Gender stereotyping
The head and sexualized body parts as fruits and vegetables
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).
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
-
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