The article focuses on the influence of culture upon both metaphorical and metonymic conceptualizations of fear in two languages, i.e. Akan (a West African, Kwa language) and English. In order to capture the differences and/or similarities in the conceptualization, the authors apply the general framework of conceptual metaphor theory. The analysis proposed in the article shows that the similarities in the conceptualization of a primary emotion of fear across cultures may be accounted for by adopting the notion of universal embodied cognition, while the differences should rather be explained in terms of cultural filtering that allows for human experiences more salient to a particular sociocultural group. The proposed analysis is also a study on a metaphor-metonymy interaction while conceptualizing primary emotions across cultures.