Exploration of Love and Mortality: Analysis Using British National Corpus

Abstract

This work comprises a theoretical foundation presented through an explanation of key concepts like cognitive linguistics and conceptual metaphor. The primary goal of this research is to examine conceptual metaphors using the words "love" and "death" within the British national corpus. The specific objectives of this study are as follows: to discover, recognize, and categorize the conceptual metaphors associated with the words "love" and "death" based on their source domains. A total of 149 instances of conceptual metaphors involving the term "death" were categorized into 15 different source domains, namely object, end, experience, state of mind, living being, unlawful act, loss, punishment, game, journey, illness, accident, bad habit, starvation, and a container. The most prevalent source domains among these were object, living being, end, and unlawful act. Similarly, the study identified 348 instances of conceptual metaphors related to "love" and classified them into 16 source domains: object, container, living being, nature, religion, fire, disease, nutrition, building, war, material, performance, knowledge, reward, court, and government. The most commonly occurring source domains here were object, living being, and container.