Where there’s a proverb, there are many conceptual mappings

Caroline Girardi Ferrari

Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Caroline Girardi Ferrari is a PhD student in Language Studies – Psycholinguistics at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Her research focuses on figurative language comprehension assessment, based on the Cognitive Linguistics framework and on Psycholinguistic methods. In her current work she is adapting a figurative language comprehension test from Brazilian Portuguese to English and analysing figurative language comprehension and acquisition in Brazilian Portuguese and British English native speakers.

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3853-3673

Maity Siqueira

Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Maity Siqueira is a full professor in the department of Linguistics, Philology and Literary Theory at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). She obtained a PhD in Linguistics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) and did her postdoctoral research in the department of Cognitive Psychology at the University of California Santa Cruz (2014). Her main research focuses on Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Linguistics, with interests in figurative language comprehension and acquisition, and in the development of a psychometric test on figurative language comprehension.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8775-4563

Abstract

This paper explores how metaphorical and metonymic mappings are recognised as part of proverbs’ meanings in Brazilian Portuguese. Six proverbs were analysed from the perspective of Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The underlying conceptual mappings of these proverbs were suggested and categorised into primary metaphorical, complex metaphorical, and metonymic. Two psycholinguistic tasks were conducted with 112 adults aiming at determining to what extent these mappings were identified as part of the proverbs' meanings. Results suggest that underlying conceptual mappings were well identified and associated with the proverbs’ meanings. For some items, complex mappings generated lower identification rates as compared to primary and metonymic ones. Statistical differences in participants’ judgments were found when contrasting the three types of mappings. Our results support the idea that participants can identify conceptual mappings and associate them with their meanings in proverbs when prompted to do so. However, their judgments vary across different types of mappings.