Difference between revisions of "Metaphors of Emotion"

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Metaphors of Emotion is Andrew T. Austin's exploration of the language used to describe emotional experience, developed in connection with Metaphors of Movement. It considers how expressions of weight, containment, temperature, pressure and injury give form to experiences that are otherwise difficult to describe.

Common forms of emotional description

Weight and burden: "weighed down by worry" or "carrying guilt" presents an experience as a load.
A person as a container: "full of joy" or "bottling up anger" places something within the person.
An emotion as a surrounding state: "in love" or "in despair" places the person within a state.
Temperature: "boiling with anger" or "a warm welcome" uses heat and cold to describe a reaction or relationship.
Pressure: "under pressure" or "ready to burst" suggests force, capacity or constraint.
Injury: "hurt", "crushed" or "torn apart" describes distress through bodily damage. See Hurts.

These forms can overlap. "Bottling up anger", for example, involves containment and may also suggest pressure. The list describes patterns of language, not separate types of people.

Why the wording matters

An emotion label and a description of an experience provide different information. Two people can both say they are upset while describing very different situations. Equally, similar images can have different meanings for different speakers.

"Crushed" and "weighed down" share an association with force or weight, but they do not describe exactly the same event. Replacing one with the other can lose a distinction the speaker has made. The same care applies to an idiom: a familiar phrase is only relevant when it fits the description and context.

Interpretation and context

An emotional metaphor expresses a person's experience; it does not automatically establish its cause, identify another person's intentions or prescribe a therapeutic response. The wording should therefore remain connected to the speaker's account rather than treated as a code with a fixed translation.

This page provides an overview of the language. Claims about the effectiveness of a therapeutic intervention require their own evidence and do not follow from identifying a metaphor.

Research example: taste and emotional words

Zhou and Tse's 2020 study examined associations between taste words and words naming or evoking emotions. Across four studies with 357 participants, sweetness was mainly associated with positive words, while bitterness, followed by sourness and spiciness, was mainly associated with negative words. Participants were Cantonese-speaking university students in Hong Kong. Yanyun Zhou and Chi-Shing Tse, “The Taste of Emotion: Metaphoric Association Between Taste Words and Emotion/Emotion-Laden Words”, Frontiers in Psychology 11:986 (2020), abstract and methods.

The tasks used word associations and ratings. Participants were not being fed different tastes to establish changes in emotion. The distinction matters: an association between words is evidence about language and judgement under those conditions, not proof that the corresponding taste changes a person's mood.

The paper also distinguishes an emotion word from an emotion-laden word: naming a feeling and naming something that evokes a feeling are different linguistic acts. This is useful when comparing descriptions of emotional experience with descriptions of events, places or objects that carry emotional significance.

For complementary approaches, Metaphor in Literature and Creativity discusses sensory description, while Metaphor in Therapeutic Conversation examines how patients and therapists use and interpret imagery. Further sources are collected in the Metaphor Research Library.

Kövecses: emotion as force and a cultural model

Zoltán Kövecses's Metaphor and Emotion is a separate research contribution to the study of emotional language. In chapter 5, he examines how apparently different descriptions of emotion can organise relationships between a force, something affected by it, resistance and a resulting response.^[1] This is background scholarship alongside the account introduced above, rather than a description or validation of Austin's method.

His analysis distinguishes two relationships that can easily be blurred: an event described as causing an emotion, and an emotion described as producing a response. In the constructed sentence “The news sparked her anger”, the event initiates a state. In “Anger drove her to protest”, the emotion becomes a motivating force. The second account assigns the emotion a causal role within the description; it does not independently prove why the person acted.

What a pressure image adds

A pressure model can combine several correspondences: the person is a container, emotion is something within it, and increasing intensity becomes increasing pressure. Resistance and the boundary's capacity then become relevant to how a response is described.^[1]

Constructed wording	Relationship foregrounded	Detail that should remain open
“The criticism lit the fuse.”	An event begins a possible sequence.	Is a later response described, anticipated or merely feared?
“She kept a lid on her irritation.”	Containment and restraint.	Does the account concern outward expression, felt intensity or both?
“Relief washed through him.”	Movement of a substance through a person.	What changes during the movement, and where does it end?
“Worry followed me home.”	A pursuing or accompanying agent.	Is the relationship threatening, persistent or otherwise specified?

These examples illustrate linguistic contrasts. They are not categories of people or observations of an underlying physical fluid. A container may be full without being pressurised, and an emotion may be intense without the speaker describing an explosion. Adding unspoken heat, confinement or damage can change the account being analysed.

Description does not establish a mechanism

Kövecses calls attention to a language-based folk model, including expectations about causes, emotional states, control and responses. Studying that model can show how an experience becomes intelligible within a community. It is a different undertaking from establishing the physiology of emotion or testing an intervention.

For example, a pressure metaphor may make release seem like an obvious next event. The linguistic inference alone does not demonstrate that a particular way of expressing anger improves wellbeing. An account that moves from figurative structure to a claim about beneficial action needs additional evidence for that step.

Body, culture and individual variation

Kövecses's broader argument connects embodied experience with cultural interpretation. In his later work on context, he also notes that an opponent image can describe illness, tasks and other difficulties, as well as emotion.^[2] A source image is therefore not a unique label for one feeling.

An entry about emotional language should preserve the named emotion, the image, the surrounding event and the speaker's qualification of it. If two people use a similar image, record whether their accounts give it the same direction, intensity, agency and outcome. Personification and Agency and Force Dynamics: Pressure, Resistance and Release develop these comparisons; Metaphor Across Languages and Cultures examines variation at several levels.

References

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 Zoltán Kövecses, Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling (Cambridge University Press, 2000), chapter 5, “The Force of Emotion”, especially pp. 64–68.
↑ Zoltán Kövecses, Where Metaphors Come From: Reconsidering Context in Metaphor (Oxford University Press, 2015), chapter 3, especially p. 46.

Related pages

Browse the library

Concepts and language

Subject index | Stories and literature | All articles A-Z

[kovecses-force-1] 1.0 ^1.1 Zoltán Kövecses, Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling (Cambridge University Press, 2000), chapter 5, “The Force of Emotion”, especially pp. 64–68.

[kovecses-context-emotion-2] Zoltán Kövecses, Where Metaphors Come From: Reconsidering Context in Metaphor (Oxford University Press, 2015), chapter 3, especially p. 46.

[1]

[2]

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-=Metaphors of Emotion=
 [[File:Andrewt.austin Metaphors of Emotion.png|400px|thumb|right]]
-The conceptual underpinning of the Metaphors of Emotion model, an extension of the Metaphors of Movement model, is predicated on the notion that individuals utilise a diverse array of bias filters and metaphorical structures to interpret and articulate their emotional experiences. This theoretical model, developed by Andrew T. Austin, posits that the metaphoric language used to describe emotions can provide profound insights into an individual's emotional state and their perception of self and the world around them.
+'''Metaphors of Emotion''' is Andrew T. Austin's exploration of the language used to describe emotional experience, developed in connection with [[About Metaphors of Movement|Metaphors of Movement]]. It considers how expressions of weight, containment, temperature, pressure and injury give form to experiences that are otherwise difficult to describe.
-====Concept====
+== Common forms of emotional description ==
+* '''Weight and burden:''' "weighed down by worry" or "carrying guilt" presents an experience as a load.
+* '''A person as a container:''' "full of joy" or "bottling up anger" places something within the person.
+* '''An emotion as a surrounding state:''' "in love" or "in despair" places the person within a state.
+* '''Temperature:''' "boiling with anger" or "a warm welcome" uses heat and cold to describe a reaction or relationship.
+* '''Pressure:''' "under pressure" or "ready to burst" suggests force, capacity or constraint.
+* '''Injury:''' "hurt", "crushed" or "torn apart" describes distress through bodily damage. See [[Hurts]].
-The Metaphors of Emotion model delineates several metaphorical structures that individuals commonly employ to express their emotions. These structures serve as a linguistic mirror, reflecting the individual's internal emotional landscape.
+These forms can overlap. "Bottling up anger", for example, involves containment and may also suggest pressure. The list describes patterns of language, not separate types of people.
-::'''Emotions as Objects or Burdens''': This metaphorical structure conceptualises emotions as tangible burdens that one must carry. For instance, phrases such as "I carry the burden of guilt" or "The guilt weighs me down" suggest a perception of guilt as a heavy load that one must bear. Similarly, expressions like "I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders" or "I have a lot on my mind" indicate a sense of overwhelming responsibility or worry.
+== Why the wording matters ==
+An emotion label and a description of an experience provide different information. Two people can both say they are upset while describing very different situations. Equally, similar images can have different meanings for different speakers.
-::'''Self as a Container for Emotions''': In this metaphorical structure, the individual is envisaged as a receptacle filled with emotions. Expressions such as "I am full of anger" or "I am brimming over with rage" suggest an abundance of anger, while "I am full of love" indicates a wealth of affection. Conversely, the phrase "I feel empty inside" conveys a lack of emotion or a sense of emotional void.
+"Crushed" and "weighed down" share an association with force or weight, but they do not describe exactly the same event. Replacing one with the other can lose a distinction the speaker has made. The same care applies to an idiom: a familiar phrase is only relevant when it fits the description and context.
-::'''Emotions as Containers''': This structure portrays emotions as states or conditions in which one exists. Phrases such as "I am in a state of despair" or "I am living in fear" suggest a pervasive emotional state that defines one's existence. Similarly, expressions like "I am in love" or "I am in a great frame of mind" indicate a positive emotional state that the individual is immersed in.
+== Interpretation and context ==
+An emotional metaphor expresses a person's experience; it does not automatically establish its cause, identify another person's intentions or prescribe a therapeutic response. The wording should therefore remain connected to the speaker's account rather than treated as a code with a fixed translation.
-::'''Emotions as Temperature''': This metaphorical structure correlates emotions with temperature changes. Phrases like "That leaves me cold" or "I am boiling with anger" use temperature to express emotional reactions. The term "ice-queen" is often used to describe a person who is emotionally cold or distant, while "I am cold-hearted" suggests a lack of empathy or warmth.
+This page provides an overview of the language. Claims about the effectiveness of a therapeutic intervention require their own evidence and do not follow from identifying a metaphor.
-::'''Emotions as Pressure''': This structure views emotions as pressure that can lead to explosive reactions. Expressions such as "I am going to explode in a minute" or "He just erupted without warning" use the metaphor of pressure to convey intense emotional states. Similarly, phrases like "He’s like a volcano about to explode" or "I need to let off steam" suggest a build-up of emotional tension that needs to be released.
+== Research example: taste and emotional words ==
+Zhou and Tse's 2020 study examined associations between taste words and words naming or evoking emotions. Across four studies with 357 participants, sweetness was mainly associated with positive words, while bitterness, followed by sourness and spiciness, was mainly associated with negative words. Participants were Cantonese-speaking university students in Hong Kong. [https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00986 Yanyun Zhou and Chi-Shing Tse, “The Taste of Emotion: Metaphoric Association Between Taste Words and Emotion/Emotion-Laden Words”, ''Frontiers in Psychology'' 11:986 (2020), abstract and methods.]
-Negative emotions are frequently depicted as forms of physical damage, with phrases such as "I am hurt", "I am torn apart", "I feel suffocated", or "I’m feeling crushed". These metaphorical expressions provide a vivid illustration of the individual's emotional pain and distress.
+The tasks used word associations and ratings. Participants were not being fed different tastes to establish changes in emotion. The distinction matters: an association between words is evidence about language and judgement under those conditions, not proof that the corresponding taste changes a person's mood.
-====Application in Therapy====
+The paper also distinguishes an emotion word from an emotion-laden word: naming a feeling and naming something that evokes a feeling are different linguistic acts. This is useful when comparing descriptions of emotional experience with descriptions of events, places or objects that carry emotional significance.
-The Metaphors of Emotion model, with its focus on the metaphorical structures used to express emotions, has significant implications for therapeutic practice. It provides a novel approach to understanding and addressing emotional issues, thereby enhancing the efficacy of therapeutic interventions.
-====Therapeutic Understanding of Emotional Metaphors====
+For complementary approaches, [[Metaphor in Literature and Creativity]] discusses sensory description, while [[Metaphor in Therapeutic Conversation]] examines how patients and therapists use and interpret imagery. Further sources are collected in the [[Metaphor Research Library]].
-In therapeutic settings, the Metaphors of Emotion model serves as a valuable tool for deciphering the metaphorical language of emotions. By understanding the metaphorical structures that clients use to describe their emotions, therapists can gain deeper insights into their clients' emotional experiences and perceptions. This understanding can inform the therapeutic process, enabling therapists to respond more effectively to their clients' emotional needs.
-For instance, a client who describes feeling "crushed" is likely experiencing a sense of overwhelming pressure or burden. In response, the therapist might focus on strategies to help the client alleviate this emotional burden, such as cognitive restructuring techniques to challenge negative thought patterns, or mindfulness exercises to promote emotional regulation.
+== Kövecses: emotion as force and a cultural model ==
+Zoltán Kövecses's ''Metaphor and Emotion'' is a separate research contribution to the study of emotional language. In chapter 5, he examines how apparently different descriptions of emotion can organise relationships between a force, something affected by it, resistance and a resulting response.<ref name="kovecses-force">Zoltán Kövecses, ''Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling'' (Cambridge University Press, 2000), chapter 5, “The Force of Emotion”, especially pp. 64–68.</ref> This is background scholarship alongside the account introduced above, rather than a description or validation of Austin's method.
-====Tailoring Therapeutic Interventions====
+His analysis distinguishes two relationships that can easily be blurred: an event described as causing an emotion, and an emotion described as producing a response. In the constructed sentence “The news sparked her anger”, the event initiates a state. In “Anger drove her to protest”, the emotion becomes a motivating force. The second account assigns the emotion a causal role within the description; it does not independently prove why the person acted.
-The Metaphors of Emotion model also underscores the importance of tailoring therapeutic interventions to the specific metaphorical structures used by the client. For instance, a therapist might respond differently to a client who feels "crushed" compared to one whose life has "fallen apart". In the former case, the therapist might focus on helping the client alleviate their emotional burden, while in the latter case, the therapist might work with the client to rebuild their sense of self and their life.
-This tailored approach to therapy can enhance the therapeutic alliance, as it demonstrates the therapist's understanding and validation of the client's emotional experiences. It can also increase the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions, as it ensures that these interventions are aligned with the client's emotional needs and perceptions.
+=== What a pressure image adds ===
+A pressure model can combine several correspondences: the person is a container, emotion is something within it, and increasing intensity becomes increasing pressure. Resistance and the boundary's capacity then become relevant to how a response is described.<ref name="kovecses-force" />
-====Enhancing Personal Change and Intervention Skills====
+<div class="mom-table-scroll" role="region" aria-label="Metaphors of Emotion: What a pressure image adds (table 1)" tabindex="0" style="max-width:100%;overflow-x:auto;">
-The Metaphors of Emotion model not only facilitates personal change for individuals but also enhances the intervention skills of change workers and therapists. By providing a deeper understanding of the metaphorical structures of emotions, the model enables therapists to develop more effective and nuanced therapeutic interventions. It also empowers individuals to better understand and manage their own emotions, thereby promoting emotional health and wellbeing.
+{| class="wikitable"
+! scope="col" | Constructed wording !! scope="col" | Relationship foregrounded !! scope="col" | Detail that should remain open
+|-
+| “The criticism lit the fuse.” || An event begins a possible sequence. || Is a later response described, anticipated or merely feared?
+|-
+| “She kept a lid on her irritation.” || Containment and restraint. || Does the account concern outward expression, felt intensity or both?
+|-
+| “Relief washed through him.” || Movement of a substance through a person. || What changes during the movement, and where does it end?
+|-
+| “Worry followed me home.” || A pursuing or accompanying agent. || Is the relationship threatening, persistent or otherwise specified?
+|}
+</div>
+These examples illustrate linguistic contrasts. They are not categories of people or observations of an underlying physical fluid. A container may be full without being pressurised, and an emotion may be intense without the speaker describing an explosion. Adding unspoken heat, confinement or damage can change the account being analysed.
+=== Description does not establish a mechanism ===
+Kövecses calls attention to a language-based folk model, including expectations about causes, emotional states, control and responses. Studying that model can show how an experience becomes intelligible within a community. It is a different undertaking from establishing the physiology of emotion or testing an intervention.
+For example, a pressure metaphor may make release seem like an obvious next event. The linguistic inference alone does not demonstrate that a particular way of expressing anger improves wellbeing. An account that moves from figurative structure to a claim about beneficial action needs additional evidence for that step.
+=== Body, culture and individual variation ===
+Kövecses's broader argument connects embodied experience with cultural interpretation. In his later work on context, he also notes that an opponent image can describe illness, tasks and other difficulties, as well as emotion.<ref name="kovecses-context-emotion">Zoltán Kövecses, ''Where Metaphors Come From: Reconsidering Context in Metaphor'' (Oxford University Press, 2015), chapter 3, especially p. 46.</ref> A source image is therefore not a unique label for one feeling.
+An entry about emotional language should preserve the named emotion, the image, the surrounding event and the speaker's qualification of it. If two people use a similar image, record whether their accounts give it the same direction, intensity, agency and outcome. [[Personification and Agency]] and [[Force Dynamics: Pressure, Resistance and Release]] develop these comparisons; [[Metaphor Across Languages and Cultures]] examines variation at several levels.
+== References ==
+<references />
+== Related pages ==
+* [[Idiomatic, Literal and Figurative Communication]]
+* [[Embodied Cognition]]
+* [[Containers]]
+* [[Burdens]]
+* [[Pressure, Compression and Explosion]]
+== Browse the library ==
+[[:Category:Concepts and language|Concepts and language]]
+[[Subject index]] | [[Stories and literature]] | [[Special:AllPages|All articles A-Z]]
+[[Category:Concepts and language]]