Conceptual Metaphors in Emotional Language A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis of Urdu Speakers in Lahore

Abstract

This study examines the conceptual metaphors structuring emotional language among Urdu speakers in Lahore, addressing a gap left by prior scholarship's focus on Urdu poetry, newspaper discourse, and acoustic corpora rather than spontaneous everyday talk. Its objective was to identify, classify, and cross-linguistically compare the metaphors and source domains used to express anger, sadness, love, and shame. The study is grounded in Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), extended by Kövecses's (2000, 2020) embodied-cultural-prototype model, framing emotion metaphor as jointly shaped by embodiment and culture. Data were analyzed using the Pragglejaz Group's (2007) Metaphor Identification Procedure with thematic source-domain coding, collected via semi-structured interviews and narrative-elicitation tasks. The population comprised Urdu-speaking residents of Lahore district (population 13,004,135; Urdu speakers approximately 2.74 million, 21.1%, per the 2023 Census of Pakistan). Forty participants (20 male, 20 female), stratified evenly across the four emotions, were purposively and snowball-sampled from University of the Punjab and Government College University Lahore. Analysis identified 612 metaphor tokens reducing to 31 source domains: heat, pressure, and eruption dominated anger; verticality and darkness dominated sadness; merger, journey, and nourishment dominated love; and diminution and concealment dominated shame, showing partial convergence with, and culturally distinctive divergence from, cross-linguistic patterns.