This study explores the controversial notion of polysemy in the body part terms head, hand and heart from a cognitive linguistic perspective. The paper starts with an overview of scholarly research on polysemy in its historical development from classical times until the present. As an indication of the heated debate on the issue, different and often divergent approaches are presented and a few details on the specificities of each of them are provided. Section 3 contains the rationale of the study. Here, the discussion shifts to the domain of embodiment in order to explain the relevance of studying polysemy in body part terms. The focus is on the centrality of the human body as a basic conceptual structure producing multiple semantic extensions. The following section sheds light on the set of criteria which have guided the selection of head, hand and heart from the Oxford English Dictionary as the lexical items that are analyzed for their polysemous senses. This part also makes clear that the analysis is based on the identification of general cognitive principles motivating meaning shifts in the selected words. Finally, the results of the analysis highlight that dominant processes of meaning extension are not only based on conceptual metaphor and metonymy but also employ functional/visual analogy and profiling. While head, hand and heart show some specific meanings, the results also unveil the existence of common patterns of polysemy in the three body part terms.
A conceptually based analysis of polysemous senses in the body part terms head, hand and heart
DEGANI, Marta
2010-01-01
Abstract
This study explores the controversial notion of polysemy in the body part terms head, hand and heart from a cognitive linguistic perspective. The paper starts with an overview of scholarly research on polysemy in its historical development from classical times until the present. As an indication of the heated debate on the issue, different and often divergent approaches are presented and a few details on the specificities of each of them are provided. Section 3 contains the rationale of the study. Here, the discussion shifts to the domain of embodiment in order to explain the relevance of studying polysemy in body part terms. The focus is on the centrality of the human body as a basic conceptual structure producing multiple semantic extensions. The following section sheds light on the set of criteria which have guided the selection of head, hand and heart from the Oxford English Dictionary as the lexical items that are analyzed for their polysemous senses. This part also makes clear that the analysis is based on the identification of general cognitive principles motivating meaning shifts in the selected words. Finally, the results of the analysis highlight that dominant processes of meaning extension are not only based on conceptual metaphor and metonymy but also employ functional/visual analogy and profiling. While head, hand and heart show some specific meanings, the results also unveil the existence of common patterns of polysemy in the three body part terms.
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