What’s hot and what’s not in English and Serbian:

A contrastive view on the semantic

extensions of temperature adjectives

Katarina Rasulić

University of Belgrade, Serbia

ekv@eunet.rs

The scope and the aims

Semantic extensions of English and Serbian temperature adjectives in abstract domains (excluding the extensions within the physical domain e.g. warm/cold clothes)

To identify and compare the semantic extensions of English and Serbian temperature adjectives in terms of the underlying conceptual mechanisms

To highlight different dimensions of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural variation relevant to the study of the semantics of temperature adjectives

The approach and the data

Usage-based approach – collocability of temperature adjectives in their abstract senses (cf. Firth 1957, Apresjan 2000, Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Rakhilina 2006) – both attributive and predicative uses (without further analysis of the syntactic behaviour; cf. Taylor 1992)

Sources of data: representative dictionaries (OED, RMS), electronic corpora (BNC, NKSJPMF), the Internet (Google search engine)

~700 English examples, ~600 Serbian examplesAnalysis: descriptive and contrastive

ENGLISH SERBIAN

TORRIDSCORCHING

ŽARKI ’torrid/scorching’

VREO ’boiling hot’

HOT VRUĆ ’hot’

WARM TOPAO ’warm’

LUKEWARM TEPID

MLAK ’lukewarm/tepid’

COOL [prohladan ‘cool/chilly’]

HLADAN ’cool/chilly/cold’CHILLY

COLD

ICY ICE-COLD

LEDEN ’icy/ice-cold’

English and Serbian temperature adjectives that extend their meanings to abstract domains:

English & Serbian temperature adjectives:

Highly polysemous – extending their meanings to a number of abstract domains and across perception modalities

Meaning extension patterns vary along the temperature scales – both intra-linguistically and cross-linguistically

EMOTIONS

Metaphorical conceptualization of emotions – primary and complex metaphors arising from the temperature domain (Kövecses 1990, 2000, Grady 1997, Lakoff and Johnson 1999): AFFECTION IS WARMTH ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN THE

CONTAINER FEAR IS COLD INTENSITY OF EMOTION IS HEAT

Characterization of emotions in terms of temperature adjectives?

Temperature of emotions – intrinsic quality:E: HOT/TORRID/SCORCHINGS: VRUĆ/VREO ANGER, FURY, RAGE

to boil/seethe with hot/torrid/scorching anger/fury/rage neobuzdani vrući/vreli bes ‘uncontrollable hot/boiling hot fury’

EXCITEMENT, AGITATION look forward to sth with hot/torrid/scorching excitement tragati za vrućim/vrelim uzbuđenjem ‘look for hot/boiling hot

excitement’PASSION, LUST

a wave of/nights of hot/torrid/scorching passion/lust oblila je vruća/vrela strast/požuda ‘hot passion/lust swept

over her’DESIRE, LONGING (also S: ŽARKI ‘torrid/scorching’)

a tide of/be filled with hot/torrid/scorching desire/longing goreti od žarke želje/žudnje/čežnje ‘burn with torrid

desire/longing’

Temperature of emotions – intrinsic quality:E: WARMS: TOPAO LOVE, AFFECTION

feel/be filled with warm love/affection topla majčinska ljubav ‘warm motherly love’

HAPPINESS, JOY his heart swells with warm joy/happiness prožima je topla sreća/radost ‘she was filled with

warm happiness/joy’

Temperature of emotions – intrinsic quality:E: COLD/CHILLY/COOL/ICE-COLD/ICYS: HLADAN/LEDEN FEAR, PANIC

be gripped by cold/chilly/ice-cold/icy fear/panic hladan/ledeni strah u kostima ‘cold/ice-cold fear in the bones’

SADNESS, DEPRESSION a cold/chilly/cool/ice-cold/icy sadness burrowed into my body obuzela ga je hladna tuga ‘a cold sadness overwhelmed him’

DESPAIR, MISERY feel cold /chilly/cool/ice-cold/icy despair/misery oseti hladan/ledeni očaj ‘he felt cold/ice-cold despair’

HATRED he just felt cold/chilly/ice-cold hatred towards her ispunjen ledenom mržnjom ‘filled with ice-cold hatred’

JEALOUSY, ENVY the women ignored her with cold/icy envy/jealousy pun hladne ljubomore/zavisti ‘full of cold jealousy/envy’

CONTEMPT, DISGUST she looked at him with cold/cool contempt/disgust oseća samo hladan prezir ‘he feels only cold contempt’

Intensity of emotions is heat?

lukewarm : hot passion/excitement S: mlaka : vruća/vrela strast, uzbuđenje

lukewarm : warm : *hot affection/joy S: mlaka : topla : *vruća naklonost/radost

lukewarm : ice-cold : *hot fear S: mlaki : ledeni : *vrući strah

The intensity of emotions – measured within the temperature range intrinsic to particular emotions

Temperature of emotions – considerably more complex than suggested by CMT:

The case of anger: - Anger may manifest itself as red-hot or ice-cold. - Cold anger is when you refuse to speak to anyone. - Behind professor's scientific brilliance lurked cold fury. - Keith Richards tells us that he felt cold rage at Mick Jagger's “blind stupidity” in accepting a knighthood. -Tada me obuzima neopisivi ledeni bes... - Edison oseti kako se u njemu gomila hladan bes. - seethe with cold anger / fury / rage - u njoj ključa ledeni bes ‘ice-cold fury is boiling in her’

Blending (Fauconnier and Turner 2002)Dynamic aspects – ENERGY TRANSFER –

outwards: hot, inwards: cold

PEOPLE: TEMPERAMENT, DISPOSITIONE: WARM/COLDS: TOPAO/HLADANEMOTIONAL IS WARM, UNEMOTIONAL IS COLD

How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold? (A. Solzhenitsyn)

a cold and introvert/ cold and indifferent/cold and distant / cold and enigmatic person

topla i dobra/nežna/prisna osoba ‘a warm and good/gentle/intimate person’

hladan i ravnodušan/hladan i strog ‘cold and indifferent, cold and strict’

Individual and collective identities:topli južnjaci i hladni severnjaci

‘warm southerners and cold northerners’Cultural and historical heritage of the theory of four

humours (cf. Geeraerts and Grondelaers 1995)

PEOPLE: TEMPERAMENT, DISPOSITIONE: WARM/COLDS: TOPAO/HLADANEnergy transfer:

SHOWING/ NOT SHOWING EMOTIONSMetonymic extensions:

warm/cold heart/face/eyes/look/smile/voice; cold shoulder

topao/hladan srce/lice/oči/pogled/osmeh/glas ‘warm/cold heart/face/eyes/look/smile/voice’

PEOPLE: SELF-CONTROL, TEMPERE: COOL; HOTS: HLADAN; VREO CALM IS COOL

a cool and composed leader; play it cool bio je miran i hladan ‘he was calm and cold’

EASILY AROUSED IS HOT hot vs. cool temper vreli momci ‘boiling hot guys’ (criminals)

Metonymic extensions: try to keep a cool head razmišlja hladne glave ‘he thinks with cool head’ hot vs. cool blood; vrela krv ‘hot blood’

Cf. Ayduk, Mischel and Downey (2002)

PEOPLE: SEXUAL ATTRACTIVENESS/RESPONSIVENESSE: HOT/COLDS: VRUĆ/VREO/HLADAN

SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE/RESPONSIVE IS HOT, UNATTRACTIVE/UNRESPONSIVE IS COLD hot girls/babes/chicks in bathing suites, hot

Hollywood actresses, hot men she was cold to his advances vrele žene/dame/Mađarice ‘boiling hot

women/ladies/Hungarian girls’ moja devojka je kao Sibir: hladna i

nedostupna ‘my girlfriend is like Siberia: cold and inaccessible’

Metonymic extensions: E: hot lips, hot tits, S: vrele usne, vrele sise

RELATIONSE: WARM/COLDS: TOPAO/HLADANTemperature & distance:

warm and close relations/ties/bonds/ friendship/cooperation/collaboration

cold and distant relationship/relations topli i bliski odnosi/saradnja ‘warm and

close relations’ hladni i zategnuti odnosi ‘cold and strained

relations’Interpersonal relations – metonymically

relations between institutions, cities, countries...

Experiential correlations between WARM/COLD and CLOSE/DISTANT

Conflation of abstract and concrete concepts (cf. Johnson 1997) may involve more than two experiential domains transitivity of metaphorical mappings (cf. Grady’s 1997 primary metaphors AFFECTION IS WARMTH INTIMACY IS CLOSENESS):

INTIMATE/FRIENDLY IS CLOSE; CLOSE IS WARM => INTIMATE/FRIENDLY IS WARM, DISTANT/UNFRIENDLY IS COLD

Cf. Williams and Bargh 2004, Zhong and Leonardelli 2008

SOCIAL INTERACTION (COMMUNICATION)E: WARM/LUKEWARM/COOL/COLD/ICE-COLDS: TOPAO/MLAK/HLADAN/LEDEN

AFFECTION IS WARTMH: warm regards, warm thanks

Affection & enthusiasm (energy transfer): warm/lukewarm/cool/cold/ice-cold

welcome, reception, reaction, feedback, response, greeting, words

topao/mlak/hladan/leden doček, prijem, pozdrav, reči, govor ‘warm/lukewarm/cold/ice-cold welcome, reception, greeting, words, speech’

LACKING ENERGY, VIGOUR, ENTHUSIASME: LUKEWARM (TEPID)S: MLAK

LACKING ENERGY IS LUKEWARM lukewarm (tepid) excitement, love;

person, voice; relationship; reception, reaction; applause; match, attack

mlaka ljubav; osoba, glas; bilateralni odnosi; doček, reakcija; pohvale, aplauz; utakmica, napad ‘lukewarm love, person, voice, bilateral relations, reception, reaction, praise, applause, match, attack’

Cf. S: N mlakonja ‘a lukewarm man’ – lacking vigour

INTENSE ACTIVITY: HIGH ENERGY TRANSFERE: HOTS: VRUĆ/VREO

CONFLICT hot battle, conflict, contest vruća/vrela bitka, borba, utakmica

‘hot/boiling hot battle, fight, match’ Cf. Cold War, S: hladni rat

INTENSE ACTIVITY IS HOT metonymic extensions: hot line, hot chair, hot topic, hot spot S: vruća linija, vruća stolica, vruća tema

PROXIMITY AND DISTANCE IN SPACE/TIIMEE: HOT/WARM/COLDS: VRUĆ/TOPAO/HLADAN

Basis for numerous further extensions: hot-warm-cold game / S: vruće-toplo-hladno

(finding objects or guessing answers) warm/cold trail, case / S: vruć/hladan trag hot and cold lotto numbers (recent/not

recent) / S: vrući/hladni brojevi

DISTANCE – DETACHMENT RATIONAL E: COOL/COLDS: HLADAN

RATIONAL IS COLD; OBJECTIVE IS COLD cool/cold reason, statistics, facts, figures,

reality, truth; cold and calculating and scientific

hladna računica, statistika, cifre, činjenice ‘cold calculation, statistics, figures, facts’

Transitivity of conceptual mappings: RATIONAL IS DETACHED/DISTANT, DETACHED/DISTANT IS COLD => RATIONAL IS COLD (Cf. Narayanan, forthcoming)

ACROSS PERCEPTION MODALITIESE: WARM/COOL/COLDS: TOPAO/HLADANCOLOURS: warm and cool/cold colours;

tople i hladne boje ‘warm and cold colours’LIGHT: combine warm and cold light;

mešavina toplog i hladnog svetla ‘a mixture of warm and cold light’

SOUND: warm sound, a dark and cold sound; topao zvuk saksofona ‘the warm sound of saxophone’ hladan, metalni zvuk ‘cold, metallic sound’

SMELL: the warm smell of christmas trees the cold smell of a different country; topao miris juga ‘the warm smell of the south’ hladan miris kiše ‘the cold smell of the rain’

Major differences in the semantic extensions of English and Serbian temperature adjectives: COOLPositive evaluation: good, great

That’s really cool! cool Christmas gifts, jeans, hair cuts,

gadgets, ipod accessories, ringtones I am cool with that

Cultural influenceThe philosophy and aesthetics of COOL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_(aesthetic)Lewis MacAdams (2001). Birth of the Cool:

Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant-Garde. COOL – widely borrowed by other languages,

including Serbian: KUL

Major differences in the semantic extensions of English and Serbian temperature adjectives: HOTAn array of semantic extensions that do not

have a parallel in Serbian ‘vruć, vreo’:The GUSTATORY meaning:

hot peppers, hot spices vs. S – separate lexeme: ljut ‘hot; angry’

POPULAR, TRENDY, FASHIONABLE: What’s hot and what’s not for 2010 Hot Christmas gifts, hot toys for 2010, hot

hair styles this season, hot new rapsongs, HDTV still hot with consumers, Scandinavian mystery novels hot with the US readers

Major differences in the semantic extensions of English and Serbian temperature adjectives: HOT

(SEXUALLY) ATTRACTED TO/INTERESTED IN (pred.) Why Is Everybody So Hot for Gerard Butler? Hot For Words – Marina Orlova, known to

millions of fans around the world as a sexy master of language

Cf. S slang word napaljen ‘turned on’ (lit. ‘burned on’)

HOT IS COOL: “That’s hot!” "Her cell phone has diamonds all over it! That's

hot“= “That’s awesome”, “That's cool“Paris Hilton’s signature line

(That’s hot! trademarks: men’s and women's clothing, electronic devices and alcoholic beverages – cultural influence)

Summing up

Polysemy patterns of English and Serbian temperature adjectives vary in number and in kind along the temperature scales (the widest range: E hot, S hladan)

A high degree of similarity in the overall underlying metaphorical and metonymical conceptualization (overriding the cross-linguistic differences in the elaboration of the lexical segmentation in the concrete domain; cf. hot : vreo, vruć; cool/chilly/cold : hladan)

Substantial differences in specific semantic extensions of individual adjectives and in the distribution of polysemy patterns along the temperature scales in the two languages (esp. E cool and hot)

Asymmetries in the semantic extensions of temperature adjectives: intra-linguistic & cross-linguisticLexical segmentation and polysemy range in the

concrete domain (e.g. E hot vs. S vruć)Physical experience and metaphorical mappings

- ENERGY TRANSFER; PROXIMITY/DISTANCE - Transitivity of conceptual mappings INTIMATE IS WARM, RATIONAL IS COLD

Cultural factors - The theory of four humours - That’s cool/hot! - Cross-cultural/cross-linguistic influences (lexical and conceptual borrowing, metaphorical loan translation)

Concluding remarks

Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural examination of temperature terms can shed fresh light on the question of universality and variation of metaphors

The semantics of temperature terms (adjectives in particular) across languages – much more than meets the eye – calls for systematic examination – a promising hot topic in cognitive linguistics

References

Apresjan, J. D. (2000). Systematic Lexicography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ayduk, O., Mischel W. and G. Downey (2002) Attentional Mechanisms Linking Rejection to Hostile Reactivity: The Role of “Hot” Versus “Cool” Focus. Psychological Science, 13:5, pp. 443-448.

Deignan, A. (1999). Metaphorical polysemy and paradigmatic relations: A corpus study. Word, 50, 319-38.

Fauconnier, G. and M. Turner (2002). The Way We Think. Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.

Firth, J. R. (1957) Studies in Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. Geeraerts, D. and S. Grondelaers (1995). Looking Back at Anger:

Cultural Traditions and. Metaphorical Patterns. In: Taylor, J. and R. MacLaury (eds.) Language and the Cognitive. Construal of the World. Berlin: Gruyter. 153-179.

References

Grady, J. (1997). Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.

Johnson, C. (1997). Metaphor vs. Conflation in the Acquisition of Polysemy: The Case of See. In: Hirago, M. K., C. Sinha and S. Wilcox (eds.), Cultural, Typological and Psychological Issues in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 155-169.

Kövecses, Z. (1990). Emotion concepts. New York: Springer. Kövecses, Z. (2000). Metaphor and Emotion. Language, Culture,

and the Body in Human Feeling. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press

Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. and E. Rakhilina (2006). "Some like it hot": On the semantics of temperature adjectives in Russian and Swedish. STUF (Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung), Leuschner, T. and G. Giannoulopoulou, eds. 59 (2).

Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

References

Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh. New York: Basic Books.

Lehrer, A. (1970). Static and dynamic elements in semantics: hot, warm, cool, cold. Papers in Linguistics, 3, 49-74.

Narayanan, S. (forthcoming). The thermal qualities of substance: a cross-cultural account (http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~snarayan/cogsci.pdf )

Sutrop, U. (1998). Basic temperature terms and subjective temperature scale. Lexicology, 4.60–104.

Taylor, J. (1992). Old problems: Adjectives in cognitive grammar. Cognitive Linguistics, 3, 1–35.

Williams, L. E. and J. A. Bargh (2004). Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth. Science, 322 (5901), 606-607.

Zhong, C-B. and G. J. Leonardelli (2008) Cold and Lonely: Does Social Exclusion Literally Feel Cold? Psychological Science, 19:9, pp. 838 -842.