Part of
Endangered MetaphorsEdited by Anna Idström and Elisabeth Piirainen
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts 2] 2012
► pp. 123–144
This paper offers a comparative analysis of two corpora of shared riddles from the sixteenth century and present day Nahuatl. Riddles are a form of speech play practiced in Nahua communities since pre-Hispanic times. Conceptualization behind riddles has been preserved, has changed and has also been lost. Analysis will expose the ways of perceiving and thinking in construing the clues of riddles from a cognitive approach based on Blending Theory together with concepts like profile, construal, mental spaces. Socio-cultural information plays a crucial part in establishing domains of knowledge in which meaning relations are established.