The role of metaphor in creating polysemy complexes in Jordanian Arabic and American English
Most papers written on polysemy focus on sense overlaps and lexical ambiguity, yet studies that explore the possibility of establishing a polysemic complex and explaining how the new interpretations arise through metaphor are almost non-existent in Arabic. This paper aims to explore how metaphor ser...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University)
2024-03-01
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| Series: | Russian Journal of Linguistics |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.rudn.ru/linguistics/article/viewFile/38057/23152 |
| _version_ | 1827325069374783488 |
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| author | Aseel Zibin Lama Khalifah Abdel Rahman Mitib Altakhaineh |
| author_facet | Aseel Zibin Lama Khalifah Abdel Rahman Mitib Altakhaineh |
| author_sort | Aseel Zibin |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Most papers written on polysemy focus on sense overlaps and lexical ambiguity, yet studies that explore the possibility of establishing a polysemic complex and explaining how the new interpretations arise through metaphor are almost non-existent in Arabic. This paper aims to explore how metaphor serves to create new concepts as part of polysemic complexes through adopting Dynamic Conceptual Semantics. The target words are bidʒannin [make mad][1] in Jordanian Arabic (JA) and mad in American English (AE). An online questionnaire containing 15 items was sent to forty participants (20 JA speakers and 20 AE speakers) where they were asked to provide the interpretations of the words bidʒannin and mad in contextualized sentences. The AE contextualized instances of mad were collected from Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) which generated 5,168 tokens of mad (in the years 2015/2019). The questionnaire results were discussed in a semi-structured focus-group discussion involving 10 participants. We have demonstrated that when an expression is deemed suitable for all situations categorized under both the primary perspective of madness and a related perspective involving exaggerated descriptions of entities, a concept (P) emerges that bears similarity or relevance to the polysemic complex ( bidʒannin\mad ) to which the expression belongs. In such cases, we can consider the related perspective (P') as a member of the polysemic complex ( bidʒannin\mad ). Thus, this study explains how the same metaphor can lead to a complex of multiple meanings in two different languages that are not necessarily related to each other. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T14:15:56Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-c733114dd094434aadc12cf0c84093c7 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2687-0088 2686-8024 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T14:15:56Z |
| publishDate | 2024-03-01 |
| publisher | Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Russian Journal of Linguistics |
| spelling | doaj.art-c733114dd094434aadc12cf0c84093c72024-03-06T13:09:51ZengPeoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University)Russian Journal of Linguistics2687-00882686-80242024-03-012818010110.22363/2687-0088-3455520888The role of metaphor in creating polysemy complexes in Jordanian Arabic and American EnglishAseel Zibin0https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2509-064XLama Khalifah1https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7497-8456Abdel Rahman Mitib Altakhaineh2https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7605-2497University of JordanUniversity of JordanUniversity of JordanMost papers written on polysemy focus on sense overlaps and lexical ambiguity, yet studies that explore the possibility of establishing a polysemic complex and explaining how the new interpretations arise through metaphor are almost non-existent in Arabic. This paper aims to explore how metaphor serves to create new concepts as part of polysemic complexes through adopting Dynamic Conceptual Semantics. The target words are bidʒannin [make mad][1] in Jordanian Arabic (JA) and mad in American English (AE). An online questionnaire containing 15 items was sent to forty participants (20 JA speakers and 20 AE speakers) where they were asked to provide the interpretations of the words bidʒannin and mad in contextualized sentences. The AE contextualized instances of mad were collected from Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) which generated 5,168 tokens of mad (in the years 2015/2019). The questionnaire results were discussed in a semi-structured focus-group discussion involving 10 participants. We have demonstrated that when an expression is deemed suitable for all situations categorized under both the primary perspective of madness and a related perspective involving exaggerated descriptions of entities, a concept (P) emerges that bears similarity or relevance to the polysemic complex ( bidʒannin\mad ) to which the expression belongs. In such cases, we can consider the related perspective (P') as a member of the polysemic complex ( bidʒannin\mad ). Thus, this study explains how the same metaphor can lead to a complex of multiple meanings in two different languages that are not necessarily related to each other.https://journals.rudn.ru/linguistics/article/viewFile/38057/23152metaphorpolysemy complexesdynamic conceptual semanticsjordanian arabicamerican english |
| spellingShingle | Aseel Zibin Lama Khalifah Abdel Rahman Mitib Altakhaineh The role of metaphor in creating polysemy complexes in Jordanian Arabic and American English Russian Journal of Linguistics metaphor polysemy complexes dynamic conceptual semantics jordanian arabic american english |
| title | The role of metaphor in creating polysemy complexes in Jordanian Arabic and American English |
| title_full | The role of metaphor in creating polysemy complexes in Jordanian Arabic and American English |
| title_fullStr | The role of metaphor in creating polysemy complexes in Jordanian Arabic and American English |
| title_full_unstemmed | The role of metaphor in creating polysemy complexes in Jordanian Arabic and American English |
| title_short | The role of metaphor in creating polysemy complexes in Jordanian Arabic and American English |
| title_sort | role of metaphor in creating polysemy complexes in jordanian arabic and american english |
| topic | metaphor polysemy complexes dynamic conceptual semantics jordanian arabic american english |
| url | https://journals.rudn.ru/linguistics/article/viewFile/38057/23152 |
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