Volume 50, Issue 1

Based on my earlier work on the conceptualization of emotions, I wish to emphasize a number of points in this paper. First, I suggest that emotion concepts are largely metaphorical and metonymic in nature. Second, I propose that several of the conceptual metaphors and metonymies are tightly connected. Third, in line with a large body of recent result, I maintain that many of our emotion concepts have a bodily basis, i.e. that they are embodied. Fourth, I concur with many others that our emotion concepts can be seen to have a frame-like structure, i.e. that they can be represented as cognitive-cultural models in the mind. Fifth, and on the methodology side, I claim that the description and analysis of emotion concepts requires both a qualitative and a quantitative methodology. Though most of these suggestions have been accepted and embraced by a number of scholars working on the emotions, several other scholars have challenged the suggestions. As a response to such challenges, I have revised and modified the ideas above in the past 25 years. The present paper is concerned with these more recent developments.

This paper proposes a common ground for discussion between linguistic and architectural production in the framework of some late Cognitive Theories of meaning construc-tion like Conceptual Metaphor Theory (from Lakoff and Johnson 1980) and Conceptual Integration Theory (from Fauconnier and Turner 2002). This common ground will be analyzed from formal plan making reference to Wittgenstein's linguistic thesis. For instance, understanding his architectural production in Palais Stonborough requires a realistic knowledge of the author's specific conception of a work of art as an object seen sub specie aeternitatis. In the author's view, this construal demands the nullification of the subjective component, since the work of art must aim to become an objective description of the totality of existing states of affair, which is the world. Thus, following Wittgenstein's conception of art, beauty emerges from the objectivity of the work in a process that must run on the side-lines of subject's mediation. We are confronted with an inclusive representational problem: Is this objectivity of the work possible as conceptually constructed and linguistically expressed by Wittgenstein in his written essays? To answer this question, we will conceptually analyze the two subcategories of linguistic plan and formal plan focusing on the way they project partial structure from the domains of object and of subject; our aim is to prove, applying feasible cognitive poetic and linguistic principles, methods, and models, that artful ideas that are linguistically valid in Tractatus cannot be directly applied to architectural production. We conclude that both plans are not really interchangeable.

Researching metaphor can be approached from various perspectives. Psycholinguistic views offer insight into how metaphoric expressions are comprehended during online tasks and whether online metaphor comprehension differs from literal language understanding. Early psycholinguistic studies used reaction time methods, which allowed researchers to investigate the time course and verify existing theories of figurative language comprehension. However, reaction time studies are somewhat limited in showing differences that occur within the same or comparable time frame. In this regard, electro-physiological methods seem to be more informative. Event-related potential studies re-port differences between metaphoric and literal language comprehension that occur as early as 200 ms (P200) after the presentation of the critical word. They also show that ERP components like the N400 or LPC are modulated by the degree of conventionality and metaphoricity. Finally, source localization methods allow researchers to identify the neural generators of these components. These results show that the neurophysiological perspective offers yet another way of looking at metaphor, which can broaden our un-derstanding of many aspects related to figurative language comprehension.

The difficulty we have in talking about feelings and emotions without making use of metaphorical language is often noted in discussions of metaphor within cognitive linguistics and it has led to interesting claims about how we conceptualise and think about emotions. Yet, these observations have had little impact so far on pragmatic theories of metaphor processing which typically work with more de-contextualised examples of language. This paper examines figurative expressions in two passages from attested psychotherapy exchanges where explicit use is made of metaphor for therapeutic purposes. The elaborated metaphorical utterances found in these transcripts of "emotion talk" are used to assess the explanatory adequacy of a current pragmatic theory, namely the "ad hoc concept" account of metaphor proposed within Relevance Theory. In line with Carston (2010), I argue that when interpreting these extended metaphors the literal meaning of the expressions in question is entertained and metarepresented as descriptive of an imaginative conception which represents the utterer's attempt to understand his/her emotional experience. By focusing and reflecting on this metarepresented literal meaning, the client, together with the therapist, is able to draw out implications that can provide insights into his/her own feelings, reactions and behaviour. The use of psychotherapeutic discourse to support this line of argument confirms the need for pragmatic theories of metaphor to be supported by data from a range of discourses.

This article explores the metaphors used by second language learners to express their emotions and emotional states. In a first experiment, two groups of French students wrote 300-word essays. The non-literal aspects of these texts and provide an account of the metaphors produced to vehicle emotions were studied. In a second experiment, French students with various proficiency levels in English picked and answered a series of questions about daily life in pairs, so as to recreate aspects of naturally-occurring conversations. The questions inquired about the emotions experienced by participants in previous, real situations, as well as their potential reactions and feelings in a set of hypo-thetical events. Some questions presented fictive scenarios (How would you feel if...) while others used images and videos designed to prompt different emotions (stress, happiness, tenderness, etc.). The learners' answers were analyzed using a similar method to MIPVU. Our analyses show that L2 learners resort to metaphors with an explanatory function exclusively when used to describe emotions; whereas they produced a wider range of metaphors (e.g. with ornamental or humorous functions) when dealing with other topics. The language of emotions   and thus, the metaphors for emotions   might be marked.