Reden wie ein Wasserfall – Hablar por los codos. Un estudio fraseológico cognitivo (español-alemán) del campo conceptual de la «cantidad» en el discurso hablado

Abstract

This text is focussed on the contrastive study of a number of phraseological units (PUs) both in Spanish and German. These units belong to the conceptual subarea related to the action of talking a lot: hablar mucho in Spanish. The analysis of the mentioned PUs is embedded within the framework of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory suggested by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). We will study three cognitive models which are highly productive in both phraseological systems: «discourse is a liquid»; «people are animals», and «the mind is a machine». Both in Spanish and in German languages, we may notice identical or very similar conceptual images which, however, do not always carry the same phraseological meaning. On the one hand, we aim to verify the existence of a conceptual core that is shared by many languages, and based on biological and psychological aspects. This, in turn, may lead us to the assumption that there are universal metaphors. On the other hand, the peculiar semantic structure of the PUs (the connection between the idiomatic and the literal meaning) explains the fact that the Spanish and the German phraseological systems do not always rest on the same metaphorical or metonymic foundation.