Article published in:
Review of Cognitive Linguistics
Vol. 18:1 (2020) ► pp. 75–93

Everyone “leaves” the world eventually

Culture-based homogeneity and variation in death is departure

| University of Queensland
| Kazimierz Wielki University
What causes metaphors to be similar or different across languages? It can be tempting to associate differences with culture and similarities with embodiment, since human cultures are diverse and human bodies are comparable. However, we argue that the death of a loved one is such a widespread experience that it forms part of every human culture. We argue that linguistic instantiations of death is departure tend to focus on the starting point of the deceased person’s journey and the arrival of the person’s remains in their final resting place. We attribute these trends to the fact that living people around the world are focused on their loved ones’ absence in the here-and-now, and living people often place importance on physical sites associated with deceased loved ones, such as the location of their remains. These cross-linguistic trends emphasize that culture can lead to similarities as well as differences in metaphoric structures.
Keywords: primary metaphor, cultural filter, embodiment, blending, conceptual integration, death
Published online: 17 August 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00051.sul
References

References

Adair, L.
(2015) The D.C. connection. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corporation.Google Scholar
Biela-Wołońciej, A.
(2013) “Death is -the essence of all evil” – but not equally everywhere: Polish-English study on valuing and masking. Intercultural Pragmatics, 10(2), 235–264. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Berndt, R. M., & Berndt, C. H.
(1964) The world of the first Australians. Sydney: Ure Smith.Google Scholar
Dąbrowska, A.
(1998) Słownik eufemizmów polskich: Czyli w rzeczy mocno, w sposobie łagodnie. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN SA.Google Scholar
Edwards, B.
(2013) Changes in Pitjantjatjara mourning and burial practices. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1, 31–44.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M.
(2002) The way we think. Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G.
(1997) Mappings in thought and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, R. W. Jr.
(2006) Embodiment and cognitive science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gibbs, R. W. Jr., & Colston, H. L.
(1995) The cognitive psychological reality of image schemas and their transformations. Cognitive Linguistics, 6, 347–378. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Grady, J. E.
(1997) Foundations of meaning: Primary metaphors and primary scenes. PhD Dissertation, University of California at Berkeley: Department of Linguistics.Google Scholar
[ p. 92 ]
Grady, J. E., & Johnson, C.
(2002) Converging evidence for the notions of subscene and primary scene. In R. Dirven & R. Pörings (Eds.), Metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast (pp. 533–554). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S.
(1986) The causes and consequences of the need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189–212). New York, NY: Springer-Verlag. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I.
(2013) The relationship between conceptual metaphor and culture. Intercultural Pragmatics, 10(2), 315–339. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, M.
(1993) Moral imagination: Implications of cognitive science for ethics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kaberry, P. M.
(1939) Aboriginal woman sacred and profane. London: G. Routledge and Sons.Google Scholar
Kövecses, Z.
(2005) Metaphor in culture. Universality and variation. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M.
(1980) Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Turner, M.
(1989) More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G.
(1987) Women, fire and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pound, L.
(1936) American euphemisms for dying, death, and burial: An anthology. American Speech, 11(3), 195–202. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Quinn, N.
(1991) The cultural basis of metaphor. In J. Fernandez (Ed.), Beyond metaphor. The theory of tropes in anthropology (pp. 56–93). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, D.
(1952) The Poems of Dylan Thomas. New York: New Directions Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Tu, B. D., & Wang, G. N.
(2013) A comparative study on “death” terms in Chinese and Vietnamese. In P. Liu & Q. Su (Eds.), Chinese lexical semantics 14th workshop, CLSW 2013 (pp. 117–125). Berlin & Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Wachowski, W.
(2017) Metonymic hiding and cross-cultural communication. In W. Wachowski, Z. Kövecses, & M. B. Zooming (Eds), Micro-scale perspectives on cognition, translation and cross-cultural communication (pp. 33–53). Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
(2018) Towards a better understanding of metonymy. Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Whittier, J. G.
(1866) Snow-bound: A winter idyl. Boston, MA: Ticknor & Fields.Google Scholar
[ p. 93 ]