Metaphor-metonymies of joy and happiness in Greek

In this paper I examine the idiomatic metonymic expressions denoting joy and happiness in Greek, focusing on their experiential grounding. I first argue for an interdisciplinary approach to the relationship between body, emotion and language, which allows for a holistic perspective to the meaning of these expressions and makes explicit the analogical experiential elements of the particular emotions. As a case study, I look at instances of metaphor within metonymy, which appear to require an interdisciplinary analysis. Drawing on corpus examples, I examine metonymies of joy and happiness with special emphasis on the neurobiological evidence (i.e. the expressive and physiological component of the emotion); the results of the analysis account for how happiness and joy are experienced by the subject.

Published online: 15 June 2012
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.10.1.05the