Metaphor, metonymy, phraseological units and euphemisms – what do we talk about when we talk about death?

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to examine a corpus of Croatian phraseological units about death and dying with particular regard to their euphemistic, i.e. dysphemistic potential. We then explore whether their euphemistic or dysphemistic potential can be related to the same or different cognitive mechanisms. Our working hypothesis is that euphemisms are more readily grounded in cognitive metaphors, since, as a two-domain model, conceptual metaphor enables a conceptual shift between domains, i.e. from a traumatic taboo target domain into a more pleasant and communication-friendly source domain. Dysphemisms, in turn, are more closely related to conceptual metonymy, a cognitive mechanism where the source and the target components, i.e. the vehicle and active zone remain within the same conceptual domain. As such, conceptual metonymy does not allow for the conceptual “escape” from, but rather highlights some aspects of the traumatic target domain. To assess the plausibility of this hypothesis, we conducted a survey among 49 speakers of Croatian, examining the Croatian phraseological inventory related to the semantic field of death and dying and interpreted the findings in light of the cognitive linguistic approach to metaphor and metonymy. The results have shown that over half the phraseological units examined are used euphemistically, with the conceptual metaphor DEATH IS SLEEP accounting for the majority of those examples.