Publications

Publication details [#6130]

Huseman, William H. 1999. The sacred centre of orthodoxy: Metaphorical links between sexual impurity and heresy In Boeve, Lieven and Kurt Feyaerts. Metaphor and Godtalk (Religions and Discourse 2). Bern: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers. pp. 231–250. 20 pp.
Publication type
Article in book  
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
Bern: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers

Abstract

Huseman (University of Oklahoma, U.S.A.) analyses a wide spectrum of anti-heretical imagery as it appears in cultural contexts, which differ from each other in space and time. A cognitive semantic analysis of conceptual metaphors, situated on a schematic level and generalising over seemingly unrelated surface metaphors, shows that different cultures make use of the same basic metaphorical model for indicating both sexual and religious impurity. More specifically, embodied spatial concept pairs like CENTRALITY/ SEXUAL PURITY and CENTRIFUGALITY/SEXUAL IMPURITY are linked with highly abstract concepts like ORTHODOXY and HERESY respectively. With his analysis, Huseman offers a strong indication of the bodily-spatial grounding of trans-cultural (universal) metaphorical patterns of reasoning. (Kurt Feyaerts and Lieven Boeve)