CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR IN RUSSIAN: COLOR AND EMOTION DOMAINS
Keywords:
Keywords: conceptual metaphor, Russian, color metaphor, emotion metaphor, cognitive linguistics, embodiment, cultural variation, Conceptual Metaphor TheoryAbstract
Abstract
This article examines the intersection of color and emotion in Russian conceptual
metaphor, drawing on lexical data from Metaphors in Russian — Animals, Colors,
Emotions, Sports (Bobrova, Kisselev & Lantolf, 2018). Using Conceptual Metaphor
Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) as its analytical framework, the study investigates
how color terms in Russian encode abstract cultural values and how the four emotions
catalogued in the dictionary — anger, happiness, love, and sadness — recruit multiple
structurally distinct source domains. A central finding is that the two domains are not
independent: red, white, black, and green each appear within emotion metaphors as
markers of observable physiological states, creating a cross-domain color-emotion
interface grounded in the visible bodily correlates of arousal. At the same time,
culturally specific elaborations — particularly the density of black-color illegality
metaphors and the Orthodox-inflected anger expressions — demonstrate that embodied
universals are always shaped by historical and cultural experience. The article
concludes with brief reflections on the implications for advanced Russian language
pedagogy.
References
References
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