HEART-RELATED EXPRESSIONS IN ARABIC AND GEORGIAN

Abstract

In general, metaphors allow us to grasp the invisible world. Metaphoricality, in its turn, clearly manifests itself in somatic phraseology. Metaphors basically employ body parts, and organs, such as a heart, an eye, a hand, bile, and so on. Phraseological expressions are primarily studied in regard to these concepts since they are the phraseologizing words and the semantic dominants. We have studied one of the most common word-concepts - “heart” - in Arabic, further comparing it with the Georgian data. Among positive emotions, love, joy, satisfaction, approval, kindness, sympathy, consolation, etc. are associated with a heart. As for negative emotions, heart-related ones include grief, fear, sadness, frustration, rage, revenge, and hatred. The following intellectual processes are also associated with a heart: thinking, intuition, convictions, inspiration, memorization, diligence, and even physiological phenomena, such as hunger, growth as well as moral issues. The content of the somatic idioms is similar in many languages. These idioms found in Georgian and Arabic represent patterns formed in certain ways; however, they once again demonstrate that there are universal human feelings described by every distinct culture from their own perspective and these feelings are often compatible with those attested in completely different and unique cultures. The analysis of idioms reveals that universal phraseologisms are often used in order to express grief or joy. Their existence can be explained by the causality of thought; in different languages, they may develop independently or occur as calques. We can infer that in both languages deep human feelings and experiences are primarily heart-related.