Linguistic realizations of the concept of FEAR

Abstract

There is something about fear.. . This paper is an attempt to look into patterns of use and variation concerning the conceptualization of ‘fear.' Analyzing the semantic field and syntactic structure of fear expressions in French, the following questions will be tackled: Which of the parameters associated with fear play a role in the linguistic encoding? Are there conceptual differences between the different realizations of this complex concept? Is it possible that ‘fear’ only has one central core or source? And finally, can members of the semantic field of fear function as a conceptual source themselves?.