A Contrastive Analysis of Metaphors Belonging to the Basic Conceptual Metaphor PEOPLE ARE PLANTS in English and Croatian

master's thesis

• Author: Nina Bassi
• Mentor: Milena Žic Fuchs (mentor)
• Committee member: Marina Grubišić (predsjednik povjerenstva)
• Committee member: Ivana Bašić (član povjerenstva)
• Committee member: Milena Žic Fuchs (član povjerenstva)
• Granter: University of Zagreb; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; (Department of English language and literature); Zagreb
• Defense date and country: 2019-10-28, Croatia
• Scientific / art field, discipline and subdiscipline: HUMANISTIC SCIENCES; Philology; Anglistics

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to use the subdomains of FLOWERS, VEGETABLES and FRUITS, which fall under the basic conceptual metaphor PEOPLE ARE PLANTS, to show the differences between English and Croatian. The assumption is that the source domain PLANTS is well-grounded in people’s everyday experience, thus, well-grounded in the cognitive processes also. PEOPLE ARE PLANTS metaphor is related to the Great Chain of Being metaphor which points out to the similarities in these two cultures, but... More certain cultural differences lead to variation in this metaphor. There are a great number of metaphors under the PEOPLE ARE PLANTS basic metaphor which translate in the same or similar way in both the English and Croatian language, but there are also certain metaphors where these languages use certain plant types for describing people, showing differences between the two languages. That is why the aim of this research was to show how different plants are used in Croatian and English when describing specific characteristics of people. The research was conducted on the basis of British National Corpus (BNC) and Hrvatski web korpus (hrWaC) where the data in the form of sentences were used. For the English language flowers narcissus, wallflower, white lily and violet were used, while ficus, daisy and mimosa were used as examples for the Croatian language. Vegetables and fruits which were used are bean, peas, cabbage, peach, pumpkin, strawberry, banana, etc. Lexemes flower, vegetable and fruit were also taken into account and used to point out to the differences and similarities between these two languages when it comes to the use and translation of this lexeme. The research showed how there are indeed differences when using flower types in metaphors, and similarities when using only the lexeme flower. When it comes to vegetable and fruit subdomains, the examples show how although English and Croatian mainly use the same vegetables and fruits for denoting the same ideas, they do differ in the meaning they convey. Less

• Keywords: conceptual metaphor; culture; Great Chain Metaphor; PEOPLE ARE PLANTS; flowers; vegetables; fruits; nuts
• Language: english
• URN:NBN: urn:nbn:hr:131:156623
• Study programme: Title: English Language and Literature (double major); specializations in: Linguistics, Literature and Culture, Translation, TEFL; Course: Linguistics; Study programme type: university; Study level: graduate; Academic / professional title: magistar/magistra engleskog jezika i književnosti (magistar/magistra engleskog jezika i književnosti)
• Type of resource: Text
• File origin: Born digital
• Access conditions: Open access
• Created on: 2019-10-29 18:03:25