY. Fishing implies trying to catch fish.
Catching is an act the target of which (the fish) does not readily lend itself to
the act. Correspondingly, the person whose praises must be sought is not a
natural and/or sincere source of praise. Praises and flattery are forms of pub-
lic acknowledgement. Fishing for compliments can then be seen as seeking
unwillingly given public acknowledgement.
So far we have not seen any explicit indication of the presence of PRIDE
in VANITY. However, there is a minor but important metaphor whose
instances clearly indicate that PRIDE is present in VANITY.
VANITY IS AN INFLATED OBJECT
His sarcastic remarks pricked her vanity.
His vanity has been punctured.
Here the inflated object can only correspond to bigness in the CONCEITED
PERSON IS BIG metaphor, which in turn is motivated by the CHEST
UNNATURALLY THRUST OUT behavioral reaction.
We have seen in the VANITY IS A (SENSUAL) PERSON metaphor
that VANITY has a DESIRE. The same aspect of vanity can be found in the
OPPONENT metaphor.
VANITY IS AN OPPONENT
She yielded to her vanity.
Her vanity has been appeased.
She overcame her vanity.
He gave in to his pride.
In this metaphor it is the expression appease that shows that VANITY has a
DESIRE. Appease presupposes that the person (the opponent) has demands
that have to be met.
Similarly to CONCEIT, SELF-LOVE is inherent in VANITY. This is
 THE CONCEPT OF PRIDE 59

indicated by such expressions as the following:

He loves the sound of his own voice.
She is completely wrapped up in her own beauty.
SELF-LOVE brings with it undue preoccupation with oneself. The
cause of vanity becomes the center of the vain person's attention. This
attitude can be exemplified by:
She is always looking at herself in the mirror.
We can conceive of this type of behavior as a behavioral reaction that is
assumed to accompany vanity.
Our treatment of VANITY gives rise to the following prototypical
model for the concept:
1. S has/is X (where X has to do with appearances).
S perceives X as having high value.
2. S is proud of X.
The scale of pride is higher than the scale of value.
Behavioral reaction: Undue preoccupation with oneself.
Inherent concept: Self-love.
S wants more public recognition than is due to him or her.

3.9. Conclusion
We have seen that 'balanced pride as immediate response' can be
regarded as a cognitive reference point in the system of concepts that we ordi-
narily designate with the term pride. Pride of this kind can serve as a pro-
totype with respect to which other related concepts, as characterized by their
own respective prototypes, can be defined. The term pride can be used of this
prototypical pride as well as of self-esteem, dignity, conceit, and maybe even
some cases of vanity. However, the terms self-esteem, dignity, conceit and
vanity could not be used to refer to what has been called prototypical pride.
This is because these forms of pride derive from 'balanced pride as an
immediate response', and not the other way around.
There is also some non-linguistic evidence which points to the same con-
clusion. As Lakoff (1987) has pointed out, prototypes often take the form of
ideals. In the case of two related scales, such as the pride and value scales, we
tend to take the state of balance between the two as the ideal. This phenom-
enon is not limited to pride but is pervasive in our thinking. Another example
from the domain of emotion will be discussed in the chapter on love. 'Ba-
60 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

lanced pride' is thus a more ideal form of pride than such 'non-balanced'
forms as conceit and vanity.
The other piece of evidence comes from emotion research. W. Lyons
(1980) argues that what he calls 'ongoing' emotional states are more paradig-
matic than dispositions or traits. Thus, 'pride as an immediate response'
would be a more paradigmatic form, or better example, of pride than conceit
and vanity, which can be viewed as dispositions and/or traits. The point is that
given these pieces of non-linguistic evidence it would really be surprising if
linguistic use did not reflect these cognitive facts in some way. (More evi-
dence of another kind can be found in chapter 6.1.).
 4. THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE

4.1. Some further aspects of a concept

Romantic love is commonly thought of as a mysterious emotion which it
is notoriously difficult to pin down. This idea is shared not only by laymen.
Various authors in various disciplines have expressed the view that this is a
concept that is difficult to grapple with and define. Consider, for example,
what Bloomfield (1933) had to say about this:
"[...] and we can define the names of plants or animals by means of the tech-
nical terms of botany and zoology, but we have no precise way of defining
words like love or hate, which concern situations that have not been accu-
rately classified — and these latter are in the great majority". (Bloomfield
1933: 139)
Or let us take as another illustration Smith and Medin's (1981) work.
They study the nature of concepts and the role of concepts in categorization
from a psychological perspective. At the beginning of their study, the authors
discuss their reasons for dealing with concepts corresponding to animals,
plants, etc. rather than with those corresponding to geometric objects like a
square or to abstract entities like love or brilliance. They write the following
in connection with the latter two:
"Similarly, had we chosen as our domain abstract concepts, such as 'love' or
'brilliance', we might have prejudiced the case against the classical view; for
no mathematician or metaphysician has come even close to constructing a
classical-view description of such concepts. Thus natural objects and human
artifacts offer an in-between case between concepts that any schoolboy can
define and concepts that no scholar can grapple with". (Smith and Medin
1981:5)
The point that I would like to make here simply is that, contrary to these
claims, the lexical approach that is employed in this study enables us to come
up with a fairly clear definition of the concept of LOVE. In this chapter I will
attempt to show that through the detailed examination of the conven-
tionalized language about love a great deal can be uncovered about the con-
stituents and structure of the concept of ROMANTIC LOVE.
62 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

In addition to the conceptual tools utilized so far (metaphors and

metomymies), some further aspects of concepts will also be discussed. In par-
ticular, I will look in some detail at what have been called 'related concepts'.
In the chapter on anger, it was implicitly assumed that DISPLEASURE is a
concept inherent in ANGER. In the chapter on pride, explicit mention was
made of concepts like JOY and SATISFACTION, which characterize the
concept of PRIDE. A large portion of the present chapter will be concerned
with the issue of inherent concepts and concepts that are otherwise related to
ROMANTIC LOVE.
Finally, another aspect of love that I wish to discuss has to do with the
issue of how many prototypical models are necessary to characterize a con-
cept in its entirety. Lakoff (1987) has shown that there are several kinds of
prototype. In the case of love, I will try to show that we need at least a typical
model and an ideal model if we wish to claim that at least a relatively full
description of the concept has been given. Some of the implications of this
distinction for theories of conceptual structure will be discussed in the next
chapter. A more complete description of the concept of ROMANTIC LOVE
can be found in Kövecses (n.d.).

4.2. The central metaphor

Amongst the various ways of conceptualizing love the model according
to which love is a UNITY OF TWO COMPLEMENTARY PARTS is
perhaps central.
LOVE IS A UNITY (OF TWO COMPLEMENTARY PARTS)
We were made for each other.
We are one.
She is my better half.
Theirs is a perfect match.
We function as a unit.
They are inseparable.
What makes the UNITY metaphor a model of love that has held for
more than two thousand years? Why is it that the metaphor has pervaded our
thinking so much that we hardly notice that it is a metaphor at all? There seem
to be essentially two reasons for the naturalness and obviousness of this
metaphor. One is that the metaphor entails several metaphorical conse-
quences which allow us to understand a number of our love experiences, the
understanding of which would be difficult without the UNITY metaphor.
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 63

Another reason is that we see a similarity of sorts between certain love experi-
ences and the unity of two complementary physical, chemical, etc. parts, and
because of this the linguistic examples of the metaphor appear natural and
obvious to us. As a result the language describing love does not strike us as
metaphorical at all.
The UNITY metaphor suggests perfect harmony, an idyllic state. What
gives rise to this is that by virtue of their perfect fit, or match the two parts
form an ideal unity in which the two parts maximally complement each other.
In the biological version of unity, the two parts live in symbiosis, one part
being dependent upon the other. One part is incomplete and cannot really
function without the other part. In a love relationship this is experienced as
the lover being only a half, the other half being made up by the beloved. It is
important to notice however that this view of love is mainly a result of the
metaphor and it is not something that we should take as inevitable. There is
nothing in the view that true love is perfect harmony that could not be other-
wise. We see and experience true love as perfect harmony because we have
made it so by virtue of the concept of UNITY OF TWO COMPLEMEN-
TARY PARTS.
The UNITY metaphor has other consequences as well. Once we con-
ceive of love as the unity of two parts, then we can also conceive of love as the
bond, or attachment, between the two parts. That we indeed think of love in
this way is shown by the following examples:
She has an attachment to him.
There are romantic ties between them.
There is something between them.
The words attachment, ties and bond correspond to love. These are the things
that hold the two persons together. And the word something also indicates
the presence of such a bond or tie. Bonds or ties can be strong or weak. We
make use of this knowledge about physical things in the understanding of the
stability aspect of our love relationships. Thus we speak of indissoluble bonds
and unbreakable ties between two people. But to speak of love in this way
reflects a deeply embedded conceptual metaphor in this culture. According
to this metaphor, the STABILITY OF LOVE is understood in terms of
PHYSICAL, CHEMICAL, etc. STABILITY. That is, the conceptual
metaphor that would account for these examples would be the following:
THE STABILITY OF A L O V E RELATIONSHIP IS PHYSICAL (CHEM-
ICAL, etc.) STABILITY.
64 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

The UNITY metaphor, or rather its metaphorical consequences enable

us to capture some further aspects of the concept LOVE. The unity of the two
parts 'can be dissolved'. Underlying sentences like Sally and John broke up
there is the knowledge that the cohesive force between two physical objects
may weaken as time goes by and the unity may cease to exist altogether. This
is the knowledge that we seem to carry over to the domain of love. The
'breaking up' in the source domain (UNITY OF TWO COMPLEMEN-
TARY PARTS) corresponds to the end of the love relationship in the target
domain (LOVE). Also, the two physical objects can form a unity, they can
become a single unit. Corresponding to this in our love experiences is the
beginning of a love relationship. An expression which is based on this idea is
get together and it occurs in sentences like They got together last year.
The purpose of this detailed (though not complete) analysis of
metaphorical consequences is to try to give an account of why we feel that the
UNITY metaphor is so particularly appropriate to our thinking (and hence
talking) about love. I believe that one source of the metaphor's appropriate-
ness is that it captures a large number of our love experiences. Thus we see
the success of a particular metaphor mainly as a result of the extent to which
the metaphorical entailments of a source domain (like UNITY OF TWO
COMPLEMENTARY PARTS) can be utilized in the target domain (like
LOVE). As we have just seen, we carry over a great deal of our knowledge
about the unity of two physical objects to the domain of love and this enables
us to comprehend, or even create, such aspects of love as the perfect harmony
associated with love, the stability of love, the beginning and end of a love
relationship, etc.
However, this is not the complete picture. The account of the intuitive
appeal of love as the unity of two physical objects has to be supplemented by
another possible explanation. The core of our argument will be a phenome-
non which most people consider the most characteristic feature of love,
namely physical closeness. The distinguished role of physical closeness in
love is illustrated by the abundance of linguistic expressions that have to do
with physical closeness:
I want to be with you all my life.
We're always together.
He follows her everywhere.
They walked along the Danube holding hands.
"I wanna hold your hand".
Please don't ever let me go.
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 65

I want to hold you in my arms forever.

You are so far away, I wish you were here.
I hasten to remark that these linguistic expressions are not metaphorical.
They simply describe something that we commonly observe; namely, that the
lovers can often be seen together, and want to be in each other's company.
Yet, on hearing these expressions one of the things we can reasonably infer
is that the people mentioned are, in all probability, in love. But how do we
know this when all we are literally told is that the two persons are, or want to
be, close to each other physically? Well, this is a reasonable guess because we
know that people in love spend, or want to spend, a lot of time together. In other
words reference to the physical closeness of the two people may serve to indi-
cate for us that the two people are in love. Linguistic expressions of this kind
are called metonymies. When we use a linguistic expression metonymically
we make reference to X which is related in some way to Y and mean or imply
Y. With respect to love this means that reference to physical closeness (X)
may indicate love (Y). This is possible because there seems to be a causal
relationship between the concept of LOVE and the concept of PHYSICAL
CLOSENESS. Cases like this can be called, on the analogy of the term con-
ceptual metaphor, conceptual metonymies.
A more precise formulation of this causal relationship in the domain of
emotions would be to say that according to our folk model of how the emo-
tions work, a given emotion (like love) is accompanied by, or manifests itself
in certain behavioral reactions (like physical closeness). It is often the case
with the emotions that the most typical behavioral reactions corresponding to
an emotion serve as the basis for the central metaphor of the emotion (or
rather, emotional concept). Thus it seems likely that it is the behavioral reac-
tion PHYSICAL CLOSENESS that forms the experiential basis of the
LOVE IS A UNITY conceptual metaphor, which plays a central role in the
structuring of the concept of LOVE. This may be another explanation of the
intuitively felt appropriateness of the UNITY metaphor. The experiential
basis of the metaphor is provided by the common everyday observation that
the lovers tend to be together as much as they can. Thus the concept of PHYS-
ICAL CLOSENESS seems to be present in both the metonymy (the physical
closeness of the two people) and the metaphor (the physical closeness of the
two physical objects that form the unity). It is important to notice however
that the concept of PHYSICAL CLOSENESS in the metonymy is very differ-
ent from PHYSICAL CLOSENESS in the metaphor. The physical closeness
of the metonymy is to be understood literally between two people, whereas
66 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

the physical closeness of the metaphor is to be understood metaphorically

between two physical objects in unity. Nevertheless, it is this shared concept
of PHYSICAL CLOSENESS that makes the UNITY metaphor a maximally
motivated metaphor for us. The UNITY metaphor is felt to be appropriate
because a feature associated with love (PHYSICAL CLOSENESS) is also
found in metaphorical form in the (UNITY) metaphor.
So far I have been concerned with trying to give an account of the central
role and naturalness of the UNITY metaphor. I have said that the naturalness
of the metaphor is due to the fact that the UNITY metaphor has a very strong
experiential basis in one of the most typical behavioral reactions associated
with love, PHYSICAL CLOSENESS. The account of the central role of this
metaphor is based on the metaphorical entailments of the metaphor. It has
been shown that a large number, and perhaps also the most significant, of our
love experiences can be captured by the network of metaphorical entailments
associated with love as a unity of two complementary parts. However, I have
not yet brought to light all of these important metaphorical consequences. So
let us explore these a little further.
In conversations about love we often hear sentences like the following:
I just can't go on without her, She will always remain my one and only love, I'll
never find a love like that, and This love will last forever. As we shall shortly
see, these sentences represent different but closely related attitudes towards
love. They can be viewed as further consequences of the UNITY metaphor.
Their examination is all the more important since these attitudes seem to
have a great deal of influence on the way we experience and evaluate our love
relationships.
A consequence of the conception of love as the UNITY OF TWO COM-
PLEMENTARY PARTS is that we see love as some kind of need. This
attitude is formulated in the sentence / can't go on without her. The view of
love as a need arises from the metaphor because if I think of love as a unity
of two complementary parts, then one part alone will be viewed as dysfunc-
tional, unable to work normally until it is completed by its complementary
other part. One part is seen as incomplete, indeed a 'half as in my other half
and my better half.
Another consequence of the UNITY metaphor is the notion of true love.
We wait for Mr. or Mrs. Right or the one and only love to come along. This
also follows in part from what we know about the UNITY OF TWO COM-
PLEMENTARY PARTS. If we accept that a part can only be completed by
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 67

one and only one other part that matches it perfectly, then it follows that
there is only a single perfect match for everyone. That is, there is one and only
one true love. This way of thinking shows up, for example, in the sentence He
is a perfect match for me. That is, true love corresponds to the perfect match.
The notion of true love brings a false dichotomy into our thinking.
Namely, it maintains that there is a single true love and there are one or more
loves that are not true. Loves that are not true are interchangeable and
replaceable, while one's true love naturally isn't. Thus we have come to the
idea of the irreplaceability of true love. However, irreplaceability can also be
derived from the UNITY metaphor. For if there is only one part that matches
the other part perfectly, then this part is irreplaceable and non-interchange-
able. What this implies for love is that true love is irreplaceable.
It is of course impossible for love to last forever and yet we often come
across and catch ourselves saying sentences like I'll love you forever, Our love
will last forever, My love will never die, etc. In comparison, Only death can
part us seems to represent a more realistic version. The main issue is: What
does the idea that love lasts forever have to do with the UNITY metaphor? I
would be inclined to think that some of the metaphorical entailments of the
metaphor jointly produce this idea. Once we see love as a need and think that
there is only one true love which is irreplaceable, then the desire that love
should last forever becomes perfectly understandable.

4.3. The object of love

The object of love is conceptualized by means of a variety of conceptual
metaphors. The study of these metaphors is important because the various
metaphors bring to light other emotions and attitudes that, in the idealized
version of love, we find inseparable from it.
Let us begin with the metaphor that seems to be maximally coherent with
the idea that love is a need. One of our most important needs is food. And so
it is not surprising that we see the ob ject of love in terms of appetizing food.
THE OBJECT OF LOVE IS (APPETIZING) FOOD
Hi, sweetheart.
She's my sweet and sugar.
Hi, sugar!
Honey, you look great today!
She's the cream in my coffee.
Hello, sweetie-pie.
68 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

The fact that we conceptualize the OBJECT OF LOVE as APPETIZING

FOOD does not only link love with needs but also with liking and sexual
desire. How is this possible? Let us take the concept of LIKING first. We do
not eat appetizing food, especially sweet things, only to satisfy hunger, that
is, to satisfy a need. We eat it because we enjoy it, like it. For something to
be pleasant to the taste is for us to like it. But to be pleasant to the taste is only
one kind of liking. Another kind of liking is when something is pleasant to the
sight. And what is pleasant to the sight is usually something that we find
beautiful. This gives us perhaps the most pervasive belief about love:
THE OBJECT OF LOVE IS BEAUTIFUL
Let's go, beautiful.
Hi, cutie!
Well, gorgeous?
Shall we go, angel-face?
It is important to note that the object of love is always considered beautiful.
For it is always the lover who defines who is beautiful for him or her. The
object of love may be the ugliest person in the world (for others), and yet the
lover will see him/her as beautiful. In other words, once we are in love, we do
not seem to be very choosy about whom we call my beautiful or cutie. And if
we think twice about whom we call my beautiful we are so much less in love.
The concept of BEAUTY plays a very important role in the conceptuali-
zation of love. It is important because it helps us understand more about the
nature of the concept of LIKING, and secondly, because it seems to form the
basis of an entire system of metaphors which, as we shall see in a later section,
will turn out to be one of the decisive factors in the way we comprehend,
experience and live our love relationships. Consider the following metaphor
for BEAUTY:
BEAUTY IS A FORCE (PHYSICAL and PSYCHOLOGICAL);
LIKING IS A REACTION TO THAT FORCE
She bowled me over.
Who's that attractive man over there?
She's a dazzling beauty.
I was hypnotized by her beauty.
What a bombshell!
I was knocked off my feet.
She's enchanting.
Look at all these glamour girls here!
She's dressed to kill.
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 69

In this metaphor the force takes a variety of forms. It can be magnetic force
{attractive), a mechanical force {bowl over, bombshell, knock off), a strong
light {dazzling, glamour), and a magical force {hypnotize, enchanting). What
is common to them is that beauty is viewed as a force which produces some
effect on the self (the person who observes it). This effect, or reaction, corre-
sponds, in this metaphor, to liking. There are two things to note about this
particular way of conceptualizing liking. The first is that our reaction to
beauty, as portrayed by the metaphor, is essentially passive. That is, accord-
ing to the metaphor beauty is something that we experience in such a way that
it is happening to us, that it affects us, without the self being actively involved
as an agent in the process. The second observation is that our reaction to the
force is such that as a result the self loses control (cf. bowl over, knock off,
hypnotize, enchant, kill). As we shall see in section 6, not only beauty but also
love is conceptualized in these ways.
However, liking does not necessarily involve the liking of such physical
attributes as beauty. If we ask someone How did you like her?, there can be
more than one acceptable answer and not just She's beautiful. The answer
may legitimately refer to some non-physical characteristic: Her personality,
her nature, etc. Thus the concept of LIKING which is present in LOVE is
broader in focus than the concept of LIKING as merely indicating physical
appearance. But since we use the same concept (LIKING) to refer to, or
focus on, several human characteristics, it can perhaps be asssumed that we
have to do, in this case also, with the mechanism that seems to pervade our
entire conceptual system: The mechanism on the basis of which we try to
understand, or indeed construct, the non-physical aspects of human beings
(like love) in terms of certain aspects of the physical world (like taste and vis-
ion).
But what does sexual desire have to do with the APPETIZING FOOD
metaphor? What establishes a connection between the two is the fact that the
object of sexual desire is also conceptualized as (APPETIZING) FOOD.
And at the same time we come to view sexual desire as HUNGER for (AP-
PETIZING) FOOD. Let us see some examples (taken from Lakoff 1987):
THE OBJECT OF SEXUAL DESIRE IS (APPETIZING) FOOD;
SEXUAL DESIRE IS HUNGER
She had him drooling.
He's sex-starved.
You have a remarkable sexual appetite.
You look luscious.
70 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

She's quite a dish.

She had kisses sweeter than wine.
Let's see some cheesecake.
Look at those buns!
What a piece of meat!
I hunger for your touch.
He's a real hunk.
I thirst for your kisses.
Only some of these examples indicate more or less clearly that love and SEX-
UAL DESIRE are related concepts in our conceptual system. She had kisses
sweeter than wine, I hunger for your touch and I thirst for your kisses may be
used to indicate the presence of love in addition to sexual desire. The user of
She's quite a dish or He's a real hunk does not necessarily want to say that he
or she is in love with the person referred to. The person using these sentences
is more likely to imply a liking of the other person and a willingness to have
sexual intercourse with him or her. This would mean then that there is only a
remote and indirect conceptual relationship between LOVE and SEXUAL
DESIRE which is mediated by the concept of LIKING. However, as I will
show later, there is a clear and direct relationship between love and sexual
desire.
The best indicators of the conceptual link between the two concepts in
the SEXUALITY IS HUNGER metaphor are perhaps those that have to do
with kissing and touching. I believe that this is not so by accident. The refer-
ence to love in these examples in a more straightforward way is possible
because the examples draw heavily on a concept that is closely associated with
LOVE: INTIMATE SEXUAL BEHAVIOR. The relationship between
LOVE and INTIMATE SEXUAL BEHAVIOR is metonymical:
INTIMATE SEXUAL BEHAVIOR STANDS FOR LOVE
She showered him with kisses.
It was a fond embrace.
He caressed her gently.
She held him to her bosom.
He embraced her tenderly.
The above linguistic expressions represent various forms of intimate sexual
behavior. Thus we find instances of kissing, touching, and embracing. The
expressions corresponding to them also indicate the presence of romantic
love. That is, INTIMATE SEXUAL BEHAVIOR is metonymically related
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 71

to LOVE in the same sense that, as we have seen, PHYSICAL CLOSENESS

is metonymically related to it. In other words, INTIMATE SEXUAL
BEHAVIOR is one of the behavioral reactions associated with LOVE. But
the concept of INTIMATE SEXUAL BEHAVIOR does not coincide with
the concept SEX. The relationship between intimate sexual behavior and
romantic love is established by the concept of INTIMACY that figures
importantly in our concept of LOVE. Intimate sexual behavior is a manifes-
tation of intimacy in the same way as physical closeness is a manifestation of
intimacy. Sex as sexual intercourse does not presuppose intimacy, or, as a
matter of fact, it does not even presuppose the presence of intimate sexual
behavior. This can explain that a sentence like Sally went to bed with John
does not imply that Sally is in love with John. This does not mean, however,
that the relationship between sex and love does not hold from the other direc-
tion; that is, the concept of LOVE, at least in the ideal cases, presupposes the
concept of SEX. However, this link between romantic love and sex is by no
means independent of space and time. More than two thousand years ago
Plato separated love and sex. Today this 'emasculated' version of love is
known as 'platonic love'.
But the metonymy INTIMATE SEXUAL BEHAVIOR STANDS
FOR LOVE gives us occasion to mention some additional emotions accom-
panying love. It would be wrong to claim that one can only kiss, caress or
embrace someone that one loves romantically. We can also kiss, caress and
embrace our children, our parents, or our friends. In these cases we would
think of what we do as expressions of our affection, or fondness. Thus the
additional emotional concept that this metonymy brings to light is AFFEC-
TION/FONDNESS. If we love someone romantically, the chances are that
we also feel affection for, or are fond of that person. And this is in turn the
reason why sentences like She's fond of him can be used as euphemisms to
indicate, or talk about, romantic love.
Romantic love also presupposes kindness. And kindness is also presup-
posed by affection, or fondness. As some of the examples indicate (gently,
tenderly), the attitude of the lover to the beloved involves gentleness, tender-
ness. TENDERNESS is one of the major ways in which KINDNESS is con-
ceptualized (cf. soft-hearted, tender-hearted, etc.). Thus KINDNESS seems
to be a concept closely associated with both ROMANTIC LOVE and
AFFECTION. It is for this reason that the sentence You are not kind to me
anymore can be uttered to convey a complaint that one is no longer loved
romantically.
72 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

A metaphor in terms of which we understand the LOVERS is the LOV-

ERS ARE DOVES metaphor. Consider the following examples:
THE LOVERS ARE DOVES
They sat there billing and cooing till after midnight
It was all lovey-dovey.
Look at those two lovebirds on the bench over there!
Here come the love doves again.
Their love nest has been discovered.
This metaphor also emphasizes the presence of AFFECTION and KIND-
NESS in the conceptual network of (ROMANTIC) LOVE. Doves are vie-
wed as symbols of peace, love, and gentleness. The gentleness of the doves is
the gentleness of the lovers. Gentleness invites care, or caring. This gives us
the further related concept: CARE. If we love each other, we want to take
care of each other. The link between (ROMANTIC) LOVE and CARE/
CARING enables us to use expressions from the domain of CARE/CAR-
ING to indicate ROMANTIC LOVE: Sally cares a lot about John.
A view of the object of love that is very different from what we have seen
so far is portrayed by the metaphor which makes us see the beloved as some
kind of deity. Let us see some examples:
THE OBJECT OF LOVE IS A DEITY
I adore you.
She loves the air he breathes.
He worships the ground she walks on.
He put her on a pedestal.
She devoted herself to him entirely.
He fell on his knees before her.
She prayed him not to leave her.
She idolizes him.
He is forever singing her praises.
She has sacrificed her whole life for the love of her husband.
The special significance of the DEITY metaphor lies in the fact that it brings
to light several of the emotional concepts associated with love; in particular,
the concepts of RESPECT, ADMIRATION, DEVOTION, SACRIFICE
and ENTHUSIASM.
There is an obvious link between the concepts of DEITY and
RESPECT. (Note such expressions as the praise of God). It seems very likely
that the original form of respect was the cultic worship of some deity. The
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 73

conceptualization of the object of love as a deity brings in respect by virtue of

the fact that the object of respect is also conceptualized as a deity. A clear
indication of this is that in the appropriate context some of the expressions in
the above metaphor can be used to denote the emotion of respect. Such
expressions are worship and idolize. To be sure, the meaning of these words
contains an element of undeserved, or undue respect. And this also applies to
love. When applied to love, these expressions indicate that the object of love
receives more love than he or she deserves. It is important to note that the
words worship and idolize are not used by the lovers to describe their own
experiences but carry the judgement of an outside observer.
RESPECT, maybe undue RESPECT, is then an integral part of our con-
ception of love. But what is undue respect for an outsider is admiration for
those on the inside, the admiration of the beloved. The outsider says that the
lover is singing the beloved's praises, while the lover whispers that he or she
adores the other and thinks that he or she is the most wonderful person in the
world. What is condemned by the outsider is a very natural thing for the
lover. Admiration and worship are just two faces of the same coin. What is
important here is that ADMIRATION is a part of LOVE.
If we look up the etymology of the word devote, we find that it goes back
to a form that meant something like 'from a vow'. The reference is possibly
to the vow that one makes when one dedicates, or devotees oneself to the ser-
vice of God. The conceptual link between LOVE and DEVOTION is that
the lovers see themselves as being devoted to each other in much the same
way as a priest sees himself as being dedicated to the service of God. Thus the
notion of devotion in the domain of love seems to enrich our idea of love with
two elements. First, in our everyday conception of romantic love we tend to
think of love as an emotion that can be directed at only one person. (Just as
a priest can only serve one God). Second, people in love see themselves as
'servants' to the beloved. Most of us are familiar with phrases like I'll be your
slave forever. The concepts of DEVOTION and SACRIFICE are difficult to
distinguish. But whatever the differences between them, the important issue
for our purposes is that our idea of love seems to incorporate the idea of
(SELF-)SACRIFICE. If you are not willing to make sacrifices for your love,
you are not considered as really being in love either.
ADMIRATION, WORSHIP and DEVOTION all presuppose the idea
of ENTHUSIASM. If I admire you, adore you and am devoted to you, I am
also enthusiastic about you. I will have more to say about enthusiasm later.
What makes it especially appropriate to mention enthusiasm in connection
74 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

with the DEITY metaphor is that the word can be traced back to Greek and
Latin words meaning 'possessed by the God'. Current usage of the concept
suggests that there is indeed a close link between LOVE and
ENTHUSIASM. If I have occasion to say that He enthuses over that pretty girl
in his class, you would feel justified to conclude from my statement that he
may be in love with her.
Finally, I must mention yet another metaphor that we use for concep-
tualizing the object of love. THE OBJECT OF LOVE IS A VALUABLE
OBJECT metaphor enriches the network of concepts related to love with two
emotion concepts.
THE OBJECT OF LOVE IS A VALUABLE OBJECT
Hello, my precious!
We have to leave now, my dear.
You're my treasure!
and on etymological grounds:
Darling, give me a kiss!
In the same way we treasure and want to keep possession of a valuable object,
we are attached to the person we love. Thus the related concept this
metaphor brings into focus is ATTACHMENT. That attachment is really a
concept related to love is shown by the fact that we can use sentences like
She's deeply attached to him to indicate love.
The VALUABLE OBJECT metaphor makes it appropriate to mention
another related concept. This is PRIDE. If I am in love, I am not only
attached to the object of love but I am also proud of her because I value her
highly. This is possible because, as we have seen, one of the typical sources
of pride is a possessed valuable object.

4.4. Related concepts

As we have seen so far, LIKING, SEX, SEXUAL DESIRE,
RESPECT, DEVOTION, SELF-SACRIFICE, ADMIRATION,
ENTHUSIASM, KINDNESS, AFFECTION, ATTACHMENT, CARING
are all concepts that in the ideal case are closely related to the concept of
ROMANTIC LOVE. In this section what I would like to do is to complete
the list of emotions and emotional attitudes associated with love. Moreover,
I will try to show that these related concepts are not a part of the conceptual
network constituting LOVE to the same degree, and that there can also be
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 75

differences among the concepts in the nature of their relationships to LOVE.

Finally, in this section I also wish to provide further linguistic evidence for the
claim that the above concepts are indeed related to the concept LOVE.
We have noted that physical closeness, intimate sexual behavior and sex
are behavioral reactions associated with love. Both the concepts of INTIMATE
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR and SEX involve the concept of PHYSICAL
CLOSENESS. Both intimate sexual behavior and sex presuppose the physi-
cal closeness of the participants. The behavioral reaction of physical close-
ness plays a very significant role in the conceptualization of love. It appears
to be the case that one of the most important concepts related to LOVE,
INTIMACY, is nothing but a metaphorical counterpart of PHYSICAL
CLOSENESS. I have already mentioned that the UNITY metaphor has in it
the concept PHYSICAL CLOSENESS that has to be understood metaphor-
ically (since the two parts can be found in each others physical vicinity). When
we say things like They are very close or (on etymological grounds) They are
very intimate, we in fact talk about this metaphorically understood notion of
PHYSICAL CLOSENESS. That is, the claim is that INTIMACY is a con-
cept that was metaphorically created on the analogy of the concept of PHYS-
ICAL CLOSENESS. Such synonyms of the word intimacy as psychological
or spiritual closeness suggest that there must indeed be a conceptual
metaphor according to which PSYCHOLOGICAL/SPIRITUAL CLOSE-
NESS is indeed understood, or perhaps has been created, on the analogy of
PHYSICAL CLOSENESS. But so far I have only been concerned with the
nature of the relationship between the concepts of PHYSICAL CLOSE-
NESS and INTIMACY and have not produced any linguistic evidence to
show the relationship between LOVE and INTIMACY. The following may
be considered such evidence. In certain contexts the sentence They are close
to each other may also mean that the two people are in love. But perhaps more
convincing examples are those that have to do with the lessening of love in a
romantic relationship: The distance has grown between them or We have
drifted apart lately.
In the discussion of PHYSICAL CLOSENESS we have seen examples
like the following: I want to be with you all my life, Dont ever let me go and
You're so far away, I wish you were here. What is common to all of these
examples is that, in a more or less straightforward way, they all contain the
idea that lovers desire to be physically close to each other, they want to be
together. Let us call this feeling of desiring to be together 'longing'. This gives
us LONGING as another concept related to LOVE.
76 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

Physical closeness serves as a model not only for intimacy. There is at

least one other concept that is also understood in terms of PHYSICAL
CLOSENESS. This is the concept FRIENDSHIP. We also say of our friends
that they are close, and people we do not know very well are often referred
to as distant acquaintances. Of course, the reason why I bother to mention
these linguistic trivia is that FRIENDSHIP also belongs to the conceptual
repertory of LOVE. Perhaps the clearest indicators of this conceptual
relatedness are the words girlfriend and boyfriend when they are used to refer
to one's sweetheart. It might be objected that these words only represent
some euphemistic usage. I would argue, however, that what makes this
euphemistic usage possible at all is that there exists a conceptual link between
LOVE and FRIENDSHIP.
Finally, mention must be made of a concept that is undoubtedly a part of
the rich conceptual network associated with LOVE. This is the concept
INTEREST. The presence of interest among the concepts related to love is
shown by such examples as She is not interested in him anymore, which is
almost equal to saying She is not in love with him anymore. The relatedness
of LOVE to INTEREST could also be shown through the concept of
ENTHUSIASM, which is a more intense form of INTEREST and thus pre-
supposes its presence.
So far I have treated the concepts associated with LOVE, such as LIK-
ING, SEXUAL DESIRE, RESPECT, ADMIRATION, ENTHUSIASM,
INTIMACY, FRIENDSHIP, as if the relationship between LOVE and these
other concepts were equally strong for each of the related concepts. But this
is not so. The relationship between romantic love on the one hand and the
various emotions and emotional attitudes on the other is strong in some cases
and weak in others. But the question is how we can decide in which case it is
strong and in which case it is weaker. We can employ the following proce-
dure. As an illustration, let us take two concepts: POOR and UNHAPPY. In
our everyday conceptual system these are related in such a way that we think
of a poor man also as an unhappy man. What evidence is there to show this?
Well, evidence can be found in the use of the word but. The word but is used
appropriately (at least in one of its major uses) when it is followed by some-
thing contrary to our expectations. That is, if we say Peter is poor, but..., then
the appropriate continuation of the sentence can only be he is happy. This is
because in this case it is being happy that is contrary to our expectations. The
sentence Peter is poor, but unhappy sounds odd because but is followed by a
state of affairs which is not contrary to our expectations set up by 'being poor' ;
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 77

so the word but is not used appropriately. Of course, there may be people for
whom being poor is not associated with being unhappy but with being happy.
For these people the sentence Peter is poor but unhappy would be perfectly
acceptable. At this point the link between being poor and being unhappy or
being poor and being happy becomes an empirical issue. Although I have not
carried out any sociological investigations into this conceptual link, I would
say that we would find more people who associate being poor with being
unhappy than people who associate being poor with being happy. And con-
sequently, I would expect to come across more people who find Peter is poor
but happy more acceptable than Peter is poor but unhappy.
Thus we could say on the basis of such (probable) majority opinion that
such concepts as ENTHUSIASM, AFFECTION, SACRIFICE, SEXUAL
DESIRE, INTIMACY, etc. are related to our idea of ROMANTIC LOVE.
Linguistic evidence seems to bear this out. Sentences like I am in love with her
but I feel affection toward her, I am in love with her but I admire her, I am in
love with her but I would make any sacrifice for her, We are in love but we are
close to each other, and I am in love with her but I feel sexual desire for her etc.
are not really acceptable sentences.
If however we negate the emotion after but, we must get acceptable sen-
tences in each case. This is true of some of the cases like I am in love with her,
but I don't feel sexual desire for her, We are in love with each other, but we are
not really friends, I am in love with her, but I don't respect her, I am in love with
her, but I am not kind to her. In the case of some other emotions we would
hesitate to consider the sentence as clearly acceptable (the question marks
before the sentences indicate this uncertainty of judgement):? I am in love
with her, but I don't admire her,? I am in love with her, but I would not make
any sacrifice f or her,? I am in love with her, but I am not devoted to her,? I am
in love with her, but I don't care about her. And again there are negated ver-
sions where one would expect more agreement. It is likely that most people
would judge the following sentences unacceptable: I am in love with her, but
I don't feel affection for her, I am in love with her, but I do not long for her, I
am in love with her, but I am not interested in her, We are in love with each
other, but we are not close to each other.
Maybe in some of these cases other people's judgement would differ
from mine. But this is not at issue now. What is really significant is that the
sensitivity of these concepts to the but-test seems to show at least three
degrees of variation. As the above tentative results indicate, we can imagine
non-ideal cases of love which lack, say, respect or sexual desire or kindness
78 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

or friendship. Secondly, I believe that my examples show that people tend to

think that romantic love is somewhat less likely to occur without admiration
or sacrifice, for example. Finally, the chances are that we would consider
someone a fool if he said that he was in love with a girl but at the same time
he did not feel affection for her or was not interested in her or did not long for
her. What all of this suggests is that some emotion concepts are indeed related
to LOVE in stronger ways (like AFFECTION, LONGING) than others (like
KINDNESS, SEXUAL DESIRE). Furthermore, there seem to be cases
between the two (like DEVOTION, SACRIFICE), which is an indication
that the 'strong-weak link' is to be conceived of as a gradient rather than a
rigid dichotomy.
Of course, this does not mean that the emotion concepts that are linked
with love in only looser ways do not form an integral part of our everyday idea
of romantic love. Our conceptual network associated with the ideal cases of
romantic love incorporates respect, kindness, sexual desire, caring, etc., just
as it does affection, longing, enthusiasm, emotional closeness. In addition to
the linguistic evidence cited so far, this is what the but-test also seems to
suggest.
Insofar as the but-test reveals anything real about the relationship of two
concepts and the strength of the link between them, and insofar as I am in
agreement with other people (or at least with a significantly large number of
people) concerning the acceptability of the above sentences, we can say that
the conceptual core of ROMANTIC LOVE is constituted by AFFECTION,
ENTHUSIASM, INTEREST, INTIMACY, and LONGING. These are
concepts that are most closely related to LOVE. Another way of putting this
is to say that these concepts are inherent in LOVE. A definition of romantic
love along these lines would be something like this: Romantic love is a feeling
which is characterized by affection, enthusiasm, interest, longing and inti-
macy. This is the kind of definition which resembles definitions as given by
dictionaries. Dictionaries try to give the necessary and sufficient conditions
for the correct application of a word. For example, the Heritage Dictionary
defines love in the following way: "An intense affectionate concern for
another person". That is, this dictionary emphasizes, among other things,
affection and concern. As we have seen, affection is also present in the defin-
ition that I have come up with. However, I have not found concern an inher-
ent part of love. Perhaps concern can be equated with what I have termed car-
ing, and in that case it would be a concept which is related to, though not
inherent in, love. But all this creates a problem. Why doesn't the dictionary
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 79

define the concept of LOVE with the other concepts that I have found inher-
ent in it (except for AFFECTION)? Several answers are possible. One is that
my linguistic intuitions do not coincide with the intuitions of the editors of the
dictionary. Another answer is that the but-test does not reveal what my exam-
ples would seem to indicate, since concern, or caring, has received a status in
the dictionary different from the one I have given to it. And thirdly, we
should not exclude the possibility that the dictionary may be wrong in that it
does not faithfully represent the conceptual organization of love.
However, our problems do not end here. If we look up the word love in
other dictionaries, we find that the dictionaries are not in agreement as to
which concepts can be used to define love. The Random House College Dic-
tionary finds tenderness and affection important. Their definition is: "A pro-
foundly tender, passionate affection for a person of the opposite sex". But
Funk and Wagnalls stress devotion and affection. Their version goes like this:
"A deep devotion or affection for another person". Now what are we to make
of all this? It seems that I am not in agreement with Heritage as to the neces-
sary ingredients of love and Heritage is not in agreement with Random
House, and Random House is not in agreement with Funk and Wagnalls, etc.
The only concept that we perhaps all take as relevant is AFFECTION. But
of course no one would want to say that romantic love is exclusively consti-
tuted by affection, since this would amount to saying that the two are the
same. Perhaps the best thing we can do is to admit that LOVE is a concept
which it is difficult to define in terms of inherent features, and whose defini-
tion might depend on such factors as one's general view of the world or one's
subculture or method of definition. In other words, we may not have defining
features for love, or as a matter of fact, for the majority of our categories,
which have the same validity forever and for everyone. If the but-test is a reli-
able method of arriving at what the defining features of a category are, then
it can provide us with these features insofar as people agree in their accepta-
bility judgments.
So far we have looked at emotions and attitudes that are related to love:
Liking, longing, intimacy, sexual desire, admiration, etc. Another emotion
concept that is also related to love is HAPPINESS. But the relationship
between love and happiness is different from the relationship between love
and the above emotions. As we have seen, the concept of LOVE presup-
poses, or takes for granted the presence of LIKING, LONGING, INTI-
MACY, SEXUAL DESIRE, ADMIRATION, etc. Another way to express
the same idea is to say that if I like, long for, am emotionally close to, feel sex-
80 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

ual desire for, admire, etc. someone, then I am in love with that person. (Ob-
viously, in the everyday ideal model of love some other conditions will also
have to be met: For example, the lovers would have to be of different sexes.
Clearly, then, I am describing the ideas of mainstream culture in this study.)
However, the relationship between love and happiness seems to be different.
Instead of saying that romantic love presupposes, or takes for granted happi-
ness, we should rather say that if I am in love (and my love is returned), then
I am happy. That is, in this case love results in happiness, (cf. This love has
made me happy). To put the difference briefly: If I like, long for, am emotion-
ally close to, etc. someone, then I am in love, and if I am in love, then I am
happy. But this way of putting things blurs important differences in the mean-
ings of the two constructions (the constructions being: 'If liking, longing for,
etc. someone, then love' on the one hand and 'if love, then happiness' on the
other). The presence of liking, longing, admiration, etc. allows us to describe
someone (including ourselves) as being in love, whereas in the case of happi-
ness being in love leads to, or brings about happiness. All this seems to
suggest that while there is a causal relationship between the concepts of
LOVE and HAPPINESS, there does not seem to be a similar relationship
between LOVE on the one hand and LIKING, LONGING, ADMIRA-
TION, etc. on the other. Perhaps the relationship between love and these
emotions can be best put by saying that in order for me to describe someone
as being in love, these emotions must be present in the situation. It seems
then that liking, longing, admiration, etc. specify and/or constitute the rules
of the applicability of the concept of ROMANTIC LOVE. If they are present
I can appropriately say of a person that he or she is in love.
However, this should not be understood as implying that all of the con-
cepts we have discussed so far must be present in order for me to correctly
describe someone as being in love. We have already seen in the discussion of
the but-test that the majority of the concepts associated with love need not
each be present. I can be truly in love with someone even if I don't feel sexual
desire for the person, provided that enough of the other concepts are present.
That is, almost any one of these related emotions can be absent (except
maybe affection, intimacy, etc., which yielded unacceptable sentences on the
but-test. But even this is an open empirical issue.) Of course, I would still want
to maintain that the ideal model of romantic love in our everyday thinking is
very much characterized by the complete repertory of emotions I have men-
tioned in this and the previous chapters.
There is at least one ('scientific') study in which an attempt is made to
define love by means of what I have called related concepts (Newton-Smith
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 81

1973). In this study the following concepts, or "love-comprising relations" as

the author calls them, are found to comprise the concept of LOVE:
(1) A knows Β (or at least knows something of B)
(2) A cares (is concerned) about Β
A likes Β
(3) A respects Β
A is attracted to Β
A feels affection for Β
(4) A is committed to Β
A wishes to see B's welfare promoted (Newton-Smith 1973: 118-
119)
With the exception of (1) and (4), I have mentioned all of the other concepts.
(1) is intended to be a precondition for love, and I will also incorporate it in
the characterization of the everyday model of love in the form 'A comes
along' and 'A finds B'. (4) can perhaps be accommodated by claiming that it
roughly corresponds to what I have termed SELF-SACRIFICE. In the light
of what has been done in this and the previous chapters, we can see two weak­
nesses in this approach. First, the conceptual features given appear to be a
fairly randomly selected choice of concepts. For example, where are concepts
like INTEREST, INTIMACY, and LONGING? And if RESPECT is
included, why not include FRIENDSHIP, ADMIRATION, and DEVO­
TION?
The second weakness that needs to be pointed out has to do with the
inadequacy of any approach that tries to define a concept in terms of neces­
sary and sufficient conditions alone. We have seen that different dictionaries
find different concepts important in their definitions of love. This is an indica­
tion of the difficulty involved in the task of coming up with the necessary and
sufficient conditions for the application of the concept LOVE. But let us sup­
pose for a moment that this is possible. The concept defined only in terms of
these features would be extremely impoverished, given what we know and
can reveal about love on the basis of everyday language use. We have already
discussed in detail the extent to which the UNITY metaphor and the various
conceptualizations of the object of love contribute to the concept of
ROMANTIC LOVE. Without these metaphors our understanding of the
various aspects of the concept would virtually be reduced to zero. It is there­
fore important to move on and consider other aspects of love as these are cap­
tured by other metaphors and metonymies.
82 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

4.5. Intensity
In this section I will be looking at the intensity aspect of love. INTEN-
SITY is an abstract concept that has evolved from more concrete and concep-
tually simpler concepts. Such simple concepts are DEPTH, QUANTITY,
EFFECT, CLOSENESS, etc. We can conceive of INTENSITY as a scale
which represents the amount of a substance, the degree of depth, the degree
of an effect, the degree of closeness, etc. Thus INTENSITY seems to be a
concept that is characterized by a scale indicating lower and higher degrees.
As we shall see, love is an emotion whose intensity, at least in the prototypical
cases, is always very high.
The conceptual relationship between INTENSITY and DEPTH is easy
to see. When we say of a person that he is deeply wrapped up in his thoughts
what we usually mean is that the person is thinking intensely. Similarly, when
we speak of deeply felt emotions, one of the things that we can mean by this
is that one experiences one's emotions with intensity. One of the metaphors
for LOVE (that I will discuss in the next section) is the LOVE IS A NATU-
RAL FORCE (FLOOD, etc.) metaphor. Examples of this metaphor are the
sentences: She is deeply immersed in love and Waves of passion came over
him. Both the waves coming over someone and immersion in something pre-
suppose depth. Thus because of the conceptual link between INTENSITY
and DEPTH, one of the implications of the sentences will be that the person
in question has intensive love experiences. This is even more transparent is
examples like She is deeply in love and Jimmy is up to his eyes in love, where
the immersion indicates the intensity of the love experience.
The intensity of love is often expressed by the amount of substance in a
container. If there is a lot of substance in the container, then the intensity of
love is high and if there is only a small amount, then it is low. The relationship
between intensity and quantity is captured most clearly by the LOVE IS A
FLUID IN A CONTAINER metaphor. This metaphor is primarily con-
cerned with the issue of intensity. Let us see some examples for this concep-
tual metaphor:
LOVE IS A FLUID IN A CONTAINER
She was filled with love.
Warm feelings welled up inside him.
She overflowed with love.
He poured out his affections on her.
He was full of love for her.
She couldn't hold in her love for him any longer.
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 83

In our conceptual system our body is often seen as a container for our emo-
tions and the emotions as fluids inside the container (cf. He was boiling with
anger, She was filled with jealousy, etc.). THE BODY IS A CONTAINER
FOR THE EMOTIONS metaphor enables us to conceptualize INTENSITY
as AMOUNT, or QUANTITY (INSIDE A CONTAINER). In love, this
means that the more fluid there is in the container the greater is the intensity
of love. Thus She couldn't hold in her love for him any longer indicates more
love, and therefore more intensive love, then Warm feelings welled up inside
him. This is because the metaphor makes use of a height scale measuring
quantity, or amount. The height scale corresponds to the height of the con-
tainer. It has two end points. The lower end point (the threshold on the inten-
sity scale) corresponds to the bottom of the container and the upper end point
(the limit point on the intensity scale) to the top of the container. These two
end points define three degrees of the intensity of love. When the amount of
love is above the threshold (love wells up from the bottom), love comes into
existence; that is, the intensity is relatively low. When the amount of love
reaches the limit (love fills the container), it indicates a high degree of love.
And when the amount goes beyond the limit (love overflows), it indicates
the highest degree.
The conceptualization of intensity as quantity is not limited to the
metapor LOVE IS A FLUID IN A CONTAINER, which is based on the
more general metaphor THE BODY IS A CONTAINER FOR THE EMO-
TIONS. In addition to the body, the heart can also serve as a container for
this purpose. This is exemplified by expressions like these: She filled my heart
with love, I love you with all my heart, etc. These examples come from the
metaphor LOVE IS IN THE HEART. What makes this metaphor particu-
larly appropriate is the fact that the heart is a container with blood (a fluid)
pumping through it. Or, indeed, it may well be that the HEART metaphor is
in a sense more basic than the BODY AS A CONTAINER metaphor. It
seems more basic in the sense that, as we shall see, the physiological effect of
increased heart rate is one of the most important bodily responses associated
with love, and also with many other emotions. This would then seem to
account for the fact that we have conceptualized our emotions, including
love, in terms of the heart and thus consider the heart as the seat of the emo-
tions.
Before we go on to the major way of conceptualizing love's intensity,
which is heat, let us see some minor ways that we use for this purpose;
namely, closeness and effect. We have already seen in the discussion of the
84 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

UNITY metaphor and the PHYSICAL CLOSENESS behavioral reaction

that the concept of CLOSENESS plays an important part in the way we con-
ceptualize love. What we need to point out in this connection is that we seem
to make use of a closeness scale too. Thus we often use sentences like You
seem to be so distant now and We are getting real close to each other, where the
expressions distant and close indicate the two end points of the closeness scale.
When two people are close to each other on this scale, their love is intense.
(They can even be thick with each other). And when they occupy the
end points, there is no love at all. Thus the closeness scale appears to be a fit-
ting device in terms of which a number of variations in the dynamics of human
relationships can be interpreted.
Another concept in terms of which love's intensity is understood is
EFFECT. Intensity is often captured by the impact something has on us. So
in the same way as we can describe the intensity of some noise as piercing, we
can describe the intensity of somebody's love with such sentences as He was
blinded by love. The more extreme and deadly the effect is, the higher is the
intensity (cf. He was dead set on it, I am dead tired, etc.). I will say more about
examples like blinded by love towards the end of this section.
However, the intensity of love, and several other emotions, is for the
most part conceptualized in terms of the concept HEAT. HEAT manifests
itself primarily in the metaphor LOVE IS FIRE. Of course, intensity is not
the only aspect of love that this metaphor brings into focus. But let us see
some examples:
LOVE IS FIRE
My heart's on fire.
He was burning with love.
The old-time fire is gone.
She set my heart on fire.
There were sparks.
She is his latest flame.
The fire slowly went out.
That kindled love in his heart.
I don't want to get burned again.
He was consumed by love.
I just melted when she looked at me.
She carries a torch for him.
This metaphor highlights the intensity of love (fire, flame, sparks, consume),
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 85

the existence of love (on fire), the coming into and going out of existence of
love (kindle, go out), its duration (flame), the cause of love (kindle, set on
fire), the frustration caused by love (get burned), and how it can render a per-
son unable to function normally (consumed). Before we discuss intensity, let
us see the correspondences between the source and target domains that con-
stitute the LOVE IS FIRE conceptual metaphor.
Source: FIRE Target: LOVE
- the fire corresponds to love
- the thing burning is the person in love
- the cause of the fire is the cause of love
- being burned by the fire is the frustration caused by love
- the burning of the fire is the existence of love
- the intensity of the fire is the intensity of love
- the inability of the thing burning to function normally is
the ability of the person in love to function normally
Some of these correspondences are possible because we seem to carry over
our knowledge of the source domain to the target domain. For example, we
know that a thing burned by fire is unable to function normally. Now when we
carry this over to love we get the (ontological) correspondence according to
which the inability of the thing burned to function normally and the inability
of a person in love to function normally are the same. That is, just as the thing
consumed by fire is unable to function normally, so a person in love is unable
to function normally. A further bit of knowledge we have of fires is that they
can burn us and can cause pain. If we carry this over to love, what we get is
that love can also burn us and can cause pain. It is this metaphorical (but
nonetheless metaphorically real) pain that we feel at the time of a frustrating
love experience. The conceptualization of EMOTIONAL PAIN as PHYS-
ICAL PAIN is again a very general conceptual metaphor in our conceptual
system.
Just as a fire can start, stop and exist, so we can conceptualize love as
having a beginning, an end and being in existence. When the fire is kindled
love begins. While the fire is burning, love exists. When it goes out, love ends.
Something which is burning can suddenly burst into flames. Flames can
last for a very short time and then return to their original intensity or go out
completely. Some of our love experiences are such that we love a person very
intensely for a short time and then our feelings abruptly come to an end.
These cases are called infatuation, and this is when we talk about our latest
86 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

flame.
However, real fires are not such short-lived flames. They last and go on
burning for a long time. We imagine real love to be a fire that burns a long
time also. But a fire represents the top of a heat scale ranging from cold
through warm to hot. And as a result of the correspondence between LOVE
and FIRE, real love is always hot. In fact, it is so hot that it can even melt us.
And a still higher degree of love is represented by the case when we are con-
sumed by love (corresponding to fire). We have already seen that the inten-
sity of love can be expressed by the effect of love on the subject of love. Tak-
ing this into account, we can see that the particular appropriateness of the
words melt and consume to express love's intensity is motivated by two con-
cepts that have to do with intensity: HEAT and EFFECT. In order for love
to melt and consume us, which are effects, it needs the heat of fire. In these
cases heat functions as cause which leads to an effect.
Like the closeness scale, the heat scale provides us with a conceptual
device in terms of which a great number of our love experiences seem to be
constructed. These scales represent various degrees and shades of love or the
lack of love. What is common to them, however, is the fact that real love is
always seen as the highest grade on the scales: Depth as opposed to shallow-
ness, closeness as opposed to distance, utmost effect as opposed to lack of
effect, and intense heat as opposed to cold.
The FIRE metaphor is perhaps the most important metaphor concern-
ing the intensity of love. And since intensity plays a very marked role in the
way we think of LOVE, the FIRE metaphor has a central role in the concept
of LOVE as a whole. In the same way as the UNITY metaphor, the FIRE
metaphor has several metaphorical consequences, which we use to bring to
light various aspects of love. The FIRE metaphor also resembles the UNITY
metaphor in that it is also grounded in experience in a clear way. As with
other emotions (e.g. anger, lust, etc.), we find the physiological effect of
body heat also in love. It is this bodily reaction that serves as an experiential
basis for the FIRE metaphor.
However, body heat is not the only physiological effect characterizing
love. Our use of conventionalized language suggests that love is also charac-
terized by the presence of other physiological effects in our conceptual model
of love. Now let us see these effects as illustrated by the corresponding lin-
guistic expressions:
BODY HEAT
I felt hot all over when I saw her.
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 87

You really have the hots for her, don't you?

"I love you", she whispered in the heat of passion.
It was a torrid love story.
INCREASE IN HEART RATE
She had palpitations.
He's a heartthrob.
His heart was throbbing with love.
Her heart began to pound when she saw him.
Increased body heat and/or heart function is assumed to cause redness in the
face.
BLUSHING
There was a glow of love in her face.
She blushed when she saw him.
And a physiological effect which has already been mentioned:
INTERFERENCE WITH ACCURATE PERCEPTION
He was blinded by love.
He saw nothing but her.
I only have eyes for her.
To summarize, the physiological effects that are assumed to accompany love
are INCREASED BODY HEAT, INCREASED HEART RATE,
BLUSHING, and INTERFERENCE WITH ACCURATE PERCEP-
TION. Of these, INCREASE IN BODY HEAT, and also indirectly
INCREASE IN HEART RATE and BLUSHING, serve as the experiential
base for the FIRE metaphor. The felt appropriateness of the metaphor arises
as a result of these physiological effects.
We have already seen in the discussion of the FIRE metaphor that a per-
son in love is not able to function normally. Perhaps this idea becomes clearer
if we look at the physiological effect of INTERFERENCE WITH ACCU-
RATE PERCEPTION. This provides us with more examples of how a per-
son in love is indeed not able to function normally. (Of course, this applies
only to the most intense forms of love). Similarly to anger and pride, we seem
to have in our folk model of love two principles:
AS LOVE INCREASES, ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS INCREASE
and
THERE IS A LIMIT BEYOND WHICH THE PHYSIOLOGICAL
88 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

EFFECTS OF LOVE IMPAIR NORMAL FUNCTIONING.

This second principle in fact tells us that if we are really in love we are
unable to function normally. Inability to function normally in love involves a
lack of control over love. This conceptualization of love's intensity brings
about a serious conflict in our conception of love. Since the maximal degree
associated with 'real' love involves a lack of control over love and since we
have the responsibility to control our emotions, we have to make a choice.
We have to decide whether we want love (together with a lack of control) or
whether we want control over love (in which case, however, there is no room
for 'real' love as it is defined by our culture). I will return to this and related
issues in the next section and the section on typical love.
To sum up, then, we have seen that to a large extent we conceptualize the
intensity aspect of love in terms of HEAT, which is a concept realized in the
FIRE metaphor. The heat scale consists of various degrees of heat, ranging
from cold to hot. On this scale romantic love is conceptualized as an emotion
with the highest degree of intensity. Furthermore, the combination of HEAT
as cause with EFFECT yields an even higher degree for love's intensity. The
case when love's heat drops to 'mere' warmth will be discussed in the section
on typical love.

4.6. Passivity, lack of control, pleasantness

We have seen that as a result of the UNITY metaphor the lovers desire
to form a unity, and if they are successful, they live in the state of perfect har-
mony. The primary focus of the FIRE metaphor is that it gives us a sense of
the intensity of love. In the discussion of the intensity aspect of love I have
mentioned the examples She is deeply immersed in love and Waves of passion
came over him which, through the concept of DEPTH, indicate the degree of
love's intensity. But these two examples are not isolated linguistic expres-
sions we use to talk about love, but instances of a system of metaphorical
expressions which group around the concept of NATURAL FORCES. As
we shall see, the LOVE IS A NATURAL FORCE metaphor addresses a
number of issues that I have not discussed so far. But first let us see some
further examples of this metaphor:
LOVE IS A NATURAL FORCE (FLOOD, WIND, STORM, etc.)
She swept me off my feet.
Waves of passion came over him.
She was carried away by love.
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 89

It was a whirlwind romance.

She let herself go.
I was swept away by love.
We were riding the passions.
It was a surging love.
She was deeply immersed in love.
We were engulfed by love.
This metaphor brings into focus three aspects of love that have been men-
tioned already but which have not yet been examined in detail. They include
passivity, lack of control, and pleasantness. In the metaphor above, the
NATURAL FORCE embodies love itself and, consequently, the person car-
ried away by the flood or wind corresponds to the person in love. The person
who is carried away plays a passive role with respect to the force in the sense
that he can't help being transported. The same idea appears in love in the fol-
lowing form: The person who falls in love can't help falling in love either.
That is, according to the metaphor love is a force independent from us which
can affect us without our active participation. The metaphor also contains the
idea of lack of control. The person who is carried away by the flood or wind
has no control over the situation, it is the force that has the upper hand. Cor-
responding to this in love is the idea that the person in love is unable to func-
tion normally. Passivity and lack of control are not easy to distinguish. We
will need further conceptual metaphors to see clearly how these two notions
differ from each other with respect to love. I have mentioned pleasantness as
the third aspect captured by the NATURAL FORCE metaphor. This can be
present in the metaphor because we think of being carried away by a force
outside us as something pleasurable. Expressions like letting oneself go and
riding the passions indicate that we readily take part in this. As a matter of
fact, there are in our culture several pastimes and sporting activities which are
based on the idea that, in them, force or energy outside the human body is
used for change of location. Sailing, skiing, gliding, etc. can be mentioned as
examples.
Let us now consider these three aspects of love one by one. We can begin
with passivity. Perhaps the clearest indication that we indeed conceive of our-
selves as being passive in relation to love is that we talk about its coming: My
true love will come along one day. That is, LOVE is thought of as a MOVING
OBJECT. According to the LOVE IS A MOVING OBJECT metaphor love
comes along, while we are standing still, waiting passively for it to happen to
us. There are many other common linguistic expressions that also suggest our
90 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

passive attitude towards love: we fall in love, we fall for another person, and
we may even fall for him or her hook, line and sinker. Falling is something
that happens to us and not something that we do. A similar idea comes
through in one of the most widely used metaphors for love: LOVE IS A
PHYSICAL FORCE. According to this metaphor a person in love is like a
physical object that obeys a larger physical force. Here are some examples to
illustrate this metaphor (from Lakoff and Johnson 1980):
LOVE IS A PHYSICAL FORCE (MAGNETIC, CHEMICAL,
GRAVITATIONAL, etc.)
I could feel the electricity between us.
There were sparks.
I was magnetically drawn to her.
They are uncontrollably attracted to each other.
They gravitated to each other immediately.
His whole life revolves around her.
The atmosphere around them is always charged.
There is incredible energy in their relationship.
They lost their momentum.
The aspect of passivity is reflected, in this metaphor, by expressions like mag-
netically drawn, attracted to, gravitate to, revolve around. What all of these
examples indicate is that the object of the physical force (i.e. the person in
love) obeys a stronger, larger physical force (i.e. love), it merely undergoes
the effect of the force without having any active role in the interaction. The
object of the force cannot do anything but obey the physical force. This way
of conceptualizing love has the consequence that love is viewed as something
for which we are not responsible and in which we have no choice, just as the
object of the force cannot be responsible for what happens to it (since it is
only an object affected by a larger force) and, for the same reason, has no
alternative in its reactions to the force.
We have seen that the PHYSICAL FORCE metaphor is at the root of
the idea that the lover can't help being in love, since all he or she does is obey
a force larger than him or her. The MAGIC metaphor, which is another
metaphor for love, also contains this idea, but at the same time we can recog-
nize in it the notion that love is something that has control over us. Lakoff and
Johnson (1980) provide the following examples for this metaphor:
LOVE IS MAGIC
She cast her spell over me.
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 91

The magic is gone.

I was spellbound.
She had me hypnotized.
He has me in a trance.
I was entranced by him.
I am charmed by her.
She is bewitching.
Similarly to the PHYSICAL FORCE metaphor, what we get here is that
there is a psychological force (the magic) whose effect the person in love
undergoes. In other words, he or she can't help being in the state he or she
somehow got into. This is what we have called the passivity aspect of love.
The idea of lack of control shows up perhaps most clearly in the examples
spellbound, hypnotized, and in a trance. If I am spellbound, hypnotized or in
a trance, I am unable to function normally. With the help of the metaphor, it
is this aspect of magic that we seem to carry over to the domain of love. A per-
son in love, we believe, is a person who lacks control over the state he or she
happens to be in. A corollary of this is the belief that the more control we
have over our emotion (in this case love), the less we are in love.
Thus it seems that we find the idea that love goes together with our ina-
bility to function normally in both the NATURAL FORCE and MAGIC
metaphors. This is what I have been referring to as lack of control in our
everyday models of love. The claim that this is a part of our everyday model
gains further substance from what was said about lack of control in connec-
tion with the FIRE metaphor. In that metaphor, lack of control took the form
of one of the physiological effects of love: INTERFERENCE WITH ACCU-
RATE PERCEPTION.
Lack of control, just like intensity, seems to have degrees. Love appears
to be conceptualized as having the highest degree in this respect as well. Con-
sider the examples of the following metaphor (from Lakoff and Johnson
1980):
LOVE IS INSANITY
I am crazy about her.
She drives me out of my mind.
He constantly raves about her.
He's gone mad over her.
I'm just wild about him.
I'm insane about her.
She's nuts about him.
92 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

In this metaphor the insane person corresponds to the person in love. The
person who makes us insane is the person that we are in love with. And the
behavior of the insane person corresponds to that of the person in love. Insan-
ity is the ultimate lack of control. The insane person is not responsible for his
actions. If and when the INSANITY metaphor is applied to love, it follows
that a person in love is not responsible for what he or she does either.
In the discussion of the DEITY metaphor it was pointed out that
enthusiasm is one of the concepts that are related to love. The INSANITY
metaphor can give us further support for this claim. This is because, similarly
to LOVE, ENTHUSIASM is a concept which is also comprehended in terms
of INSANITY (cf. He's crazy about stamps). We can be enthusiastic about
people in the same way as we can be about stamps, for example. The uncon-
trolled nature of the state of insanity is extended to both. But enthusiasm is
just one characteristic of love. As we have already seen, many additional con-
ditions have to be met for a relationship to be called true, or ideal love.
Let us now briefly look at what I have called the pleasantness aspect of
love. I have mentioned in connection with the NATURAL FORCE
metaphor that according to this metaphor love is a pleasant journey. Its pleas-
antness comes from a special circumstance attaching to journeys of this kind;
namely, there is an external source that provides the energy required for the
change of location. We know, however, of many other sources of pleasure in
this culture. Of these perhaps one of the most typical is what can be called
'rapture' (or more informally, a 'high'). It is not surprising then that we also
conceive of love as rapture:
LOVE IS A RAPTURE
They were besotted with love.
He is intoxicated with love.
I am giddy with love.
She was euphoric with love.
I have been high on love for weeks.
She is drunk with love.
In this metaphor, corresponding to the person under the influence of the drug
is the person who is in love, and to the drug, love itself. But what comes
through most forcefully in this metaphor is the correspondence between the
pleasantness of the rapture or high and the pleasantness of the love experi-
ence.
The idea that love involves a lack of control is also present in the RAP-
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 93

TURE metaphor. A rapture, or high, similarly to insanity and being

spellbound, is a state in which a person is not in possession of his or her facul-
ties.
In summary, we can say that LOVE is conceptualized as a FORCE
which takes control over the person. The FORCE can be either physical
(MAGNETIC, CHEMICAL, etc.) or psychological (MAGIC). In the ideal
case there is ATTRACTION at the very beginning of the relationship (love
at first sight), which quickly reaches the point on the intensity scale, and goes
beyond this point, leading to the state of lack of control (I was spellbound,
She had me hypnotized).

4.7. The ideal model

In the light of what has been said so far, we can now try to pull together
the pieces and see what the ideal model of romantic love looks like. We have
seen that on the basis of the UNITY metaphor the lovers view themselves as
a unity composed of two complementary parts. This enables them to live the
relationship as a state of perfect harmony. Furthermore, lovers will experi-
ence the relationship as one in which they need each other on almost a biolog-
ical level. They also believe that their love is true love, that the beloved is
irreplaceable, and that their love will last forever. Love is seen by the lovers
as an unbreakable emotional bond or tie which guarantees the stability of the
relationship.
Ideal love is also characterized by a number of behavioral reactions such
as physical closeness, intimate sexual behavior, and sex. Of these, physical
closeness, intimate sexual behavior presuppose love, while sex does not. But,
as was previously noted, love does not presuppose only the former two but
also sex. With these behavioral reactions we have not yet exhausted the
whole range of manifestations that are understood as accompanying romantic
love in our ideal folk model. A further and very salient behavioral expression
of love is what can be called loving visual behavior. Again, this can be
gathered from our use of conventionalized language: Her eyes were beaming,
Love showed in his eyes, She's starry-eyed, etc.
Not only do the lovers exhibit certain behavioral reactions, but they also
experience certain physiological effects. The ones we have arrived at by
studying language include increase in body heat, increase in heart rate, blush-
ing, and interference with accurate perception.
Perhaps partly as a result of some of these physiological effects, the lov-
ers experience their love as a state of pleasant giddiness, as some kind of rap-
94 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

ture or high. Another possible source of this feeling may be sexual desire. It
was mentioned that sexual desire and sex play a significant part in our con-
temporary conception of romantic love. Some of the physiological processes
attaching to sexual desire may in part coincide with those physiological effects
that characterize our folk model of love and thus may reinforce them. (One
such shared effect can be body heat, as suggested by expressions like a
hot-blooded woman).
In addition to sexual desire, there are many other emotions and emo-
tional attitudes that are related to love on a conceptual level. As has been
seen, these include liking, respect, devotion, self-sacrifice, enthusiasm, admi-
ration, kindness, affection, care, attachment, pride, intimacy, longing,
friendship, interest and happiness. Moreover, it seems that these emotions
and emotional attitudes are related to love with varying degrees of strength.
Some of them appear to be merely associated with love, while others seem to
be inherent in the concept of love itself. What is common to them, though, is
that they are all present in the ideal case. A major characteristic of these con-
cepts is that they in fact define, or constitute, the nature of the emotional
relationship between the self and the beloved.
Love, as we have seen, is a fire which burns everything, it is a flood which
carries us away, it is a depth which swallows us up, it is a fluid which fills a con-
tainer and then overflows. That is, love's intensity is always at a maximum
high no matter which scale (like that of heat) we use to measure it. Our folk
model also contains the principle that the more intense the love is, the more
intense its physiological effects are. Thus love's intensity can increase to a
point where it leads to interference with accurate perception.
Interference with accurate perception is one of the ways that suggests
that in love we are unable to function normally. And we have seen that there
are several other physical or psychological states in which we are seriously
impaired in terms of our ability to maintain control over what we do. The con-
ceptualizations of love as insanity, magic, and rapture indicate in the clearest
way that according to our folk model love is a state characterized by a lack of
control.
In ideal love, true love comes along, and all we have to do is wait
patiently. In other words, love has an active part, while we are passive. If we
are lucky, and it does come along, the other person begins to attract us
immediately and irresistibly. The attraction (love) reaches the limit on the
intensity scale at once and then goes beyond the limit. In ordinary language
this is what we call love at first sight. There is a lack of control over love. The
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 95

intensity of love stays above the limit indefinitely, which in love means
forever. However, the self's irresistible attraction to the other is seen not just
as a result of an independent force outside us, but also as one which is capable
of supplying us with extra energy.
So far we have been concerned with the various aspects and features of
love, but have not discussed a major feature in our conception of ideal love.
This is the idea that love should be mutual. In the ideal version of romantic
love, I love you and you love me to the same degree as I do. That is, love is
not only mutual but also equal in degree. Where does the idea of love's mutu-
ality and equality come from? For an answer we have to turn to yet another
conceptual metaphor which is pervasive in our thinking:
LOVE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY (IN AN ECONOMIC
EXCHANGE)
I gave her all my love.
I didn't get much in return.
I've lost all my love for her.
He received a lot of love from her.
She rewarded his love by taking care of him.
What am I getting out of this relationship anyway?
I am putting more into this than you are.
She's invested a lot in that relationship.
This relationship isn't worth anything anymore.
It should be clear from the examples above that a large part of the concept of
LOVE is viewed as and comprehended in terms of commercial transactions.
Thanks to the metaphor, love is seen as a situation in which love functions as
a valuable commodity and the lovers as merchants exchanging goods. In a
commercial transaction the giving of goods presupposes the taking of goods
and also that the goods given must be of the same value as the goods received.
Corresponding to the former in love is the idea that love is mutual and to the
latter that the love given and received be of equal amount.
The events, states, and properties I have listed above as characterizing
the ideal case of romantic love do not of course occur all at the same time.
There seems to be some temporal order in which the events, states and prop-
erties can be arranged. If we take into account the temporal dimension of the
folk model, then ideal love looks something like the following:
1. True love comes along.
The other attracts me irresistibly.
96 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

The attraction reaches the limit point on the intensity scale at once.
2. The intensity of the attraction goes beyond the limit point.
3. I am in a state of lack of control.
Love's intensity is maximal.
I feel that my love gives me extra energy.
I view myself and the other as forming a unity.
I experience the relationship as a state of perfect harmony.
I see love as something that guarantees the stability of the relationship.
I believe that love is a need.
that this love is my true love.
that the object of love is irreplaceable.
that love lasts forever.
Love is mutual.
I experience certain physiological effects: Increase in body heat,
increase in heart rate, blushing, and interference with accurate percep-
tion.
I exhibit certain behavioral reactions: Physical closeness, intimate sexual
behavior, sex, loving visual behavior.
I experience love as something pleasant.
I define my attitude to the object of love through a number of emotions
and emotional attitudes: Liking, sexual desire, respect, devotion, self-
sacrifice, enthusiasm, admiration, kindness, affection, care, attach-
ment, intimacy, pride, longing, friendship, and interest.
I am happy.
These features seem to be the ones in terms of which our language-based
folk model of ideal love can be characterized. As can be seen, this model sets
very high standards for anyone to be truly in love. But this is in the nature of
ideal models. Ideal models are ideal because they represent goals that are vir-
tually impossible to achieve. A slightly more realistic and practicable model
of love is what we can call the 'typical model'. Let us now turn to this.

4.8. Towards the typical model

The ideal model we saw in the previous section is not the only model of
romantic love we have. Another model is what can be regarded as the typical
model. Just as the ideal model has been arrived at by examining conven-
tionalized linguistic expressions, so I will try to lay bare the typical model
through the examination of language. There will be perhaps more people
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 97

who find the concept of love as characterized in this section more familiar and
realistic than the one outlined in the previous section. To the extent that this
is true, the typical model can be said to have more social reality than the ideal.
Thus this is the kind of model one would expect sociologists to find in the
investigation of what ordinary people mean by romantic love. The language-
based typical model is likely to be closer to the model people actually use in
the course of their everyday lives. In contrast, the language-based ideal
model is one, I surmise, which, in all probability, we reserve for our 'romantic
moments'. Also, it seems more likely that the ideal model is something that
we somehow grow out of, or mature out of, as we go through our love experi-
ences. Thus, although there can be a great deal of individual variation in this
respect, on the whole, I would expect the ideal, rather than the typical, model
to be more characteristic of the way adolescents think about love. These are
of course merely conjectures and thorough empirical research would be
necessary to justify any of these claims.
According to our model of ideal love, true love comes along and we pas-
sively fall in love. The typical model does not share the myth of passivity to
the degree the ideal model would like to suggest. But the question arises:
How do we know? For an answer let us turn to a further metaphor:
LOVE IS A HIDDEN OBJECT
He sought for love in the wrong places.
His search for love wasn't successful.
She's continually looking for true love.
After many years of unsuccessful search, he eventually found love.
You're lucky to have found her.
The main message of the HIDDEN OBJECT metaphor is that love is not
something that comes along but it is something that we must go and find. In
this metaphor, the hidden object corresponds to love, or the object of love,
which stands in a metonymic relation to it (i.e. love can mean either the emo-
tion or the object of love). And the search for the hidden object corresponds
to the search for love or the object of love. Thus according to the HIDDEN
OBJECT metaphor it is not the self who is passive and who waits for the com-
ing of love, but love is passive and we try to find it.
But this is not the only difference between the ideal and typical models.
We have seen that in the ideal model love's intensity increases to the point of
losing control. This is also characteristic of the typical model. However, while
in the ideal case this point is reached immediately and without any attempt to
98 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

prevent it from happening, in the typical case we make an attempt to avoid

getting into the state of lack of control. As we shall see, this accords maxi-
mally with some of our folk beliefs concerning the emotions. But let us now
look at those linguistic expressions that suggest that we really try to avoid lack
of control over love:
LOVE IS AN OPPONENT
He tried to fight off his feelings of love.
Eventually he surrendered to his love.
She was struggling with her feelings of love.
He tried to suppress his feelings in vain.
She was overcome by love.
Love took complete control over him.
She was seized by love.
The OPPONENT metaphor is constituted by a number of correspondences
between the source domain (OPPONENT) and the target domain (LOVE).
These are the following:
Source domain: OPPONENT Target domain: LOVE
- the opponent is love
- the fight against the opponent is an attempt to avoid loss of control over
love
- losing to the opponent is getting into a state of lack of control
- winning is being successful in maintaining control over love
- surrender is giving up the attempt to maintain control and accepting love's
control over us
Thus the OPPONENT metaphor's main focus seems to be the control related
aspects of the concept; in particular, the attempt to avoid lack of control. At
this point we are confronted with a very important question: Why is it so
important for us to try to avoid a lack of control in love? Why do we try to fight
off feelings of love and why do we struggle with love? The application of the
OPPONENT metaphor would make sense and would be felt to be justified in
the case of such 'negative' emotions as, for example, anger, but in the case of
such paradigmatically 'positive' emotions as love it certainly calls for some
explanation. According to the teachings of Western civilization, we have to
keep under control such emotions as anger, desire, romantic love, etc. It
seems to me that this idea stems from a particular conception, or view of the
emotions in Western civilization. This view is based on metaphor and can be
put in the following way: PASSIONS ARE BEASTS INSIDE A PERSON
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 99

(cf. You bring out the beast in me). A special case of this metaphor also applies
to love:
LOVE IS A CAPTIVE ANIMAL
His love got out of hand.
He unleashed his love.
She gave way to her feelings of love.
He couldn't hold back his love.
She let go of her feelings.
He lost his grip on his feelings of love.
Her feelings of love broke loose.
It appears that it is the PASSIONS ARE BEASTS INSIDE A PERSON
metaphor which serves as a basis for the view that the emotions (very likely
those which we consider as 'passions') constitute the 'animal' part of the
human psyche. Possibly, it is this conception of the emotions which has led to
the belief that we have to keep our emotions under control. Interestingly, this
expectation is perhaps less severe with women. The reason for the belief that
we have to control our emotions seems to be a metaphorical consequence of
the metaphor itself. For if we cannot keep the animal inside us, it can cause
harm to others and as a result to us as well. Therefore, we are responsible for
keeping the animal inside, that is, controlling our emotions.
The LOVE IS A CAPTIVE ANIMAL metaphor works a little different-
ly. According to this metaphor, the animal is not necessarily inside us.
Rather, it seems to be outside and we try to keep it back as it tries to get away
from us. In this metaphor the animal trying to get away is love and the person
trying to keep it back is the person who is in love. Corresponding to success-
fully preventing it from getting away is the successful avoidance of losing con-
trol, and failure to keep the animal back corresponds to a loss of control over
love. To keep the animal back requires a lot of energy. Corresponding to this
is the energy needed to maintain control over love.
The CAPTIVE ANIMAL and the BEAST INSIDE A PERSON
metaphors entail some very interesting consequences that we make use of in
our thinking about love. Thus, for example, since the animal can cause harm
to others and also to ourselves, it is not desirable for us to let the animal loose.
What corresponds to this in love is that it is also undesirable for us to give up
control over love. It is perhaps this metaphorical consequence which shows
most clearly the conflict that exists between one's individual desires and the
expectations imposed on the individual by society. The individual appears to
100 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

want complete lack of control, whereas society wants him to behave in a

socially responsible manner. The same idea can perhaps be put in the follow-
ing way: The ideal model is the model of individual desires, while the typical
model involves what is expected by and offered as a model by society.
The same metaphors have, as we have seen, another metaphorical con-
sequence as well. It is that a lot of energy is needed to keep the animal inside
or stop it from getting away from us. Correspondingly, it also requires a lot
of energy to prevent love from taking control of us. Those who cannot main-
tain control over their love are considered weak. Women are believed to be
especially weak (i.e. unable to control their emotions), and the less they are
capable of controlling their emotions, the more feminine they are taken to be.
The stereotype of women being emotionally weak and men emotionally
stronger is coherent with another stereotype according to which men are
physically strong and women are physically weak. I am not interested here in
the validity of these views. What is of much more importance for my purposes
is to see how certain views in our everyday thinking about the world correlate
with each other. It appears that a view of women which arises from a
metaphor is maximally motivated by, or is based on another (non-metaphor-
ical) view we have of women. The widespread belief that women are emo-
tionally weak is supported by the belief that women are also physically weak.
It is perhaps not wholly mistaken to see in this another example of how our
emotional world is based on, or has been created on the analogy of how we
see ourselves in less abstract realms.
The related concepts that can be found in the ideal model are also pre-
sent in the typical model. The list of these concepts has to be augmented by
two additional concepts, jealousy and loyalty, or faithfulness, which do not
have a place in the ideal model because they simply do not arise in the case
of ideal love. The conceptual relatedness of LOVE and JEALOUSY gains
linguistic expression in the proverb: "Love is never without jealousy" (The
Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs, 1983). One possible explanation of this
relationship can be that, as we have seen, we conceptualize the object of love
as a valuable object and love as a valuable commodity. Jealousy, in this
respect, can be defined as demanding, or claiming a person's love for oneself.
LOYALTY and FAITHFULNESS are closely linked to JEALOUSY.
Given the definition of jealousy above, we can say that loyalty is not giving
oneself and one's love to a person outside the love relationship. Most people
take loyalty to be a precondition for love. This view is often expressed in the
slogan "If you are not faithful to a person, you don't really love him" or in
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 101

another proverb:
"Faithfulness is a sister of love" (The Penguin Dictionary of
Proverbs, 1983).
We are not surprised, in fact we find it natural, if after a while love's
intensity (its amount, heat, degree of closeness, etc.) goes down. There are a
number of conventionalized linguistic expressions that are used to indicate
this change. Thus we find expressions used for this purpose in the FIRE
metaphor: The old-time fire is gone, The fiery passion died down and gave way
to warm affection, etc. What both examples suggest is that the intensity of fire
decreases and as a result, at least according to our folk knowledge of physics,
the temperature goes down too. The scorching, all-consuming fire becomes
a friendly fire that radiates warmth. This change corresponds to the process
in love that we often put as love turns into affection. ROMANTIC LOVE is
represented in our conceptual system as HEAT, while AFFECTION is con­
ceptualized as WARMTH.
We have already seen linguistic evidence for the claim that romantic love
is viewed as hot. In addition to the FIRE metaphor, it was pointed out that,
at least in our language-based folk model of love, love is understood as being
accompanied by the physiological effect of body heat; that is, in a fiery or wild
love affair our body temperature is assumed to become hot. However, in the
case of affection, as the examples below indicate, we reach only warmth on
the heat scale:
There was a warm glow inside.
It was warm affection.
She feels warm all over when her husband comes home from work.
They created a warm family home for themselves and their children.
Hearth and home.
She wasn't worth warming up to.
These examples stand in a metonymic relationship with the concept of
AFFECTION. This means that with the help of WARMTH we can make
reference to AFFECTION. We have already seen a similar case in the dis­
cussion of the behavioral reaction PHYSICAL CLOSENESS. Now it
appears that we find a general metonymic principle also in the case of
physiological effects:
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF AN EMOTION STAND FOR
THE EMOTION.
This principle holds both for love and affection. With respect to the
physiological effect INCREASE IN BODY TEMPERATURE, love seems
102 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

to go together with HEAT, and affection with WARMTH. Of course, to the

extent that AFFECTION is a part of ROMANTIC LOVE, warmth can also
be used to indicate romantic love.
So far I have tried to argue that according to our language-based folk
model of love, love's intensity goes down as a natural course of events. This
is when we talk about wild passions turning into warm affection. It is impor­
tant to stress that this change occurs of its own accord, and not as a result of
something external (though, of course, this may also happen). This is why our
reaction to this change is acceptance and resignation. Another point to
emphasize is that this change does not in the least imply the end of love, but
only a drop from heat to warmth. But of course love can cease altogether, and
to conceptualize this we can also employ the heat scale. If love is viewed as hot
and affection is associated with warmth, then it is only natural that the cessa­
tion of love is conceptualized as cold. Here are some examples:
Their relationship has cooled recently.
Why are you so cold to me?
This relationship is getting lukewarm.
This is not to say, however, that only HEAT can be used for comprehending
this aspect of love. Another aspect that can be utilized for this purpose is
CLOSENESS, as the example suggests: We are growing apart.
In the examples above there are expressions like home, family, children,
etc. These expressions point to the concept of marriage as it is conceived of
in our culture. LOVE and MARRIAGE seem to be concepts that are related
in interesting ways in the typical model of love. First of all, it appears that in
the typical model love ends in marriage. Moreover, the conventionalized lan­
guage we use to talk about this aspect of love indicates that love does not sim­
ply end in marriage but does so in a special way. The use of the words culmi­
nate and fulfill in the following sentences suggests that over and above ending
in it, marriage is the highest, the most desired, point—indeed the fulfillment
— of love: Love must culminate in marriage, Their love was fulfilled in mar­
riage. In the sentences the use of the verbs culminate and fulfill can be
regarded as completely conventionalized. Another piece of conventionalized
language, a proverb, also seems to give credence to the view that the peak of
love in everyday thinking is marriage: "Love is a flower which turns into fruit
at marriage" (The Penguin Dictionary Proverbs, 1983). Curiously enough,
however, we have to notice that there appears to be some positive correlation
between the decrease in love's intensity and marriage. More specifically, it
looks like love's intensity begins to go down at around the time when mar-
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 103

riage appears on the scene. In the examples we have seen, the concepts that
have to do with marriage begin to show up when love's intensity drops from
HOT to WARM. There is no knowing, at least using our methodology,
exactly when this takes place; it can be the time of marriage, the end of the
honeymoon, or maybe some time after this. What is important, however, is
that marriage seems to give rise to the decrease of love's intensity. There is
further linguistic evidence to show that this is really the case. Consider the
sentence They have been married for ten years now, and yet they are still wildly
in love with each other. The word yet could not be used in the sentence if it did
not express a state of affairs which is contrary to our expectations. The expec­
tation then is that a fiery and wild love affair is supposed to turn into quiet and
warm affection after marriage.

4.9. The typical model

In the previous section we have surveyed the most important linguisti­
cally accessible differences between the ideal and the typical models. We are
now in a position to put together the pieces and describe the typical model in
detail. It should by now be clear that this model has a much more clear-cut
temporal structure than the ideal model. Taking this into account, our lan­
guage-based typical model could be given as follows:
1. I search for true love.
I find true love.
The other attracts me irresistibly.
The attraction soon reaches the limit on the intensity scale.
2. I try to keep control of my emotions (the attraction): That is, I make an
effort to prevent love's intensity from going beyond the limit.
3. The effort is unsuccessful, I lose control over love: Love's intensity goes
beyond the limit.
4. I am in a state of lack of control.
Love's intensity is maximal.
I feel that my love gives me extra energy.
I view myself and the other as forming a unity.
I experience the relationship as a state of perfect harmony.
I see love as something that guarantees the stability of the relationship.
I believe that love is a need.
that this love is my true love.
that the object of my love is irreplaceable.
Love is mutual.
104 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

I experience certain physiological effects: Increase in body heat,

increase in heart rate, blushing, and interference with accurate percep­
tion.
I exhibit certain behavioral reactions: Physical closeness, intimate sexual
behavior, sex, and loving visual behavior.
I experience love as something pleasant.
I define my attitude to the object of love through a variety of emotions
and emotional attitudes: liking, sexual desire, respect, devotion, self-
sacrifice, enthusiasm, admiration, kindness, affection, care, attach­
ment, intimacy, pride, longing, jealousy, faithfulness, friendship, and
interest.
I am happy.
5. Love is fulfilled in marriage.
Love's intensity decreases, it goes below the limit: Love turns into affec­
tion.
It seems then that the typical model retains many features of the ideal model,
but at the same time there are also major differences. The two main points of
divergence involve control and marriage. The typical model is supplemented
by an attempt to control love and by love's culminating in marriage. In addi­
tion, our passivity in waiting for love is replaced by our search for love. In the
typical model we don't find the (metaphorical) belief that love lasts forever
either. It is replaced by the idea that wild romantic love turns into peaceful
affection in a natural way. As a matter of fact, it is debatable to what extent,
or whether at all, the other beliefs (those in stage 4) form a part of the typical
model. Perhaps we may even go so far as to question the presence in the typ­
ical model of everything which results from the UNITY metaphor. It may
well be that everything that this metaphor contributes to our idea of romantic
love is only relevant to the ideal case. Unfortunately, at present it seems that
our methodology does not help us decide these issues. Nevertheless, even if
we leave out the products of the UNITY metaphor from the model above, the
typical model will remain a sufficiently rich conceptualization of some of our
love experiences.
I feel that we cannot dismiss the possibility that there is in the typical
model a feature that I have not talked about so far. Intuitively it perhaps
makes sense to believe that in the typical case the beloved does not return the
self's love at once or to the same degree as the self does. Maybe the typical
case includes a situation in which one person conquers another, or one in
 THE CONCEPT OF ROMANTIC LOVE 105

which the otherplays hard to get. Conquest corresponds to 'not falling in love
with the other immediately' (this is why we have to conquer him/her) and
hard to get to 'not falling in love to the same degree' (if the person fell in love
to the same degree he or she would not play hard to get). In the case of con­
quest, the typical model would change in the following way: I fall in love, but
the other person does not fall in love with me, and as a result I make attempts
to have the other fall in love with me too. I succeed, and all the rest continues
according to model as specified. This interpretation would be made possible
by the expression conquer in particular and the LOVE IS WAR metaphor in
general. This metaphor is discussed by Kövecses (to appear). The expression
play hard to get, which comes from the metaphor LOVE IS A GAME (see
also Kövecses, to appear), would necessitate a slightly different change. In
this case I fall in love and the other person may also fall in love, but he or she
does not show her emotions. Eventually, however, he or she may give in too
and things go on as described.
The possibility of these alternatives in the model raises a very significant
methodological issue. Namely, the problem is that we have at our disposal
linguistic material which may give rise to more than one distinct typical model
(at least on the basis of my intuitions), and we have no linguistic test that we
could use to decide which one of them is the typical model. Until such a lin­
guistic test is found, the methodology suffers from a major weakness. Or else,
it may turn out that we indeed have more than one typical model. Perhaps to
decide on either of these issues, we will need the help of sociologists and
social psychologists.
5. IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF CONCEPTUAL STRUC­
TURE

5.1. The structure of a concept

The study of the three emotion concepts, ANGER, PRIDE and LOVE,
suggests that at least some concepts have a structure with at least the follow­
ing parts:
a. a system of conceptual metonymies related to the concept in ques­
tion
b. a system of conceptual metaphors related to the concept in question
 a set of concepts linked with the concept in question
d. a category of cognitive models, some of which, the prototypical
ones, representing the concept in question as we commonly think
of it
Before I go into the various issues that emerge from this way of looking at the
structure of a concept, let me briefly illustrate each of the four parts with
examples from the foregoing analyses. Firstly, we have seen that related to
the concepts of ANGER, PRIDE and LOVE is a number of conceptual
metonymies: INCREASED BLOOD PRESSURE, ERECT POSTURE,
and BODY HEAT, respectively. Secondly, there is a group of conceptual
metaphors that seem to structure these concepts. For example, the concepts
of FIRE, CAPTIVE ANIMAL, NATURAL FORCE, NUTRIENT, PHYS­
ICAL UNITY, VALUABLE COMMODITY, etc. each provide partial
structuring for the concept of LOVE. Thirdly, in the case of LOVE again, we
have found that a number of other concepts are related to LOVE. These
include FRIENDSHIP, RESPECT, INTIMACY, AFFECTION, DESIRE,
ENTHUSIASM, etc. And fourthly, we have seen that the concepts of
ANGER, PRIDE and LOVE can each be partially characterized by one or
(in the case of LOVE) two prototypical cognitive models and a large number
of non-prototypical ones.
Maybe the most important claim that I would like to make is that we
need to take into account at least these elements if we wish to describe the
108 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

structure of ANGER, PRIDE and LOVE in a way that represents the com­
plexities of (psychological) reality. Most current theories of lexical meaning
in linguistics see the structure of a concept as being definable by a set of sense
components. These sense components are viewed as 'basic' concepts that
recur in various parts of the lexicon, and the more often they show up as parts
of other concepts the more universal and basic they are taken to be. We
could, according to this analysis, build up the concept of ANGER, for exam­
ple, out of such sense components as FEELING, INTENSE, DISPLEA­
SURE, yielding: 'a feeling of intense displeasure'. In the light of the three
studies above, I believe that this way of analyzing the structure of a concept
suffers from several weaknesses. Some of these weaknesses have been men­
tioned in the study of anger and love, and they repeat, implicitly or explicitly,
criticisms by others. We are now, however, in a position to address the issues
that were raised in chapter 1. These issues have to do with some additional
weaknesses of componential analysis and the need for considering reference
as just as important a part of lexical meaning as sense.
To begin with, it can be claimed that, against the background of concep­
tual structure as given in a, b, c, and d, the structure of a concept as defined
by sense components is grossly oversimplified. Intuitively, one feels that a
definition in terms of some basic and atomic concepts does not do justice to
what we usually mean by and know of a concept. The metonymies, metaphors
and related concepts lend some of our categories a much richer texture than
what is captured by sense components. One could counter this by saying that
the goals of the two approaches are different, and consequently the means
used to achieve these goals are different; and that componential analysis
serves the purposes to which it is put in a satisfactory way. But this does not
seem to be true. It appears that componential analysis is not a satisfactory
way of handling some fundamental semantic phenomena. In the next
chapter I will try to show that it does not enable us to account for polysemy,
collocation and lexical fields. The issue of oversimplicity will be raised again
in another connection in this chapter.
The second point is related to the first. One source of our impression that
componential analysis oversimplifies matters is its insistence on the smallest
possible number of sense components in the characterization of meaning. I
have suggested that the structure of a concept like LOVE consists of concep­
tual metonymies, conceptual metaphors, related concepts, and a category of
cognitive models which includes some prototypical models and a number of
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE 109

nonprototypical ones. Of these four parts what resembles most the structure
of a concept as it is conceived of on the basis of componential analysis is what
has been called prototypical cognitive models. Indeed, one could say that the
models of ANGER, PRIDE and LOVE are simply extended feature (com­
ponential) analyses of these concepts. To some extent this is true. These mod­
els do employ features as well. However, there are also some major differ­
ences. Perhaps the most conspicuous difference is in the number of features
employed in the two approaches. Componential analysis attempts to capture
meaning in terms of a minimal number of components, whereas I have used
extensive but structured lists of features in the characterization of ANGER,
PRIDE and LOVE. In other words, in my analysis the features cohere into
more or less complete but not infinitely long folk models.
A third point has to do with folk models. The analysis of sense in compo­
nential analysis can be seen as an attempt to arrive at those conceptual fea­
tures which are objectively real; i.e. features which the objects, states or
events possess in and of themselves, independently of human beings. These
are then features in terms of which an objectively-oriented scientific
methodology would like to characterize and define objects, states or events.
There are two kinds of evidence in the present study that considerably
weaken the claim that sense components should be objectively real. First,
they are not objectively real in the sense that, as Lakoff and Johnson (1980)
argue, they often arise via conceptual metaphors, and hence they are the pro­
ducts of how the human mind works. I will take up this issue in section 2 in this
chapter. The second kind of evidence is that the features that characterize
ANGER, PRIDE and LOVE do not come from 'scientific' theories but arise
from how ordinary people in everyday life think of and interpret their experi­
ences. In this work I have called conceptual models and interpretations of this
kind folk models. We can take a concrete example to illustrate the point. We
have seen in the case of LOVE, for example, that one of the ingredients of
love in our folk model is that we experience it as something that happens to
us; i.e., we have a passive attitude towards it. However, some scientific
theories of love may inform us that this not what is really going on. Solomon,
for example, tells us that in reality we create love and do not undergo it (Sol­
omon 1982). That is to say, according to this scientific model what is really the
case is that we have an active, rather than passive, attitude towards love. But
most people do not seem to be worried about what features scientific models
of love find important and keep falling (!) in love in accordance with their folk
models. That is, they regard passivity as one of the features of love. On the
110 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

whole, in a large number of life situations folk models seem to play a more
decisive role than objectively real scientific characterizations.
Fourthly, another weakness of concentrating on sense to the exclusion of
reference is that we cannot account for the following dilemma: If we accept
componential definitions as a way of representing the structure of concepts,
then we should have only a very limited range of experiences corresponding
to the concepts in question. That is, a given conceptual structure as rep­
resented by a minimal number of sense components should make available
for us a very narrow range of fairly simple and undifferentiated experiences.
Thus there appears to be a big gap, on componential analysis, between
thought and experience. For example, with respect to anger we should only
be able to experience the 'feeling of intense displeasure' and with respect to
love, depending on which definition we choose, say, 'a profoundly tender,
passionate affection for a person of the opposite sex'. But, as we have seen,
there is much more going on in both anger and romantic love. The richness
of what is involved in experiencing anger is given in the prototypical model of
anger and, as we have seen, the concept of LOVE involves even more com­
plexities. The dilemma arises in componential analysis because componential
analysis overemphasizes and takes for granted a distinction between sense
and reference, and claims that the proper domain of the study of lexical
meaning is sense. The notion of sense corresponds to the notion of concept,
as defined by a minimal number of sense components and reference is a
relationship between a given aspect of the world and a corresponding concept
which codes most of our experiences as regards this aspect of the world. Thus
the idea of 'concept as sense' cannot ensure a fit between thought (concept)
and experience. If, however, we conceive of a concept as the 'concept of ref­
erence', then the match between thought and experience can be captured.
This relationship between concept and experience is stated succinctly by
Winch (1958): "The concepts we have settle for us the form of the experience
we have of the world". (Winch 1958: 15).
The fit between conceptual structure and experiential structure (i.e.
what we experience) as it is conceived of in this work is made possible by
allowing all the four parts — metonymy, metaphor, related concepts and cog­
nitive models — to play a role in the structure of concepts. As we have seen
throughout, they contribute to a large extent to our understanding and
experience of anger, pride and love. Without taking all of them into account,
we could not explain the wide range of experiences we have of anger, pride
and love. Since componential analysis has a place for these parts in the struc-
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE 111

ture of concepts only to a very limited degree, it cannot match conceptual

structure with experiential structure.
So far I may have created the impression that the four parts in the struc­
ture of concepts like ANGER, PRIDE and LOVE are unrelated. This is not
so. First of all, there is global interconnectedness among the parts in the sense
that the metonymies, metaphors, related concepts can, in some form, all be
found in the prototypical cognitive models. We have seen how the various
conceptual metonymies, conceptual metaphors and related concepts I have
discussed all map onto a part of the prototypical scenario, and how they
jointly converge on that scenario. This enables us to show exactly how the
various metonymies, metaphors and related concepts are related to one
another, and how they function together to help characterize a single concept
like ANGER, PRIDE or LOVE. This is something that Lakoff and Johnson
(1980) were unable to do.
Secondly, any two parts of a concept as characterized here are related to
each other in interesting ways. Of these perhaps the most important kind of
relationship can be found between conceptual metonymies and conceptual
metaphors. Before I discuss this issue and the issue of the metaphorical
nature of the concepts under investigation, let me briefly survey and sum­
marize the main points that have emerged in connection with the prototypical
models.
The most obvious, and perhaps the least interesting, feature of the mod­
els is that they display the events and properties that they are composed of in
a temporal order. This temporal dimension seems to be more elaborate in
some cases than in others. The model which is the most elaborate in this
respect is that of anger and what I have called typical love (both were found
to comprise 5 stages). Pride and the model of ideal love show less structuring
in terms of time. Obviously, not all concepts have a temporal dimension. The
cognitive models of objects (entities) like CHAIR and GUN or substances
(mass entities) like WATER and SAND or properties like RED and HON­
EST will not have a time aspect built into them. Although, for example, anger
is not a mass entity like water, it is conceptualized as such. Consequently, as
we have seen, it takes the grammar of mass nouns.
The study of LOVE has shown that there can be more than one prototyp­
ical cognitive model for a concept. It has been found necessary to distinguish
the ideal model from the typical one. The idea that prototype effects may
arise as a result of various types of models for categories comes from Lakoff
(1987). Lakoff distinguishes between social stereotypes, typical examples,
112 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

ideals, paragons, etc. for categories. These are all cases that give rise to pro­
totype effects. The importance of this idea for the purposes of this study is
that we do not need to provide an indefinitely long list of features for
categories like LOVE. Instead, we will have one model for love which,
among other things, is characterized by, for example, the idea that love lasts
for ever (the ideal model) and another model which, among other things, is
characterized by the idea that wild passions turn into warm affection (the typ­
ical model). For componential analysts one of the rationales for breaking
down the meaning of a category into a minimal number of sense components
(i.e. just enough components to be able to distinguish one meaning from
another) is that the other solution involves ending up with an indefinitely long
list of features, which is clearly undesirable. This is, it is claimed, because
there is no natural stopping point in listing the characteristic features of
objects, states and events and thus this undertaking becomes an attempt to
describe the entirety of the world of experience. As Leech (1982: 13) writes
in this connection "... any characteristic of the referent... may contribute to
the connotative meaning of the expression which denotes it". But as we have
seen, the typical model of anger includes only so much, the typical model of
love can similarly be characterized by a 'human-sized' list of features, and
ideal love is also describable in terms of a relatively short, though not neces­
sarily minimal, list of components. In other words, our folk models like typi­
cal examples, ideals, stereotypes, etc. delimit to a considerable degree the
range and number of features that, for us, comprise a category. Thus we will
not need an indefinitely long list of features for the characterization of a cat­
egory and we will not need to jam all the features of a category, like those of
ROMANTIC LOVE for example, into a single componential formula.
Instead, we can have an ideal model and/or a typical model and/or a
stereotype, etc., and each will have, in additioin to the possible overlaps, its
own distinctive features. By opting for this solution we can arrive at cognitive
models for categories which do not have unduly long lists of features and are
not composed of a minimal number of features either but which reflect faith­
fully what people mean by these categories.
Another feature of the prototypical cognitive models of anger, pride and
love is that they seem to be essentially composed of a number of entities and
a number of predicates. The entities for love include the self, the beloved and
love itself, and for anger they include the self, the target, the wrongdoer, etc.
Part of what makes one model a model of love rather than that of anger, and
vice versa, lies in the differences in the number and kinds of entities that make
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE 113

up particular models. In this respect, anger seems to be more elaborate than

love. It allows the participants in the anger scenario to play more than one
role.
Prototypes often involve clusters of conditions and the prototypical
anger scenario is no exception. The clustering can be seen explicitly in iden­
tity conditions such as: Victim = Self, Target = Wrongdoer, Offence =
Immediate Cause, etc. When these identity conditions do not hold, we get
nonprototypical cases. For example, with righteous indignation, the victim
does not have to equal the self. In the case of an indirect cause, the offence
does not equal the immediate cause. Usually the act of retribution and the
disappearance of anger go together, but in the case of spontaneous cessation
and insatiable anger, that is not the case. And in the Don't-get-mad-get-even
case, angry behavior is avoided, and is therefore not identical to the act of
retribution. Thus part of what makes a prototypical scenario prototypical is
that it has a conflation of conditions which are not conflated in nonprototyp­
ical cases.
The predicates in the prototypical cognitive models can be factored into
two types: Properties and relations. Properties characterize entities and rela­
tions hold between the entities. Examples of relations and properties are: An
offence 'displeases' the self, the offence 'causes' anger to come into existence,
the intensity of anger, pride or love is 'high', the beloved is 'beautiful', I
'value' myself highly, I 'form a unity' with the beloved, etc. 'Displease',
'cause', 'value' and 'form a unity' exemplify relations, while 'beautiful' and
'high' illustrate properties. Predicates like these come closest to what we
think of as sense components, or features, in componential analysis. This
means that the kind of analysis that I have been suggesting in this study is not
a complete breakaway from componential analysis. To be sure, there are
overlaps between the two approaches, but as we have seen throughout, there
are also major differences.
A tentative third category of elements that make up cognitive models is
what I would like to call cognitive attitudes. Their presence in the models is
especially noticeable in the case of love. I 'believe' that love lasts forever, I
'view' myself and the beloved as forming a unity, I 'feel' that love gives me
extra energy, I 'experience' the relationship as a state of perfect harmony,
etc. The various entities and predicates seem to form the content of these cog­
nitive attitudes. For example, the entities 'self and 'beloved' plus the relation
'form a unity with' serve as the content of the cognitive attitude 'view'. If cog­
nitive attitudes like these are indeed a part of prototypical cognitive models,
114 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE. AND LOVE

then we can have an even more refined way, or means, of specifying the struc­
ture of a concept. We could say that cognitive models consist of three ele­
ments: Cognitive attitudes, entities and predicates. Differences between var­
ious categories could then be seen as resulting from not only differences in the
number and kind of entities and predicates but also from the kinds of cogni­
tive attitudes characterizing the categories and from their particular config­
urations in the models.
Related concepts appear in the prototypical models as ways of defining
certain relationships betweeen the entities; for example, in the case of love,
between the self and the beloved, in the case of pride, between the self and
the source of pride. Thus, in this respect, they are similar to relations, and can
perhaps be taken as belonging to the set of predicates. As we have seen in the
discussion of love, related concepts can be of two kinds: Inherent concepts
and associated concepts (with perhaps a middle ground between them).
Inherent concepts are the ones which must be minimally present in order for
us to use a category appropriately, and associated concepts are those which
may be absent but are presupposed (in a loose sense of 'presuppose') in the
prototypical cases by the concept in question. Inherent concepts also come
close to what a 'componentialisť would consider sense components in terms
of which a category can be defined. Some objections have been raised to the
analysis of meaning in terms of inherent concepts alone in the chapter on love
and in this chapter. However, the fact that I have objections to the idea that
meaning is defineable in terms of inherent concepts alone should not be taken
as implying that I do not see an important place for inherent concepts in the
analysis of meaning. The examination of love has shown that these concepts
are very much a part of the structure of categories.
As we have seen for all the three concepts under study, the conceptual
metonymies appear in the prototypical cognitive models as behavioral reac­
tions and physiological effects. I suspect that these 'outward' manifestations
of 'internal' states must form a crucial and integral part of the cognitive mod­
els associated with internal states in general. The reasons for this, as can be
determined in the light of the three studies, are twofold. In the discussion of
polysemy it will be seen that it is not possible to give an adequate account of
polysemy without taking into account these behavioral reactions and
physiological effects. The other reason is that conceptual metonymies often
serve to make concepts what Lakoff and Johnson (1980) call 'embodied'. We
have seen that the conceptual metonymy BODY HEAT STANDS FOR
ANGER provides the experiential basis for the ANGER IS HOT FLUID IN
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE 115

A CONTAINER and ANGER IS FIRE conceptual metaphors, the

metonymy PHYSICAL CLOSENESS STANDS FOR LOVE for the LOVE
IS A UNITY metaphor, ERECT POSTURE STANDS FOR PRIDE for the
PROUD PERSON IS UP metaphor, etc. These conceptual metonymies give
us understandings of abstract concepts in terms of direct physical experience.
Since the metonymies provide experiential motivation for the metaphors and
the metaphors map onto a particular cognitive model which specifies the cor­
responding concept, the concept, no matter how abstract, will be anchored to
direct physical experience via the metonymies. That is to say, the concept will
be embodied rather than just a disembodied abstraction and thus will be
available for experiential, and not just intellectual, understanding. This argu­
ment requires us to give a more detailed account of how metaphors map onto
a cognitive model than has been given so far.

5.2. Metaphorical aspects of concepts

If one looks only at the ontology (the entities and predicates) of the pro­
totypical scenarios associated with anger, pride and love, it is tempting to
think
- that the concepts of ANGER, PRIDE and LOVE exist and are under­
stood independently of any metaphors.
- that the ontology of anger, pride and love and the category of scenarios
represent the literal meaning of anger, pride and love.
- that metaphors do no more than provide ways of talking about the
ontology of anger, pride and love.
These ideas entail the following:
- The elements of the anger, pride and love ontologies really, literally
exist, independent of any metaphors.
A brief examination of the ontology of anger, pride and love reveals that
this is simply not the case. In the anger ontology, for example, anger exists as
an independent entity, capable of exerting force and controlling a person.
This is what Lakoff and Johnson (1980) refer to as an 'ontological metaphor'.
In this case it would be the ANGER IS AN ENTITY metaphor. A person's
anger does not really, literally exist as an independent entity, though we do
comprehend it metaphorically as such. In the ontology, there is an intensity
scale for anger, which is understood as being oriented UP, by virtue of the
MORE IS UP metaphor. This is what Lakoff and Johnson call an Orienta-
tional metaphor'. The intensity scale has a limit associated with it — another
ontological metaphor. As has been noted, anger is understood as being capa-
116 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

ble of exerting force and capable of taking control of a person. The FORCE
and CONTROL here are also metaphorical, based on physical force and
physical control. The anger ontology also borrows certain elements from the
ontology of retributive justice: Offence and retribution, with their scales of
intensity and the concept of balance. These are also metaphorical, with
metaphorical BALANCE based on physical balance. In short, the anger
ontology is largely constituted by metaphor. As we have seen, the concept of
CONTROL can also be found in the typical model of love, where it emerges
via the LOVE IS AN OPPONENT and LOVE IS A CAPTIVE ANIMAL
metaphors. The concept of INTENSITY is also present in both pride and
love, and is also based on physical intensity. VALUE is a predicate in the pro­
totypical model of pride (in 'S values himself highly'). A person does not
really, literally have a value, but by virtue of the PEOPLE ARE VALU­
ABLE COMMODITIES metaphor we have integrated this predicate into
our thinking about people. And finally, to take another example from love,
two people who are in love do not really, literally form a unity, but they do
comprehend their relationship metaphorically as such. In sum, in most, or
perhaps all, of these examples we seem to understand at least certain aspects
of ANGER, PRIDE and LOVE in terms of the physical world or, at any rate,
in terms of those aspects of the world that can be viewed as more physical than
anger, pride or love is. Or, in another formulation that I will clarify shortly
below, it could be said that some aspects of the concepts of ANGER, PRIDE
and LOVE have been created on the analogy of certain physical aspects of the
world. These formulations suggest that the ontologies corresponding to
ANGER, PRIDE and LOVE are to a large extent constituted by metaphor­
ically understood/created concepts like ENTITY, INTENSITY, LIMIT,
FORCE, CONTROL, VALUE, UNITY, etc.
These concepts, together with the concepts of ANGER, PRIDE and
LOVE, form what can be termed constitutive metaphors, which, if spelled
out fully, can be stated in the following ways: ANGER is understood as
being, or is created to be, an ENTITY, ANGER and LOVE are understood
as having, or are created to have, a CONTROL aspect; the PROUD PER­
SON is understood as having, or is created to have, a VALUE; etc. Let us
now examine these constitutive metaphors. Their source domains —
ENTITY, INTENSITY, LIMIT, FORCE, CONTROL, VALUE, UNITY,
etc. — all seem to be superordinate concepts, that is, concepts that are fairly
abstract. By contrast, the principal metaphors that map onto the anger, pride
and love ontologies — HOT FLUID, FIRE, INSANITY, BURDEN,
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE 117

STRUGGLE, ECONOMIC VALUE, PHYSICL UNITY (like a BOND),

etc. — appear to be basic-level concepts that are linked more directly to
experience, concepts that are information-rich and rich in conventional men­
tal imagery. Let us call the metaphors that are based on such concepts 'basic-
level metaphors'. I would like to suggest that most of our understanding of
anger, pride and love comes via these basic-level metaphors. For example,
the HOT FLUID and FIRE metaphors give us an understanding of what kind
of entity anger is and the STRUGGLE and OPPONENT metaphors for
anger and love, respectively, give us a sense of what is involved in controlling
anger and love. Without these metaphors, our understanding of anger, pride
and love would be extremely impoverished, to say the least. One is tempted
to ask which is more primary: The constitutive metaphors or the basic-level
ones. My intuitions tell me that the basic-level ones are more primary. It
seems to me that we could not see ANGER as having a CONTROL aspect if
we had not conceptualized it in terms of OPPONENT IN A STRUGGLE, or
we could not see ANGER and LOVE as having an INTENSITY aspect if we
had not conceptualized them in terms of HOT FLUID, FIRE, INSANITY,
FLOOD, etc., or we could not see LOVE as being a UNITY if we had not
conceptualized it in terms of PHYSICAL UNITY, etc. Of course, this is a his­
torical perspective on the issue, and if we view it in a synchronic perspective
the question loses its relevance. Historically, the basic-level concepts can, in
my view, be said to have partially created the concepts of ANGER, PRIDE
and LOVE. Looked at from a synchronic perspective, perhaps all we should
say is that both the constitutive and basic-level metaphors exist, and have
their separate functions: The basic-level metaphors allow us to comprehend
and draw inferences about these concepts, using our knowledge of familiar,
well-structured domains. The constitutive metaphors provide the bulk of the
anger, pride and love ontologies.
So far in this study I have only been concerned with cases in which a more
abstract domain is understood in terms of a physical domain. Examples in the
case of, say, anger are fire, insanity, burden, vicious animal, etc. The con­
cepts of FIRE, INSANITY, BURDEN, etc. are familiar and relatively well-
structured concepts which are used to understand (and create) aspects of such
abstract, and hence less familiar and well-structured, concepts as ANGER.
But the opposite process can also take place. This is when we use an adjective
like raging in such expressions as raging storm to describe storms.
But this gives us a problem. If it is true that, on the whole, we use rela­
tively physical domains for the comprehension of more abstract domains, and
118 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

this is the primary function of conceptual metaphors, then this 'reverse'

metaphorization should not occur at all. In other words, the metaphorical
process that goes from the more abstract to the more physical should not take
place since it does not perform any important (cognitive) function that would
motivate its application. (The question of what 'non-primary' functions con­
ceptual metaphors can have will be discussed shortly). We can go about solv­
ing this apparent problem along the following lines.
The example cited above is not an isolated metaphorical expression but
forms a part of a system of metaphorical expressions. Consider the following
conceptual metaphor:
A STORM IS AN ANGRY PERSON
It was a violent storm.
The sea was lashing the rocks.
The fierce wind caused a lot of damage.
The angry waves calmed down as the dawn came.
We had a raging storm last night.
The savage storm whipped up the waves.
There were roaring winds.
The problem that this metaphor should not exist but it does ceases to be a
problem if we consider the following. Primary metaphorization (in which the
source domain is more physical than the target domain) is motivated by the
cognitive function of understanding the more abstract in terms of the more
concrete. This is possible because physical domains usually have, for us, a
clearer structure than abstract domains. However, by virtue of structuring
abstract domains in terms of metonymies and metaphors (which involve
physical domains), we also get a fairly clear understanding of the abstract
domains. The abstract domains structured and understood in this way can in
turn be used to structure and understand further the physical domains that
were originally employed to structure and understand the abstract ones. Let
us call this process 'secondary metaphorization'. The processes of primary
and secondary metaphorization can be seen as mutually enriching our under­
standing of the world. Domain A is used to understand domain  and con­
sequently  can be used to understand A.
The conceptual metaphor above is an instance of secondary metaphoriza­
tion. Historically again, it must have been preceded, at least on this analysis,
by instances of primary metaphorization. In this case the corresponding prim­
ary metaphor is ANGER IS A STORM:
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE 119

ANGER IS A STORM
After the row she stormed out of the room
Waves of anger swept over him.
We had a tempes tous meeting.
He thundered with rage.
His face clouded over with anger.
After that stormy conversation, he wouldn't even talk to me.
You could see rage surging up in him.
The experimental basis of this metaphor is ANGRY BEHAVIOR, which
stands metonymically for ANGER. Angry behavior includes INSANE
BEHAVIOR, AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR and PHYSICAL AGITA­
TION, this last one also characterizing the first two. What is common to these
forms of behavior is UNCONTROLLED MOVEMENT. It is this which
serves as a basis for applying the concept of STORM to ANGER and that of
ANGER to STORM.
It should be noted that experiential bases for metaphors are not to be
taken as similarities, in the ordinary sense, between a source and a target
domain. Possibly we would not see any similarity between a storm and anger
if we did not have the STORMS ARE ANGRY PERSONS metaphor. How­
ever, the metonymies corresponding to the experiential bases provide
enough motivation for us to accept the conceptual metaphors as natural.
It can be noticed that there is a difference in the style of the examples
given for primary and secondary metaphors. Examples of secondary
metaphors usually have a distinctly literary flavor: The expressions in the sec­
ondary metaphor A STORM IS AN ANGRY PERSON involving anger
sound what we would normally call poetic, or imaginative, or fanciful in com­
parison to the examples in the ANGER IS A STORM primary metaphor. To
account for this, we can bring in the notion of 'rhetorical function' for
metaphors. As we have seen, this rhetorical function does not play a very
important part in primary metaphorization whose crucial function is under­
standing. In secondary metaphorization, however, we can see a strengthening
of the rhetorical function — though the purpose of (further) understanding
an already well-structured domain is not lost completely either. Since the
target domains of secondary metaphors are typically already well-structured
and familiar domains, in these metaphors there is less emphasis on the cogni­
tive function of understanding. The result is that the linguistic examples of
secondary metaphors will have a more literary or poetic character than those
120 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

of primary metaphors. The issue of how the process of secondary metaphori-

zation can be relevant to accounting for the collocational range of words like
angry and proud will be taken up in the next chapter.
To conclude what I have said about the structure of concepts in this chap­
ter, an important point has to be made. I have tried to show that the structure
of at least some concepts can be seen as having four parts: A system of con­
ceptual metonymies, a system of conceptual metaphors, a set of related con­
cepts and one or maybe more prototypical cognitive models with their several
variants. However, no claim is made that all concepts have this level of com­
plexity. In particular, it seems to me that it is mostly abstract, less clearly
delineated concepts that are elaborately structured in terms of metaphors and
metonymies, and that familiar and relatively clearly structured concepts,
which typically denote physical phenomena, would lack these (metaphorical
and metonymical) aspects of conceptual structure — though they would
remain characterizable in terms of prototypical cognitive models and related
concepts (especially what have been called associated concepts). This differ­
ence in the structure of abstract and concrete concepts follows naturally from
the cognitive functions of metaphor and metonymy as explained by Lakoff
and Johnson (1980). Since metaphors and to a lesser degree also metonymies
are primarily used for the purposes of understanding less clearly-structured
domains in terms of more clearly-structured domains, we do not so much
need metaphors and metonymies in the comprehension of more clearly-struc­
tured areas of experience.
 6. IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF LEXICAL STRUCTURE

In this chapter I will try to show how the approach presented in the inves­
tigation of ANGER, PRIDE and LOVE can be put to use in the study of
some lexical issues. These issues include polysemy, collocation and semantic
fields.

6.1. Polysemy
The simplest view of polysemy maintains that polysemy involves a word
that has a number related senses with at least one sense component shared by
all the senses. In this section an attempt will be made to show that this is not
how polysemy works in the case of the word proud. Linguists have come up
with more subtle models for explaining polysemy, relying on the notion of lit­
eral, metonymical, and metaphorical extensions of meaning. These exten­
sions of meaning are generally taken as being based on the notion of similarity
(except, of course, metonymical extension). However, no account of the
exact nature of similarity is provided. Moreover, little is said of the way in
which the various senses of a word are related: Thus we do not get a picture
of the internal structure of a category. Finally, senses are given in terms of
minimal sense components, like 'feeling intense displeasure' in the case of
anger and 'feeling satisfaction with oneself for pride. As a result, only some
of the senses of a particular word can be accounted for and some of the subtler
relationships between the senses cannot be made explicit. What is needed
instead, I suggest, are prototypical cognitive models of the kind we have seen
for anger, pride, and love. These are rich enough to enable us to derive a large
number of senses in a systematic way and to recognize how the senses are
related.
Consider the various senses of proud extracted from several standard
dictionaries:
ARROGANT, CONCEITED, HAUGHTY asin He's too proud to talk
to us
ELATED, EXULTANT as in John is proud of winning the race
122 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

HONORED, DELIGHTED, GLAD as in I am proud to introduce

the new president
METTLESOME, HIGH-SPIRITED as in aproud steed
DIGNIFIED, STATELY as'mproud cliffs
SPLENDID, MAGNIFICENT as in those proud old castles
CAUSING PRIDE, GLORIOUS as in It was a proud victory
SELF-RESPECTING, DIGNIFIED as in They are poor but proud
INDICATING PRIDE as in There was a proud look on his face
PROTRUDING as'mproud joint
OVERGROWN as'mproud flesh
To claim that these senses are somehow similar is to claim that there is at least
one sense component which is present in all of the senses above. This claim
is easy to refute. What feature, or component, could possibly be shared by
CONCEITED, ELATED, SELF-RESPECTING, METTLESOME,
PROTRUDING, etc. each? In fact some of the senses suggest sharply oppos­
ing features: DIGNIFIED suggests calmness, slowness and METTLESOME
suggests vigor. And in some cases it seems impossible to see any connection
between the senses. One wonders what could possibly link PROTRUDING
with, say, SELF-RESPECTING.
This is not to say, however, that the idea of similarity does not play an
important role in accounting for the various senses of proud. To be sure,
there are some similarities between some of the senses on the list, but these
similarities do not extend beyond two, three, or, maybe, four cases. For
example, there is something in common between John's pride as a result of
winning the race and self-respect. However, the point is that whatever simi­
larities there are between the senses, these similarities are not shared by all
the items on the list of senses forproud.
If the similarity account does not take us too far, what can we offer in its
place? Perhaps the intuitively simplest account of these relationships
between the various senses could begin along the following lines. There is a
prototypical, or central, or primary nuclear sense of proud. This sense is spel­
led out in the prototypical cognitive model, or prototype scenario, as
described in the chapter on pride. Given this model, the wordproud denotes
the following: A person has done something, he perceives what he has done
as an achievement, and values it highly on a social value scale. As a result, he
also values himself highly but proportionately to the achievement.
Given this central sense of proud, we can begin to see how the various
other senses can be defined in relation to this central sense. The sense which
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF LEXICAL STRUCTURE 123

is related to the central sense in the most obvious way is that of INDICA­
TIVE OF PRIDE; as in a proud look. We have seen that looking in a certain
way is one of the behavioral reactions that accompany pride in our folk model
of pride. That is, the relationship between pride and the various behavioral
reactions associated with it is that, in the folk model, the behavioral reactions
result from the emotion. Because of the result from relationship, a behavioral
reaction can indicate the existence of the emotion. Thus when the adjective
proud is used to describe a behavioral reaction of pride (as in proud look) it
will have INDICATING PRIDE as its sense. The relationship between
INDICATING PRIDE and PRIDE/PROUD is that the former contains the
latter as a part. That is, the two meanings are related metonymically.
Another set of behavioral reactions associated with pride is erect posture
and chest out. The further senses OVERGROWN and PROTRUDING (the
latter found only in British English) can be derived from these manifestations
of pride. Just as proud people 'Stand out' physically in relation to people who
are not proud (i.e. who do not exhibit these behavioral reactions), so the flesh
around a healing wound and a piece of wood in a joint can stick out physically
in relation to the surface of the flesh or wood surrounding them. This
metaphorical similarity accounts for the senses OVERGROWN and PROT­
RUDING forproud.
When proud is used of castles, buildings, towers, etc., it acquires the
sense SPLENDID, MAGNIFICENT. Splendor is associated in our concep­
tual system with properties like sumptuousness, tallness, bigness, etc. For our
purposes it is tallness and bigness that are important. Tallness corresponds to
the behavioral reactions of erect posture and head held unnaturally high, and
bigness to those of chest out and chest unnaturally thrust out. The conceptual
link between SPLENDOR on the one hand and TALLNESS and BIGNESS
on the other can be seen if we try to decide which of the two expressions
sounds more natural: a tall and splendid building or a small and splendid
building. I believe that most people agree with me that we need less
specialized contexts for accepting the former, rather than the latter, as more
natural. Thus whenproud is used metaphorically of castles, buildings, etc., it
will activate this conceptual link between TALLNESS and BIGNESS on the
one hand and SPLENDID, MAGNIFICENT on the other. It is this concep­
tual link which will motivate and make natural the use of proud in the sense
of SPLENDID, MAGNIFICENT.
We have seen how pride is viewed as resulting in a number of behavioral
reactions. Now let us consider cases where it is pride that resultsfrom a cer-
124 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

tain state of affairs, this state of affairs being an achievement in the prototyp­
ical case. The sense that proud acquires when it is applied to achievements is
termed GLORIOUS, or CAUSING PRIDE, or PRODUCTIVE OF
PRIDE. The sense GLORIOUS arises because there is a state of affairs (an
achievement) which is productive of pride. And here again we have a case of
metonymy. But proud can be used in conjunction with several words which
do not denote achievements (or other causes of pride) and yet it has the
meaning PRODUCTIVE OF PRIDE. Some examples for this case are 
proud day, a proud sight, etc. I will consider these examples in the next sec­
tion in which the possible collocations ofproud will be discussed.
As has been noted in the chapter on pride, one of the behavioral reac­
tions of pride is smiling. This is possible because JOY and SATISFACTION
are concepts that are related to prototypical PRIDE. Smiling as a behavioral
reaction is primarily associated with JOY, and since JOY is closely related to
PRIDE, smiling becomes a manifestation of pride as well. Dictionaries tend
to equate the central, or prototypical, sense of proud with the concept of
JOY, defining this sense of proud as ELATED, EXULTANT. This is of
course mistaken because a sense of a word cannot be given by substituting
another concept for it as though somehow this concept could fully exhaust the
sense in question. As the description of the prototype of PRIDE suggests,
this concept involves a great deal more than just the idea of being happy as a
result of an achievement. Nevertheless, this practice of lexicography is to
some extent justified since the prototype of PRIDE involves as one of its cru­
cial ingredients the concept of JOY.
The word proud is employed in its prototypical sense when the person
who achieved something equals the person who is proud. Butproud can also
be used of a person who is not the 'achiever'. This is the case when, for exam­
ple, I introduce to an audience a person who achieved something. In this sit­
uation I can say: I am proud to introduce X. This sense oí proud is given by
dictionaries as FEELING HONORED, or GLAD, or DELIGHTED. These
latter two definitions are possible for the same reason that has been given
above for ELATED. Incidentally, this account also explains why, in the same
situation, the sentences Iam glad to introduce X, Iam pleased to introduce X,
and I am honored to introduce X can be used with no significant difference in
communicative effect.
Another sense that heavily exploits the concept of JOY as related to
PRIDE is METTLESOME, or HIGH-SPIRITED, as it is applied to horses.
One of the behavioral reactions that is understood as accompanying joy is
intense (uncontrolled) movement (as in She was leaping for joy). Horses that
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF LEXICAL STRUCTURE 125

are characterized by intense (uncontrolled) movement are called mettle­

some, or high-spirited. It is this metaphorical similarity between intense
movement in horses and in man from which the sense METTLESOME,
HIGH-SPIRITED arises for the wordproud.
Let us now return to the prototypical sense. The prototype for pride
involves, as we have seen, a value scale and a pride scale that are balanced.
In the case oí proud meaning CONCEITED, the pride scale is higher than the
value scale. That is, there is more pride than would be appropriate. What jus­
tifies the extension of proud to this sense is that the model of conceit contains
essentially the same elements (entities and predicates) as prototypical pride:
A pride scale (entity), a value scale (entity), and balance (predicate). But in
conceit the relation (balance) between the two entities is negated. This can be
thought of as similarity of some sorts; but the similarity is of a very peculiar
kind.
Proud can also be used in the sense of SELF-RESPECTING. Self-
respect can be defined as an AWARENESS OF ONE'S WORTH. If in pro­
totypical pride one values oneself highly for a particular achievement, in self-
respect one values oneself highly for no particular cause. In other words, in
both pride and self-respect we find the idea that the self values oneself highly.
Thus it seems thatproud is extended to the sense of SELF-RESPECTING on
the basis of this shared feature, which, as we have seen, is metaphorically con­
stituted. But there may be another motivation for this. There is, at least in the
lexical domain of emotions, a productive semantic process by which new
meanings are generated. This is a process whereby emotions that prototypi-
cally have their particular causes (like achievement for pride) become 'cause­
less'. The causeless version will typically get a new name but the name of the
primary, or prototypical, version, out of which the new one developed, will
also be used to express the new sense. Some examples that illustrate the pro­
cess are: Pride vs. self-respect, anger vs. resentment, fear vs. anxiety, sadness
vs. depression, etc. In all these pairs, the first word can be used to cover the
meaning of the second, but not the other way around.
Closely related to SELF-RESPECTING is the sense DIGNIFIED. In
the chapter on pride, we have seen that DIGNIFIED is a concept inherent in
SELF-RESPECT or SELF-ESTEEM. This allows proud to be used, via
SELF-RESPECT or SELF-ESTEEM, of people in the sense of DIG­
NIFIED: A proud man can mean very much the same as a man with dignity.
(I did not use the expression dignified man because dignified is primarily,
though not exclusively, employed to describe the manifestations of dignity:
Calmness, solemnity, ceremonial slowness, etc. And this is not the intended
126 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

sense here.) What makes this further extension of proud even more under­
standable is that DIGNIFIED can also be defined in terms of WORTH.
Webster gives the following definition for dignity: CONFIDENCE IN
ONE'S WORTH, and, on the basis of other dictionaries, we may add: IN
RELATION TO ONE'S CHARACTER. Thus the key concepts that seem
to play a decisive role in the definition of dignity are: WORTH and
CHARACTER.
However, this still leaves us with the question: How can proud mean
DIGNIFIED when it (proud) is used of mountains, cliffs, big rivers, etc.?
The answer to this question requires us to look at how CHARACTER (in the
sense of INTEGRITY) is conceptualized. A large part of our understanding
of the concept of CHARACTER seems to arise from two metaphors. Let us
take the metaphor CHARACTER IS STRAIGHT MOVEMENT first:
CHARACTER IS STRAIGHT MOVEMENT
They're OK. They're on the straight and level.
He's a man of unswerving integrity.
You're just a crook.
I want a straight answer.
She would never deviate from the truth.
A particularly forceful, though archaic, example of this metaphor comes
from a book on character (Smiles 1878):
Without principles, a man is like a ship without a rudder or compass, left
to drift hither and thither with every wind that blows (Smiles 1878: 6)
The other metaphor that is relevant for the comprehension of
CHARACTER is the following:
CHARACTER IS PHYSICAL STRENGTH
She's morally strong.
Moral strength is above all.
He has afirm character.
He's a bit unstable, as far as character goes.
She has weak character.
You will find some loose women in that bar.
A combination of both of these metaphors seems to be present in the word
bent when it is used in the sense CORRUPT (as in Some policemen are bent).
A hard physical object resists bending, i.e. it is strong. But if a lot of force is
applied, it bends; i.e. it becomes not straight. A consequence of the PHYSI-
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF LEXICAL STRUCTURE 127

CAL STRENGTH and STRAIGHT MOVEMENT metaphors is that we

conceive of people with character as unyielding to such metaphorically con­
strued forces as temptation (cf. I could not resist the temptation). The feature
UNYIELDING appears in the STRAIGHT MOVEMENT metaphor as not
deviating from a straight line, or course.
Natural formations of large physical size like mountains, cliffs, big riv­
ers, etc. are unyielding in a physical sense. Mountains and cliffs are immobile,
stable and withstand the forces of nature affectig them. Big rivers follow a
straight course and are unstoppable. It seems that it is metaphorical similarity
of this kind between certain natural formations and character that is respon­
sible for proud having the meaning DIGNIFIED when it is used of these nat­
ural formations.
On the basis of the foregoing analysis, we can perhaps safely conclude
that we need a much subtler account of polysemy than the one which is based
on the undifferentiated notion of similarity between the senses. It is just not
true to say that polysemy involves senses that all share at least one compo­
nent. This view of polysemy can be represented in the following way (W
stands for a word: s1, s2 , s3 etc. stand for the various senses of W; d, e, f,
etc. stand for various sense components.
W:s 1 (c d ,c e ,c f ....c),s 2 (c d , g, h, ...c) s3 (d, i, j, ...)
It can be noticed that the sense component cd is common to all of the senses.
This view of polysemy may apply to some cases, but it certainly does not do
as a general account. In the discussion of the various senses of proud, no
single component has been found to be present in all the senses.
Perhaps a subtler account of polysemy can be imagined along the follow­
ing lines, using the same abbreviations as above:
W: s1 (cd,ce ,cf....c),s2(cd, g, h, ...c) s3 (d, i, j, ...)
The difference between this account and the previous one is that in this case
the first and the second senses share one component (cf) and the second and
third senses share another (c ), etc., but there is no single feature that the
three senses have in common. This is of course Wittgenstein's idea of family
resemblance, as he aplied it to concepts like GAME (Wittgenstein 1963). A
similar idea has been around for quite a while in lexicographic practice. Con­
sider the entry hop up in the Dictionary of American Slang:
Hop up v.i., v.t. 1 To take narcotic drugs, as an addict; to drug a person
...→ 2 To give a race horse a stimulating drug so that he will run faster
128 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

than he normally would ... → 3 To increase the maximum speed, ... of

an automobile ...
The arrows indicate that the sense after the arrow developed out of the sense
preceding it. Here we could say that senses 1 and 2 share the component
STIMULATE WITH A DRUG and senses 2 and 3 have in common the fea­
ture IN ORDER TO INCREASE SPEED. But there is no component
shared by all the senses.
The analysis of proud reveals an even more sophisticated structure for
polysemy. We have seen that proud (W) involves a prototypical sense (s )
defined by a number of components (c d , c e , cf, ...). The various other senses
ofproud (s2, s3, s4, ...) all seem to emerge from and cluster around particular
components. Thus we have the following situation:
W: s (c p ,ce, cf, ...n )
uster 1: s2 (c d , cg, c h , ...), s3(ch, c., ...). etc.
Cluster 2: s5 (c e , c k , ...), s 6 (c R , cļ5 ...), etc.
Cluster 3: s8 (cf, cm, ...), s9(cm, cn, ...), etc.
etc.
The prototypical sense ofproud has been characterized by such sense compo­
nents as inherent concepts like JOY, behavioral manifestations like tallness
and bigness, the idea of worth, the idea of balance between the pride and
value scales, etc. The various senses can be seen as forming several clusters
of senses based on different components. Thus tallness and bigness in the pro­
totype give rise to the senses PROTRUDING, OVERGROWN and
SPLENDID. The idea of worth is the grounds for the extension ofproud to
mean SELF-RESPECTING, which in turn leads to DIGNIFIED. The sense
METTLESOME emerges via the concept of JOY, which is also present in
FEELING HONORED or GLAD. CONCEITED is based on the balance
between the two scales. That is, all of these clusters of senses draw on differ­
ents aspects of the prototype scenario.
In sum, the account of polysemy in the case of the wordproud required
us to rely upon all the parts, or elements, of conceptual structure as given in
the previous chapter. The conceptual metonymies, conceptual metaphors,
related concepts, and the prototypical cognitive model of pride all seem to
contribute to our understanding of what senses this word has and how they
are related. It is not clear how this could be done in an approach which defines
proud in terms of a minimal number of sense components like WORTH DUE
TO AN ACHIEVEMENT, for example.
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF LEXICAL STRUCTURE 129

6.2. Collocation
In the previous section the focus of the discussion was on the questions:
How does a particular word acquire a given sense and how are these senses
related? It was assumed that a word (like proud) combines with other words
(like look, victory, building, etc.) to form larger syntactic units and that the
various senses arise in these combinations. In this section I would like to look
at some of the regularities that seem to govern with which other words a given
word can combine to form acceptable larger units. For illustration, I will
continue to use mostly the word proud.
The problem of which words can combine with a given word is well
known in linguistics. It goes under various names: In one school of British lin­
guistics represented by Firth (1957) it is called collocation, or collocability
and in more recent approaches it is usually discussed under the name of selec­
tion restrictions (Leech 1982; Lehrer 1974). Interestingly enough, the issue
has been given some attention by philosophers as well. Austin, perhaps the
most eminent philosopher to deal with the problem, couched the issue of col­
locability in a broader philosophical perspective and asked in a famous paper
(Austin 1961): "why do we call different things by the same name?"
The traditional answer to the question, according to Austin, is that we
call different things by the same name because they are similar. Indeed, when
we think about why the word head can apply to such different things as the
human head, head of department, bridgehead, the head of a hammer, the
head of beer, etc., we tend to think that there is something common in all of
them; i.e. that they are all similar. In this case, maybe we could find a feature
shared by all: Perhaps something like 'the uppermost part' or 'the most
extreme position', although we would have difficulties accommodating
examples like bridgehead or head of department. And there are obviously
cases where the similarity position clearly does not work. Let us take Austin's
examples: healthy body, healthy exercise, and healthy complexion. Austin's
claim is that there is a primary nuclear sense of healthy in which it is used of
healthy bodies. The other two senses are given by him as PRODUCTIVE OF
HEALTHY BODIES (in healthy exercise) and RESULTING FROM
HEALTHY BODIES (in healthy complexion). Austin's conclusion is that
the body, the exercise and the complexion are not called healthy because they
are in any way similar, but because they are related to each other in these par­
ticular ways.
In his discussion Austin does not distinguish between the issue of sense
(polysemy) and that of combinability of words (collocation, selection
130 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

restrictions). He talks about senses in one place and possible combinations of

words in another. For his purposes Austin did not need to make this distinc­
tion. However, my purposes require the two (obviously related) issues to be
kept apart in a clear way. Polysemy involves the different senses of a word,
whereas collocation involves the set of different words that a particular word
can combine with. With this in mind, the basic issue concerning collocation
can be put in the following way: How can we characterize the mechanism by
which a certain word selects a set of other words as 'collocational partners'?
The answer to the question is given according to which school of linguistics
one belongs (Lehrer 1974: 173). The Firthian school maintains that colloca­
tion is a matter of lexical items and not a matter of the meanings of lexical
items, although the set of collocations a word has forms a part of, or is one
level of the meaning ofthat item. That is, this school correctly recognizes that
one item collocates with a number of other items and that this is an important
aspect of meaning, but offers no explanation of the mechanism that may gov­
ern the selection of some items rather than others. The other approach to the
problem at hand is represented by the work of Lehrer (1974), Leech (1974)
and Weinreich (1966). Their accounts are improved versions of proposals
made by linguists like Katz, Fodor and Postal. Authors in this approach main­
tain that word A can collocate with word  if a feature 'c' found in the meaning
of word A is also present in the meaning of word  or the feature 'c' can be
transferred from A to  without causing a clash of features in  (Weinreich
1966). Leech (1974) claims to achieve the same result as Weinreich by what
he calls 'contextual redundancy rules'. These rules work in the following way.
Consider the sentence Gold owns the man (Leech 1982: 140). The semantic
anomaly of the sentence, according to Leech, is due to a clash of the features
+ANIMATE and -ANIMATE in the initial argument of gold. The verb own
requires an initial argument which has the feature +PERSON. +PERSON
adds the feature + ANIMATE to the initial argument by a redundancy rule.
And another redundancy rule 'Gold requires - A N I M A T E ' produces the
contradictory feature -ANIMATE in the same argument. The result is a clash
of features within the initial argument and so the sentence becomes anomolous.
Leech also notes that "many metaphorical uses of language involve a viola­
tion of selection resrictions" (Leech 1982: 141). He observes that a sentence
like Gold owns the man or My gasmeter eats up 10ps" can be, and are, inter­
preted figuratively and thus are not thought of as anomolous. Eat requires the
feature +ANIMATE in its initial argument and since meter has the feature
—ANIMATE, the result is a clash of features. However, we can interpret eat in
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF LEXICAL STRUCTURE 131

this sentence metaphorically as 'uses up 10ps like an animal eating something'

(p.41) and thus avoid the emergence of contradictory features in the initial
argument.
This seems to me to be an inadequate and ad hoc way of handling collo­
cation in a large number of cases that involve metaphors. To say simply that
a metaphor can be characterized by the statement 'X is like Y' is not to
explain too much. In the first place, this is an ad hoc account because i s like'
is a catch-all phrase which is intended to account for all the metaphors in lan­
guage. However, we have seen that if we work with conceptual metaphors we
can get a much more precise understanding of how the human mind processes
knowledge about the world. Second, this traditional view of metaphor based
on the idea 'X is like Y' can only provide an after-the-fact analysis of
metaphorical processes. On encountering a linguistic metaphor, all we can
do, so this view maintains, is to say that the metaphor is possible because X
is like Y. In other words, this view has no predictive power as to which
metaphors will occur.
In order to see how these accounts of selection restrictions can be
improved, let us now return to the word proud. In the chapter on pride it was
observed that in its prototypical use proud co-occurs with PERSONS as in
John is proud of winning the race or John is a proud man. The selection
restrictions for proud would state that proud requires the feature PERSON
in the argument and thus we would get the correct results. However, we
noticed in the previous section that proud can also collocate with victory,
look, horse, building, etc. which are not persons. Perhaps we could, at the
expense of losing important information, accommodate horse by saying that
proud requires ANIMATE rather than PERSON. But what about the other
items and a host of other examples? There is much more to these unac­
counted-for cases than simply saying that, for example, in the case oí proud
buildings the buildings in question resemble proud persons (metaphorical
transfer of meaning) or in the case of proud victory victories produce proud
persons (metonymical transfer of meaning). At this point we have to return
to the issue of primary and secondary metaphorization in order to see
how our conceptual system can have a direct influence on what at first glance
appeared to be a purely lexical issue.
What I would like to claim is that the collocational range of a word is in
part determined by which other concept(s) the word (more precisely, the cor­
responding concept) is used to conceptualize. For example, we have seen that
132 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

ANGER is used to conceptualize the concept of STORM. This enables us to

account for an expression like angry waves. Similarly, the concept PRIDE is
employed to structure (further) the concepts of BUILDINGS, MOUN­
TAINS, etc. Let us examine the following secondary metaphor for PRIDE:
ARTIFACTS (BUILDINGS, CITIES, etc.) ARE PROUD PERSONS
NATURAL FORMATIONS (RIVERS, MOUNTAINS, etc.) ARE
PROUD PERSONS
And ahead of us emerged the proud city of London.
Proud buildings lined the road on both sides.
The Danube flows proudly underneath.
Suddenly a proud tower emerged before us.
A proud ship was slowly sailing by.
Proud mountains surrounded the town on all sides.
It is the metonymies ERECT POSTURE, HEAD HELD UNNATUR­
ALLY HIGH, CHEST OUT and CHEST UNNATURALLY THRUST
OUT that form the basis of this metaphor. What this means in this case is that
the ARTIFACTS and NATURAL FORMATIONS have to be of a particu­
lar kind; exactly what kind is specified by the metonymies above: i.e. they
must be tall and/or big things.
The importance of all this for our purposes is that the metaphors A
STORM IS AN ANGRY PERSON and ARTIFACTS/NATURAL FOR­
MATIONS ARE PROUD PERSONS delimit, on a conceptual level, the
range of possible words that angry and proud, and the other conceptually
related terms, can combine with; namely, they tell us that these words can
collocate with words that express, or are related to, the concept of STORM
and certain kinds of ARTIFACTS and NATURAL FORMATIONS. How­
ever, it should not be thought that this statement is intended to apply to
instances of secondary metaphorization alone. What type of metaphor is rel­
evant for the delimitation of the collocational range of a word depends on the
nature of the corresponding concept in question. Abstract concepts like
ANGER and PRIDE can be used, as the metaphors above show, to concep­
tualize more physical domains. The delimiting effect of concepts associated
with more physical domains is dependent upon which abstract concepts they
are used to conceptualize. Thus the collocational possibilities of words that
have to do with, for example, FIRE would seem to depend on which more
abstract concepts it is used to structure. FIRE is present in the conceptualiza­
tion of a large number of other concepts: Among them, as we have seen, in
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF LEXICAL STRUCTURE 133

the conceptualization of LOVE. This fact would in turn enable us to account

for, and on a conceptual level predict, the collocation fiery passions, for
example. Thus it seems that the situation which is relevant for the issue of col­
location is when the concept in question serves as a source, as opposed to a
target domain, either in primary or in secondary metaphorization.
Admittedly, the mechanism that has been used to delimit the possible
collocations of proud and angry is not very precise in the sense that the delimi­
tation has been done on a conceptual and not on a lexical level. That is to say,
no attempt has been made to provide a complete list of items that can co-
occur withproud and angry. That would mean that we simply state the collo­
cations of words without trying to explain why the words have just those pos­
sible collocations that they have. Furthermore, listing all the items that can
co-occur with another seems, in most cases, to be a futile job anyway since
one can always add a new item to the list on the basis of the regularities pro­
vided by the conceptual metaphors and their experiential bases. It is this reg­
ularity and predictability that arises from the notion that we can call the 'col-
locability of concepts', rather than that of isolated words, which can be regarded
as an advantage of the present lexical approach over the mechanisms proposed
by Leech and Weinreich. The approach based on conceptual metaphors can
make, however slight, predictions concerning possible collocations. It is this
that the other approaches do not allow us to make because they perform
after-the-fact analyses of isolated words.
The germ of the idea of the 'collocability of concepts' can be found
already in the work of Firth (1957) and Halliday (1966). Firth talked about
'formal scatters' by which he meant groups of related words. He suggested
that collocation operates between scatters rather than words. Or, consider
Halliday's examples (1966): a strong argument, the strength of the argument,
he argued strongly, and his argument was strengthened. It is clear that it is pos­
sible to formulate a rule for the collocations of these items which would be on
a more general level than the words that form a part of the collocations. In
particular, we could say that one aspect of the concept of ARGUMENT (the
strength of an argument) is comprehended in terms of the concept of PHYS­
ICAL STRENGTH and that items that express, or are related to, either of
these concepts can combine with each other. Incidentally, the metaphor THE
STRENGTH OF AN ARGUMENT IS PHYSICAL STRENGTH forms a
part of a more general metaphor for arguments. The metaphor, as given by
Lakoff and Johnson (1980), is ARGUMENTS ARE BUILDINGS.
Let me now continue with cases that involve what is commonly referred
134 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

to as transfer of meaning based on metonymy. To account for collocations

like a proud achievement, a proud victory, a proud feat, a proud look, proud
gait, etc., the following rule can be set up: The word proud can be used to
modify a noun that denotes some of the prototypical causes or manifestations
of pride. Here again, we are not concerned with particular cases. This state­
ment helps us capture as possible collocations of proud a number of types of
causes and manifestations which are specified in the prototypical cognitive
model of pride. Within the types there can be a great deal of lexical variety.
But things are more complicated than this. Consider the following exam­
ples: Proud gold medal, proud day, proud fields of Waterloo, proud sight, etc.
The gold medal, the day, the fields of Waterloo, and the sight are not, strictly
speaking, causes or manifestations of pride. The gold medal as such is not the
achievement itself, the day as such is not something that can make one proud,
etc. However, all these entities are related to achievements in certain specifi­
able ways: The gold medal is a token of an achievement, the day is the time
when an achievement was accomplished, the fields are the place of an
achievement, and the sight is a visual experience of whatever achievement
was accomplished. We can call these cases instances of 'secondary
metonymies'. These observations lead us to recognize a further principle of
collocability forproud: The word proud can be used to modify a noun which
denotes the possible tokens, the time, the place and the virtual experience of
the prototypical cause of pride.
These rules seem to be sufficiently general for the wordproud; i.e. they
seem to allow us to capture the most important (metonymy-based) colloca­
tions of the word. But the question one can raise is to what extent these rules
are applicable outside the domain of pride and in other languages. Their
applicability, in their present form, to other domains and the same domain in
other languages seems to be restricted in a number of ways. Languages may
differ as to whether they observe the first principle or not. This principle cov­
ers both the causes and manifestations of pride. But, for example, Hungarian
does not seem to make it possible to use the equivalent ofproud to modify
causes of pride, only manifestations of it. Thus in Hungarian one cannot say
the equivalents ofproud achievement, proud victory, etc. Second, the gener­
ality of the principles seems to be limited even within the same language. The
first principle seems to hold for, say, fearful (as in a fearful animal and a fear­
ful glance) but not for, say, angry; an angry insult does not mean an insult
causing anger, although insults are fairly typical causes of anger. Third, since
there are several kinds of causes that can produce pride, it has to be examined
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF LEXICAL STRUCTURE 135

which of these do and which do not take proud as a modifier. Achievements

do seem to take it. Possessions are less likely to do so: ?α proud garden, Ία
proud Mercedes, ?α proud possession, etc. Appearances are even more
doubtful: ??her proud long black hair. And perhaps causes like positive
moral qualities are even less likely to take it: cf. ???his proud integrity. If
there is a difference in the degree of acceptability between these cases, this
may suggest an ordering from the most prototypical to the least prototypical
causes. Fourth, we have even seen that the generality of the principles is
limited even within the realm of emotional states. It remains to be seen
whether and to what extent the first principle holds in the case of other states.
It seems to work with physical states like health. But a mental property like
intelligence appears to allow only manifestations (as in an intelligent look) but
not causes. Fifth, another limitation involves what was called secondary
metonymy. The set of secondary metonymies (token of cause, place of cause,
time of cause, etc. for pride) that characterize a type of cause, if they have a
cause component at all, may also be word-specific (or rather, concept-
specific). In other words, lexical items (concepts) may differ in the number
and kinds of secondary metonymies they allow. For example, unlike proud,
healthy does not seem to take places that are related to its prototypical causes.
Thus although we have healthy exercise, we do not have healthy gym, in spite
of the fact that gyms are places where exercise that produces healthy bodies
can be performed.
Are we to conclude, in view of these limitations, that the lexical
approach I have presented has no role to play in the study of selection restric­
tions? Such a conclusion can be reached only by those who insist that colloca­
tions involve only semantic properties of individual words and have nothing
to do with the way in which our conceptual system functions. However, as we
have seen in this section, ignoring the study of conceptual structure in the
attempt to account for collocation would mean the loss of certain significant
generalizations (e.g. the role of conceptual metaphors and conceptual
metonymies) for the collocability of the word proud. Instead of such a conclu­
sion, what emerges from the foregoing analysis is that we need sufficiently
general conceptually-based rules for particular words, where the rules may
not be generalizable to (conceptual) domains outside the (conceptual)
domain for which they have been established. The use of particular words in
combination with other words would seem to depend largely on how the cor­
responding concepts are conceptualized, as we have seen for PRIDE and
ANGER, although there may well be certain arbitrary limitations which have
136 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

to be stated independently.
When I say that the use of a word in collocations depends on how it is
conceptualized, I do not intend to limit this statement to cover only the issue
of which complex metaphorical and metonymical concepts the corresponding
concept (i.e. corresponding to the word in question) in question forms a part
of (as ANGER forms a part of the complex metaphorical concept A STORM
IS AN ANGRY PERSON and PRIDE is a part of the complex metonymical
concept THE CAUSES OF PRIDE STAND FOR PRIDE). In many cases,
selection restrictions have nothing to do with metaphor or metonymy. These
are cases where detailed prototypical cognitive models are needed to account
for the use of the word in question in collocations. For example, whenproud
is used in combination with a person, it is used non-metaphorically and non-
metonymically but the person in question must have enough of the properties
as given by the prototype for PRIDE. Perhaps the majority of cases in the
ordinary use of language are like this.

6.3. Semantic fields

The area of linguistics which is explicitly concerned with the relationship
between lexical structure and conceptual structure is what has come to be
known as the theory of lexical, or semantic fields. In chapters 2 through 4 I
have looked at a number of semantic fields: In particular, the semantic fields
of anger, pride and love. Since theories of semantic fields can be interpreted
as theories of how lexical structure and conceptual structure are related, it
can be useful for us to see what and how the analyses of these fields can con­
tribute to the theory of semantic fields in general. This is all the more impor­
tant since the contribution that our lexical approach can make to the study of
this area of semantics can be thought of as one measure of the validity of the
approach.
Trier (1931), one of the pioneers of field theory, made a distinction
between conceptual and lexical fields. Furthermore, he assumed that a lexical
field cuts up the corresponding conceptual space like a mosaic. This idea has
been criticized by a number of authors, among them Lehrer (1974). Lehrer
suggests that the 'mosaic' idea does not work because there are gaps and over­
laps in most lexical, or semantic fields. She proposes another model for the
analysis of semantic fields. Her model is based on Berlin and Kay's research
on color as reported in their book Basic Color Terms (1969). Berlin and Kay
found that, in the domain of color, there are certain focal points which people
find easier to identify than nonfocal areas. The linguistic terms corresponding
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF LEXICAL STRUCTURE 137

to the focal points are called 'basic color terms'. Lehrer generalizes this idea
to the study of lexical fields. She proposes a distinction between basic and
peripheral terms. Basic terms are clear instances of a given lexical field,
whereas in the case of peripheral items people may differ in their judgements
of whether the item does or does not belong to the field. The issue of which
items are basic within a particular field can be decided on the following
criteria (adapted from Lehrer):
1. Basic words are monolexemic.
2. The application of basic words is not restricted to a narrow class of
objects (as it is in the case of auburn and blonde).
3. Basic words are psychologically salient for informants.
4. Recent foreign loan words are suspect as basic words.
5. The meaning of a basic term in not included in that of any other except
the headword for the taxonomy (as it is in the case of crimson and scarlet
which refer to types of red).
According to Lehrer, on these criteria the following are basic words in the
domain of cooking terms (Lehrer 1974: 30): cook, bake, boil, roast,fry, broil
(or grill in British English) and steam. She then adds simmer, stew, poach,
braise, sauté, French-fry, deep-fry, barbecue, grill (American English) and
charcoal. The peripheral words in the same domain include parboil, plank,
shirr, scallop, flamber, rissoler, and compounds like steam-bake and ovenfry.
That some of the words that Lehrer calls basic do not in fact seem to be basic
on the above criteria should not worry us. What is more important for my pur­
poses at this point is to try to get a more or less complete picture of how the
study of lexical fields is envisioned by previous researchers. This is necessary
if we want to see the major differences between the approach represented by
Lehrer and the approach that seems to emerge from the three case studies.
As a next step, Lehrer gives us a diagram that shows how the various
basic words are related to each other and to the two superordinate terms cook
and bake. For example, we come to know thatfry is subordinate to cook, and
sauté and French-fry are subordinate tofry, and that, in addition, sauté and
French-fry are incompatible. It is significant to notice that all the terms listed
by Lehrer belong to the same word class; they are all verbs. It is typical of
studies of lexical fields to set up fields that include terms from only one word
class. Lehrer also points out that in order for us to know that these items
belong to the field of culinary terms and to know that they are related in these
particular ways, we need to know which minimal sense components make up
138 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

the meanings of particular items. In other words, what a theory of lexical

fields must be capable of doing is the following: (1) specifying which gram­
matically homogeneous items belong to the field and which of these items are
basic terms on the Berlin and Kay criteria, (2) showing the relationship
between the superordinate term and the other items, (3) showing the
relationships among the various items within the field, and (4) doing all this
on the basis of minimal sense components as characterizations of meaning.
It seems to me that one can be in agreement with this program as far as
(2) and (3) are concerned without having to commit oneself to (1) and (4).
And if we do not accept (1) and (4), our conception of semantic fields will be
very different from the picture that the traditional views offer. To see the dif­
ferences, we have to imagine what, for example, the field of anger would look
like if we approached it along the traditional lines.
The conceptual domain of anger would possibly be subdivided into four
fields. One of them would correspond to the adjective angry and it would
include words like choleric, enraged, incensed, indignant, irate, ireful, mad,
seething, sore, wrathful. The second field could be thought of as being subor­
dinated to the verb anger when it means CAUSE TO FEEL ANGER. The
items would include burn up, enrage, incense, infuriate, madden, provoke,
and steam up. The third field, corresponding to the verb anger when it means
BE/BECOME ANGRY, would have such items as blow up, boil, bristle,
explode, flare up, fume, rage and seethe. And finally, we could set up a field
that corresponds to the noun anger as exemplified by rage, indignation, etc.
(we shall see some more examples for this field in a moment). Let us now stop
and try to evaluate this conception of the lexical field of anger. Several com­
ments can be made.
First, it does not seem to be intuitively right to have four distinct sub-
fields for the domain. Our intuitions tell us that words like seethe and seeth­
ing, enrage and enrage, etc. should go together because they express the same
concept. One of the disadvantages of insisting on grammatically homogene­
ous word classes is that the presentation of the field will be very uneconomi­
cal. Items which are felt to be the same conceptually will have to be stated as
many times as many word classes they belong to.
The second issue has to do with the distinction between basic and
peripheral items. It is claimed that it is sufficient to analyze the meanings of
basic terms because it is these terms that carry all the important semantic con­
trasts within a field (Lehrer 1974: 10). This distinction, at least as it is made
use of by Lehrer, makes it appear that there are important items within a field
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF LEXICAL STRUCTURE 139

(i.e. the basic words) and there are unimportant ones (those that are
peripheral). However, I find that the issue of importance has nothing to do
with the organization of a semantic field. As we have seen in the study of
anger, there is a large number of nonprototypical (peripheral) cases which
are not in any way less important than the prototypical case. In fact, they
seem to carry semantic features which cannot be found in the prototype. This,
in a sense, makes these terms even more salient than the one which refers to
the prototype.
Thirdly, it can be objected furthermore that the lexical items in the
four fields taken together do not provide a complete list of the linguistic
expressions that are related to anger in some way. The analysis of anger in this
work has been based on the study of more than 150 conventionalized expres­
sions, and this is a much larger number than what we would get if we added
up all the items in the four subfields given above. The reason is that in this
study attention has been given to items, like various kinds of metaphors,
metonymies, collocations, idioms, etc., which would be ignored in a tradi­
tional approach. However, as it has been pointed out, these expressions are
just as important as the more 'basic' ones if we want to see the structure of the
entire field.
A final objection to the analysis so far is concerned with the number of
aspects a particular concept has. The various subfields that correspond to the
adjective angry, the noun anger and the verb anger make us believe that
ANGER is a concept that has only a limited number of aspects. In particular,
they suggest that we conceptualize anger as an emotional state (suggested by
the adjective), an abstract mass entity (suggested by the noun), a state in
which we are (suggested by one sense of the verb) and a state which we come
to be in as a result of some cause (suggested by the other sense of the verb).
But, as we have seen, there are several additional aspects which characterize
anger: They include retribution, responsibility, controling anger, loss of con­
trol, physiological effects, cessation of anger, just to mention a few. By con­
trast, the aspects as based on grammatical classes feature the concept in only
a very crude way.
In order to see how a componential approach would handle the relation­
ship between the superordinate term anger and its subordinates, let us now
turn to the componential analysis of the fourth subfield, which corresponds to
the noun anger. Some of the examples in this subfield are indignation, irrita­
tion, wrath, fury and rage. Anger has already been analyzed as STRONG
FEELING OF DISPLEASURE (OVER A WRONG). The other items
140 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

could be given the following componential definitions: Indignation can be

defined as INTENSE DISPLEASURE DUE TO MORAL INJUSTICE,
irritation as MILD DISPLEASURE, wrath as LONG-LASTING INTENSE
DISPLEASURE, andfury and rage as EXTREMELY STRONG DISPLE­
ASURE. The way in which anger and the other terms are related is captured
in a very simple way in componential analysis. This is possible because the
sense components are designed to show minimal differences. In componen­
tial analysis each item receives a minimal conceptual definition, where mini­
mal means that an item must differ from every other item (within the field) in
at least one conceptual component. The exception to this is synonymy where
two items are characterized by the same componential formula (like in the
case offury and rage). The relationship between anger and the other terms is
arrived at by pointing out that since anger is defined as INTENSE FEELING
OF DISPLEASURE and that there is at least one component (DISPLEA­
SURE) which is present in the definition of all the other items in some
(specified or modified) form, the word anger would be the super-ordinate
term in this field.
In the light of what has been said about anger in this study, some objec­
tions can be made to this analysis. Componential analysis takes the definition
of concepts lightly. In the case of anger, all we are told is that it can be given
as INTENSE FEELING OF DISPLEASURE. In contrast to this, we have
seen that the conceptual definition of anger requires a lot more. It has been
found important to set up five successive stages in characterizing the temporal
dimension of anger. Moreover, a number of entities and predicates were used
to describe (the various aspects of) each particular stage. The result was a
large and intricate network of concepts that was called the prototypical
scenario. This scenario is sufficiently rich so that a large number of non-pro­
totypical cases can be defined in relation to it. Furthermore, the application
of componential analysis to the other terms is deficient in the same way. As
we have seen in the discussion of the nonprototypical cases of anger, wrath,
for example, is not just LONG LASTING INTENSE DISPLEASURE.
Rather, we should say that, in addition to lasting a long time and being
intense, in wrath the intensity of the offense is well above the limit and many
acts of retribution are required to create a balance between the offense, the
anger and the retribution scales. In the case of indignation, it does not do to
define it simply as INTENSE DISPLEASURE DUE TO MORAL INJUS­
TICE. It is just as important to say that the victim does not equal the self and
that the intensity of anger is not near the limit. Rage andfury were defined as
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF LEXICAL STRUCTURE 141

EXTREMELY INTENSE DISPLEASURE. Instead of this, it can be said

that rage andfury primarily have to do with stage 4, that is, with loss of control
and angry behavior. Perhaps these examples will suffice to make the general
point that componential analysis singles out certain components as distinc­
tive. These are the components that allow the analyst to distinguish one
meaning from another in minimal terms. This in turn leads to the unfortunate
consequence that some other features that may be just as important to define
a term will be ignored.
The lexical approach as described in this study offers us an alternative to
this view. Namely, we can see semantic fields as categories of concepts with
a prototype in the center. (This is what Lakoff (1987) calls 'radial
categories'.) These categories of concepts, like those centering around
PRIDE and ANGER, may emerge in two ways. A prototype may give rise to
a variety of senses that deviate from the meaning of the prototype and these
senses are thought of as the standard meanings of the term corresponding to
the cognitive prototype. The senses are typically listed in the lexicon of the
language. This is what is commonly referred to as polysemy and this is what
we have in the case of the concept PRIDE. The various senses of the term
pride and proud as listed by the dictionary can all be systematically derived
from the prototype of pride as it is given in the prototypical cognitive model.
Typically (though not always), these standardized meanings can also be con­
veyed by lexical items that are different from the one denoting the prototype.
That is, we have words like conceited, mettlesome, splendid, etc. which are
typically used to express the corresponding meanings. Another, and usually
parallel, way in which a lexical field may arise is when the deviations from the
prototype are not lexically standardized; i.e. are not thought of as standard
lexical meanings of the word in question and consequently are not listed as
such in the lexicon. This is what we have seen in the case of the concept
ANGER. Most of the nonprototypical cases of anger are not standardized
senses of anger: frustrated anger, exaggerated response, constructive use,
indirect cause, etc. are not standard meanings of anger in the sense as CON­
CEITED, METTLESOME, etc. are standard meanings ofproud. Typically
(though not always), these members of the lexical field of anger are not refer­
red to by what can be called standard lexical items, or conventionalized
expressions. Frustrated anger, exaggerated response, etc. are not standard
lexical items in the sense, for example, conceited and mettlesome are; they are
simply descriptions of certain nonprototypical cases. It is important to note
that these generalizations concerning the emergence and lexical manifesta-
142 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

tions of semantic fields should be taken to hold only typically. The two pro­
cesses often intermingle, both as regards the standardization of meaning and
the lexical manifestations of nonprototypical cases. In this study we have seen
several examples for both.
The question arises: If the meaning of anger is given as described in the
prototypical cognitive model, then how can we characterize the meanings of
nonprototypical cases? The answer depends on the ways in which something
can deviate from the prototype, i.e. can be nonprototypical. There are cases
where the meaning of an expression can be defined in terms of which part of
the prototypical scenario it is linked up with. As we have seen above, rage and
fury seem to derive their sense from a particular part of the prototype.
Struggle with anger would have the meaning it has because it has to do
with the aspect of control in the same model, and be boiling can be seen as
deriving its meaning from the fact that it is connected with the intensity aspect
of anger. The issue of which term in the field is linked up with which aspect
of the model is determined by the mappings that have been discussed in the
previous chapter. The mappings represent a process by which the various
items capture, or translate into the terms of, the various aspects of the pro­
totypical scenario.
All the examples we have seen above are cases where a certain part of the
prototypical scenario is focussed on. It is this partial focussing which makes
these cases nonprototypical. But there is another type of nonprototypicality.
This is when a term derives its meaning from negating a particular aspect of
the prototype. These are cases where the differences between the prototype
and the deviation from it have to be marked explicitly. It has been pointed out
that, for example, in the case of indignation it is negated that the angry person
is the same as the victim, that the intensity of anger goes beyond the limit, and
that the cause of anger is an act intentionally performed to make someone
angry.
It seems then that there are various ways in which we can deviate from
the prototype. A distinction has just been made between the deviation which
works by focussing on a certain part of the prototype and one which works by
negating a certain part of the prototype. As a consequence of this distinction,
the meaning of the items belonging to the field can be specified in two distinct
ways. In the former case, the meaning of an item does not need to be specified
separately: It can be stated by referring the item to the suitable part of the
prototypical model. For items that fall into the second category we can do
 IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF LEXICAL STRUCTURE 143

either of two things: If there is a binary choice offered by the ontology of the
prototype, we just need to refer the item to the entity or predicate that the
item negates and mark it with a minus (for example, -INTENSE). Or, if there
is no binary choice, we mark the difference with respect to the prototype in an
explicit way (by saying, for example, that in the case ofindignation the typical
cause for anger is to be replaced by some moral injustice).
So far I have been concerned with the relationship between anger and
the terms that are subordinated to it. But how can we handle the relationships
among the various items related to anger? How do we know, for example,
that someone who is boiling with anger hasn't hit the ceiling yet, that boiling
involves a more intense form of anger than simmer, that someone who is
struggling with his anger is ready to blow up, etc.? What a person who under­
stands these expressions knows is which part, or segment, of the prototypical
scenario the expression links up with. For example, since we know from the
prototype that struggle with anger maps onto trying to control anger, that con­
trolling anger presupposes that the intensity of anger is near the limit, and
that blow up maps onto loss of control, which in turn takes place if the anger
goes above the limit, we will know that the person who is struggling with his
anger can blow up any minute. It is this kind of knowledge that speakers of
English possess which enables them to see the various meaning relations
among the terms.
If it is true that this kind of knowledge is necessary for establishing cer­
tain meaning relations among various items in a field, then the conceptual
structure that has been found important to characterize the concepts of
ANGER, PRIDE and LOVE must play a very significant role in the descrip­
tion of meaning. It seems to me that without taking into account conceptual
metaphors, prototypical scenarios, mappings onto these scenarios, the cate­
gory of nonprototypical cases, etc., that is, is we solely rely on minimal sense
components, we cannot faithfully represent the complexities of lexical mean­
ing in natural language. Let us take the previous example again and see what
componential analysis would say about the meaning of the words struggle and
blow up when they apply to anger. Struggle would probably receive the mean­
ing specification TRYING TO CONTROL ANGER and the meaning of
blow up would in all probability be characterized as LOSS OF CONTROL
OVER ANGER. All we would learn from these descriptions of meaning is
that the two words have to do with anger and that they capture two different
aspects of it, but we would not know exactly how these aspects are related
within the model of anger. In other words, componential analysis could give
144 METAPHORS OF ANGER, PRIDE, AND LOVE

no systematic account of how it is that people somehow do know why it is that

a person who is struggling with his anger is ready to blow up. The major
reason for this deficiency is that componential analysis sees word meanings as
autonomous, isolated conceptual entities with a simple structure, rather than
as overlapping segments in a rich conceptual texture which is organized in
complex ways. It seems to me that lexical meaning can only be studied against
this rich conceptual background.
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