한국언어과학회

Kövecses (2005, 2008) argues that some metaphors are cross-culturally universal but some are diverse. In discussing the metaphorical variation, he suggests ten aspects of metaphor which may be affected by the metaphorical variation. The ten aspects involve experiential basis, source domain, target domain, relationship between the source and the target, metaphorical linguistic expressions, mapping, entailments, blends, nonlinguistic realization, and cultural models. This paper delves into the question of how the metaphorical mappings are affected by metaphorical variations, observing the metaphorical extensions of digest in English and sohwahata ‘digest’ in Korean. The comparison between the metaphorical extensions of the same concept DIGEST in the two languages shows that the differences come from the fact that different stages of digestion are highlighted. The comparison between Korean and English DIGEST empirically supports Kövecses (2005, 2008) in that cross-cultural variation is observed in the aspect of metaphorical mapping.