9818246722

9

Plant metaphors for the expression of emotions

mutual sympathy between two people may develop into love etc. Because of the above-mentioned facts, emotions are experienced as a highly dynamie process. The plant domain is a perfect source domain for emotion conceptualisation sińce plant growth presupposes a tremendous change. A seed barely visible to the human eye grows into something very big. It would be impossible to make sense of the above-mentioned changes in emotional States by using a source domain where there is no change.

2.2. Conceptualisation of the stages of emotion

development

Thus, in the English language, there is a considerable number of metaphorical expressions in which emotions are conceptualised in terms of plants or their parts. In the EMOTIONS ARE PLANTS metaphor, different stages of emotion development correlate with the stages of plant growth.

As is known, the life cycle of a plant starts from a seed. In the English language, there is a set of metaphorical expressions in which the seed represents the initial stage or source of an emotion. Here are some examples:

(1)    The seeds of friendship were sown early and they remained lifelong companions.

(2)    Each letter was a seed falling on a fertile heart. A romance was budding.

(3)    The germs of her wilful and capricious passions might have been sown during her wandering and adventurous childhood.

(4)    This planted the seed of hatred for the foreign occupation of Scotland.

Some plants grow naturally, other ones must be sown. In the above-mentioned expressions, to cali forth an emotion is to sow a seed.