한국어와 영어의 ‘두려움’ 개념화의 보편성과 특수성 연구

The purpose of this paper is to explore the conceptual metonymies and metaphors of FEAR in Korean and English, and to account for both the universality and variation of the conceptualization of FEAR. FEAR is one of the emotions most common to humans and its concept is universal across cultures. Recent findings from cognitive linguistic studies reveal that the conceptualization of an emotion among various cultures can be based on both embodied cognition arising from the common human experience and thought and variant cultural models founded on individual socio-cultural contexts. The analysis of metonymic and metaphorical expressions of FEAR in Korean and English show that both the conceptual metonymies and conceptual metaphors in each language are highly commensurate, with a 95% match for the former and 90% match for the latter. This validates to a considerable degree the hypothesis for universality of conceptual metaphors and metonymies between languages. At the same time, it is proposed that some variations in conceptual metonymies and metaphors found in Korean arose from the folk models based on the unique Korean culture and consciousness.