Figurative ‘eye’ expressions in the conceptualization of emotions and personality traits in Slovak

Abstract: This paper explores metonymic and metaphoric expressions with the lexeme ‘eye’ and provides empirical evidence from the Slovak language about the close interaction between the physiological and cultural aspects of the embodied mind. Our study, relying on data collected from several Slovak dictionaries, demonstrates the importance of the organ of sight in the conceptualization of various emotions (anger, happiness, sadness, love, hate, envy, surprise, and fear) and personality traits (honesty, greed, and hostility), all considered to be essential parts of the Slovak linguistic worldview. The identification of specific metonymic and/or metaphorical mappings has shed more light on the emergence and motivation of particular figurative expressions in Slovak. In the investigation of the linguistic data, the traditional Lakovian approach was used alongside the more recent anthropologically-oriented methodological approaches of Polish and Russian schools of cognitive semantics. Both contemporary and etymological meanings of multilayered emotion concepts were analyzed, and their hierarchical organization was presented in an associative-semantic network. It has been shown that there are no obvious boundaries between the concepts – rather the opposite, as the network illustrates their internal continuity. By revealing the complexities of the creation of new meanings via associations, this paper contributes towards a deeper understanding of the relationship between figurative language, culture, and human thought.