Embodiment in colloquial Arabic proverbs: A cognitive linguistic perspective

1 Introduction

Embodiment and conceptual metaphors have received a considerable amount of attention since the 1980s, as the beginning of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), regarding cognitive linguistics. This study aims to contribute to this field by investigating embodiment in relation to cognitive linguistics by applying image schema and conceptual metaphors to colloquial Arabic proverbs. A good number of research articles have covered this idea from a cross-cultural perspective. However, this study tackles this issue from an intracultural perspective. Proverbs have long been an essential part of discourse, whether formal or informal, and since the human body is used as a source for understanding abstract concepts, paremiology, the science of studying proverbs using body parts to explain abstract ideas, has proven the pervasiveness of figurative proverbs in various languages (Hrisztova-Gotthardt and Varga 2014).

Arabic proverbs are a characteristic of folk speech, as is the case with other languages, but in Arabic, proverbs, especially the colloquial variety, are essential and rich, as Arabic is spoken in more than 22 countries, giving proverbs a wide spectrum of meanings and figurative language. The spread of Arabs from the Arabian Gulf in the east, to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, gives the language rich cultural variation resulting from the great number of dialects and provides a fertile land for cognitive linguistic research.

This study aims to explore Arabic proverbs from a cognitive linguistic perspective to find out how body parts, namely, the hand, the head, and the heart, have been used to express various ideas. They were chosen because, according to White (2021), they are among the first five frequently mentioned body parts. Other body parts have also reflected various ideas in a way that enables speakers to express their ancestors’ experiences without offense to an audience. This is based on the high context culture to which Arabic speakers belong. According to Hall and Hall (1990), communication in such type of culture does not need much explanation as speakers share much background information. Moreover, when one says, “المثل يقول” (or ‘the proverb says’) or “على رأي المثل” (or ‘according to the proverb’), the speaker really means, ‘It is not me who says this,’ especially if what is said includes some negative characteristics or difficult advice as speakers avoid offence and prefer to “be committed to people and human relations” according to Hall and Hall (1990, 15). For example, if you would like to tell someone that he/she is speaking to the wrong person, you would say:

عينك في الفيل و تطعن في ظله

Literal Translation: ‘Your eye on the elephant and stab in its shadow.’

Actual Meaning: ‘You see the elephant, but you stab its shadow.’

Such way of communicating among Arabic speakers is pervasive, and Arabic proverbs contain various types of metaphors that serve to express different concepts in Arabic communities. These proverbs include metaphors that use body parts as an essential way of drawing images and figures of speech.

The present research relies on CMT as a framework for the analysis since it is widely recognized as the major mechanism for conducting such type of analysis in cognitive linguistics. In particular, it places special emphasis on schemata as a prominent method for showcasing embodiment. According to Johnson (1987, 29–30), image schemas are “structures of an activity by which we organize our experience in ways that we can comprehend, and they are flexible in that they can take on any number of specific instantiations in varying contexts.” Moreover, Evans (2007, 106) further connects image schema to embodiment, stating that “image schemas derive from sensory and perceptual experience. Accordingly, they derive from embodied experience.” Consequently, the human mind and language are inseparable from human embodiment and should be analyzed as a unified whole.

Although this study does not aim to compare and contrast Arabic proverbs directly with their English counterparts, any resulting similarities may help shed light on the universality of the concept of embodiment, especially considering the shared nature of human body parts. Instead, the study primarily focuses on how Arabic speakers conceptualize everyday life experiences via body parts, with a particular focus on the hand, head, and heart.

In the field of cognitive science, the term ‘embodiment’ refers to “understanding the role of an agent’s own body in its everyday, situated cognition”; that is, it refers to how our bodies influence the ways we think and speak (Gibbs 2006, 1). This perspective forms the foundation from which this investigation of figurative language in Arabic proverbs begins. Accordingly, this research aims to answer the following questions:

1. What are the most prominent schematic images portrayed by the body parts, including the head, hand, and heart, in Arabic colloquial proverbs?

2. To what extent can the image schemas drawn by the selected body parts reflect the interaction between language, cognition, and embodied experience across a variety of Arabic colloquial proverbs?

Given that proverbs reflect how people convey various issues, the main objective is to shed light on Arabic culture and language through proverbs.

Nevertheless, one of the challenges that face researchers when they try to draw generalizations about proverbs is that they are mainly oral, making them prone to change and editing from one person to another and from one dialect to another. As White (2021, 8) explains, “Arabic is challenging to pin down as a language. It has varieties within varieties: ancient, medieval, and modern; urban and rural; written and oral. Like other languages, it is constantly evolving.” Thus, the same complexity applies to Arabic proverbs.

By establishing a taxonomy of metaphorical expressions rooted in embodied experiences, this research aims to provide a deeper understanding of the interaction between language, cognition, and culture within the Arabic context. In doing so, it not only contributes to the field of cognitive linguistics but also offers valuable insights for cross-cultural studies, language education, and translation. Finally, the triangulation of three different countries represented by four authors in this study will enrich the discussion about proverbs, as they are sometimes the same and sometimes different across regions.

2 Literature review

3 Research methodology

The research is a descriptive analytical study that takes a cognitive perspective to investigate the figurative meaning of body parts in Arabic proverbs within the framework of CMT by Johnson and Lakoff (1987). The view of image schemas that was elaborated from this theory has been adopted as an analytical framework for the purpose of this research. According to Lakoff (1987), various areas of experience are metaphorically structured through a limited number of image schemas. Johnson (1987) explains that embodied experience manifests itself at the cognitive level in terms of image schemas.

Specifically, the notion of ‘image schema’ as ‘experiential gestalts’ that was introduced by Gibbs (2005, 2008) was adopted in this research. In this sense, Gibbs claims that image schemas could be described as ‘emergent properties’ that momentarily emerge from ongoing brain, body, and world interactions. Hence, they are meaningful, stable states of embodied experience rather than entities stored in the minds.

In this claim, Gibbs explains that image schemas are ‘experiential gestalts’ or ‘as-if body’ loops actively created on the fly during different cognitive activity and not encoded structures in the head that are passively activated as part of unconscious linguistic understanding processes (Hampe 2005, 119).

Hence, the current study is conducted based on descriptive-inductive methodology. The analysis of data was based on image schemas that emerged in the corpus of Arabic proverbs that covered a variety of Arabic dialects across different regions of the Arab world. The Arabian dialects include Arabic regional varieties spoken in the Middle East and North African states as categories mentioned by Cotterell and Callison-Burch (2014), including Egyptian Arabic, Levantine ‘Shami’ Arabic, Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, and the North African Arabic dialects. In this study, the Arabic dialects spoken in the Middle Eastern countries are the most prevalent in the study data. This is not surprising as they are more similar due to the cultural and geographical proximity between them.

The corpus of the Arabic proverbs used in this study is taken from two main sources (books) of Arabic proverbs written in the Arabic language, namely, موسوعة الحكم و الأمثالMawswaat Alhikam wa Alamthal (Encyclopedia of Wise Sayings and Proverbs) and الأمثال العاميةAlamthal Alamiah (The Dialectal Proverbs). Only proverbs that contain selected body parts were under examination. The data collected from these sources were imported into NVivo15 software released 2024 for the purpose of categorization, visualization, and coding.

Data analysis was conducted in two basic classification stages. The first involved collecting and classifying proverbs according to the body parts most frequently mentioned in the proverbs. The second involved classifying the previously selected proverbs according to the most prominent imagery schemas.

A total of 255 Arabic proverbs were primarily extracted from the research corpus. These proverbs include all body parts appearing in the corpus (head, face, hands, shoulders, arms, fingers, legs, eyes, nose, ears, mouth, tongue, heart, cheeks, back, abdomen, skin, and teeth). Then, the three most frequent body parts – hand, head, and heart – were selected as they most closely capture the schematic patterns of Arabic proverbs discourse and the interaction between the world, body, and brain. Figure 1 shows the distribution of the three body parts in the involved proverbs, with Figure 2 showing the occurrences of the three body parts as appeared in the study corpus for better understanding.

Figure 1

The frequency of the three body parts selected for the purpose of the research (hand, head, and heart) (data source: NVivo 15).

Figure 2

The occurrences of the three body parts selected for the purpose of the research (hand, head, and heart) (data source: NVivo 15).

A number of schematic images portrayed by the three body parts, namely the head, hand, and heart, in Arabic colloquial proverbs were inductively examined and analyzed in this study. The key image schemas that were identified from the data corpus were five as follows: 1. Containment; 2. Part-Whole; 3. Force; 4. Support; 5. Path.

These five categories were selected based on a preliminary analysis of all the imagery schemas of the proverbs selected for the study. They were included for their prominence and frequency among the other imagery schemas as shown in Table 1. Only proverbs (with the three body parts) that represented the five schematic images were included in study and analysis to answer the research questions.

For clarification of schemas, Table 2 shows brief descriptions of the five major image schemas that appeared in the study corpus. The definitions were adapted from Hu (2011) and Gibbs (2005).

The data extracts were presented first in Arabic script. Then they are directly followed by English translations for the Arabic words, considering the semantic meaning of the popular proverb. The body part presented in each extract was identified in bold font in both Arabic and English scripts. Within some examples of Arabic proverbs, explanations also followed in parentheses for ambiguous expressions.

4 Results

Proverbs resulted from daily experiences of Arabic speakers. A significant number of proverbs contain body parts. Embodiment in these proverbs implies how Arabic speakers are aware of their bodies, and at the same time, they convey various concepts to recipients in an imaginary image schema that makes meaning very rich and acceptable. The following is an analysis of pervasive image schemas in proverbs containing head, heart, and hand.

Five image schemas are found to be prevalent in the proverbs containing the three body parts. These schemas are CONTAINMENT, FORCE, SUPPORT, PART FOR WHOLE, and PATH. They are illustrated in Figures 3 and 4.

Figure 3

The key image schemas identified from the data corpus, based on data analyzed in NVivo 15 (data source: NVivo 15).

Figure 4

The occurrences of the five schemas in the selected proverbs by body parts, based on data analyzed in NVivo 15 (data source: NVivo 15).

As shown in Figure 4, CONTAINMENT is the most prevalent of the other four image schemas through proverbs relating to all three body parts concerned by the study counting 24 for Hand and equally 15 for both head and heart proverbs.

FORCE schemas come second in the proverbs related to the hand (N = 8), while the number represents the least among the schematic images of the other body parts, representing two for the heart and only one for the head proverbs.

PART FOR WHOLE is one of the more prominent image schemas in the head-related proverbs (N = 8), while it represents four images in the hand and three in the heart-related schematic images.

Regarding the SUPPORT schemas, their distribution is considered the third among the image schemas related to the hand, with a number of 5, while it is few (N = 2) in the proverbs data of the heart and the least (N = 1) among the corpus schematic images related to the head.

Finally, as illustrated in Figure 4, PATH represents the least number of image schemas related to all parts of the body across the proverbs selected for the research data counting 2 for heart, and 1 for each of the hand and the head.

In the following sections, the five image schemas will be presented and discussed, including extracts chosen from the data corpus.

5 Discussion

The first research question, What are the most prominent schematic images portrayed by the body parts, including the head, hand, and heart, in Arabic colloquial proverbs?, is addressed through an analysis of the schemas’ prevalence and distribution. For instance, the CONTAINMENT schema frequently conceptualizes body parts as either containers (e.g., the head as a repository of wisdom) or as being contained (e.g., the heart encapsulating emotions) comes first.

The second research question, To what extent can the image schemas drawn by the selected body parts reflect the interaction between language, cognition, and embodied experience across a variety of Arabic colloquial proverbs?, is explored by examining how these schemas encode cultural values such as collectivism (SUPPORT schema) and moral or social lessons (FORCE schema). These findings illuminate the deeply embedded connections between linguistic expression, embodied cognition, and cultural narratives in the Arabic-speaking world.

The data analysis demonstrates the richness and diversity of Arabic proverbs in their use of body parts as cognitive tools. Whether through the metaphorical depiction of the hand as a symbol of agency and control, the head as a container of rational thought, or the heart as the seat of emotions, these proverbs encapsulate a wealth of cultural and cognitive insights. By categorizing these metaphoric expressions, the study not only addresses the research questions but also contributes to broader discussions on the universality and specificity of embodied cognition in language.

Results proved that CONTAINMENT is the most prominent schema among the schemas studied earlier. Body parts representing this schema as both CONTAINED and CONTAINER revealed interesting results. When the hand, for example, is a CONTAINER, it means it has power and positive attribute. According to Yu (2008), in both English and Chinese, the hand has control when it is a CONTAINER. Yu mapped it as: CONTROL IS HOLDING IN THE HAND (2008, 394).

Likewise, the HEAD as a CONTAINER indicates power and control of thought as opposed to when it is CONTAINED. Mandić (2020) discussed the prevalence of HEAD IS A CONTAINER in both English and Serbian proverbs, indicating that the HEAD can be a CONTAINER of thoughts, psychological entities, and the like.

The heart does not only contain emotions but also untold stories and hidden memories of unsuccessful love, pain, or sorrow. On the other hand, the heart is a dynamic organ containing positive feelings, and it means life. Al-Harrasi (2012) commented on the oft-repeated phrase, قلب العروبة النابض/qalb al rooba annabiD (the ‘throbbing heart of Arabhood’), resulting from the centrality and vitality of the heart for the human body. It is frequently conceptualized as the essence of everything, as in ‘the heart of the topic.’ According to Al-Harrasi (2012, 195), “the heart is used metaphorically to represent the center of feelings.”

The second prevalent schema is FORCE schema. Literature in conceptual metaphors and image schemas discussed FORCE image schema from different perspectives, such as cause and effect or a kind of interaction between force and counter-force (Amant et al. 2006), and Mandić (2020), for instance, exemplifies this FORCE through the idiom ‘bang someone’s head against a brick wall.’ The meaning of force schema is also discussed as a dynamic pattern in research, Yang et al. (2021). Findings of this study proved that ‘shortness of hand,’ for instance, indicates lack of power and/or force. In Maalej’s (2011) phrase, AMBITION IS AN INCREASE IN THE EYE’S SIZE; the meaning includes ambition, though the figurative meaning is related to AN INCREASE IN THE SHARPNESS OF SIGHT. By this, he refers to the idea of BIG SIZE indicates INCREASE and SMALLNESS or SHORTNESS indicates lack of power or force.

The third pervasive schema is PART OF THE BODY STANDS FOR THE PERSON metonym. According to Yu (2008), this metaphoric metonymy is very common. Results showed that the hand, as a dynamic part, the head as the mental center and the heart as both mental and emotional power stand for the person in Arabic proverbs, indicating various values of Arabs belonging to High Context Culture division according to Hall and Hall (1990). One of the aforementioned proverbs is related to marriage as a respected, highly celebrated social custom, based on social practices related to religion, Arab values, and customs (Al-Kandari and Gaither 2011, Witteborn 2007). It celebrates the value of uniting people into strong, legal relationships that might be lifelong, hence HEAD FOR PERSON.

SUPPORT schema is not much represented by the three body parts in spite of the prevalence of the value of support among Arabs. It comes before PATH schema, which is the least represented. Several studies (e.g., Al-Kandari and Gaither 2011, Witteborn 2007) asserted the collective identity of Arabs in which devotion to families and tribes is reflected as a prominent Arab value of groups’ membership. People achieve their goals easier when they come ‘hand in hand,’ even if they are planning evil (Taymor 2014), and the heart is the best body part to conceptualize SUPPORT, as emotional support might be more important than physical or financial support (White 2021).

The aforementioned schemas conceptualized in colloquial Arabic proverbs prove that “culture, by interpreting bodily experience, affects the formation of conceptual metaphors; body, by grounding metaphorical mappings, affects cultural understanding; and metaphor, by structuring cultural models, affects the understanding of bodily experience” (Yu 2008).

6 Conclusion and recommendations

Image schemas of PATH, FORCE, SUPPORT, PART FOR WHOLE, and CONTAINMENT, with the two types of the last one, the head, hand, and heart as being CONTAINERS and CONTAINED, prove that cognition and everyday experiences manifest in proverbs that use body parts, producing dynamic image schemas that reflect Arabic culture with its values and wisdom. These body parts have mapped different cultural and abstract concepts into dynamic image schemas that are based on the human body to achieve the cognition of Arab experiences that are pervasive in proverbs.

The three body parts, head, hand, and heart, have contributed to forming image schemas that have CONTAINED various abstract concepts, and they have contributed to being a source for imaginative structures in the form of metaphor or metonymy that spread cultural models in the form of proverbs. Maalej (2011) has come to a similar conclusion to that of Yu (2009), which supports the interaction of language, culture, cognition, and body in an attempt to extend embodiment theory, initiated by Lakoff and Johnson in 1980.

This study is limited to three body parts in Colloquial Arabic proverbs due to space constraints; however, the findings underscore the rich potential of embodiment in Arabic proverbs as a fertile area for cognitive research. Based on the findings of this study, several recommendations can be made. First, educators and linguists should incorporate the analysis of embodied metaphors in Arabic proverbs into language curricula to enhance learners’ understanding of cultural nuances and cognitive processes. This can help bridge linguistic and cultural gaps, particularly for nonnative speakers learning Arabic or translators working with Arabic texts. Second, future research should explore a broader range of body parts and proverbs across diverse Arabic dialects to identify regional variations in embodiment and metaphorical expressions. Finally, cross-cultural comparative studies are encouraged to examine the universality and cultural specificity of embodied metaphors, which can contribute to cognitive linguistics and intercultural communication fields. Collaborative efforts between paremiologists, linguists, and cognitive scientists are essential to deepen insights into the interplay between language, cognition, and culture.