Metonymic Uses of Body Parts Hand in the English Language and Ruka and Šaka in the Bosnian Language

Abstract

This paper explores metonymic uses of the body part “hand” in the English language and „ruka” and „šaka” in the Bosnian language. The paper aims to establish similarities and differences between the languages in terms of conceptual metonymies exploiting these body parts. The paper also tries to determine to what extent conceptual metonymy interacts with or exploits other processes of cognitive thinking, namely chained metonymies and metaphors. The methodological framework of corpus analysis is by the taxonomies of metonymy types developed by Radden and Kövecses (1999) and Kövecses (2002) and patterns of conceptual interaction (Diez Velasco 2000, 2002). The study will show that body-part metonymies can form chained metonymies and that they often serve as a basis for metaphorical mapping.

Keywords

• cognitive linguistics
• metonymy
• metaphor
• english
• bosnian
• “hand” “ruka-šaka”