Cultural Metaphors Related to Forest

Abstract

This section explores the cultural conceptualizations of forest, one of the most frequent conceptual entities in the nature images of folksongs. Associative domains related to the notion are primarily based on the two main conceptual domains of location and structure, which also share common characteristics. More specific domains include lodging/domicile, shelter, emotional sphere, locus of rendezvous, locus of sexual act and place of death. These domains make up a matrix of cultural conceptualizations related to forest. Descriptions of spatial formation generally dominate the adjectival attributes of such concepts, e.g., the expression “round forest” profiles the forest as a location and presents it as a closed, finite piece of land. In the metaphorical sense, forest is an intimate location where those private emotions can be freely expressed, which are not ‘compatible’ with the cultural community’s rules and norms. The underlying cultural metaphor behind the diversity of conceptualizations is a place of intimacy as forest, which emerges from universal metaphors such as intimacy as closeness, emotion as a unity, difficulties are impediments to motion, and many more.