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What’s hot and what’s not in English and Serbian: A contrastive view on the semantic extensions of temperature adjectives. Katarina Rasulić University of Belgrade, Serbia ekv@eunet.rs. The scope and the aims.
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What’s hot and what’s not in English and Serbian:A contrastive view on the semantic extensions of temperature adjectives Katarina Rasulić University of Belgrade, Serbia ekv@eunet.rs
The scope and the aims • Semantic extensions of English and Serbian temperature adjectives in abstract domains (excluding the extensions within the physical domain e.g. warm/cold clothes) • To identify and compare the semantic extensions of English and Serbian temperature adjectives in terms of the underlying conceptual mechanisms • To highlight different dimensions of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural variation relevant to the study of the semantics of temperature adjectives
The approach and the data • Usage-based approach – collocability of temperature adjectives in their abstract senses(cf. Firth 1957, Apresjan 2000, Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Rakhilina 2006) – both attributive and predicative uses (without further analysis of the syntactic behaviour; cf. Taylor 1992) • Sources of data: representative dictionaries (OED, RMS), electronic corpora (BNC, NKSJPMF), the Internet (Google search engine) • ~700 English examples, ~600 Serbian examples • Analysis: descriptive and contrastive
English and Serbian temperature adjectives that extend their meanings to abstract domains:
English & Serbian temperature adjectives: • Highly polysemous – extending their meanings to a number of abstract domains and across perception modalities • Meaning extension patterns vary along the temperature scales – both intra-linguistically and cross-linguistically
EMOTIONS • Metaphorical conceptualization of emotions – primary and complex metaphors arising from the temperature domain (Kövecses 1990, 2000, Grady 1997, Lakoff and Johnson 1999): • AFFECTION IS WARMTH • ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN THE CONTAINER • FEAR IS COLD • INTENSITY OF EMOTION IS HEAT • Characterization of emotions in terms of temperature adjectives?
Temperature of emotions – intrinsic quality:E: HOT/TORRID/SCORCHINGS: VRUĆ/VREO • ANGER, FURY, RAGE • to boil/seethewithhot/torrid/scorching anger/fury/rage • neobuzdani vrući/vreli bes‘uncontrollable hot/boiling hot fury’ • EXCITEMENT, AGITATION • look forward to sth withhot/torrid/scorching excitement • tragati za vrućim/vrelim uzbuđenjem ‘look for hot/boiling hot excitement’ • PASSION, LUST • a wave of/nights of hot/torrid/scorching passion/lust • oblila je vruća/vrela strast/požuda ‘hot passion/lust swept over her’ • DESIRE, LONGING (also S: ŽARKI ‘torrid/scorching’) • a tide of/be filled with hot/torrid/scorching desire/longing • goreti od žarke želje/žudnje/čežnje‘burn with torrid desire/longing’
Temperature of emotions – intrinsic quality:E: WARMS: TOPAO • LOVE, AFFECTION • feel/be filled with warm love/affection • topla majčinska ljubav ‘warm motherly love’ • HAPPINESS, JOY • his heart swells with warm joy/happiness • prožima je topla sreća/radost ‘she was filled with warm happiness/joy’
Temperature of emotions – intrinsic quality:E: COLD/CHILLY/COOL/ICE-COLD/ICYS: HLADAN/LEDEN • FEAR, PANIC • be gripped by cold/chilly/ice-cold/icy fear/panic • hladan/ledeni strahu kostima ‘cold/ice-cold fear in the bones’ • SADNESS, DEPRESSION • a cold/chilly/cool/ice-cold/icy sadness burrowed into my body • obuzela ga je hladna tuga ‘a cold sadness overwhelmed him’ • DESPAIR, MISERY • feel cold /chilly/cool/ice-cold/icy despair/misery • oseti hladan/ledeni očaj ‘he felt cold/ice-cold despair’ • HATRED • he just felt cold/chilly/ice-cold hatred towards her • ispunjen ledenom mržnjom ‘filled with ice-cold hatred’ • JEALOUSY, ENVY • the women ignored her with cold/icy envy/jealousy • pun hladne ljubomore/zavisti ‘full of cold jealousy/envy’ • CONTEMPT, DISGUST • she looked at him with cold/cool contempt/disgust • oseća samo hladan prezir ‘he feels only cold contempt’
Intensity of emotions is heat? • lukewarm : hot passion/excitementS: mlaka : vruća/vrela strast, uzbuđenje • lukewarm : warm : *hot affection/joy S: mlaka : topla : *vruća naklonost/radost • lukewarm : ice-cold : *hot fearS: mlaki : ledeni : *vrući strah • The intensity of emotions – measured within the temperature range intrinsic to particular emotions
Temperature of emotions – considerably more complex than suggested by CMT: • The case of anger: - Anger may manifest itself as red-hot or ice-cold.- Cold anger is when you refuse to speak to anyone. - Behind professor's scientific brilliance lurked cold fury. - Keith Richards tells us that he felt cold rage at Mick Jagger's “blind stupidity” in accepting a knighthood. -Tada me obuzima neopisivi ledeni bes... - Edison oseti kako se u njemu gomila hladan bes. - seethe with cold anger / fury / rage - unjojključaledeni bes ‘ice-cold fury is boiling in her’ • Blending (Fauconnier and Turner 2002) • Dynamic aspects – ENERGY TRANSFER – outwards: hot, inwards: cold
PEOPLE: TEMPERAMENT, DISPOSITIONE: WARM/COLDS: TOPAO/HLADAN • EMOTIONAL IS WARM, UNEMOTIONAL IS COLD • How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold? (A. Solzhenitsyn) • acold and introvert/ cold and indifferent/cold and distant / cold and enigmatic person • topla i dobra/nežna/prisna osoba ‘a warm and good/gentle/intimate person’ • hladan i ravnodušan/hladan i strog ‘cold and indifferent, cold and strict’ • Individual and collective identities: • topli južnjaci i hladni severnjaci‘warm southerners and cold northerners’ • Cultural and historical heritage of the theory of four humours (cf. Geeraerts and Grondelaers 1995)
PEOPLE: TEMPERAMENT, DISPOSITIONE: WARM/COLDS: TOPAO/HLADAN • Energy transfer: SHOWING/ NOT SHOWING EMOTIONS • Metonymic extensions: • warm/cold heart/face/eyes/look/smile/voice; cold shoulder • topao/hladan srce/lice/oči/pogled/osmeh/glas ‘warm/cold heart/face/eyes/look/smile/voice’
PEOPLE: SELF-CONTROL, TEMPERE: COOL; HOTS: HLADAN; VREO • CALM IS COOL • a cool and composed leader; play it cool • bio je miran i hladan ‘he was calm and cold’ • EASILY AROUSED IS HOT • hot vs. cool temper • vreli momci ‘boiling hot guys’ (criminals) • Metonymic extensions: • try to keep a cool head • razmišlja hladne glave ‘he thinks with cool head’ • hot vs. cool blood; vrela krv ‘hot blood’ • Cf. Ayduk, Mischel and Downey (2002)
PEOPLE: SEXUAL ATTRACTIVENESS/RESPONSIVENESSE: HOT/COLDS: VRUĆ/VREO/HLADAN • SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE/RESPONSIVE IS HOT, UNATTRACTIVE/UNRESPONSIVE IS COLD • hot girls/babes/chicks in bathing suites, hot Hollywood actresses, hot men • she was cold to his advances • vrele žene/dame/Mađarice ‘boiling hot women/ladies/Hungarian girls’ • moja devojka je kao Sibir: hladna i nedostupna ‘my girlfriend is like Siberia: cold and inaccessible’ • Metonymic extensions: E: hot lips, hot tits, S: vrele usne, vrele sise
RELATIONSE: WARM/COLDS: TOPAO/HLADAN • Temperature & distance: • warm and close relations/ties/bonds/ friendship/cooperation/collaboration • cold and distant relationship/relations • topli i bliski odnosi/saradnja ‘warm and close relations’ • hladni i zategnuti odnosi ‘cold and strained relations’ • Interpersonal relations – metonymically relations between institutions, cities, countries...
Experiential correlations between WARM/COLD and CLOSE/DISTANT • Conflation of abstract and concrete concepts (cf. Johnson 1997) may involve more than two experiential domains transitivity of metaphorical mappings (cf. Grady’s 1997 primary metaphors AFFECTION IS WARMTH INTIMACY IS CLOSENESS): • INTIMATE/FRIENDLY IS CLOSE; CLOSE IS WARM => INTIMATE/FRIENDLY IS WARM, DISTANT/UNFRIENDLY IS COLD • Cf. Williams and Bargh 2004, Zhong and Leonardelli 2008
SOCIAL INTERACTION (COMMUNICATION)E: WARM/LUKEWARM/COOL/COLD/ICE-COLDS: TOPAO/MLAK/HLADAN/LEDEN • AFFECTION IS WARTMH: warm regards, warm thanks • Affection & enthusiasm (energy transfer): • warm/lukewarm/cool/cold/ice-cold welcome, reception, reaction, feedback, response, greeting, words • topao/mlak/hladan/leden doček, prijem, pozdrav, reči, govor ‘warm/lukewarm/cold/ice-cold welcome, reception, greeting, words, speech’
LACKING ENERGY, VIGOUR, ENTHUSIASME: LUKEWARM (TEPID)S: MLAK • LACKING ENERGY IS LUKEWARM • lukewarm (tepid) excitement, love; person, voice; relationship; reception, reaction; applause; match, attack • mlaka ljubav; osoba, glas; bilateralni odnosi; doček, reakcija; pohvale, aplauz; utakmica, napad ‘lukewarm love, person, voice, bilateral relations, reception, reaction, praise, applause, match, attack’ • Cf. S: N mlakonja ‘a lukewarm man’ – lacking vigour
INTENSE ACTIVITY: HIGH ENERGY TRANSFERE: HOTS: VRUĆ/VREO • CONFLICT • hot battle, conflict, contest • vruća/vrela bitka, borba, utakmica ‘hot/boiling hot battle, fight, match’ • Cf. Cold War, S: hladni rat • INTENSE ACTIVITY IS HOT metonymic extensions: hot line, hot chair,hot topic, hot spot S: vruća linija, vruća stolica, vruća tema
PROXIMITY AND DISTANCE IN SPACE/TIIMEE: HOT/WARM/COLDS: VRUĆ/TOPAO/HLADAN • Basis for numerous further extensions: • hot-warm-cold game / S: vruće-toplo-hladno (finding objects or guessing answers) • warm/cold trail, case / S: vruć/hladan trag • hot and cold lotto numbers (recent/not recent) / S: vrući/hladni brojevi
DISTANCE – DETACHMENT RATIONAL E: COOL/COLDS: HLADAN • RATIONAL IS COLD; OBJECTIVE IS COLD • cool/cold reason, statistics, facts, figures, reality, truth; cold and calculating and scientific • hladna računica, statistika, cifre, činjenice ‘cold calculation, statistics, figures, facts’ • Transitivity of conceptual mappings: RATIONAL IS DETACHED/DISTANT, DETACHED/DISTANT IS COLD => RATIONAL IS COLD(Cf. Narayanan, forthcoming)
ACROSS PERCEPTION MODALITIESE: WARM/COOL/COLDS: TOPAO/HLADAN • COLOURS: warm and cool/cold colours; tople i hladne boje ‘warm and cold colours’ • LIGHT: combine warm and cold light; mešavina toplog i hladnog svetla ‘a mixture of warm and cold light’ • SOUND:warm sound, a dark and cold sound; topao zvuk saksofona ‘the warm sound of saxophone’ hladan, metalni zvuk ‘cold, metallic sound’ • SMELL: the warm smell of christmas trees the cold smell of a different country; topao miris juga ‘the warm smell of the south’ hladan miris kiše ‘the cold smell of the rain’
Major differences in the semantic extensions of English and Serbian temperature adjectives: COOL • Positive evaluation: good, great • That’s really cool! • cool Christmas gifts, jeans, hair cuts, gadgets, ipod accessories, ringtones • I am cool with that • Cultural influence • The philosophy and aesthetics of COOL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_(aesthetic) • Lewis MacAdams (2001). Birth of the Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant-Garde. • COOL – widely borrowed by other languages, including Serbian: KUL
Major differences in the semantic extensions of English and Serbian temperature adjectives: HOT • An array of semantic extensions that do not have a parallel in Serbian ‘vruć, vreo’: • The GUSTATORY meaning: • hot peppers, hot spices vs. • S – separate lexeme: ljut ‘hot; angry’ • POPULAR, TRENDY, FASHIONABLE: • What’s hotand what’s not for 2010 • Hot Christmas gifts, hot toys for 2010, hot hair styles this season, hot new rapsongs, HDTV still hot with consumers, Scandinavian mystery novels hot with the US readers
Major differences in the semantic extensions of English and Serbian temperature adjectives: HOT • (SEXUALLY) ATTRACTED TO/INTERESTED IN (pred.) • Why Is Everybody So Hot for Gerard Butler? • HotForWords – Marina Orlova, known to millions of fans around the world as a sexy master of language • Cf. S slang word napaljen ‘turned on’ (lit. ‘burned on’) • HOT IS COOL: “That’s hot!” • "Her cell phone has diamonds all over it! That's hot“= “That’s awesome”, “That's cool“ • Paris Hilton’s signature line (That’s hot! trademarks: men’s and women's clothing, electronic devices and alcoholic beverages – cultural influence)
Summing up • Polysemy patterns of English and Serbian temperature adjectives vary in number and in kind along the temperature scales (the widest range: E hot, S hladan) • A high degree of similarity in the overall underlying metaphorical and metonymical conceptualization (overriding the cross-linguistic differences in the elaboration of the lexical segmentation in the concrete domain; cf. hot : vreo, vruć; cool/chilly/cold : hladan) • Substantial differences in specific semantic extensions of individual adjectives and in the distribution of polysemy patterns along the temperature scales in the two languages (esp. E cool and hot)
Asymmetries in the semantic extensions of temperature adjectives: intra-linguistic & cross-linguistic • Lexical segmentation and polysemy range in the concrete domain (e.g. E hot vs. S vruć) • Physical experience and metaphorical mappings - ENERGY TRANSFER; PROXIMITY/DISTANCE - Transitivity of conceptual mappingsINTIMATE IS WARM, RATIONAL IS COLD • Cultural factors - The theory of four humours - That’s cool/hot! - Cross-cultural/cross-linguistic influences (lexical and conceptual borrowing, metaphorical loan translation)
Concluding remarks • Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural examination of temperature terms can shed fresh light on the question of universality and variation of metaphors • The semantics of temperature terms (adjectives in particular) across languages – much more than meets the eye – calls for systematic examination – a promising hot topic in cognitive linguistics
References • Apresjan, J. D. (2000). Systematic Lexicography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. • Ayduk, O., Mischel W. and G. Downey (2002) Attentional Mechanisms Linking Rejection to Hostile Reactivity: The Role of “Hot” Versus “Cool” Focus. Psychological Science, 13:5, pp. 443-448. • Deignan, A. (1999). Metaphorical polysemy and paradigmatic relations: A corpus study. Word, 50, 319-38. • Fauconnier, G. and M. Turner (2002). The Way We Think. Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books. • Firth, J. R. (1957) Studies in Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. • Geeraerts, D. and S. Grondelaers (1995). Looking Back at Anger: Cultural Traditions and. Metaphorical Patterns. In: Taylor, J. and R. MacLaury (eds.) Language and the Cognitive. Construal of the World. Berlin: Gruyter. 153-179.
References • Grady, J. (1997). Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. • Johnson, C. (1997). Metaphor vs. Conflation in the Acquisition of Polysemy: The Case of See. In: Hirago, M. K., C. Sinha and S. Wilcox (eds.), Cultural, Typological and Psychological Issues in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 155-169. • Kövecses, Z. (1990). Emotion concepts. New York: Springer. • Kövecses, Z. (2000). Metaphor and Emotion.Language, Culture, and the Body in Human Feeling. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press • Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. and E. Rakhilina (2006). "Some like it hot": On the semantics of temperature adjectives in Russian and Swedish. STUF (Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung), Leuschner, T. and G. Giannoulopoulou, eds. 59 (2). • Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
References • Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh. New York: Basic Books. • Lehrer, A. (1970). Static and dynamic elements in semantics: hot, warm, cool, cold. Papers in Linguistics, 3, 49-74. • Narayanan, S. (forthcoming). The thermal qualities of substance: a cross-cultural account (http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~snarayan/cogsci.pdf ) • Sutrop, U. (1998). Basic temperature terms and subjective temperature scale. Lexicology, 4.60–104. • Taylor, J. (1992). Old problems: Adjectives in cognitive grammar. Cognitive Linguistics, 3, 1–35. • Williams, L. E. and J. A. Bargh (2004).Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth. Science, 322 (5901), 606-607. • Zhong, C-B. and G. J. Leonardelli (2008) Cold and Lonely: Does Social Exclusion Literally Feel Cold? Psychological Science, 19:9, pp. 838 -842.