Aspects of the Metaphorical Conceptualisation of Basic Emotions in Korean

The purpose of this study is to show the metaphorical aspects of basic emotional expressions, focusing on the meaning extension of verbs, in terms of experientialism and folk models of cognitive linguistics. In this study the aspects of the metaphorical conceptualisation of basic emotions in Korean have been explored concerning six classes of verbs expressing ‘anger’, ‘fear’, ‘hate’, ‘sadness’, ‘joy’,and ‘love’ based on the semantic extension of a target domain by a source domain. The results of this study are as follows. First, the source domains applicable to all the basic emotions are ‘a fluid in a container’, ‘a thing’, ‘a plant’, and ‘food’. Second, such source domains as ‘a fluid in a container’, ‘a thing’, ‘a plant’, and ‘food’ have a scenario of ‘the occurrence of an emotion’ → ‘its growth’ → ‘its disappearance’. Third, conceptual metaphors by ‘a fluid in a container’, ‘food’, ‘an enemy’, ‘a natural force’ are based on physiological metonymy. Fourth, there are some differences in the aspects of metaphorical conceptualisation of negative emotions and positive ones.