Metáfora e emoção: sobre a conceptualização na língua portuguesa

Abstract

This research aims at investigating the metaphorical conceptualization of emotional categories and is based on cognitive linguistics. The work discusses how primary and complex conceptual metaphors (LAKOFF; JOHNSON, 1980; GRADY, 1997) and metaphorical idealized cognitive models (LAKOFF, 1987) structure emotion concepts. It also presents the ideas of emotion prototype and aspects of emotion concepts (KÖVECSES, 2000; 2002b), as well as debates the universality and cultural variation among metaphors from emotional domain (KÖVECSES, 2005). Considering these notions, a corpus study from Twitter was carried out, concerning metaphorical occurrences for SADNESS and HAPPINESS in Portuguese language from Brazil, in order to search for evidences about the conceptualization of these emotions in such language. The investigation indicated metaphorical cognitive models that can underlie the conceptualization of the analyzed categories, several metaphorical expressions that result from these models and primary and complex conceptual metaphors that structure them. In addition, the applied study showed the relation of the cognitive models identified in corpus with the emotion prototype, similarities and differences between the analyzed categories, possibilities to elaborate different aspects of emotion concepts and also the correspondence or not of the models found for Portuguese with those pointed out for English.