Open AccessConceptualizations of the Heart in Jordanian Arabic: A Cognitive Perspective
Author(s) -
Omar Bani Mofarrej,
Ghaleb Rabab’ah
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international journal of linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1948-5425
DOI - 10.5296/ijl.v12i4.17360
Subject(s) - arabic , metaphor , cognition , psychology , perspective (graphical) , similarity (geometry) , linguistics , test (biology) , conceptual metaphor , cognitive psychology , philosophy , computer science , artificial intelligence , paleontology , neuroscience , image (mathematics) , biology
The present paper examines the metaphorical and metonymical conceptualizations of the heart in Jordanian Arabic (JA) within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). The main aim is to explore how the human heart is conceptualized in JA, and to test the applicability of the different general cognitive mechanisms proposed by Niemeier (2003 and 2008) to those found in JA. The data were extracted from Idioms and Idiomatic Expressions in Levantine Arabic: Jordanian Dialect (Alzoubi, 2020), and other resources including articles, dissertations and books of Arabic proverbs. The findings revealed that all the four general cognitive mechanisms suggested by Niemeier (2003 and 2008) are applicable to JA. The findings also showed that the similarity derives from the universal aspects of the human body, which lends tremendous support to the embodiment hypothesis proposed by cognitive linguists.