This paper examines the correlations between linguistic figurative features and their corresponding conceptual representations, by exploring their respective continuities and discontinuities in language shift. It compares the figurative encoding of emotions in Kriol, a creole of northern Australia, with those of Dalabon, one of the languages replaced by this creole, with a specific emphasis on evidence from metaphorical gestures. The conclusions are three-fold. Firstly, the prominent figurative association between the body and the emotions observed in Dalabon is, overall, not matched in Kriol. Secondly, altbeit this association is not prominent in Kriol, it is not entirely lacking. It surfaces where speakers are less restricted by linguistic conventions: in non-conventionalized tropes, and especially gestures. Indeed, some of the verbal emotion metaphors that have vanished with language shift are maintained as gestural metaphors. Thus, Kriol speakers support the conceptual association between emotions and the body, in spite of the lower linguistic incidence of this association. The third conclusion is that therefore, in language shift, conceptual figurative representations and linguistic figurative representations are independent of each other. The former can persist when the latter largely vanish. Conversely, the fact that speakers support a certain type of conceptual representation does not entail that they will employ corresponding linguistic forms in the new language. The transfer of linguistic figurative representations appears to rely, instead, upon solely linguistic parameters.