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Article published In:
Languages in Contrast
Vol. 23:1 (2023) ► pp.1–33

Body part metaphors in phraseological expressions

A comparative survey of Italian, Spanish, French and English

ORCID logo | Università degli Studi Roma Tre (Italy)
ORCID logo | Università degli Studi Roma Tre (Italy)
ORCID logo | Università degli Studi Roma Tre (Italy)

The paper addresses the employment of body part nouns in the creation of phraseological expressions of some European languages, a topic at the crossroads of language, cognition and culture. In particular, the contrastive analysis explores the common linguistic representation of meanings through body part metaphorical expressions in Italian, French, Spanish and English. While several efforts to gauge the existence of a “European linguistic type” (cf. Haspelmath, 2001) have been largely devoted to the study of grammatical structures, a systematic account of the lexical component of the major European languages has not been attempted yet. Among the lexical units, phraseological expressions (e.g. compounds, multiword units, idiomatic expressions, as well as light verb and light noun constructions) represent a relevant ground to inquire into, since they are the most transparent and authentic vehicle of common ideas and experiences gradually rooted in European communicative realities.

Keywords: phraseological expressions, body part nouns, metaphorical relations, European languages, Italian/Spanish/French/English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Body part nouns in metaphorical expressions
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Semantic properties
  • 4.Data extraction
  • 5.Semantic mapping
    • 5.1Spatial orientation
    • 5.2Spatial hierarchy
    • 5.3Social hierarchy
    • 5.4Intellect
    • 5.5Possession
    • 5.6Control
    • 5.7Activity
    • 5.8Language faculty
    • 5.9Perceiving is knowing
    • 5.10Group of people
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Sitography
Published online: 26 August 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.21006.gan
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