HEAD AS A CONTAINER IN ENGLISH AND SERBIAN – A COGNITIVE LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE

Apstrakt

Within the theoretical framework of Conceptual Metaphor and Metonymy Theory in this paper we aim to establish the ways the container image schemais used in the conceptualisation of head/glava in English and Serbian to see whether theseconceptualisations are shared in the two languages or, alternatively, whether they manifestany cross-conceptual and cross-linguistic differences. The corpus of our analysis has beencompiled from various monolingual and bilingual English and Serbian dictionaries as wellas dictionaries of idioms and idiomatic expressions in both languages. The main hypothesisof the paper is the following: since the mind is embodied and human concepts are cruciallyshaped by our bodies and brains, we expect to find little difference in the conceptualisationof head/glava as a container between English and Serbian. However, since the mind isalso enculturated, i.e. culturally constructed and is filtered through specific languages, wehypothesise that the differences will mainly manifest not at the conceptual level, but in thelinguistic instantiations in the two languages.