Goddard, Cliff (1996). Cross-linguistic research on metaphor. Language & Communication, 16(2), 145-151. DOI: 10.1016/0271-5309(96)00003-1
This paper takes issue with the assertion that there is no culture-neutral boundary between what is literal and what is metaphorical, and with the undercurrent of extreme relativism shown in a recent paper published in the same journal. It furthermore makes the point that, to study (and even to identify) the metaphoric systems of other languages, a coherent theory of semantic description is required. It is argued that, despite the enormous semantic differences between languages, there is solid evidence that they share a small set of ‘universal meanings’, which can provide a non-arbitrary and non-ethnocentric vocabulary for cross-linguistic semantics.
The claims contained in this paper are underpinned by discussion of the semantic primes THERE IS and FEEL in Yankunytjatjara.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
