Bifurcating the Mechanism of Foodsemy: Randy Skeletal Meats, Sinister Variety Meats, Gay Fruit, Sick Veggies and Bad Apples

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed increased interest in the study of metaphor. New categories of metaphorical transfers have been singled out and studied in world linguistics. In recent times the two types of metaphorical extensions that have drawn the attention of those markedly interested in the process of metaphorisation – both synchronically and diachronically – are by now well-recognized categories of metaphorical transfers known as zoosemy and foodsemy. The former has been defined as metaphorical transfer onto the conceptual macrocategory HUMAN BEING of the lexical items primarily linked to the macrocategory ANIMALS, while the latter pertains to the transfer from the macrocategory FOODSTUFFS . This paper is intended to be a contribution to the study of foodstuffs-related metaphor. The term foodsemy was first used for the purpose of data-oriented study in Kleparski (2008). In the case of this type of metaphorical transfer, the food-related lexical items are a subject to metaphorical shifts where the source domain is identifiable as the category FOODSTUFFS, and the most frequent target domain is the macrocategory HUMAN BEING, but also other categories, such as BODY PARTS or MONEY. It turns out that there are certain well-definable paths and tendencies that may be captured in the semantic history of the relevant vocabulary, and this paper attempts to point to so some of the most obvious patterns of metaphorical shifts.

Keywords

• semantic change
• metaphore
• foodsemy
• wammel-syndrome