Temperatur i språk och tanke. En jämförande semantisk studie av svenska temperaturadjektiv

Abstract

In this thesis, seven temperature adjectives in Swedish are analysed: varm ’warm’, kall ’cold’, het ’hot’, ljum/ljummen ’lukewarm’ or ’tepid’, kylig ’chilly’, sval ’cool’ and mild ’mild’. A model for analysis, inspired by cognitive semantics etc., has been elaborated for the purpose of analysing these adjectives. The materials are mainly corpora (a newspaper, 19,4 million words, and novels, 3,7 million words). 33 meaning variants are discerned. These meaning variants are concrete (physical), abstract (non-physical; i.e. extended meanings), as well as concrete and abstract at the same time. The meaning variants concern phenomena like the human body, the climate, certain artefacts like food and drink, feelings, social activities, colours etc. The meaning variants are compared to associations by informants, as well as to previous research in linguistics and other disciplines, like medicine and psychology. It is concluded that ”metaphorical” structures in language and (immediate) thought seem to differ in certain respects. The primary metaphors of Grady (1997) including temperature, especially AFFECTION IS WARMTH, are confirmed by the results. They point out important conceptual bindings between the physical and extended meanings in the temperature domain in Swedish. Because of such fundamental conceptual structures, it is argued in the thesis that a phenomenon called gradual metaphors is made possible in language (and mind). Physical descriptions (e.g. he was feeling cold, a warm wind) might include a non-physical (metaphorical etc.) dimension. Also, a hypothesis of ”the conceptual web” is proposed, based on associated concepts, like, to warmth: light, movement, life etc.; and, to cold: darkness, non-movement, death etc.