Metaphern mit dem Substantiv Geschmack in der indonesischen, englischen und javanischen klassischen Literatur / Taste Noun Metaphors in Indonesian, English, and Javanese Classical Literature

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate three genetically (un)related languages – Indonesian, English, and Javanese – on the taste noun metaphor in classical literature. The article provides a general evaluation of the selected data based on its historical background and the “taste” lexicon from each language. The data was collected from randomly chosen works of classical literature from the 1900–1950 era. The size of the collected corpus is around 250,000 words for each language. The main analysis reveals that there are three general conceptual metaphors (physical experience is taste, emotional experience is taste, cognitive experience is taste) that can be specified into sub-metaphors. The results show that the Indonesian language uses taste words more productive than the two other languages, which is also reflected in how the language applies the taste noun in metaphorical expressions for conceptualizing bodily and beyond bodily sensations. Javanese appears to apply the three general conceptual metaphors in a similar way to Indonesian, though not as productive as in the Indonesian language, while English, which shows less occurrence of the ‘taste’ noun, uses it only in expressing non-bodily experiences (emotion and cognition). The findings overlap with the general statement from Lakoff and Johnson (1980) claiming that idea is food and cognition is perception.

Keywords

• metafora smaku
• metafora konceptualna
• badania porównawcze
• literatura klasyczna