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18 Orazgozel Esenova

(46)    You Ve given me a thorn to lie on, just when I was feeling comfortable.

(47)    Probably I haven’t got over those Poor Richard tags yet.

I rankle still with them. They are thoms in your flesh.

(48)    Virtuous love...shall pluck the thorn from compunction.

3. Conclusions

Humań beings have centuries of agricultural experience and tremendous knowledge about plants. Many emotion metaphors in the English language are grounded on this experience. Since plant growth presupposes a huge change, this is a perfect source domain for the conceptualisation of emotions. In the EMOTIONS ARE PLANTS metaphor, stages of plant growth are systematically mapped onto the stages of emotion development. The stages of plant growth that are mapped onto the stages of emotion development are: seed, germination, budding, flowering, fruition and withering. The seed-bearing stage is mapped onto other domains than emotions. Thus we make use of all the stages of plant growth in our abstract conceptualisation.

Some emotions or States, like acąuaintance, friendship and love, are seen as different points lying on the same continuum of development. Generally, less intimate forms of such emotions or States are associated with an unripe fruit and morę intimate forms with ripe fruit. The initial stage of an emotion correlates with an unripe fruit and later stages with a ripe one. Sometimes positive and negative emotions are associated with sweet and bitter fruits respectively and such associations stem from our experiences in our evolutionary past.

Furthermore, in some metaphorical expressions, an intensifying emotion is conceptualised as a plant growingbigger. However, some of these expressions can also be motivated by other experiences, such as pregnancy. In another group of linguistic metaphors, strongly felt emotions are regarded