With the heart in the hands or in the trousers

About metaphors in spanish and icelandic phrases

Abstract

This paper is a comparative study of phrases and idioms in Spanish and Icelandic. Our point of departure are some basic ideas of cognitive linguistics and semantics, and first and foremost the scheme constructed by the Spanish linguist Pamies and Iñesta (2000, 2002, Pamies 2001a) aiming at systematising phrases and expressions of diverse languages based on conceptual metaphors in order to establish weather they are universal o not. The article gives an account of the conclusions drawn from a comparision of idioms concerning FEAR, HUNGER and OVEREATING in Spanish and Icelandic. The main conclusion of the comparison is that the same conceptual metaphors form the basis of many of the Icelandic and Spanish idioms covered by the study.