Exploring the feeling-emotions continuum across cultures: Jealousy in English and Spanish

Abstract In this paper, we propose an analysis of a set of metaphorical expressions of jealousy in American English and in peninsular Spanish. Using the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the Corpus de Referencia del Español, we have analyzed all the occurrences of English jealousy and Spanish celo(s) (and their derivates) in order to make a list of metaphorical source domains for this emotion. The domains identified here have been classified into groups, after which we have compared, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the metaphorical expressions for jealousy in the two languages. Special attention has been paid to the role of sensorial perception in the metaphors articulating the ways speakers from the two cultures feel this emotion. According to our analysis, in spite of the basic role of touch in both languages, American English speakers make use of a wide variety of sensory-related metaphors (including vision, hearing, smelling, and tasting), which, much more frequently than in Spanish, foreground the physical component of this emotion.

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