Versprachlichung der Gemischten Gefühle – Zwischen Sozialem Handeln und Mentaler Repräsentation
Verbal Expression of Mixed Feelings – Between Social Practice and Mental Representation

Summary/Abstract: Although in languages like English, German or Polish there exist lexemes enabling one to talk about emotions – love, hate or sadness etc. – expressis verbis, people commonly employ conceptual metaphors (e.g. LOVE IS WAR, HATE IS A BOILING LIQUID IN A CONTAINER) and resort to evoking images in the minds of the hearer(s) to express what they feel. Such way of conveying emotions is employed all the more when a person experiences mixed feelings. The objective of this article is to analyse the process of creation of (novel) mental representations aimed at conveyance of a mixture of positive and negative emotions, taking the role of discursive mechanisms into consideration. To this end selected literary texts (song lyrics, poems) in English, German and Polish are analysed. For the purposes of our research we propose that the abovementioned process under analysis is called ‘conceptual proximization’. The term is analogous to Cap’s ‘temporal proximization’ (cf. 2008, 2010). In our opinion, when a mixture of emotions is being described, two (or possibly more) emotions are conceptually drawn nearer to one another, i.e. they are ‘proximized’, so that a conceptual blend can be created. In order for this to happen, certain discursive mechanisms, as elements of social practice, are employed. The method of analysis used for our research is the multi-layered linguistic model of discourse analysis DIMEAN formulated by Warnke / Spitzmüller (2008).

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