HEART metaphors in economic discourse corpora: conceptual evidence and translation insight

Abstract

Deeply rooted in human cognition, metaphors have always intrigued researchers to examine what motivates them across different cultures. This paper attempts to investigate how HEART metaphors are generated and used in Arabic and English within economic discourses in light of conceptual metaphor theory. Drawing evidence from economic discourse exclusively, the study at hand targets instances of figurative language outside the realm of creative writing and literature. Utilizing discourse analysis as its primary method, it combines theoretical veins from cognitive linguistics and cognitive translation hypothesis with digitalized techniques using SketchEngine, a corpus processing software package, to highlight patterns of universality and cultural situatedness. A sample of 562 metaphorical contexts (252 from Arabic and 310 from English) were selected and analyzed discursively. Results indicated the prominence of three major target domains, CENTRAL POSITION, AFFECTION, and VITALITY, which were quite universal and similar in both languages. Another three subordinate target domains were identified: UNITY/SOLIDARITY, COGNITIVE ABILITY, and DEPTH/ESSENCE revealing more linguistic and cultural variations than the major ones. Both major and subordinate target domains proved to have similar mapping conditions in terms of their cognitive translation load. Nevertheless, while the major target domains were quite straightforward in such mapping, some subordinate ones were realized differently on a lexical level. These findings are further discussed in terms of their wider ideological and cultural contexts as well as the constructionist take on discourse. Some translation implications are presented accordingly.

Keywords:

• Cognitive linguistics
• conceptual metaphor theory
• cognitive translation hypothesis
• corpus linguistics
• heart metaphors
• SketchEngine

REVIEWING EDITOR:

• Jeroen van de Weijer, College of International Studies, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

SUBJECTS:

• Corpus Linguistics
• Discourse Analysis
• Applied Linguistics

1. Introduction

To learn easily is naturally pleasant to all people, and words signify something, so whatever words that create knowledge in us are the most pleasant…. The metaphor achieves this best.

Aristotle (Kirby, 1997)

The above quote, dating from the fourth century BCE, signifies the vital role of metaphor in communication, which has always been a center of attention across different disciplines. A rich, ever-growing body of literature on metaphor studies has been continuously expanded on by scholars of philosophy, rhetoric, linguistics, literature, politics, and cognitive sciences (see, for instance, Agbede & Mheta, 2022; Al-Jumaili, 2020; Bracco & Ivaldi, 2023; Duong, 2021; Semino et al., 2017; Silvia & Beaty, 2021; Stevanovic, 2021). As such, in this paper, metaphor is approached not as a decorative linguistic accessory but rather as ubiquitous, and perhaps even necessary for the construction of human cognition (Abdul Malik et al., 2022). Semino et al. (2017, p. 6) defined metaphor as involving ‘talking and, potentially, thinking about one thing in terms of another, where the two things are different, but some form of similarity can be perceived between them’. Along the same line, Musolff (2015, p. 7) stated that metaphors bring together ‘different areas of experience and knowledge so that a particular topic is cognitively and communicatively presented in terms of another topic’. In both definitions, there is a reference to what Charteris-Black (2004, p. 21) refers to as ‘semantic tension’, which can be resolved if linguistic metaphors are approached as conceptual ones.

Keeping this in mind, perceiving and even constructing metaphors as ways of understanding the world around us is inevitable (Taylor, 2022), as they have been a cornerstone of cognitive linguistics ever since the advent of Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By (1980). With consideration to conceptual metaphor theory (henceforth CMT), metaphors have lives of their own (Deignan, 2008)—another metaphor, if one may say so! In that sense, it is possible to draw a distinction between innovative so-called living metaphors on the one hand and conventionalized and dead ones on the other (Abdel-Raheem, 2021; Deignan, 1998; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Nevertheless, such distinction is never crystal clear but rather fuzzy, since even the most conventionalized and common metaphors are seldom neutral (Cheded et al., 2022; Potts & Semino, 2019). Indeed, the starting point for both classes is the same, with dead ones losing their metaphorical creativity gradually through a process of ‘demetaphorizing’ as a common feature in most languages (Halliday, 1994, p. 348). From this perspective, metaphors are inherently cognitive, but they are also embodied and discursive with social interaction and ideological contextualization tremendously impacting their construction and interpretation (Cheded et al., 2022; Stevanovic, 2021).

1.1. Body metaphors: accessibility, universality, and sociocultural situatedness

Such embodiment stems from the fact that within cognitive linguistics, a significant section of cognition is embodied (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Tay, 2017) to the point that the term ‘embodiment’ per se has been a buzzword in recent decades (Kimmel, 2007). Consequently, relevant research focused on the body–metaphor relationship as a recurrent theme in cognitive linguistics (Tay, 2017). Yu (2000, 2003, p. 29) attempted to grasp this connection by relying on a ‘circular triangular relationship’ between metaphor, body, and culture. In particular, bodily experience has predominantly been a critical source in shaping human experience and communication. This is primarily for the obvious reason that it is clearly and explicitly delineated, widely accessible, as well as rich in vivid images for cognitive mapping (Potts & Semino, 2019). Against this backdrop, humans have utilized body metaphors heavily throughout history. Sterling (2019) went back to the days of the Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, in the first century BCE, in which he used body metaphors to decode the meaning of Scripture. By the same token, a well-known Hadith (i.e. saying/tradition) by the Prophet Mohammed in Islamic history in the seventh century CE resorts to body metaphor to construct the Islamic view of Muslims as a unified nation. Nu’man bin Bashir reported: Messenger of Allah said, ‘The believers in their mutual kindness, compassion, and sympathy are just like one body. When one of the limbs suffers, the whole body responds to it with wakefulness and fever’ [Al-Bukhari and Muslim].

This usage flourished over the following decades, especially within political discourses across different civilizations, to construct nations symbolically within discourses of solidarity, prosperity, and even xenophobia. A prominent example of such construction is the body politic (Musolff, 2010; Musolff & Zinken, 2009), which has been proposed to represent the notion of the nation as a body and expanded profoundly in research within political and economic discourses ever since. Examining relevant discourses from all over the world, the use of body metaphors as a humanized representation of nations is too utilized not to be seen; to name a few, powerful men like Uncle Sam (USA), John Bull (England), forceful women like Marianne (France), Mother Russia (Heinze, 2014; Musolff, 2023), and even the Sick Man of Europe to designate the Ottoman Empire at its weakest. Inspiring a plethora of research, however, such embodiment shifted in the second half of the twentieth century. Heinze (2014) highlighted that while body metaphors have previously represented the nation as a body, they have recently begun to represent the economy in place of the nation. In such case, a clear example of this shift in perspective is evident in postwar Germany and Japan, where economic power has taken over other factors. This perspective is primarily due to the fact that there is a global shift in interest towards economic success as a source of lasting wealth and power instead of war or conquest. Keeping this in mind, the current paper corresponds to this shift by focusing primarily on body metaphors within predominantly economic discourses.

Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that body metaphors have not only focused on the body as a whole but also utilized images from body parts to construct locative, temporal, and logical relations and actions across different languages and cultures (Yu, 2000). The current study adopts this stance, focusing exclusively on key words like ‘heart’ (more on this in the remaining of this Section and Section 2 below). The same perspective has also served as a motivation for many comparative studies to examine body metaphors cross-linguistically (Kövecses, 2005). Musolff (2006), for instance, examined body metaphors in a bilingual English–German corpus, thus leading to his expansion of conceptual metaphors to metaphor scenarios. By the same token, Linh (2011) conducted another comparative study between English and Vietnamese corpora while Yu (2008) investigated the face as a metaphor between English and Chinese. However, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, no similar analyses are to be found within Arabic corpus-based research, let alone a comparative study. Along the same line, Abdul Malik et al. (2022) conducted a systematic review of published corpus-based metaphor studies in which they documented the scarcity of relevant Arabic-based analyses.

Another motivation for the current study is an interest in examining the paradoxical take on body metaphors as signaling both universality and sociocultural situatedness. Put another way, while the previous discussion establishes bodily experience as readily accessible and self-explicit for all humans, Kövecses (2005) contended to the fact that such universal experience does not necessarily result in universal metaphor. The key word in such assumption is necessarily since there are some more worn-out metaphors that might acquire a ‘universalized status’, but there are also metaphors that intertwine with diverse and even conflicting ideological systems (Cheded et al., 2022, p. 546). In most cases, then, values and norms do ‘form a coherent system’ with such metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003, p23); thus, suggesting that culture often functions as a ‘filter’ that links sensory motor experience with subjective experience (Yu, 2007, 2008, p. 247). From this perspective, it is possible to see the impact of sociocultural situatedness on metaphors as they are constructed by their interaction with the surrounding sociocultural context (Frank et al., 2008). Such duality in deconstructing metaphors does, in fact, stem from the social turn that has colored the cognitive linguistics enterprise in recent years (Alduais et al., 2022; Croft, 2009; Divjak et al., 2016; Langacker, 2016).

That being said, it is of key significance to highlight that the above discussion on examining body metaphors in different languages linguistically, socio-politically, and cognitively does take on more importance in case of the word heart. The Arabic culture is strongly affiliated with the Islamic culture due to the fact that Arabic is the medium of the Holy Quran. Against this backdrop, heart (قلب in Arabic) is repeatedly presented within the Arabic Islamic culture as a multi-faced construction (Sarhan et al., 2022). Lisan Alarab, a well-known Arabic-Arabic dictionary, documents that ‘قلب’ originates from the verb ‘قَلَب’ (to turn/to change) and encompasses a variety of concrete and abstract meanings. Terminologically, ‘قلب’ differs from ‘فؤاد’ although these two could be used interchangeably in very few contexts. In particular, in the vast majority of relevant literature (e.g. Altirmithi, 2012), ‘فؤاد’ appears to be more specific as it is primarily cognitive and relates to decision making while ‘قلب’ has been used extensively in a variety of contexts that extends beyond this. Hence, ‘فؤاد’ is often located in the head while ‘قلب’ is more chest-based. By the same token, researchers often draw a philosophical distinction between ‘قلب’ and ‘عقل’ (i.e. mind) which often collocate in Arabic. In this pair, ‘عقل’ is exclusively cognitive and does not denote the same multiplicity of meanings as قلب (Tritton, 1971). Due to this, it is fair to conclude that while these different terms in Arabic bear some prominence, it is ‘قلب’ that should be prioritized in the current paper. Given its inherently multi-faced construction, heart is universal enough to be approached from a CMT perspective, yet extensive enough to allow for cultural-situatedness. Interestingly, though, since the study at hand targets heart metaphors in economic discourse, it would be intriguing to examine if such duality of universality and cultural-situatedness is transferred to the targeted economic discourse.

This detailed examination of the meaning of heart in Arabic rises another question regarding its relative equivalent in English, heart. Culturally and ideologically loaded terms are inherently the byproducts of their cultures. Consequently, comparative research in such direction could offer some useful insight into understanding the aforementioned duality. Easier said than done, however, relevant literature from non-Euro-American cultures is quite scarce. Rashwan (2020) underscored this issue by acknowledging the challenges in establishing universality in such heavily loaded cultural references. Nevertheless, addressing a more philosophical and abstract level (e.g. his examination of wordplay in English/Jinas in Arabic), Rashwan’s work should not discourage further research from targeting culturally loaded terms with an explicit physical core in it (e.g. heart).

1.2. Conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) meets corpora

Ever since Lakoff and Johnson reshaped metaphor studies with their pioneering work (1980), CMT has been heavily implemented, scrutinized, expanded on, and criticized in relevant discourse studies (Abdul Malik et al., 2022; Potts & Semino, 2019). In brief, CMT is based on analyzing metaphors as having a source domain (SD), a target domain (TD), and an essential conceptual mapping between the SD and TD. SDs are more concrete and often form a relatively smaller set while TDs are more abstract (Lederer, 2016). A well-known example of this is LOVE IS JOURNEY, in which LOVE is the TD and JOURNEY is the SD; it has been a convention to capitalize such domains in writing in the CMT literature. A plethora of research has used CMT as its theoretical framework, be it ecopolitical discourses, such as Musolff (2023), Nartey (2019, 2020), and/or even in wider-scope discourse studies like Almegewly and Alsoraihi (2022), de Saint Preux and Blanco (2021), and Ford and Littlemore (2023).

Interestingly though, one of the earliest critiques of CMT centered around the fact that most of its demonstrating examples were decontextualized, which have been revised in the following decades as more authentic materials have been analyzed (Semino, 2017). The affiliation between CMT and corpus linguistics, in particular, has been a driving force in this direction, as it inherently offered empirical linguistic evidence from larger body of authentic texts (Charteris-Black, 2004; Yu, 2000) as well as the incorporation of both quantitative and qualitative analyses (Partington, 2006). Similar to most fields within modern linguistics, metaphor analysis has benefited tremendously from corpus approaches to discourse studies (Stefanowitsch & Gries, 2006). Consequently, both monolingual and comparative investigations of body metaphors within political and economic discourse with corpus-based imputes have been quite common. To name a few, Afrashi and Ghouchani (2018), Chung (2008), Deignan and Potter (2004), Gandomkar (2019), Herteg (2019), Hintikka (2014), Hussein and Ameer (2015), Taylor (2020, 2022), and Zhao et al. (2019) are all based on such affiliation.

1.3. Translation of figurative language

In light of the aforementioned discussion, translating metaphors from one language to another poses a real challenge for translators and language learners. Such challenge is further complicated if examined against the dilemma in most translation endeavors of adhering to translation norms at varying levels. Translation norms refer to widespread opinions and beliefs in a given community at a specific period with regard to what makes a particular translation adequate and acceptable (Toury, 2012). Within such hierarchy, three levels of norms are identified as controlling and impacting the translation process: initial, preliminary, and operational. In initial norms, there are adequacy norms originating from the source culture and acceptability norms tailoring more to the target culture. Preliminary norms are based on the translator’s individual decision-making while operational norms are more directed toward a given community’s translation policy. Against this backdrop, figurative language bears more challenges since they are inherently richer in cultural references; thus, complicating the approach to such norms further.

Keeping in mind the aforementioned universality and the culture-specific continuum as well as the framework of CMT, many questions arise regarding how to approach these. In particular, Mandelblit (1995)’s cognitive translation hypothesis (henceforth CTH) offers two cognitive schemes for the mapping of the SD and the TD, namely, similar mapping conditions (SMCs) and different mapping conditions (DMCs). Under an SMC, both the SD and TD employ the same metaphor as a way of conceptualizing it, while under a DMC, a given notion is usually conceptualized using a different metaphor. Such theorization has motivated plenty of comparative studies from different languages, and a few of these have focused on Arabic–English translations, such as Al Zoubi et al. (2007) and Iranmanesh and Kaur (2010). By the same token, Al Hasnawi (2007) elaborated on this notion by identifying three potential mapping conditions for translating metaphors: metaphors with similar mapping conditions, metaphors with different mapping conditions, and, in between, metaphors that have similar mapping conditions yet with different lexical realizations. This cognitive take on the translation process ties in with CMT and, hence, is utilized in the study at hand, as it might offer some practical insight.

From such perspective, the plethora of research on translating figurative languages across languages in general and within Arabic-English research , in particular, has utilized several translation strategies (for instance, Liu & Zhang, 2005 and Newmark, 1988). Drawing on the concepts of communicative equivalence (Schäffner, 2004, p. 2), Liu and Zhang (2005, p. 123) proposed the strategies of literal translation, transference, and meaning translation within their model. The literal translation is acceptable and appropriate if the two languages share the same vehicle (SD) and tenor (TD). If such sameness is not the case, then translators may resort to transference (ibid:124) which involves substituting words or phrases with an equivalent alternative in the target language. If both strategies cannot be applied, then meaning translation is the remaining option. In this strategy, omission, addition, rephrasing, using different expressions, or explaining the image literally could be used. Ideologically speaking, however, such strategies could be further painted in the light of the cultural and socioeconomic context of their surroundings. Within the Arabic translation literature, for instance, Alwazna (2014) and Baawaidhan (2016) highlighted that a mixture of foreignization (in response to adequacy norms discussed above) and domestication (in response to acceptability norms) strategies is optimal. Nevertheless, the later argued that in actual practice in Arabic-to-English translation of specific cultural items (e.g. metaphors and idioms), employing domestication strategies dominates more.

1.4. Research questions

The study at hand attempts to investigate the diverse applications of heart metaphors across two languages, Arabic and English. This is carried out within economic discourse by examining how heart-based metaphors are utilized and recontextualized discursively in two corpora. Keeping in mind the cultural load of each linguistic context, the following research questions are proposed to outline the design of this paper:

RQ1: How are heart metaphors constructed in the Arabic and English corpora within conceptual metaphor theory?

RQ2: How could this comparative take on conceptual metaphor theory facilitate or impede the translation process of heart metaphors between English and Arabic?

2. Methodology

Due to the argument presented in Section 1, extensive reading and deliberate pilot studying preceded deciding on which corpora to base the analysis on. The corpus processing software SketchEngine (Kilgarriff et al., 2014) was chosen for its practicality and ease of access. It also offers well-represented inbuilt corpora of both Arabic and English (arTenTen18 and enTenTen21, respectively). The two identified corpora represent the most recent collection of texts comprising relatively parallel subsections. In this sense, the selection and collection criteria for both in-built corpora are quite identical; thus, allowing for optimal basis for comparison. In terms of genre, four types of writing styles are present in each corpora, legal, discussion, news, and blog. The corpora also allow for filtering their content to include concordance lines from the topic of economy and business only. Due to the aforementioned global shift in sources of wealth and power from war and conquest to economic success (Section 1.1), examining economic discourse could be promising in revealing insight with regard to body metaphors within CMT. This is of key significance if one considers that current research in Arabic-English translation of cultural references like metaphors and idioms often focuses on general texts rather than specific fields (Alrumayh, 2021); thus, investigating economic discourse in particular could correspond to such gap. Initial piloting revealed the prominence of many Boolean words denoting body parts in both corpora, such as heart, head, eye, hand, feet, and so on. However, it was necessary to limit these to one word for practicality. Accordingly, and given the detailed examination of its meaning terminologically in Section 1.1, heart was chosen. Table 1 denotes its distribution in the two corpora at hand.

Table 1. Corpora description.

Language	Corpus name	Topic	Heart occurrences	Metaphorical sample
Arabic	arTenTen18	Business and economy	1803	252
English	enTenTen21	Business and economy	31,229	208
Total				460

The analysis consisted of two stages: a corpus-based stage and a CMT-based one. In stage one, a concordance line search was conducted with regards to ‘heart’ as a lemma (in enTenTen21), and its Arabic counterpart, ‘قلب’ (in arTenTen18). This resulted in 1803 concordance lines in arTenTen18 and 31,229 in enTenTen21. Due to the smaller dataset in arTenTen18, it was possible to examine the entire sample carefully in search of metaphorical expressions only. Examples whose concordance lines revealed a rather literal and not metaphorical use were excluded, as they bear no relevance to the study at hand. This stage also included excluding cases where heart is used as a proper name, such as ‘Heart of Pasco Award’ and ‘جمعية قلب كبير’. This eventually resulted in 252 metaphorical contexts in arTenTen18, all of which were analyzed carefully. With regard to enTenTen21, it was impossible to go through all the identified lines due to its larger size compared to arTenTen18, so a downsized representative sample had to be selected following insights from Baker (2023) in terms of adequacy, representativeness, and objectivity. Keeping in mind that a roughly parallel number of metaphorical cases from enTenTen21 was needed, the first line of each 100 lines was examined; then, if it turned out to be metaphorical, it would be included. If it was literal, the next lines were examined in order until a metaphorical one was identified. This resulted in 310 metaphorical contexts from enTenTen21.

Stage two was more qualitative since these concordance lines were analyzed comparatively in light of CMT. All the 562 concordance lines from both corpora were examined carefully. This involved expanding their textual context in SketchEngine whenever necessary. Doing this, several patterns appeared consistently in both corpora. The cut-off point for identifying a particular pattern as such and selecting it was a minimum of five concordance lines. In case of the Arabic corpus, since all the identified metaphorical cases were included, no further action was taken. However, with regard to the English corpus, if a pattern is identified in the sample, it was later looked at individually in the larger corpus to ensure its consistency. Following this step, all the identified patterns proved to be consistent and recurrent; and thus, were maintained. These patterns were later grouped as TDs in each corpus separately before analyzing them comparatively. The selection and categorization processes were further checked by two academics with PhDs in linguistics and modifications and revisions were made accordingly. After the analysis revealed the categorized textual evidence as TDs, further contextual examination followed. In particular, this step was necessary in accordance with the multileveled perception of discourse (Van Dijk, 2009) in which language and context are reciprocally constructive of each other and mediated by cognition. Examined contextual evidence was analyzed with regard to their specific cultural reference, This involved consulting cultural elements, such as religious or social norms. Findings of stages one and two were later examined in light of CTH and how they can relate to translation strategies. To support the translation implications proposed in the discussion (Section 4), certain examples from machine translation, Google Translate, were included. Since the current analysis is primarily corpus-based and can be classified as a discourse study at heart, resorting to actual cases of translations to support the discussion was rather necessary.

3. Results

Below is a detailed bilingual analysis of the TDs of HEART as a SD following the two stages identified earlier..

3.1. CENTRAL POSITION

43% of the metaphorical contexts of HEART in the sample were formed around this TD. In particular, being the center of or at a central position seems to dominate most of the metaphorical contexts of this word, a position that comes directly from the central physical positioning of the heart within the human body. Starting with the Arabic corpus, this TD was demonstrated in cases like ‘قلب الحدث’ (the heart of the event) or ‘قلب أوروبا’ (the heart of Europe), as shown in 1 and 2 of Table 2 below. In most of these cases, there is a centrality of physical position to decode the SD–TD mapping. Interestingly, though, it is possible from this perspective to see that this pattern often serves to highlight the strategic position of the entity or institution under question. Ideologically, this might occasionally indicate certain hegemonic encodings over such mapping as well, but this is discussed in more detail in Section 4. Examining the cases in Table 1, it is also possible to see that this particular mapping uses such metaphorical connection to denote both physical target domains (e.g. اوروباEurope ، العاصمة المصرية القاهرة Cairo, the Egyptian capital, as in 2 and 5) as well as abstract ones (استراتيجيات Strategies and الانكار الامريكي the American Denial, as in 3 and 4). Thus, it is possible to detect a pattern in these examples where this TD of CENTRAL POSITION can be linked to geographical locations as well. In such way, when a given position is conceptualized as HEART, it can be a physical source of information/resources due to its accessibility and availability. Examples 6 and 7 both highlight this aspect as well, given that information (news الأخبار) and services (الممرات roads) are accessed easily due to their physical closeness to such HEART.

Table 2. Examples of CENTRAL POSITION as a TD.

	Left context	Nod	Right context
1	الحدث الهام الذي يحضره نخبة رجال المال والأعمال	قلب	فإنه يسعدنا في “إدارة نادي خبراء المال” أن نكون في
2	أوروبا. هذا وسبق للجنيه الإسترليني أن أبدى	قلب	نظرا لتأثر المملكة المتحدة بالتباطؤ الذي يعم دول
3	استراتيجيات الكثير من الشركات مما مكنها من	قلب	ويأتي الاستثمار في أسواق الدول الصاعدة في
4	الإنكار الأمريكي العميق، والذي تمثل في إخفاقنا	قلب	حجة برنانكي في إغراق المدخرات كانت في
5	العاصمة المصرية القاهرة هو المتحكم في مسار سوق	قلب	توقع محللون أن يظل ميدان التحرير في
6	الأسواق والبورصات العالمية	قلب	الحصول على الأسعار المباشرة والأخبار الحية المباشرة من
7	الممرات التجارية	قلب	وأضافت معاليها: موقعنا الاستراتيجي يجعلنا في
8	Establish our new relationship centers in the	Heart	of both the Dexter and Croghan communities
9	Much more populated territory in the	Heart	Europe, Switzerland
10	CEO, Noel Quinn announced plans to ‘move the	Heart	of the business to Asia, including leadership’.
11	With teeny, chargrilled artichoke	Hearts	and cubes of bloody Mary jelly
12	Ralph Chivers said that at the	Heart	of the group’s recommendations to the
13	Making sure that the	Heart	of their home—the kitchen—is fitted

Representing more than one-third of the sample, this TD was quite evident in the English sample as well. Both physical and abstract constructions were expressed using this TD, and in some cases, both aspects were expressed in the same case. Hence, it was not surprising that it referred to a geographical location, as in 8 and 9, as well as an actual physical center of a given vegetable, as in 11. This geographical realization was also exhibited in example 10 which clearly demonstrated the HEART as a movable object, a headquarter in particular. By the same token, such centrality was also constructed in cases where HEART was used within more abstract contexts, as in 12 below. Example 13 represents a case of both concrete and physical centrality since many households are architecturally centered around the kitchen in a literal sense, but the kitchen also often holds an abstract central value as the place where families sit and dine together. Looking at both corpora, it was evident then that CENTRAL POSITION emerged in both languages predominately through its materialization in terms of physical positioning.

3.2. AFFECTION

Unlike the first TD, which was rather straightforward, the second TD in the sample identified a relatively complex metaphor. On the surface, this particular cognitive mapping between HEART and AFFECTION could be perceived as inherent and taken for granted. However, careful examination of both Arabic and English corpora reveals that this relation is far from simple. For one, using heart metaphors to express affection and emotion has been so prominent in human languages that it could even be argued as being demetaphorized. Yet, excluding it as such runs the risk of overlooking a decent amount of data along with its potential for providing insights with regard to CMT. Another reason for this is the strong ties between metaphor on the one hand and metonymy on the other. In particular, both are figures of speech embedded and fueled by cognition to denote a connection between two objects. However, while metaphor creates this connection, metonymy presupposes it (Bredin, 1984). Easier said than done, drawing a crystal-clear distinction between these two can be quite challenging. Physiologically speaking, the heart as an organ could be used in place of affection, but it can also be one part of affection denoting it as a whole. Recalling the aforementioned argument is Section 1 of the meaning of the word ‘heart’ and its cross-linguistic interpretations, it is possible to see further the complexity of this cognitive mapping.

Several examples in both corpora could support this argument (Table 3). The same metonymy discussed in the last paragraph was present in the Arabic and English corpora. The examples in Table 3 document the strong affiliation between HEART as an SD and AFFECTION of all kinds as a TD. In 14, for instance, heart is squeezed with sadness while some mothers are heavily criticized for having no heart in 15. Example 16 also documents a case where the heart is depicted as a source of gratitude. Such polarity of affection then entails using heart metaphors to express emotions in either direction, negative or positive. By the same token, in the English corpora, one might as well have a broken heart (19) or a heavy heart (20) to express distress, or conversely, as in 21, where it is used to express endearment and fondness. Another variation of such mapping was identified in 17 and 18 in which a speech that originates from the heart was explicitly demonstrated as affectious and emotional. Due to such construction, painting any communication in such light allows it more acceptance on the part of the audience. This pattern where communication is associated with heart metaphors was identified in the English corpus as well; thus, further solidifying this facet of HEART in both languages (22 and 23). Besides, examining example 24 added further evidence to this particular TD since it demonstrated the strong mapping between feeling on the one hand and HEART as a place for such affection on the other.

Table 3. Examples of AFFECTION as a TD.

	Left context	Nod	Right context
14	ـه ودائما يفكر في مستقبل أبنائه السبعة	قلب	أنه أصبح لا يهنأ بالأكل والشرب مع أبنائه لأن الهم يعتصر
15	يلقين بأطفالهن إلى الشارع دون أن تتحرك في رؤوسهن شعرة	قلب	أسر تبيع أولادها بحجة الفقر وأمهات بلا
16	ـي أشكرك على مجهودك الرائع وتوعية الناس	قلب	لكي نقضي معا على هذا المرض. بكل أعماق
17	للجميع ويفتح الباب للحضور للحديث والابداع	القلب	ليتحدث حديثا من
18	وتود توصيل المعلومة للجميع	القلب	لأنك تتكلم من
19	Poets have believed that a broken	Heart	could kill one for centuries
20	Chris Holbrook said: ‘Our	Hearts	are heavy at the tremendous loss of life’
21	The phrase ‘absence makes the	Heart	grow fonder’ has a huge ring of truth
22	If you speak from the	Heart	and honestly share what matters to you
23	He spoke from the	Heart	about the needs of young people
24	You feel it in your	Heart	if you turn someone down

3.3. VITALITY

As is evident in the sample, the third TD reveals patterns with strong ties to the first one. However, in the third TD, metaphor construction is transformed from focus on form to function, thus revolving around the vital role of the heart as the most critical organ in the human body. Interestingly, in both languages, the heart does collocate with beating ‘النابض’ very often, which further intensifies this functional perspective of the third TD. Such construction entails that the heart must keep beating to sustain other organs and that when it no longer beats, everything else stops. In this regard, the examples in Table 4 below document cases where countries like the USA in 25, for instance, exercise a particular vital role in the global economy. Going along the same line, companies and economic institutions are also constructed as exercising a vital role in promoting any country’s economy (26), while young people are represented as such with regard to their country (27). This portrayal serves to cast the entities involved in this metaphorical construction, in particular those feeding into this TD, as nourishing and sustaining to dependents, another ideological connection to be looked at accumulatively in Section 4. Along the same line, the English corpus revealed parallel TDs focusing on function as well. Interestingly, the same collocation with beating is identified here as well, see 28 and 29, for instance. Even when beating is not included, many examples like 30 below document the critical and vital role of the entities involved in this cognitive connection. Interestingly, though, due to the more abstract and rather unphysical nature of function in any form-function duality, the VITAITY as a TD appeared in far more abstract constructions of HEART than the first TD of CENTRAL POSITION explained in Section 3.1. In particular, while CENTRAL POSITION highlighted more physical constructions like geographical locations and closeness, VITALITY focused more on abstract constructions, such as the critical role of problem-saving in marketing (31) or of small businesses in boosting the economy (32).

Table 4. Examples of VITALITY as a TD.

	Left context	Nod	Right context
25	النابض للاقتصاد العلمي	قلب	ومفاتيحها هي بيد الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية فهم الـ
26	النابض لاقتصاد أي دولة فبتعثر الأولى وإفلاسها يتعثر	قلب	تعتبر الشركات والمؤسسات الاقتصادية الــ
27	النابض لأي بلد، وعملية تشغيلهم من المحاور	قلب	عودة الهدوء للمجتمع بعد مرحلة الانتخابات والشباب هو الـ
28	Baaz’s vision of being the beating	Heart	of Arabic content
29	Brand strategy is the beating	Heart	and spark of any modern company
30	The Niger Delta is the	Heart	of Nigeria’s oil industry
31	The	Heart	of marketing and sales is problem-solving
32	They are the backbone of the economy and the	Heart	of our communities

3.4. Unity/solidarity

This target domain reveals a more idiomatic construction compared with the first three, which suggests that it is usually expressed within rather fixed syntactic structures (بـ/على قلب واحد، قلبا وقالبا). All the examples in Table 5 below demonstrate contexts in which different individuals, entities, or institutions as TDs are identified as one solid entity. The only exception to this is example 41 which demonstrates the unity and solidarity of a particular individual; yet by highlighting the compatibility and integration of this individual’s faith internally and externally. This interpretation is further supported by (maintained her Islam حافظت على إسلامها) in the same example. From a wider perspective, the cognitive mapping of the Arabic examples in Table 5 also indicates a perception of these diverse entities as one body, controlled by one heart and destined to the same fate. Going through the contexts below, it is evident that such construction indicates a declaration of support and solidarity, be it emotional, economic, or political. Further evidence of the prominence of this TD within the Arabic corpus is identified in examples 36 and 37. Here the cognitive mapping of HEART as UNITY/SOLIDARITY is accompanied by (one hand يدا واحدة); another common cognitive construction denoting the same connection. Keeping in mind the discussion in the introduction, such construction resonates with the aforementioned Hadith by the Prophet Mohammed, thus highlighting the cultural symbolism of this particular target domain in the Arabic language. In parallel lines to the body as a whole or even its individual parts like hand, HEART was identified consistently in the Arabic sample. However, going through the English sample, only one case was identified with this TD (42). This entails that evidence of CMT was identified in both corpora; yet, their distribution could reveal some cultural variation, which is discussed in more detail in Section 4.

Table 5. Examples of UNITY/SOLIDARITY as a TD.

	Left context	Nod	Right context
33	واحد لظهرت النتائج	قلب	لنقاطع فنحن أمة المليار ولو قاطعنا بـ
34	رجل واحد تسودنا روح المحبة والألفة والأخوة	قلب	بعد أن كانت بيننا آلاف الكيلوات اجتمعنا والتقينا على
35	رجل واحد واستطاعوا أن يحيوا الدين في قلوب	قلب	أقول إن أمة الإسلام خرج منها شيوخ وعلماء كانوا على
36	صافية لكل مافيه مصلحة نادينا	قلوبا	وأن نصبح يدا واحدة و
37	واحدا وموقفا واحدا	قلبا	المطلوب من الجميع في هذه المرحلة ان يكونوا يدا واحدة و
38	ـا وقالبا ولا ينبغي للنادي أن ينجرف وراء مشاريع	قلب	أما القرار الذي فتح من أجله هذا الموضوع فأنا معه
39	ـا وقالبا. وأشار إلى أن العلاقات بين الكويت ومصر	قلب	مصر قوية وأن استقرارها هو استقرار للكويت وأننا معها
40	ـا وقالبا مع أخي الكريم القناص فعند بداية هذه	قلب	في مواضيع الاستراتيجيات نشاطا. اتفق
41	ـا وقالبا.	قلب	حافظت على اسلامها
42	One nation, one	Heart	!

3.5. COGNITIVE ABILITY

This is the fifth and most specific TD in the sample and perhaps the most idiosyncratic as well. Similar to the previous TD, this construction is quite idiomatic and always comes in a fixed structure in both languages, ‘عن ظهر قلب’ and ‘by heart’. Going through the examples in Table 6, it is clear that it refers to the mental ability to memorize things by heart. Interestingly, such metaphorical connection is not based on the principle of similarity or consistency between the SD and the TD as with the other patterns identified earlier. Instead, it is fair to say that it arises from a new—and perhaps a peculiar—connection, thus allowing for some new conceptual projections to be made with creative TDs. Such connection casts the HEART in a different light though; here, the heart takes on a cognitive function (i.e. memorization) originally assigned to the mind. Consequently, this perspective constructs the heart as a record, thus materializing it again but with a different functional take. The examples below from both languages (43–47) all portray such connection. However, taking into consideration the rather classical difference between the two Arabic equivalents of heart (قلب and فؤاد) discussed in Section 1, these findings need to be interpreted and elaborated accordingly.

Table 6. Examples of COGNITIVE ABILITY as a TD.

	Left context	Nod	Right context
43	فلا تتضايق ولا تتذمر واستمع إليها واضحك إذا كانت	قلب	نحو ألف مرة وتكون أنت حافظها عن ظهر
44	اجعلي كلماتك من القلب لا من الذاكرة	قلب	تحاولي حفظ الكلمات التي تودين الحديث بها عن ظهر
45	وكمان أضفت إليها المؤشرات	قلب	في الشموع المجردة التي كنت أحفظها عن ظهر
46	You know the Pledge of Allegiance, probably by	Heart	.
47	All employees can sing the corporate anthem by	Heart	.

3.6. DEPTH/ESSENCE

In contrast to the fifth TD, the sixth TD identifies a cognitive connection that is evident in the English corpus but not the Arabic one. In particular, HEART is used here to denote the TD of DEPTH/ESSENCE. In this sense, it is different from the Arabic example 16 in the second TD, which expresses deep gratitude as a form of affection. Instead, examples in this TD demonstrate when HEART is used to express wholeness in DEPTH/ESSENCE in a more intensive and comprehensive sense, comprising mental, emotional, and physical components. A handful of cases were identified in the English corpus—see examples 48–55 in Table 7 below. Four idiosyncratic constructions were prominent in the English corpus (heart and soul, at heart, change of heart), and to a lesser degree (faint of heart). Examining the first construction, it is possible to see that both heart and soul denote a combination of internal cognitive and affective capacities. In this light, this English idiosyncratic construction differs from the Arabic one (قلبا وقالبا) discussed in examples (38–41) in the fourth TD since ‘قلبا وقالبا comprises an external component. The same argument could be made with reference to (at heart) in 49, 50, and 51 and (change of heart) in 52 and 53. With regard to (faint at heart) in 54, however, categorizing it was not straightforward as it superficially denotes the TD of affection. Yet, further examination of its contexts by expanding and thoroughly examining its concordance lines revealed an internal cognitive component in line with the other examples identified in the TD of DEPTH/ESSENCE. The last example 55 in Table 7, however, represents a rather interesting case that differs in meaning from the previous examples in the same table. Yet, it is included here as it can offer further evidence of the same TD. Heartburn refers to physical discomfort in internal organs like the esophagus, chest, upper abdomen, and stomach due to digestive complications. None of these issues are literally located in the heart; nevertheless, the use of heart in this compound word further solidifies the TD of DEPTH/ESSENCE since it denotes an internal and whole perspective to its conceptualization in English. From this perspective, such TD could not be identified in the Arabic corpus.

Table 7. Examples of DEPTH/ESSENCE as a TD.

	Left context	Nod	Right context
48	We put	Heart	and soul in Surfing
49	If you’re an athlete at	Heart	, then you’ll certainly appreciate the Olympics
50	If you are a feminist at	Heart	, believe women are being wronged
51	Have his or her patient’s best interests at	Heart	.
52	Aung San Suu Kyi, Mynmar’s de facto leader and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has a change of	Heart	regarding US sanctions against her country.
53	If Lula decides to have a change of	Heart,	He might just be president when Brazil hosts the Soccer World Cup.
54	They are not for the faint of	Heart	.
55	We save our clients’ a lot of	Heart	-burn

4. Discussion

Both corpora were analyzed deliberately in search of metaphorical patterns. Interestingly, careful examination of the sample revealed similar patterns in more than 86% of cases. This was more evident in case of the first and second TDs, CENTRAL POSITION, and AFFECTION, which were quite common. By the same token, VITALITY and COGNITIVE ABILITY proved to be prominent in both corpora but not as the first two TDs. More variations, however, were detected in cases of the SOLIDARITY/UNITY and DEPTH/ESSENCE, which demonstrated diverse linguistic distribution in each language. All this served to signify the evidence sought in the current study, that is, providing authentic data in support of CMT. This was quite evident even in metaphorical expressions of the heart that were not as common within a given language yet still retained their universality across the two languages at hand. This should not be surprising considering that the key word under examination denotes a universal body part necessary to the lives of all human beings. As explained in Section 1, such universality is the case due to the readily accessible nature of heart metaphors.

What is intriguing, however, is that a multiplicity of TDs were detected in both languages for the same universal SD, HEART. The analyzed sample explicitly suggests that different cognitive connections were made using heart metaphors. Going through the TDs, it is possible to say that certain mappings were more straightforward than others. This is clearly demonstrated in case of the form–function duality identified in TDs one and three. Such duality highlights the complexity of cognitive mapping in CMT and further problematizes the readily accessible conception of the heart in human cognition. So, not only is ‘heart’ used in the two languages to denote physical centrality, considering its anatomical positioning in the center of the body, but such connection is also further functionalized to denote the vitality of its role. As a result, such form-function duality could be linked to the concrete-abstract continuum as aforementioned in Section 3.3. In particular, this suggests that the readily accessible nature of heart has generated cognitive mappings that could primarily be concrete, such as geographical locations but also other ones that are predominately abstract, such as the critical role of a given entity in economic institutions. By the same token, further complexity can be found with affection, which has been analyzed in detail above. Taking into consideration the examples identified in Section 3.2 in both corpora, it is self-evident that HEART is universally identified as a source of AFFECTION. Yet, the detailed examination of such mapping proved that such connection is multifaceted since it could be materialized through different realizations. Not only was such affection realized through communication, but also through actions and behaviors.

Therefore, being universal and readily accessible does not equate simplicity in cognitive mapping nor does it detach from ideological underpinnings. Indeed, these metaphors are not produced and circulated in vacuum, and their contextualization within different linguistic and ecopolitical contexts reveals strong ties to power distribution. Taking into consideration the discussed examples as well as the business-based nature of the corpora involved, using heart metaphors in terms of functionality indicates that the entities represented within this TD might possess more power within their given contexts. Interestingly, this should be understood from the constructionist theorization (Van Dijk, 2009) on discourse in which both text and contexts mutually and reciprocally construct each other, with cognition mediating such construction processes. As such, while the production and distribution of heart metaphors could indicate the prominence of certain existing ideologies (i.e. the dominance of certain entities over others), they can also reinforce such prominence by distributing these ideologies over and over, thus maintaining the status quo in question.

The same argument could be made to interpret why the TD of UNITY/SOLIDARITY, for instance, was far more evident in the Arabic corpus than in the English one. In particular, the analysis of this TD, while confirming universality, simultaneously conveys evidence in support of cultural situatedness. Within Arab/Muslim culture, the cognitive mapping between body metaphors and the notion of Ummah (i.e. nation) is quite common and even inherent in many relevant contexts. This is primarily due to the aforementioned Hadith (Section 1), which is deeply rooted in such religiously shaped culture. It is true that similar patterns denoting unity were also prominent within diverse western cultures; yet, due to the dynamic and ever-changing nature of discourse (Cohen et al., 2022), further contextualization of subsequent heart metaphors might have shifted from this. In light of this, it could be argued that this shift in English has been directed towards the TD of -DEPTH/ESSENCE, which could not be identified in the Arabic corpus. The aforementioned discussion of the terminology of heart in Arabic (section 1.1) could be further used to explain such distribution. Considering the fact that Arabic appears to have more synonyms of heart with varying levels of meanings compared to English, it is possible to argue that the concept of heart is perceived with more wholeness in English. The findings discussed in Section 3.6 might offer evidence of such assumption, especially on an internal level. In Arabic, however, such wholeness in terms of DEPTH/ESSENCE does not appear to materialize on a textual level in parallel lines. Instead, other terms with more specialized meanings might be used to decode the same linguistic content (see Altirmithi, 2012 and Tritton, 1971 for further discussion). When examining this process cross-linguistically, Baawaidhan (2020) highlights that such shift from one language to another does take place in cycles. Each cycle requires not only conceptualization on the part of language users but also re-conceptualization as an essential component of such process, which is later followed by another cycle.

Equally important, this study also attempts to understand how all this ties in with the CTH discussed in Section 1.3 above. Given the evidence highlighted in this cross-linguistic analysis, it might be tempting to utilize this in light of CTH to arrive at some pedagogical and practical implications. Bearing in mind the universality highlighted in Sections 3 and 4, more than two-thirds of the identified heart metaphors in the sample can be classified as falling within the SMC. Consequently, it could be argued that the translation of such metaphors should flow smoothly from one language to another without creating any cognitive tension on either end. A metaphor using the heart to denote CENTRAL POSITION or AFFECTION, for instance, might hardly impose any challenges for Arabic and English translators. This is especially true if one considers the syntactic and structural flexibility of these metaphors in both languages. However, with more fixated idioms like the ones discussed within the TD of COGNITIVE ABILITY, matters are a bit more complex. Taking the Arabic idiomatic phrase ‘عن ظهر قلب’ as an example, it is feasible to translate this into its English equivalent, ‘by heart’, and vice versa. However, due to the fixed syntactic structure of these idioms in both languages, attention should be paid to tailor for such idiosyncratic transition. From this perspective, it is then possible to classify such cases as metaphors with similar mapping conditions but realized differently at a lexical level. A good approach to tackling these in translator training programs would be immersing trainees in a large base of authentic language data through the availability of corpus processing software. This could allow them to internalize its idiomatic structure while at the same time highlighting its cognitive mappings.

The cognitive processing of figurative language between Arabic and English is far from being simple or straightforward (Alkhammash, 2022). Such perspective could motivate several translation strategies, which are specific to the data at hand. In particular, recalling the translation strategies introduced in section 1.3, as well as the findings presented in section 3, some TD like CENTAL POSITION, AFFECTION, and VITALITY revealed sameness in textual coding and universality in cognitive processing, hence literal translation is not only acceptable under such circumstances but also encouraged as appropriate (Toury, 2012). This explains, for instance, why ‘القلب النابض، بلا قلب’ and ‘beating heart, heartless’ are very common literal translations in both linguistic directions. Yet, other TD revealed cases in which this was not the case; hence, transference could be an efficient strategy in translating such cases. Examining ‘by heart’ in the COGNITIVE ABILITY TD, translators often opt for using another idiom/metaphor when translating it to Arabic ‘عن ظهر قلب’ since both constructions are quite common in the data. Still, other identified cases revealed that meaning translation can be the best approach to translate certain mappings. In particular, when examining the compound word ‘heartburn’ in English, translators almost consistently use omission of the heart root and reduce it to ‘حرقة’, another conceptual metaphor from the SD of FIRE.

To support the above argument with reference to translation strategies and what ‘normalized’ translations are accepted for metaphors, the authors resorted to machine translation (Google Translate) to see if the above implications are accurate. As an example of literal translation, ‘beating heart’ was actually translated automatically to ‘قلب نابض’ and vice versa. By the same token, this transference was also maintained when the idiomatic expression of ‘by heart’ was translated through another idiom ‘عن ظهر قلب’. Even with meaning translation like the above case of omission in heartburn to just ‘حرقة’, all these figurative cases were machine translated in accordance with the suggested strategies discussed in the previous paragraph. Interestingly, Google Translate translated ‘قلبا وقالبا’ using transference to ‘heart and soul’. Examining their detailed TD investigation in sections 3.4 and 3.6, respectively, these two metaphors are not identical in meaning; the first is comprised of internal and external components while the second is predominantly internal. This rises several questions regarding the potential of machine translation in translation figurative language, but these are beyond the scope of the current paper.

All in all, it is important to wrap this discussion up with a critical point that needs to be highlighted. As suggested by the analysis and supported by relevant studies in the literature, the distinction between these TDs should not be perceived as crystal clear or decisive. Instead, it is better conceived as a continuum with fuzzy boundaries. This is even more accurate if one considers that all of these TDs actually originate from a very universal and readily available body part like the heart. The only reason these were divided as such in the present study is for the identification of common patterns in both corpora. In addition to this, examining each particular case within a wider context might indicate duality or even multiplicity of TD categorization. However, approaching larger sets of authentic language data to identify such patterns was only feasible through the affiliation between cognitive linguistics on the one hand and corpus tools on the other. Keeping in mind this corpus-based impetus, this study adds to the plethora of research calling for the digitalization of humanities and social sciences in terms of their methodological approaches using such technologies.

5. Conclusions

This paper attempted to provide a comparative corpus-based analysis of heart metaphors in Arabic and English in economic discourses. Drawing primarily on conceptual metaphor theory, patterns of universality and similarity were identified and examined in detail in three primary TDs, CENTRAL POSITION, AFFECTION, and VITALITY, as well as three subordinate ones with more cultural situatedness, namely, UNITY/SOLIDARITY, COGNITIVE ABILITY, and DEPTH/ESSENCE. Areas of similarity and differences were further examined in light of the cognitive translation hypothesis to identify practical implications for translators and translator education programs. Due to limitations on word count, this study only focused on one body part, the heart; however, it is strongly suggested that further research with a similar comparative vein is conducted in this direction to bridge the current gap in English–Arabic cognitive research. At the moment, very few studies attempted to explore the potential of conceptual metaphor theory from such a comparative stand outside the world of Euro-American languages. In addition to this, our findings documented strong distinctive cultural ties that were realized at a textual level even within economic discourse. It would be intriguing to examine how similar constructions could be realized within other fields, such as politics and pop culture. Our analysis also revealed the centrality of heart metaphors in economic discourse, thus, highlighting the ubiquitous status of heart metaphor in business communication. More research is needed to examine if other body parts like head or hand have similar status.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data are available upon request.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to thank the Saudi Ministry of Culture for funding this project. This work was Funded by the Literature, Publishing and Translation Commission, Ministry of Culture, Saudi Arabia under Grant [number 133] as part of the Arabic Observatory of Translation.

Notes on contributors

Shrouq Almaghlouth

Shrouq Almaghlouth is an associate professor of linguistics at Saudi Electronic University. She is interested in interdisciplinary discourse studies and digital humanities. In her published works, she analyzes data from both Arabic and English as she examines the intersection of language, communication and context.

Leena Alotaibi

Leena Alotaibi holds a PhD degree in linguistics from King Faisal University. She currently works as a linguistic consultant and an assistant professor. She is interested in corpus linguistics and discourse analysis in Arabic.