Metaphors of blood in American English and Hungarian: A cross-linguistic corpus investigation

Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 2897–2910

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Metaphors of blood in American English and Hungarian: A cross-linguistic corpus investigation Judit Simo´ * Case Western Reserve University, 11112 Bellflower Road, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history: Received 16 December 2010 Received in revised form 2 May 2011 Accepted 11 May 2011 Available online 16 June 2011

This study investigates the metaphorical uses of blood in American English and Hungarian, using large corpora. The study aims at identifying the target themes of metaphorical expressions containing blood in the two languages as well as unearthing details of patterns of usage in a case-study analysis of four selected expressions. Findings show that the two languages mostly share the range of phenomena that their extensive metaphorical uses of blood depict. At the same time, the case studies reveal a remarkable difference in the frequency, connotation, and usage patterns of the expressions that underwent a detailed analysis. The expressions also display substantial within-language variation in their connotations. The findings provide support for the usage of mixed corpora, and imply a vital need to investigate the context of metaphorical expressions in order to bring to light the conceptualizations inherent in them. ß 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Metaphor Blood Corpus American English Hungarian

1. Introduction The recent debate concerning the methodologies of traditional conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, 1999) has been instrumental to its refinement. Researchers who conduct corpus studies – also called the bottom-up approach – see the power of their method in that it provides a wealth of information, most notably about the frequency of certain metaphorical expressions, which can thus offer evidence – or counterevidence – as to the actual existence and strength of conceptual metaphors proposed by followers of the traditional approach (Deignan, 2005; Musolff, 2004; Semino, 2006, 2008; Stefanowitsch, 2006). Since conceptual metaphors are posited based on linguistic examples even in the traditional, or top-down approach, it makes intuitive sense to examine whether metaphorical expressions indeed exhibit the behavior which is claimed to be the basis of the conceptual metaphors in real-life usage. Even if conceptual metaphors formulated at the supra-individual level do not necessarily play out in the on-line language use of individual speakers fully on every occasion (Ko¨vecses, 2011), large corpora should provide linguistic evidence for those conceptualizations. The criticism levelled at the introspective and selective data collection methodologies of the traditional approach was articulated most powerfully by Stefanowitsch (2006), who designed and put into practice an experimental procedure to prove the superiority of corpus-analysis, claiming that his approach facilitates a more complete exploration of the conceptualizations related to a target domain. Answering the challenges, Ko¨vecses (2008, 2011) has nevertheless subdued this debate by stating that the two approaches, while complementary, have different goals and thus their methodologies are naturally different. As he maintains, the aim of the traditional approach is not to provide a full list of conceptual metaphors for a given target, but to ‘‘propose conceptual metaphors on the basis of linguistic expressions that researchers intuitively take to be metaphorical’’

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 216 533 7160; fax: +1 216 368 4367. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected]. 0378-2166/$ – see front matter ß 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2011.05.004

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(Ko¨vecses, 2011, p. 27); a goal connected to the supra-individual level of metaphor functioning. At this point, then, the traditional top-down approach can be considered as proposing hypotheses about conceptual metaphors, which can then be verified, modified or refined based on comprehensive linguistic – and non-linguistic – data. Meanwhile, an undisputed advantage of using corpora is that they provide access to the context of metaphorical expressions, which has been shown to play a pivotal role in metaphor usage, both conventional and novel (Ko¨vecses, 2002, 2005, 2010; Musolff, 2004; Semino, 2008). Naturally, context is a very broad notion which subsumes the physical and socio(sub)cultural environment and the immediate discourse context (Ko¨vecses, 2005, 2010). Corpora provide both the broader linguistic context as well as extralinguistic information (source, genre, medium, recency), which allow conclusions about most of these variables. The most obvious details linguistic context helps tease out, depending on how much of it is available in the corpus, are discourse topic, the evaluative function of the metaphor, and characteristic collocations. Extra-linguistic context can provide an explanation as to the motivation behind these. Most importantly, though, such basic notions as the source and the target domains of metaphorical expressions show context-dependent variation (Semino, 2006, 2008). This is especially problematic for the traditional introspective method as long as linguistic metaphors are posited as the prime evidence for conceptual metaphors. Studies exploring the usage of body parts in metaphorical expressions cross-linguistically show variation not only in their methodology but also in their focus. Those that emphasize conceptual metaphors may discuss which body parts play a role in the metaphorical description of certain phenomena, usually an emotional state (anger, happiness; Ko¨vecses, 2002; Maalej, 2004; Yu, 1995). A more direct way is to pick a particular body part or body parts and examine its/their metaphorical uses (Yu, 2000, 2004), sometimes with the help of corpora (Charteris-Black, 2003; Deignan and Potter, 2004). Thus, these studies reveal information about body parts and expressions involving body parts that the researchers deem worth studying. Both approaches stumble on the problem of humans’, including linguists’, less than satisfying intuition about language use (Deignan, 2005). The present study falls in line with cross-linguistic corpus studies that examine the metaphorical usage of a certain body part, or rather, in the present case, a bodily substance – blood. It hopes to circumvent the problems of relying too much on researcher intuition in that the examination of larger corpora for the metaphorical uses of blood was motivated by an observation of the differences in its usage in smaller, hand-searchable discourse-specific corpora in American English and Hungarian (Simo´, 2008). The advantages of such a methodological approach are discussed in Cameron and Deignan (2003). At the same time, in line with Ko¨vecses (2008), it will be argued that researcher intuition when analyzing and assessing data remains a necessary and unavoidable component of any kind of study. Although the present investigation stays short of compiling a collection of conceptual metaphors with blood as the source domain, the contribution of corpus analysis in this respect will be pointed out. Through a detailed analysis of a few specific target items, the study will emphasize the importance of examining a large number of occurrences and their context in cross-linguistic metaphor research with such basic issues at stake whether the same metaphorical expression implies the same conceptualization in the first place. Blood, as a vital body fluid, conveys an abundant symbolism in many cultures (see Csa´sza´r, 1996, for a survey and also Turner, 2003). It can represent vitality, passion, life, familial ties, but also aggression and death. In fact, in Proto-IndoEuropean language, outside blood, associated with death, and inside blood, related to life, were denoted by different words (Linke, 1985). The association of blood with the color red also plays an important role in the images blood evokes (Allan, 2009). Examinations of actual linguistic instances show figurative uses of blood first of all in relation to race, or origin (Musolff, 2007; Salvant, 2003). Furthermore, metaphorical uses of blood have been pointed out in relation to certain emotions: the dropping temperature of blood, e.g., blood running cold, is related to fear in English (Ko¨vecses, 1990), and an increase in blood temperature, as in boiling blood, to anger in English (Ko¨vecses, 1990; Lakoff and Ko¨vecses, 1987) and both in English and Hungarian (Ko¨vecses, 2002). At the same time, a diachronic corpus-study, spanning 490 years, on blood metaphors showed that a certain expression is capable of conveying a host of emotional states, the identification of which requires the study of the broader context (Mischler, 2008). The most comprehensive corpus investigation of the figurative uses of blood, based on the Bank of English, comes from Charteris-Black (2001), whose analysis confirmed three ‘‘conceptual keys’’ – ancestry, life, and temperament – that motivate these uses. A conceptual key is defined as ‘‘an underlying proposition that bridges language and thought. It may include, conceptual metaphors, conceptual metonyms, conventional scripts and other types of knowledge drawn from everyday experience’’ (Charteris-Black, 2000, p. 282). Since all the expressions that underwent a close analysis for the present paper are also discussed by Charteris-Black (2001), details of his findings will be provided in the relevant sections. In spite of this significance, systematic cross-linguistic examinations of the metaphorical uses of blood are hard to come by. The present study aims to begin filling this gap. The most immediate motivation for this investigation comes from the findings of a study on body part metaphors in naturally occurring language use, chess articles in American English and Hungarian, which showed substantial differences in the metaphorical uses of blood in these two languages (Simo´, 2008). It was noted that the Hungarian articles use blood to a much bigger extent in the metaphorical description of both chess players and a chess game. To describe the actions of a chess player, expressions like hidegve´rrel (in cold blood), ve´rt izzad (sweat blood), or ve´rt szagol (smell blood) came up only in the Hungarian data. Similarly, ve´res csata´k (bloody battles) to characterize chess games and ezer sebből ve´rző a´lla´s (‘a position bleeding from a thousand wounds’ – i.e., a position full of weaknesses) to portray a position were present only in Hungarian. Furthermore, the fact that hidegve´rrel (in cold blood) conveyed a positive meaning in these Hungarian articles – something rather counterintuitive to native speakers of American English – suggested the possibility of considerable differences in the connotations of blood metaphors in the two languages. These findings led to the

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idea of examining bigger corpora to see if they hold in more varied texts as well. And while chess may be thought of as a highly specialized activity for its language to be indicative of larger trends, if we consider games’ and sports’ importance in the two cultures, the language of chess will seem less of an oddity. It was hoped that investigating a larger number of examples in their context will facilitate the cross-linguistic comparison of patterns of usage first of all in terms of frequency, meaning, connotations and characteristic discourse topic. A secondary aim of the study was to examine within-language variation in the uses of blood metaphors between fiction versus nonfiction. The advantages of using corpora for this common genre differentiation purpose in metaphor research have been pointed out earlier (Ko¨vecses, 2005; Steen and Gibbs, 2004). More specifically, and because of the anticipated vastness of the data, the following questions were sought to be answered: 1. What are the main target themes of the figurative uses of blood in American English and Hungarian, as attested by corpus evidence? 2. What does a case-study style, detailed examination of the context of selected metaphorical expressions reveal about cross-linguistic and within-language variation in the frequency, meaning, and usage patterns of these expressions?

2. Method 2.1. Corpus The American corpus used for this study was the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), which at present is a compilation of more than 400 million words of spoken and written contemporary (from 1990 till present) American English from newspapers, fiction, magazines, and academic texts (Davies, 2008). The analysis was based on data up to 2008 (385 million words). Twenty percent of the corpus comes from fiction. The Hungarian corpus was the Magyar Nemzeti Szo¨vegta´r (Hungarian National Corpus [HNC]), which has 187.6 million words from five regional dialects of contemporary written Hungarian including news, fiction, scientific and official texts, and personal exchanges on the Internet (Va´radi, 2002). Again, 20% of the corpus comes from fiction. 2.2. Data collection and analysis In order to answer the first research question regarding the target themes, metaphorical uses of blood were obtained by reading through the first 500 hits of blood in the COCA and the root and any suffixed forms of the Hungarian ve´r (blood) in the HNC. Metaphorical expressions were then grouped based on their target theme. To answer the second question on the crosslinguistic and within-language variation in the usage of selected expressions, a comparative analysis of four metaphorical expressions was conducted by examining their frequencies, contexts, and meanings in the American and Hungarian corpora. 3. Target themes of the figurative uses of blood Examining the first 500 hits of blood/ve´r* led to the identification of two major metaphorical target themes: emotion and essence. This second theme can be further divided into four subtopics: origin, significance, quality, and life. This somewhat different delineation than the one offered by Charteris-Black’s (2001) conceptual keys is partly a result of my investigating two languages. Another reason for the mismatch is that my understanding of the themes ‘emotion’ (closest to CharterisBlack’s ‘temperament’) and ‘life’ is more restricted than his: for example, sweat blood, signalling effort, seems to be more intentional than the ‘‘classic’’ emotion metaphors and was thus placed into the ‘significance’ theme. Also, I use ‘life’ strictly as an antonym of ‘death’, rather than as a broader notion subsuming senses like fertility or creativity, which forced some expressions into a different category. 3.1. Metaphorical expressions with blood to signal emotion Both corpora revealed a wide range of metaphorical uses of blood to denote an emotion. Some examples from the American corpus are: stir our blood, make my blood boil, bad blood, in cold blood. Hungarian examples include forr a ve´re (his blood is boiling); elo¨nti a ve´r az agya´t (the blood is flooding his brain); feje´be szo¨kik a ve´r (the blood rushes to his head); ve´rbe borul az arca (her/his face fills up with blood). Based on the sample, Hungarian seems to have more numerous expressions, which may be a result of this language naming more specific body parts where blood can be located, as opposed to the whole body. 3.2. Metaphorical expressions with blood to signal essence Metaphorical expressions in this theme represent blood as a fundamental factor contributing to the essence of a person in one way or another. In the examined corpora, expressions appeared to fall into the four subcategories outlined below.

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3.2.1. Blood as origin Expressions in this category suggested that being related through blood offers a bonding between people. The two languages share most of the expressions, for example: a ve´r nem va´lik vizze´/blood is thicker than water; ve´reink/our blood, and expressions where a nationality modifies blood, as in Hungarian/American/Arab blood. A subset of expressions designates blood as the carrier of certain things (characteristics, talents, affinities), e.g., ve´ru¨nkben van/it’s in our blood, with some of the instances either explicitly or implicitly referring to the role of inheritance in this. 3.2.2. Blood as significance In this subtheme, blood signifies the intensity of an activity. Both languages mix sweat and blood in expressions such as ve´rt izzad/sweat blood; how much blood, sweat and tears; ve´rrel e´s verejte´kkel (with blood and sweat). In the Hungarian data, blood also represents a most important part of a person in expressions like ve´rre megy (‘it goes for blood’, i.e., it’s dead serious), and ve´rig se´rt (‘hurt to the blood’, i.e., offend greatly). 3.2.3. Blood as quality This category came up only in the Hungarian data. Expressions belonging here are made up of an adjective followed by blood, for example, bu¨szke ve´r (proud blood), olcso´ ve´r (cheap blood). These expressions show a similarity with some of those in the above-mentioned subset of the ‘origin’ subcategory in that both attribute the role of container of personal characteristics to blood. Still, the syntactic form has the effect that in the present category, the emphasis is more on the content, i.e., on the quality that’s in the blood, whereas in the case of the ‘origin’ category the stress is on the container, i.e., on the fact that the trait is located in somebody’s blood. 3.2.4. Blood as life In this meaning, blood is basically a synonym for life (ve´re´t adja- ‘give his blood’, i.e., sacrifice one’s life; pay in blood). The American data show more numerous examples, especially ones where blood expresses the price of something and often cooccurs with other nouns expressing value (in terms of money and blood, costlier in both blood and treasure). 4. Case studies of metaphorical uses of blood In this section, the findings of the case studies of four metaphorical expressions of blood are presented and discussed. The analyses were driven by previous findings as well as by the patterns emerging in the data, and thus differ in scope. The first expression to be analyzed, in his/her blood/ve´re´ben, comes from the target topic of origin; the second, sweat blood/ve´rt izzad, from that of significance. Finally, two expressions from the target domain of emotion – in cold blood/hidegve´rrel and blood (is/ was) boil(ing/ed/s)/forr(t) a ve´r(e/m/ed/u¨nk/u¨k) – are analyzed. In the examples, target expressions are in italics, unless the example as a whole exhibits the feature under discussion. All examples are numbered and those from the American corpus are prefixed with (A), and those from the Hungarian, with (H). Examples that illustrate methodological considerations are included in the running text and are not numbered. All translations from Hungarian to English are mine. A word-for-word gloss for the Hungarian examples is included only when it is necessary to make metaphoricity clear. To help the reader, nonfiction Hungarian examples are marked as such. 4.1. In his/her blood/ve´re´ben Given the significance of blood’s metaphorical usage in denoting ‘origin’, as discussed in previous literature (CharterisBlack, 2001; Musolff, 2007; Salvant, 2003) and also revealed as a target theme in the present investigation, an expression from this domain was chosen. In his/her blood/ve´re´ben was picked because it is one of the most frequent expressions, and exists in both languages. The third person singular offers many more instances than the other persons, such as in my blood/ ve´remben or in your blood/ve´redben. The main focus of the analysis was to establish what kinds of things can be carried in somebody’s blood, and to what extent inheritance is alluded to as responsible for those things being in the blood. After removing the non-metaphorical hits, 163 instances were left in the COCA. Of these, 32 referred to an emotion (e.g., ‘‘The rage circulating in her blood made her ears hot, her sight dim’’, Brennan, Allison: See no evil, 2007), and were thus discarded from this category. The remaining 131 expressions (.34/million words) were grouped according to the nature of the thing that is in the blood. This delineation resulted in 12 categories, plus a 13th one for the 10 examples that could not be classified with a similar ease as the rest based on the available context (e.g., ‘‘She lifted her chin a notch. She would stay, for the Double B was in her blood, an extension of her very soul, but she did not want to marry the man her father had chosen for her, and she’d made no secret of the fact.’’ Miller, Linda Lael: One wish, 2000). One item named two things in the blood and therefore was included in two categories, resulting in a total count of 132 instances. The most numerous categories are ‘profession’ (39 of the 132 expressions; 29.55%), ‘art’ and ‘characteristic’ (21/132; 15.91%), ‘sport’ (12/132; 9.1%) and ‘place’ (10/132; 7.58%). See examples A1–A5 below. (A1)

For Christopher Petty, the military was in his blood. Petty’s grandfather commanded artillery troops during World War II. Another relative led militiamen against the British during the Revolutionary War. Uncle Ralph Petty said that for Christopher, being an Army officer came quite naturally. (NPR Morning, 2006-01-17)

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Table 1 Grouping of the instances of in his/her blood in COCA by the thing that is in the blood. Thing in the blood

Total # of instances out of 132 (% of 132)

# of instances in fiction (out of 53)

# of instances in non-fiction (out of 79)

Profession Art Characteristic Sport Place Nationality Effect of alcohol Person Past Sound Food Knowledge Miscellaneous

39 21 21 12 10 5 4 4 2 2 1 1 10

10 6 12 1 4 5 4 3 0 2 0 1 5

29 15 9 11 6 0 0 1 2 0 1 0 5

(29.55%) (15.91%) (15.91%) (9.1%) (7.58%)

(7.58%)

(A2)

For Medina, the yearning to create runs deeper than a New Mexico blue sky, much wider than the Rio Grande Valley where she creates her weavings. The art, she says, is in her blood. (Denver Post, 1998-08-28)

(A3)

‘‘Bah! He’ll get you in trouble with those Others. Young idiot! All he wants is war. Something bad in his blood. I remember when he was born. Blood.. bad blood.’’ (W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear: People of the Wolf, 1990)

(A4)

A gifted athlete as a youngster, Arrington considered an NBA career before football took hold of his heart. The game is in his blood, he believes, and he ticks off the names of Pittsburgh’s great linebackers with reverence: Andy Russell, Jack Lambert, Jack Ham, Levon Kirkland, Earl Holmes. . . (Washington Post, 2001-12-16)

(A5)

Seconds after that he had a grip on his patience. All it took was a good long look at the lake and the reminder that people like Buck and Jenny didn’t have that. They had the Ridge, where houses were too small, too close, and too dirty to uplift anyone, much less someone battling alcoholism, physical abuse, or chronic unemployment. John knew. He had the Ridge in his blood as well. He would hear it, feel it, smell it until the day he died. (Delinsky, Barbara: Lake news, 2000)

Fifty-three of the 132 instances (40.2%) come from fiction, and 79 (59.8%) from non-fiction. Fiction instances abound in the categories ‘nationality’ and ‘effect of alcohol’ (4 and 5 examples, respectively, both 100%; see A6 and A7). Fifty-seven percent of the examples in the category ‘characteristic’ also come from fiction. Conversely, only 10 of the 39 expressions (25.64%) in the ‘profession’ group come from fiction, and 11 of the 12 instances (92%) in ‘sport’ appear in non-fiction. Table 1 above summarizes this information. (A6)

Trevor hadn’t been raised on legends and myths, but there was more than enough Irish in his blood to cause him to wonder about them. (Roberst, Nora: Heart of sea, 2000)

(A7)

He put the food away, stuck a meal in the microwave, and thought about pouring himself another beer. But the stout he’d drunk with Jimi buzzed in his blood like street-grade amphetamine. (Mary Rosenblum: Search Engine, 2005)

In the Hungarian corpus, 98 metaphorical instances of ve´re´ben (in his/her blood) were found. Because of the particulars of the language, some of these expressions referred to a plural subject or a cover term designating a group of people (e.g., ‘‘. . . az embargo´ alatt megszu¨letett az a re´teg, amelynek a ve´re´ben- e´s a pe´nzta´rca´ja´ban- van az u¨zlet’’ [Heti Vila´ggazdasa´g, 1999-05-22, non-fiction] -..during the embargo, a social class was born, which has business in its blood- and in its wallet). To achieve the biggest possible equivalence between the two languages, these expressions (36), as well as the 6 emotionmetaphors, were discarded. Similarly to the American data, the remaining 56 instances (.30/million words) were delineated into 12 groups plus one for the miscellaneous examples. By far the most numerous group is ‘characteristic’, with 25 (44.6%) instances. The second biggest group is ‘profession’ (6/56; 10.7%), followed by ‘art’ and ‘knowledge’, both with 5/56 (8.9%) instances (see examples H1–H4). Thirty-eight of the 56 examples (67.9%) come from fiction, and 18 (32.1%) from non-fiction. All examples in the ‘knowledge’ category come from fiction, as well as 68% (17/25) in the ‘characteristic’ group. On the other hand, 4 of the 6 (67%) ‘profession’ instances come from non-fiction. Table 2 displays these results. (H1)

Nemhia´ba, ahogy a tavalyi, hazai me´rkőze´sekre időzı´tett halaszthatatlan u¨zleti ta´rgyala´sok megmutatta´k, Komora´nak a ve´re´ben van a meneku¨le´s. (Ne´pszava, 1997-08-05 [non-fiction]) - And in fact, as the timing of last year’s immutable business trips, overlapping with the home games showed, Komora has escape in his blood.

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Table 2 Grouping of the instances of ve´re´ben in the HNC by the thing that is in the blood. Thing in the blood

Total # of instances out of 56 (% of 56)

# of instances in fiction (out of 38)

# of instances in non-fiction (out of 18)

Characteristic Profession Knowledge Art Sport Nationality Person Place Kinship Effect of alcohol Origin Political affiliation Miscellaneous

25 6 5 5 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 4

17 2 5 3 1 0 2 1 1 1 1 0 4

8 4 0 2 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 0

(44.6%) (10.7%) (8.9%) (8.9%) (3.57%) (3.57%) (3.57%)

(7.14%)

(H2)

Pocakos, fekete, zsı´ros arcu´ ember, nagy hangon fogadta a vevőket, ra´juk so´zott mindent, de senkit sem csapott be, csak e´ppen a ve´re´ben volt a kereskede´s. (Szakonyi Ka´roly: Pa´l apostol szigetei, 2002) - A paunchy, dark man with a fatty face, he greeted the costumers in a loud voice, foisted everything on them, but he did not deceive anybody, it’s just he had trade in his blood.

(H3)

Csak mikor ma´r fu¨le´ben, agya´ban, ve´re´ben lu¨ktetett a melo´dia, akkor ke´rt bara´taito´l nyersfordı´ta´st. (Domokos Sa´muel: Magyar-roma´n irodalmi kapcsolatok 1999-12-23 [non-fiction])- Only when the melody was throbbing in his ears, brain, blood, did he ask his friends for a rough translation.

(H4)

..ez a fiatalember azzal kezdi, hogy felru´gja az aranyszaba´lyt: ami belőle a jo´, az a ve´re´ben van, ami meg nincs a ve´re´ben, azt nem e´rdemes megtartani. (Hata´r Győző: Ko¨po¨nyeg sors, 1985:1997). -..this young man starts out with abandoning the golden rule: what’s good in it is in his blood, and what’s not in his blood is not worth keeping anyway.

Thus, nine (‘characteristic’, ‘profession’, ‘art’, ‘sport’, ‘knowledge, ‘place’, ‘nationality’, ‘effect of alcohol’, ‘person’) of the 12 established categories overlap between the two languages, with the three different ones (‘past’, ‘sound’, and ‘food’ in the American and ‘kinship’, ‘origin’ and ‘political affiliation’ in the Hungarian data) yielding very few examples. Beyond this similarity, though, there is a remarkable variation between the two languages in the importance of the categories. Possibly the most conspicuous result is the dominance of the category ‘characteristic’ in the Hungarian data. It gives four times more instances than the next category, ‘profession’; is almost three times more productive than its American counterpart, and 1.5 times more productive than the leading category, ‘profession’, in the American data (based on their relative importance expressed in the percentages). Looking at the first category in the American data more closely, a subdued but similar tendency is observable as in the Hungarian data: ‘profession’ sticks out by giving 1.86 times more instances than the next categories, ‘art’ and ‘characteristic’, and is also 2.76 times more productive than the Hungarian ‘profession.’ Of the overlapping categories, further discrepancies in importance appear with the categories ‘knowledge’ and ‘sport’. These results suggest that while the two languages have a capability of expressing more or less the same things as being carried in somebody’s blood, their tendency to actually do so varies substantially. Looking at the fiction/non-fiction dichotomy, the most obvious difference between the two languages is that while the majority (67.9%) of the Hungarian examples come from fiction, in the American data, non-fiction provides more instances than fiction (59.8% versus 40.2%). This is a notable fact considering that the two corpora have the same percentage of input from fiction. A similarity between the two languages is that instances from fiction appear in more categories, thus revealing a greater flexibility of this genre. This trend is especially pronounced in the Hungarian data, where non-fiction is represented only in 6 of the 13 categories. Two final minor parallels between the two languages in the usage of this metaphor are that the vast majority of the expressions refers to a human being – only in two American and three Hungarian instances was the carrier of the thing an animal, – and that very few instances are in the negative: four American and only one Hungarian examples described what was not in somebody’s blood. In an attempt to explain how things get into somebody’s blood, I examined the context of these examples to see how many refer to inheritance. Reference to inheritance was established if the available context of the expression in his/her blood/ ve´re´ben included a mention of somebody’s elder relatives or otherwise attributed the existence of the thing in the blood to biology. See examples A8 and H5. In the American data, 46 of the 132 expressions (34.85%) were such, with 16/53 (30.19%) in the fiction, and 30/79 (37.97%) in the non-fiction data. Looking at the categories that gave at least 5% of the examples, ‘characteristic’ and ‘profession’ referred to inheritance above average (52 and 46% of the instances, respectively) while ‘art’ was at about average (33%), and ‘place’ and ‘sport’ scored below (10 and 8.3%, respectively). The figures are lower in the Hungarian data: 9 of the 56 expressions (16%) allude to heritage; 5 of the 38 (13%) in the fiction, and 4 of the 18 (22%) in the non-fiction data. Of the four most numerous categories, examples in ‘knowledge’ and ‘art’ referred to inheritance with an

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Table 3 The percentage of the instances that refer to inheritance in the total data and by genre and category. USA

HUN Total: 34.85% Fiction: 30.19% Non-fiction: 37.97%

Characteristic Profession Art Place Sport

Total: 16% Fiction: 13% Non-fiction: 22% 52% 46% 33% 10% 8.3%

Art Knowledge Profession Characteristic

20% 20% 17% 12%

above average frequency (20% each), ‘profession’ was on average (17%) and ‘characteristic’, below (12%). See Table 3 for these results. (A8)

He’s kind of got that wild streak in his blood, which personally, I don’t mind. Someone once told me not to complain about my kids’ wild behavior, because it was actually Good Gravy’s and my fault. ‘‘You take your Comanche blood, your Apache and your Cheyenne and go mixing them up in the same kids. Well, no wonder they can’t settle down..’’ (Gomez, Terry: The naked people, 2002).

(H5)

Az Encyclopaedia Britannica´bo´l kideru¨l, hogy a ta´nc a ve´re´ben van: nagymama´ja ı´r ta´ncbajnok volt. (Ne´pszabadsa´g, 2000-06-29 [non-fiction])- The Encyclopaedia Britannica reveals that dance is in his blood: his grandmother was an Irish dance champion.

Looking across the most important findings from the different analyses, the pictures that emerge can be described as ‘taken-for-granted’ or ‘mysterious’ or sometimes both at the same time. In the Hungarian data, ‘characteristic’ is the dominant category, inheritance is less frequently referred to than in the American data, and instances in the ‘characteristic’ category are the least likely to refer to inheritance among the four most numerous categories. All this implies that personal traits are in somebody’s blood because that is the natural modus operandi, and it is beyond question how they get there. So I would call this scene a ‘mysterious taken-for-granted.’ Conversely, the relative dominance of the ‘profession’ category in the American data, and the fact that the role of ancestors is mentioned with an above-average frequency in this category evokes a ‘taken-for-granted’ scenario and diminishes the element of mystery. We may speculate that these professions might not have been in the blood at birth but may have penetrated into it simply by living with, or observing, someone’s elders carrying them out. Naturally, a more close reading of these texts is necessary to come to any firm conclusion. Also, considering the advances in gene research and recent propositions about the inheritability of acquired traits, and in light of Mischler’s (2008) findings regarding the effect of scientific developments on metaphor usage, it would be worthwhile to conduct a diachronic study on the usage of this metaphor. An exploration focusing on the evaluative connotations of in his/her blood/ve´re´ben (Charteris-Black, 2001) would be especially revealing when carried out separately for the different categories. 4.2. Sweat blood/ve´rt izzad Both languages use blood in collocations to represent the intensity of an activity. Sweat blood/ve´rt izzad was chosen to investigate whether the observed disparity in its frequency of usage in relation to chess players’ efforts (Simo´, 2008, see Introduction) holds up in larger corpora. In addition to gathering quantitative data, the analysis aimed at identifying the connotations of the expression in the two languages. The COCA was searched for the root and suffixed forms of ‘sweat’ followed by ‘blood’ within four words (‘sweat* (4) blood’) to allow for variation in form and tense as well as for things other than blood being sweated (e.g., ‘sweat tears and blood’). After removing the duplicates and literal uses, the search resulted in 24 hits (.062/million words). The HNC was searched for the accusative form of ‘blood’ followed or preceded by the root and suffixed forms of ‘sweat’ within four words (‘ve´rt (4) izzad*’ and ‘izzad* (4) ve´rt’) again, to allow for grammatical/morphological variation. Seventy-nine instances remained after removing the duplicates and literal uses (.42/million words). (In both languages, Biblical references to Jesus’ suffering, e.g., ‘‘MORAL COWARDICE MAY HAVE DRIVEN PETER TO LIE, Judas to betray, and the disciples to sleep while Jesus sweat blood in the garden.’’ [Alice Camille: The Judas in us, U.S. Catholic, 2002] were deemed literal). Examining the broader contexts of the expression, it was found that in both languages, the chief usage is to portray effort (see examples A9 and H6, H7). Nevertheless, a substantial difference can be noted as to the dominance of this sense in the two languages: whereas in the American data, 17 of the 24 instances (70.8%) carried this meaning, in the Hungarian data, the corresponding figures are 73 out of 79 (92.4%). A unique feature of the Hungarian data is that 19, or 24% of the instances appear in a sport context (see H7). (A9)

And while Charlie had gone off to fish, Joel had sweated blood to transform Thornquist Gear from a two-bit storefront operation into a cash-rich empire, a young and hungry shark that was on the verge of swallowing whole its first live prey. (Krentz, Jayne Ann: Perfect partners, 1992)

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(H6)

E´n abban a demokra´cia´ban hiszek, amelyben a korma´nynak ve´rt kell izzadnia ahhoz, hogy az akarata´t keresztu¨lvihesse. (Magyar Hı´rlap, 2001-07-28, [non-fiction]) - I believe in a democracy where the government has to sweat blood to implement its will.

(H7)

Akkor ko¨nynyu versenyezni, ha jo¨nnek a jo´ doba´sok, de most minden centime´tere´rt ve´rt kellett izzadnom. (Ne´pszava, 1997-08-05, [non-fiction]) – It’s easy to compete when the good throws are coming, but now I had to sweat blood for each and every centimetre.

Apart from the discrepancy in the dominance of the ‘effort’ sense, a more significant difference is revealed in the secondary sense of the expression in the two languages: whereas the rest of the Hungarian examples all refer to suffering, whether physical or emotional, the major secondary meaning in the American instances is a kind of worry, or fear. Speculatively, this latter meaning can be made sense of via the conceptual metaphors EMOTION IS FORCE (Ko¨vecses, 2000) and FEAR IS A SUPERNATURAL ENTITY (Ko¨vecses, 1990), in that the force of fear is so strong that it leads to the supernatural phenomenon of sweating blood. These secondary meanings of the expression are not discussed separately by Charteris-Black (2001), who sees sweating blood as signifying ‘‘working or struggling very hard’’ (p. 284). Although it is plausible to say that worry or fear is a kind of struggle, the value of treating these senses separately is especially emphasized in the present crosslinguistic examination, as it helps to shed light on the difference in the prevalence of the primary meaning. Also, the secondary meanings discussed here are unique to the corresponding language and are not represented in the other at all. Finally, with the relatively significant share of the secondary meaning in the American data, a difference in the predominant syntactic manifestations of the primary and secondary senses comes to light: whereas the ‘effort’ sense is most likely to be expressed by an infinitive following sweat blood (see A9), the ‘fear’/‘worry’ sense is usually followed by a new clause. See examples A10, A11 for worry and H8 for mental suffering. (A10)

‘‘In his defense, you have led a sheltered life,’’ Keely said gently. ‘‘Kilraven is street smart. And he’s dangerous.’’ # ‘‘I know,’’ Winnie muttered. ‘‘There have been times that he’s been in situations where I sweat blood until he walks back into the station. He’s noticed that, too. He didn’t like it and he said so.’’ (Palmer, Diana: Heart of stone, 2008)

(A11)

He chuckled. ‘‘As security chief, I’m one of the people that had to give Teresa Laudy the green light in the first place. Our marketing division was sweating blood that the competition might learn what we’ve been up to. I’m glad I overrode their veto. Terry tells me the program’s been a hit.’’ (Rajnar Vajra: Viewschool, 2004)

(H8)

Ja´r me´g opera´ba? - Igen, minden premieren ott vagyok, e´s ve´rt izzadok, a szı´vem-lelkem sı´r. (Magyar Hı´rlap, 199808-15, [non-fiction]). - Do you still go to the Opera? - Yes, I attend every first night, and I sweat blood, my heart and soul are crying.

Separating fiction from non-fiction, we find that in the American data, 13 of the 24 examples come from non-fiction (54.17%), and 11 from fiction (45.83%). The vast majority (11 out of 13, 84.6%) of the non-fiction instances express effort. At the same time, only 6 of the 11 (54.5%) occurrences from fiction do the same. The Hungarian data do not exhibit this genre variance: 19 of the 79 (24%) instances come from fiction, and of those, effort is the main sense in 17 (89.47%). Of the 60 nonfiction instances, 56 (93%) express effort. The quantitative findings of this analysis support previous results (Simo´, 2008) and suggest that sweating blood as a metaphorical portrayal of intensity is more frequently used in Hungarian than in American English not only in chess articles, but also in more varied discourses. At the same time, the relatively high number of occurrences of the expression in a sport context in Hungarian implies that in that language, it is especially apt to depict the image of the efforts exhibited not only in chess, but in other sports as well. Meanwhile, the fact that the ‘effort’ sense of the expression proved to be less dominant in American English than in Hungarian may contribute to its more sparse usage in this specific context. The discrepancies between the two languages in the prominence of the primary meaning and in the secondary meanings warrant further investigation. The present analysis also verifies Stefanowitsch’ (2006) contention as to the potential difficulty of identifying the target domain of metaphorical expressions that do not spell it out: whereas primarily signalling effort, and thus belonging to ‘significance’, the secondary meaning of sweat blood would place the expression in the ‘emotion’ category in both languages. I suggest that this loss in an unequivocal categorization is amply compensated for by the exposure of these sense differences. At the same time, considering the meanings of sweat itself in the two languages, what ‘blood’ contributes is the element of intensity in all the senses of the expression. The hypothesised ability and inclination of the fiction genre to more fully exploit the gamut of possible connotations of metaphorical expressions was borne out only in the American data in the present case. 4.3. In cold blood/hidegve´rrel From the target theme of emotion, two expressions were chosen. In cold blood/hidegve´rrel was picked for a more detailed scrutiny because of previous findings indicating a difference in usage between the two languages in specialized corpora (Simo´, 2008; see Introduction). The analysis focused on the frequency and meaning of the expression as well as the contextual environment in which it appears, including metaphor clusters, collocations, and other patterns of usage. In the COCA, after eliminating duplicates and references to Truman Capote’s novel In cold blood (1966), 166 metaphorical hits remained (.43/million words). One hundred and fifty-two of the instances collocated with a verb of violence that causes

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Table 4 Percentages of the metaphorical uses of in cold blood/hidegve´rrel. USA

Total Non-fiction Fiction

HUN

Killing

Positive meaning

Killing

Positive meaning

156/166 (94%) 109/114 (96%) 47/52 (90%)

6/166 (3.6%) 2/114 (1.75%) 4/52 (7.7%)

57/139 (41%) 50/95 (52.6%) 7/44 (16%)

56/139 (40%) 32/95 (33.68%) 24/44 (54.5%)

death, most often with ‘kill’ (68 instances), ‘shoot’ (37), and ‘murder’ (26). See examples A12 and A13 below. This finding on the most characteristic collocations of in cold blood overlaps with that of Charteris-Black’s (2001) in the Bank of English corpus. Based on their context, an additional four examples also suggested killing, although the collocation was with a neutral verb (e.g., act in cold blood). This means that altogether, 94% (156/166) of the examples commented on the manner of killing. The remaining instances conveyed the meaning of doing something deliberately or calmly, with six of the total of 166 instances (3.6%) carrying a positive meaning (see A14). Fifty-two of the 166 (31.33%) uses appeared in fiction; 90% of them referred to murder. Four (7.7%) carried a positive meaning. Of the 114 non-fiction instances, 109 (96%) referred to killing and only 2 (1.75%) had a positive sense. See Table 4 for these results. The numbers of examples with a neutral or negative (but not ‘killing’) meaning are not separately indicated in the table. (A12)

Investigators are trying to find out whether a group of Marines in Hamandiyah killed an Iraqi man in cold blood back in April. Tonight, we are hearing from members of that man’s family, who have some very disturbing allegations about why they say he was killed. (CNN_Zahn, 2006-06-12)

(A13)

The United Nations calculates that an unprecedented 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October. Death squads connected to the Mahdi Army, as well as to other Shia and Sunni groups, capture and execute civilians in cold blood, sometimes dragging them out of hospitals or government ministries. (Newsweek, 2006-12-4)

(A14)

But the way Phil Mickelson completed his round was stunning. Everything he did over the last seven holes was done in cold blood. It was Nicklaus at his very, very best, Peter Thomson as his best years ago, Ben Hogan at his best before that, and Bobby Jones at his best before that. (Golf Magazine, 2004 July)

The HNC search for hidegve´rrel had 139 different hits, which is a frequency of .74/million words. Fifty-one collocated with a verb expressing killing, most often with gyilkol (murder) and lő (shoot) or any prefixed version of these (11 each, see H9 and H10). ‘Mego¨l’ (kill) had seven instances. Six more examples suggested killing, resulting in 41% (57/139) of the instances describing the manner of killing. On the other hand, 56 (40%) of the instances carried a positive meaning, translatable like ‘level-headedly’, or ‘with enormous calmness’ (see H11). Of the 139 instances, 44 (31.66%) appeared in fiction; 7 of these (16%) referred to killing and 24 (54.5%) carried a positive meaning. Of the 95 non-fiction appearances, 50 (52.6%) referred to killing and 32 (33.68%) had a positive meaning. These results can be found in Table 4. (H9)

Ismeretlen tettesek szombaton kirabolta´k a Varso´ ko¨zpontja´ban muko¨dő Kredyt Bankot, e´s eko¨zben ´ j Szo´, 2001-03-06 [non-fiction])–Unknown hidegve´rrel agyonlőtte´k a pe´nzinte´zet ne´gy alkalmazottja´t. (U offenders robbed the Kredyt Bank in the center of Warsaw on Saturday, shooting four employees of the bank to death in cold blood.

(H10)

A hatalom sok elno¨k agya´t teljesen elborı´totta, hidegve´rrel gyilkoltak, kı´nozta´k honfita´rsaikat. (Ne´pszava, 2000-03-06 [non-fiction])- The power flooded the brain (corrupted the judgment) of many presidents, they killed and tortured their fellow countrymen in cold blood.

(H11)

Jurcic szaba´lytalansa´ga´t ko¨vetően a manchesteri Irwin helyezte a labda´t hidegve´rrel a bal also´ sarokba. (Magyar Nemzet, 1998-09- 07 [non-fiction])–After Jurcic’s foul, Irwin for Manchester put (kicked) the ball into the left lower corner in cold blood (with enormous calmness).

As the table clearly shows, regardless of genre, in the overwhelming majority of the cases, in cold blood in American English is used to describe the manner of killing. In light of the findings of Mischler’s (2008) diachronic study, where cool/ cold blood was used somewhat interchangeably with variable meanings, the present finding seems to indicate a shift in the meaning of in cold blood to a clearly negative, murder scenario. The picture is more varied in Hungarian, where the expression tends to more easily lend itself to positive scenarios. Especially striking is the low percentage of the metaphor’s usage in the ‘killing’ context in Hungarian fiction; this genre is more likely to employ the expression in its favourable sense also in American English. These findings, especially in the Hungarian data, are somewhat different from those of Charteris-Black (2001), who found an unequivocally negative connotation of this expression in the Bank of English. Examining the broader environment in which in cold blood appears, we find that the clustering of metaphors is not very widespread in these extracts in either language, although some examples in Hungarian fiction and news exist. One recurring theme is the usage of other body parts to elaborate on hidegve´rrel to further capture the state of mind of the actor,

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e.g., hidegve´rrel e´s tiszta fejjel (in cold blood and with a clear head) or hidegve´rrel e´s forro´ szı´vvel (in cold blood and with a hot heart). Metaphor clustering is also present in both languages when the importance of cold blood in a tense situation, be it a physical battle or a high-stake sport event, is fore-grounded. See A15 and H12 below. (A15)

It’s just he had made up his mind there was no help for it. Boldness for battle is nothing out of the way for a Scotsman, ye ken, but to face down fear in cold blood is rare in any man. (Diana Gabaldon: Outlander, 1991)

(H12)

Ő azonban nem ha´tra´l, puszta ke´zzel legyuri a grizzly medve´t. Ko¨zben minden o´ra´s felese´ge hidegve´rrel viseli, hogy fo¨ldi javaik, belee´rtve a porcela´n tea´ske´szletet, sze´tzu´zo´dnak a kanyon szirtjein. . .(Ne´pszava, 1997-08-04, [non-fiction]) - However, he does not retreat but defeats the grizzly bear with his bare hands. In the meantime, his wife, who is about to deliver any minute, endures in cold blood (with calmness) that all their earthly belongings, including the porcelain tea-set, smash on the cliffs of the canyon.

In the examples where in cold blood does not collocate with a verb of killing, different cues help the reader to infer the connotation of the metaphor. Because of the more numerous examples, patterns emerge first of all in the Hungarian data. One group of cues builds on human experience: when used in a sport commentary, hidegve´rrel almost always has a positive meaning (only 1 of the 16 Hungarian sport-examples is negative, and the sole American example, A3, is also positive). Also building on the human belief system is the usage in the Hungarian texts where an adjective denoting nationality – most often ‘English’ – modifies in cold blood (H13). Again, these are all positive scenarios. This usage draws on blood’s ability to metaphorically carry not only emotion, but also characteristic. (H13)

Tony Blair brit miniszterelno¨k auto´ja forgalmi dugo´ba keveredett, de az ‘‘u´j ko¨ze´p’’ politika´ja´nak egyik euro´pai lete´teme´nyese angol hidegve´rrel feltala´lta maga´t. (Magyar Hı´rlap, 1999-10-29, [non-fiction])–The car of British Prime Minister Tony Blair got into a traffic jam, but he, one of the chief European representatives of the politics of the ‘‘new middle’’, dealt with the emergency in English cold blood (with the calmness of the English).

Apart from these prompts exploiting extralinguistic knowledge, both languages employ linguistic tools to signal the connotation of the metaphor. On the negative end, where in cold blood means ‘without emotion/consideration’, its appearance with vocabulary like rosszindulatu´ (malicious), gyulo¨let (hatred), gonosz (wicked), and inconceivable helps infer the negative meaning of the expression (H14 and A16). (H14)

Teha´t nem felte´tlenu¨l gonosz minden ember. De az o¨n fejedelme mindig gonosz vagy az tud lenni, mert hidegve´rrel megszegi me´g azokat a to¨rve´nyeket is, amelyeket saja´t maga hozott. (Fekete Sa´ndor: Folyoso´i szu¨mpozion, 1970)–So, not every human being is wicked necessarily. But your monarch is or can always be wicked, because he in cold blood breaches even the laws that he himself enacted.

(A16)

And, of course, you’re referring to the jetliner that was blown up over Scotland? CAPTAIN ROBERT KAISS/USS MISSOURI Yes. It’s inconceivable to me that an American president, two years later, in cold blood, could say, ‘A-ha, the Iranians did it, and we’re now going to eradicate their cities and kill millions of people.’ It just wouldn’t happen. (NPR_ATC, 1995-07-16)

In the Hungarian examples, the positive tone of the expression is often reinforced by coupling hidegve´rrel with other adverbials of manner, such as komolysa´ggal (with seriousness), ko¨ru¨ltekintően (prudently), előrela´ta´ssal (with foresight), e´sszel (sensibly) (H15). It is harder to find such micro-level hints in the American data, where the help of the broader context is needed. Still, collocating in cold blood with such adverbials as viewed and judged seems to indicate a favourable meaning (A17). (H15)

Az igazi ko¨lte´szet - szerintem - valamife´leke´pp ezt a ke´t ve´gletet szabadı´tja egyma´sra pa´rtatlan hidegve´rrel e´s komolysa´ggal. (Pilinszky Ja´nos: Publicisztikai ı´ra´sok, 1999) - Real poetry- I think- in a way clashes these two extremes in fair cold blood (fair-mindedly) and with seriousness.

(A17)

Beginning with 1997 models, all cars must have beefed-up side guards. Judged in cold blood, the savings are miniscule: 83 lives and, 1,500 injuries a year, according to the government. Cost: about $50 per car (USA Today, 1993-12-06).

Just like the findings on sweat blood, this investigation has also provided support for earlier observations (Simo´, 2008) in that the expression has proven to be more widespread in Hungarian than in American English, and that a sport context is a discourse where its positive meaning is employed with a remarkable frequency in Hungarian. Also, the usage in one of the languages, in this case American English, is dominated by one sense. At this point, the expression in Hungarian can be said to be polysemious, where numerous linguistic and extralinguistic usage patterns help to clarify the connotation of the metaphor at hand. Occurrences in fiction show a bigger deviation in meaning from the average than non-fiction examples in both languages.

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4.4. Blood (2) boil*/forr*(2) ve´r* From the other end of the temperature scale, boiling blood was chosen for a more detailed analysis, because it is an often cited example as an instantiation of the ANGER IS HEAT conceptual metaphor (Ko¨vecses, 1990; Lakoff and Ko¨vecses, 1987). Again, frequency of usage and the connotations and usage patterns were analyzed. In his paper, Charteris-Black (2001) analyzes the expression make somebody’s blood boil; the present analysis is a more comprehensive one of the images of boiling blood as it allows for more varied expressions (as can be seen in the examples below). The COCA was searched for blood followed by boil and its suffixed forms within two words (‘blood (2) boil*’) to allow for verb tense/aspect variations. One hundred metaphorical uses were found (.26/million words); the most frequent form being make somebody’s blood boil (47 instances). Seventy-five (75%) examples expressed anger, while the remaining 25 (25%) expressed excitement or vitality (the latter two glossed over as ‘positive emotion’ in Table 5). In some of the examples, this excitement refers to sexual desire, which usage can then be explained by the LUST IS HEAT conceptual metaphor (Lakoff, 1987), even though Lakoff relates this heat to that of fire. He also observes that anger and lust have many source domains in common, so it is not surprising for the images of boiling blood to be able to convey both emotions. Moreover, Ko¨vecses (1988) explicitly mentions the expression ‘‘hot-blooded woman’’ related to body heat brought about by sexual desire. Separating fiction from non-fiction, we find that about 63% of the examples from fiction express anger and 37% express a positive emotion. Non-fiction examples are dominated by the anger sense. A search in the HNC for ‘forr* (2) ve´r*’ and ‘ve´r* (2) forr*’ (‘boil* (2) blood*’ and ‘blood* (2) boil*’), allowing for different tenses and word order and for all persons, had 27 hits after removing the duplicates (.144/million words). Of these, 11 (41%) expressed anger, and 16 (59%), excitement or vitality. Eighteen of the 27 instances came from fiction; 7 (39%) expressed anger and 11 (61%) expressed excitement or vitality. We find similar percentages in the non-fiction data. See Table 5 for these results. Although the low number of the Hungarian examples does not allow far-fetching generalizations, the results again suggest some trends in the usage of this metaphor. First of all, boiling blood does not appear to primarily denote anger in Hungarian. Also, just like with in cold blood, though to a smaller extent, the American usage seems to be dominated by one meaning. This tendency is stronger in non-fiction than in fiction. The Hungarian data do not show a substantial difference between fiction and non-fiction in this regard. It needs to be noted here that in the American data, while ‘make somebody’ s blood boil’ was the most frequent form, the positive emotions were more likely to be conveyed by the expression ‘get somebody’s blood boiling’. This fact emphasizes the importance linguistic form plays in metaphor usage, as has been pointed out previously (Deignan, 2005). When portraying excitement, fiction writers of both languages sometimes elaborate on the physiological effects of the emotion (H16 and A18), combining boiling blood with other metaphorical scenes. Non-fiction texts are less likely to do this, even though we find examples, first of all in Hungarian. (H16)

A ve´rem forrni kezdett o¨ro¨me´ben, e´s e´reztem, hogy a tagjaimon keresztu¨l mindenu¨nne´t jo¨n e´s robog az első nagy győzelem a vila´g felett. (Tama´si A´ron: Je´gto¨rő Ma´tya´s, 1936:1986) - My blood started to boil with happiness, and I felt the first big victory over the world coming and dashing through my body parts from everywhere.

(A18)

The actors line up to get measured for their costumes. One says this is the first part that has ever been written just for him. # ‘‘It’s a little nervous making,’’ he smiles. ‘‘But I like getting my blood boiling.’’ (New York Times, 1994-07-17)

Other metaphor clusters evoke an atmosphere of passion, which then creates the ground for boiling blood (H17 and A19): (H17)

Vira´gos kert az e´let, ha ez a va´ros e´bred a ko´sza sze´l neked mese´l egy a´lom u´jrae´led, e´rzed forr a ve´red s u´j u´tra hı´v. (personal internet forum posting, 1998-10-06 [non-fiction]) - Life is a flower garden, if this town is awakening, the breeze is talking to you, a dream is reviving, you feel your blood boiling and calling you to a new adventure.

(A19)

A lot of people, says Lee, will bail out early. And, of course, always keep an eye on your bottom line. This is easier said than done. Auctions have the atmosphere of a horse track, they get the gambler’s blood boiling. But there are times when that spell is broken and the piece goes cheap. (Mother Earth News, 1992 April)

Table 5 Frequencies and percentages of the metaphorical uses of blood (2) boil*/forr* (2) ve´r*. USA

Total Non-fiction Fiction

HUN

Anger

Positive emotion

Anger

Positive emotion

75/100 (75%) 53/65 (81.5%) 22/35 (63%)

25/100 (25%) 12/65 (18.5%) 13/35 (37%)

11/27 (41%) 4/9 (44%) 7/18 (39%)

16/27 (59%) 5/9 (56%) 11/18 (61%)

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The immediate contexts in which boiling blood signals anger show a bigger variation in the two languages. The most noticeable feature of the Hungarian texts-both fiction and non-fiction- is that many actually name anger, or a synonym, together with the metaphor (H18, H19). Metaphor clusters, whether detailing the physiological effects or otherwise, exist but are rare (H19). (H18)

Ha ra´juk gondolok, du¨ho¨mben forr a ve´rem. S ma´r jo¨het ezuta´n, ott u¨to¨m, ahol e´rem. (Spiro´ Gyo¨rgy: Csirkefej, 1987) – If I think of them, my blood is boiling with rage. And it may come afterwards; I hit it wherever I can.

(H19)

Csak a Boda Ferus o¨szto¨ne forrott fel a ve´rben, s haraggal tele leve, mint a vad, ha elese´ge´t hirtelen eleme´szti az ido˜. (Tama´si A´ron: Tama´si A´ron o¨sszes novella´i, (Collected short stories of A´ron Tama´si, 1922-1929:2002) Only Ferus Boda’s instinct boiled in the blood, and he was full of anger, like the game when its feed is suddenly consumed by time.

Conversely, the American texts very rarely name the emotion itself (A20), but we find metaphor clusters, both describing additional physiological effects of anger (A21), or the metaphorical representation of phenomena that triggers it (A22). (A20)

Cee Cee’s blood boiled, her face was hot, and she knew with a kind of drunken headiness that she was about to lose it and say what was on her mind. Later she would replay this scene in her mind and wonder how she’d let that rage take her over so completely at that moment to make her mouth shoot off at the president of the network. (Iris Rainer Dart: I’ll Be There, 1991)

(A21)

Every dad, mom, son or daughter, past or present, from the land of prep schools tucked away in the hills to the inner-city’s blackboard jungles, knows of one high school they just can’t stand. # At the mere mention of the name, eyes roll. Skin crawls. Blood boils. # Do people love to hate them? # Or hate to love them? (Denver Post, 1996-08-25)

(A22)

Everyone knows the boss has a short temper, but by working hard, you’ve been able to stay on her good side. Until now. She’s in a foul mood for some reason, and you happen to cross her path. Right there in the hallway, she launches into a verbal attack about how your sales numbers are low, how you’re not carrying your weight and how you’re a disappointment to the staff. Your co-workers slink away, leaving you standing there with your blood boiling and mouth ajar. (Psychology Today, 2004 Oct)

Because of the more numerous examples in the American data, it is there that we can observe patterns as to the contexts in which boiling blood as a signal of anger appears. These most often talk about injustice, be it in connection to money matters, legal issues, human rights, or the treatment of people (A23). This usage seems to confirm the observations of Charteris-Black (2001), even though the ‘‘gravity of the offence that gave rise to this emotion’’ (p. 285) seems less obvious in some of the examples. And although I stay clear of calling ‘anger’ a negative emotion here, I would hesitate to say that ‘‘the phrase is used with positive evaluation of the speaker/hearer’’ (p. 285), as Charteris-Black does. Sure, the anger is justified, but that does not make it a positive emotion, to my mind. At the most, I would say it is a natural reaction. (A23)

It makes my blood boil that those executives in academia can get away with hefty pay raises while average people are unable to get a cost-of-living pay raise. # It makes me wonder what those executives do with all that money. Do they really need that much? Do they do anything to enrich the lives of average citizens? It doesn’t make any sense to me. (Atlanta Journal Constitution, 2004-08-14)

The present data suggest that boiling blood is most often associated with anger in American English, but not in Hungarian, where there appears to be a split as to its meaning between anger and excitement/vitality. These differences warrant a further corpus exploration of the connotations of expressions of blood to denote emotion. That usage patterns would show more diversity between the two languages in the ‘anger’ meaning is an unexpected finding. A noticeable genre difference can be observed in American English, where the prevalence of the ‘anger’ sense of the expression is less strong in fiction. 5. Conclusions This study on the metaphorical uses of blood took advantage of the method of grounding analysis of large corpora on findings emerging from the investigation of small, hand-searchable data source. The insights gained in this study clearly verify the benefits of the method. First of all, the cross-linguistic quantitative difference in blood metaphors observed in specialized texts (Simo´, 2008) was not confirmed by the present investigation of larger American and Hungarian corpora. The data show that in general, both languages make an extensive use of blood figuratively, mostly to represent the same target themes. Of the four expressions picked for detailed analyses, one appears at about the same frequency in the two corpora, one is more frequent in the American corpora, and two in the Hungarian. At the same time, the investigation of the frequency and contexts of the expressions in cold blood and sweat blood confirmed the substantial quantitative differences noted in its usage in relation to chess, and uncovered qualitative differences in more detail. It was concluded that in Hungarian, a sport context may be a specific discourse where both expressions are used extensively, which might explain the findings on chess.

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This finding provides further evidence for the interplay of context and discourse topic with metaphor usage (Ko¨vecses, 2005; Musolff, 2004; Semino, 2008). The analysis also revealed sizable cross-linguistic differences in connotations, the most apparent ones emerging with the two expressions from the emotion domain. Both in cold blood and expressions of boiling blood appear to be dominated by one, negative, sense in American English, while being split between a negative and a positive scenario in Hungarian. This confirms Mischler’s (2008) findings on the ability and tendency of specific metaphorical expressions to signal different emotions, and is also informative for conceptual metaphor theory, suggesting that the existence of the same figurative expression in two or more languages does not necessarily indicate the same conceptualization, and a close study of the contexts in which they tend to appear is indispensable before drawing any firm conclusions in this regard. Thus, the study has also verified Stefanowitsch’ (2006) suggestion and Semino’s (2006, 2008) findings that the target domains of metaphorical expressions, if not clearly stated, may be hard to identify, and may in fact turn out to be different from those previously established by the introspective method of the traditional approach when examined in real-life language use. At this moment, the expression in his/her blood/ve´re´ben shows the biggest overlap of usage in the two languages. For a more thorough understanding of blood’s metaphoric role in signalling inheritance or bonding, more diachronic and discourse analysis-style investigations of a number of expressions is necessary. A further benefit of using large corpora is to unearth within-language variation by separating genres. The findings emerging from the examination of examples from fiction and those from non-fiction imply that the fiction genre is more likely to prompt a fuller exploitation of the different senses of metaphorical expressions than a non-fiction setting. This suggests that fiction writers may use not only different metaphors, but may be more creative in applying a wider range of connotations to the same metaphor. Finally, from the perspective of methodology, the case of sweat blood and through that conclusions about the target themes of metaphorical uses of blood offer a good illustration of how researcher intuition interplays with corpus data (Ko¨vecses, 2008). To start with, I categorized the ‘‘same’’ data differently than Charteris-Black (2001), which was partly the result of the present study being a cross-linguistic exploration, but also, of my intuition of where important boundaries are to be drawn between target themes based on the clustering of metaphorical expressions. This intuition placed sweat blood in the significance subtheme of essence. Then, a closer look at the contexts of the instances in the corpus revealed that the meaning senses of the expression may belong to two different themes. This finding suggests a re-examination of the original target themes. At a more abstract level, essence and intensity may be the two main underlying concepts that blood signifies when used metaphorically. These associations then get drawn on in a variety of ways in a number of domains at the more concrete level. References Allan, Keith, 2009. The connotations of English colour terms: colour-based X-phemisms. Journal of Pragmatics 41, 626–637. Cameron, Lynn, Deignan, Alice, 2003. Combining large and small corpora to investigate tuning devices around metaphor in spoken discourse. Metaphor and Symbol 18 (3), 149–160. Capote, Truman, 1966. In Cold Blood. Random House, New York. Charteris-Black, Jonathan, 2000. 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Metaphors We Live by. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Lakoff, George, Johnson, Mark, 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. Basic Books, New York. Lakoff, George, Ko¨vecses, Zolta´n, 1987. The cognitive model of anger inherent in American English. In: Holland, D., Quinn, N. (Eds.), Cultural Models in Language and Thought. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 195–221. Linke, Uli, 1985. Blood as metaphor in Proto-Indo-European. The Journal of Indo-European Studies 13, 333–376. Maalej, Zouheir A., 2004. Figurative language in anger expressions in Tunisian Arabic: an extended view of embodiment. Metaphor and Symbol 19 (1), 51–75. Mischler, James J., 2008. A time for anger: conceptions of human feeling in Modern English, A.D. 1500–1990. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Oklahoma State University. Musolff, Andreas, 2004. Metaphor and Political Discourse. Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. Palgrave-MacMillan, Houndmills, Great Britain. Musolff, Andreas, 2007. 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Semino, Elena, 2006. A corpus-based study of metaphors for speech activity in British English. In: Stefanowitsch, A., Gries, S.Th. (Eds.), Corpus-based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 36–62. Semino, Elena, 2008. Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Simo´, Judit, 2008. It’s not all about the brain: a cross-linguistic exploration of body-part metaphors in chess. In: The Ninth Conference on Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language (CSDL 9), October 2008, Cleveland, Ohio. Steen, Gerard, Gibbs, Raymond W., 2004. Questions about metaphor in literature. European Journal of English Studies 8, 337–354. Stefanowitsch, Anatol, 2006. Words and their metaphors: a corpus-based approach. In: Stefanowitsch, A., Gries, S.Th. (Eds.), Corpus-based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 63–105. Turner, Brian S., 2003. Social fluids: metaphors and meanings of society. Body & Society 9 (1), 1–10. Va´radi, Tama´s, 2002. The Hungarian National Corpus. In: Proceedings of the 3rd LREC Conference, Las Palmas, Spain, 2002, pp. 385–389. Available online at http://corpus.nytud.hu/mnsz. Yu, Ning, 1995. Metaphorical expressions of anger and happiness in English and Chinese. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10, 59–92. Yu, Ning, 2000. Figurative uses of finger and palm in Chinese and English. Metaphor and Symbol 15 (3), 159–175. Yu, Ning, 2004. The eyes for sight and mind. Journal of Pragmatics 36, 663–686. Judit Simo´ obtained her Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University and currently teaches writing in the Department of English at Case Western Reserve University. Her main research interests include conceptual metaphors, corpus linguistics, frame semantics, and subjectivity.