POJMOVNE METAFORE SA IZVORNIM DOMENOM „OŽILJAKA“ I „RANA“ U SAVREMENOM SRPSKOM JEZIKU

Abstract

This paper examines how abstract emotional and social phenomena are conceptualized through conceptual metaphors based on the domain of scars and wounds. The paper is grounded in cognitive linguistics, more precisely, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which views metaphor not merely as a stylistic device but as a fundamental mechanism of thought. According to this framework, abstract concepts (target domains) are understood through more concrete, bodily experiences (source domains). The aim of the research was to demonstrate how the source domain of bodily injuries, such as wounds and scars, participates in the conceptualization of abstract notions across different contexts in the contemporary Serbian language. Corpus analysis revealed that these metaphorical models systematically occur in diverse contexts, where abstract concepts are understood as injuries that bleed, heal, or leave permanent scars. The study shows that the source domain of wounds and scars in Serbian is used to conceptualize a range of abstract phenomena, including emotional states, moral and spiritual issues, sporting failures, and collective and national crises. The analysis also demonstrates that the cognitive mapping mechanism “one-to-many” – mappings from one source domain onto a number of different target domains – allows abstract experiences to be understood through immediate bodily experience, confirming that metaphor is not only a stylistic device but also a fundamental mechanism of thought. In the political and national contexts identified in the corpus, wounds and scars tend to describe historical and collective traumas. In religious discourse, they are often used to conceptualize sin and moral downfall as tangible physical processes. In the emotional domain, they articulate states such as heartbreak, disappointment, and lasting consequences, while in sports discourse, sports outcomes and their consequences are very often conceptualized through the same domains. Overall, the analysis demonstrates that across all domains the same cognitive mechanism applies: abstract experiences are mapped onto processes of physical injury, bleeding, healing, and recovery.