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Article published In:
Metaphor and the Social World
Vol. 9:2 (2019) ► pp.199–220

Gender stereotyping

The head and sexualized body parts as fruits and vegetables

| University of Vienna

Across languages, the head and sexualized body parts (i.e., vagina, breasts, penis, testicles) are conceptualized in a number of ways, for example as fruits and vegetables: heads are conceptualized as cabbages, vaginas as figs, breasts as melons, penises as carrots, and testicles as olives, to only name a few. The present study draws on the theories of conceptual metaphor and metonymy by Lakoff & Johnson (1980) to analyze the conceptualizations of the five body parts as fruits and vegetables in English, Spanish and French. For this purpose, a slang dictionary-based database of 184 conceptualizations was compiled. Research on the head and sexualized body parts is particularly interesting as they represent the core of intellect and sexuality respectively, which makes them prone to being conceptualized in a variety of expressive and euphemistic ways. The results of the present study show that female body parts are primarily conceptualized as sweet fruits, while the penis as well as the head are mostly understood of as savory vegetables. This finding suggests a case of gender stereotyping, whereby sweet-natured women are denied intelligence as the head is stereotypically seen as a male body part (i.e., as a savory vegetable).

Keywords: body part metaphors, dictionary search, fruits and vegetables, gender stereotypes, English, Spanish, French
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.State of the art
    • 2.1Target domain body part
    • 2.2 body parts are fruits/vegetables
    • 2.3Botany vs. cuisine
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Dictionaries
    • 3.2The choice of the analyzed body parts
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Target concept head
    • 4.2Female body parts
      • 4.2.1Target concept vagina
      • 4.2.2Target concept breasts
    • 4.3Male body parts
      • 4.3.1Target concept penis
      • 4.3.2Target concept testicles
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.18007.dzi
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