Abstract
This chapter applies a Cultural Linguistic perspective to survey the cultural conceptualisations of river in the context of love in Hungarian folksongs (Sharifian in Cultural conceptualisations and language: theoretical framework and applications. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 2011, The Routledge handbook of language and culture. Routledge, London/New York, 2015). In traditional folk cultural communities, experiences about nature are potential source domains for metaphorical imagery in communicating emotional states. Based on an analysis of the collected linguistic data, it is proposed that the conceptualisations of river in the folksongs can be traced back to the underlying cultural metaphor emotion is river water, which develops in several related metaphors and image schemas grounded in cultural experiences. Most importantly, the folksongs instantiate the cultural schema reservedness in expressing emotions, which derives from the norms of peasant morality. It is concluded that the images of nature in the folksongs have connection to emotion metaphors (Kövecses in Metaphor and emotion. Language, culture and body in human feeling. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000) but their explanation requires in-depth knowledge on the norms of love and morality in the traditional Hungarian folk culture.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
“The term construal refers to our manifest ability to conceive and portray the same situation in alternate ways” (Langacker 2008: 43).
- 2.
Referring to the Hungarian revolution against Austrian dominance within Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1848–49.
- 3.
Another possible interpretation of line 4 is ‘therefore her love stuck on me.’
- 4.
Literally: ‘my flower’
- 5.
Note that in Hungarian possessive suffixes can also indicate multiple possession.
- 6.
In the sense ‘distract’ (from the riverbed)
- 7.
The Hungarian word means ‘falls asleep’ in the meaning of ‘freezes.’
- 8.
‘Clean wheat’ means the wheat grains free from rye or other cereals after threshing and riddling
- 9.
Literally: ‘my dove’
- 10.
Literally: ‘digest’
References
Balázs Kovács, S. (2004). Protestáns etika – paraszti erkölcs [Protestant ethics – peasant morality]. In T. Faragó (Ed.), Magyarország társadalomtörténete a 18–19. században 2. (pp. 183–194). Budapest: Dico Kiadó – Új Mandátum Kiadó.
Baranyiné Kóczy, J. (2011a). Szövegtípus és deixis: a térdeixis funkciója a magyar népdalban [Text type and deixis: The function of spatial deixis in Hungarian folksongs]. Magyar Nyelvőr, 135, 36–47.
Baranyiné Kóczy, J. (2011b). Az erdő konceptualizációja a magyar népdalokban [The conceptualisations of ‘forest’ in Hungarian folksongs]. Magyar Nyelv, 107, 318–325, 398–406.
Baranyiné Kóczy, J. (2011c). Az időjárás mint szemantikai összetevő a magyar népdalokban [Weather as a semantic component in Hungarian folksongs]. In A. Parapatics (Ed.), Félúton 6. A hatodik Félúton konferencia (2010) kiadványa. http://linguistics.elte.hu/studies/fuk/fuk10/
Baranyiné Kóczy, J. (2016). Reference point constructions in the meaning construal of Hungarian folksongs. Cognitive Linguistic Studies, 3(1), 113–133.
Bell, P. D. (1985). Peasants in socialist transition: Life in a collectivized Hungarian village. California: University of California Press.
Bódán, Z. (2008). Erkölcs, szerelem, szexualitás: a megesett lány a régi falusi társadalomban [Morality, love, sexuality: The expecting girl in the old village society]. In B. Bakó & E. Z. Tóth (Eds.), Határtalan nők: Kizártak és befogadottak a női társadalomban (pp. 316–337). Budapest: Nyitott Könyvműhely.
Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M. (2002). The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books.
Idström, A. (2012). Antlers as a metaphor of pride: What idioms reveal about the relationship between human and animal in Inari Saami conceptual system. In A. Idström & E. Piirainen (Eds.), Endangered metaphors (pp. 275–292). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Jávor, K. (2000). A magyar paraszti erkölcs és magatartás [The Hungarian peasant morality and manner]. In A. Paládi-Kovács (Ed.), Magyar Néprajz VIII. Társadalom (pp. 601–692). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination and reason. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Katona, I. (1998). Líra [Lyrics]. In V. Voigt (Ed.), A magyar folklór (pp. 356–399). Budapest: Osiris Kiadó.
Katona, I. (2002). Szépen szóló madárka. Népdalaink szöveges üzenete [The nicely singing bird: The text message of our folksongs]. Budapest: Masszi Kiadó.
Kövecses, Z. (2000). Metaphor and emotion. Language, culture, and body in human feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kövecses, Z. (2002). Metaphor. A practical introduction. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kövecses, Z. (2005). Metaphor in culture. Universality and variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kövecses, Z. (2015). Where metaphors come from: Reconsidering context in metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190224868.001.0001
Küllős, I. (1991). The messages of a repertory investigation: the quantitative stylistic analysis of Csángó folksongs. In A. Koiranen (Ed.), Finnish-Hungarian Symposium on Musik & Folklore research (pp. 15–21). Tampere: Tampereen yliopiston kansanperinteen laitos.
Lakoff, G. (1992). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed.), pp. 202–251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challange to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.
Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lükő, G. (1942, 2001). A magyar lélek formái [Forms of the Hungarian soul]. Budapest: Táton.
Mona, I. (1959). Népdalszöveg rendszerezés és népdalszöveg tipológia [A systematisation and typology of texts of folksongs]. Ethnographia, 70, 563–578.
Nagy Abonyi, Á. (2015). Fehér liliomszál, ugorj a Tiszába…”. A Tisza és a tisztálkodás folklórja [“Fehér liliomszál, ugorj a Tiszába…”: The Tisza and the ethnography of cleansing]. Híd, 1(82), 102–110.
Nagy, O. (1989). A törvény szorításában [Under the pressure of the law]. Budapest: Gondolat Könyvkiadó.
Ortutay, G. (1975a). A magyar népdal [The Hungarian folksong]. In G. Ortutay & I. Katona (Eds.), Magyar népdalok I-II. (pp. 7–69). Budapest: Szépirodalmi Kiadó.
Ortutay, G. (Ed.). (1981). Magyar néprajzi lexikon IV. [The Hungarian Encyclopedia of Ethnography (Vol. 4)]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Ortutay, G. (Ed.). (1982). Magyar néprajzi lexikon V. [The Hungarian Encyclopedia of Ethnography (Vol. 5)]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Ortutay, G., & Katona I. (1975). Magyar népdalok I–II. [Hungarian folksongs I–II]. Budapest: Szépirodalmi Kiadó.
Paládi-Kovács, A. (Ed.). (2001). Magyar néprajz II. Gazdálkodás [Hungarian ethnography: Agriculture]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Palmer, G. B. (1996). Toward a theory of cultural linguistics. Austin/Texas: University of Texas Press. doi:10.2307/417950.
Sharifian, F. (2003). On cultural conceptualizations. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 3(3), 187–207.
Sharifian, F. (2011). Cultural conceptualizations and language: Theoretical framework and applications. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Sharifian, F. (2015). Cultural Linguistics. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and culture (pp. 478–492). London/New York: Routledge.
Sharifian, F. (2017). Cultural Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Sharifian, F., Dirven, R., Yu, N., & Neiemier, S. (Eds.). (2008). Culture, body, and language: Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages. Berlin/New York: Mouton DeGruyter.
Strauss, C., & Quinn, N. (1997). A cognitive theory of cultural meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tomori, V. (2004). A magyar parasztság lélektana [The psychology of the Hungarian peasantry]. In T. Faragó (Ed.), Magyarország társadalomtörténete a 18–19. században 2. (pp. 195–203). Budapest: Dico Kiadó – Új Mandátum Kiadó.
Whorf, B. L. (1956). Science and linguistics. In J. B. Carrol (Ed.), Language, thought, and reality: Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (pp. 212–214). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Yu, N. (2007). Heart and cognition in ancient Chinese philosophy. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 7(1–2), 27–47.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Baranyiné Kóczy, J. (2017). Cultural Conceptualisations of river in Hungarian Folksongs. In: Sharifian, F. (eds) Advances in Cultural Linguistics. Cultural Linguistics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4056-6_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4056-6_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-4055-9
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-4056-6
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)