Metaphorical Framing Influences How We Think about Emotions: Some Evidence from Spanish Florencia Reali (f.reali96@uniandes.edu.co) Catalina Arciniegas (c.arcinegas959@uniandes.edu.co) Departamento de Psicologia, Universidad de los Andes. Cra. 1 No 18A- 12, Edificio Franco, Bogota, 111711. Colombia Abstract Conceptual metaphor theory proposes that the conceptual structure of emotions emerges through metaphorization from concrete concepts such spatial orientation and physical containment. Primary metaphors for emotions have been described in a wide range of languages. Here we show the results of a corpus analysis revealing that certain metaphors such as EMOTIONS ARE FLUIDS IN CONTAINERS and EMOTIONS ARE BOUNDED SPACES are quite natural in Spanish. Moreover, the corpus data reveals that BOUNDED SPACE source domain is more frequently mapped onto negative emotions. Second, we consider the question of whether the instantiation of metaphorical framing influences the way we reason about emotions. A questionnaire experiment was conducted to explore this question focusing on the case of locura (madness). Our results show that when madness is framed as a fluid filling a container (the body) people tend to rate symptoms as less enduring and as more likely to be caused by social and environmental factors compared to when it is framed as an enclosed space. Keywords: conceptual metaphor; cognitive linguistics; corpus analysis; emotion concepts; Spanish. Introduction In the last few decades Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) (Kovecses, 2000; Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; 1999) has provided a new framework for conceiving the cognitive mechanisms involved in the structuring of conceptual systems. According to CMT, a few concrete concepts constitute basic domains that emerge directly from perceptual schemas such as spatial orientations or physical containment. In turn, abstract concepts emerge through metaphorization from concrete ones. Conceptual metaphors allow the mapping of inferential structure from source (more concrete) domains onto target (more abstract) domains (Casasanto, 2010; Kovecses, 2000; Lakoff, 1987). Along these lines, basic emotions are not considered feelings separated from thought but concepts endowed with a complex conceptual structure. Emotions are thought to be grounded – embodied – in physiological or physical experiences, such as an increase in heart rate or a change in body posture associated with particular moods (e.g., ANGER IS HEAT or HAPPY IS UP) (Lakoff & Johnson,1980; Lakoff, 1987). Along these lines, primary metaphors might be universal because they emerge from physiological experiences or basic perceptual schemas (Kovecses, 2010; Lakoff, 1987). One of the methodological approaches used to study the metaphorical structuring of concepts has been the analysis of linguistic expressions that are used in everyday discourse. Such methodological decision is based on the fundamental assumption that metaphorical expressions are systematically tied to the conceptual system (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Sauciuc, 2013). In the case of emotions – such as anger, lust, happiness or hope – the cross-cultural ubiquity of certain linguistic expressions has been taken as evidence that certain schemas are embodied and provide grounding for emotion concepts. Metaphors for emotions have been described in a wide range of languages including English, Spanish, Chinese, Hungarian, Zulu, Polish among others (see Kovecses, 2010 and Soriano, 2003, for a review). Although the same metaphor – that is, the same mapping between source and target domains– may be said to exist in many languages, the corresponding linguistic expressions of the metaphor may not be exactly the same (Barcelona, 2001). For example, contrasting studies of ANGER metaphors in Spanish and English have shown cross-linguistic differences at the level of conceptual elaboration, linguistic conventionalization and degree of linguistic exploitation (Soriano, 2003). In the present study, we focus on the study of expressions of the following conceptual metaphors in Spanish: EMOTIONS ARE FLUIDS IN CONTAINERS and EMOTIONS ARE BOUNDED SPACES. We decided to concentrate on these two metaphors because of the following reasons. The metaphor EMOTIONS ARE FLUIDS IN CONTAINERS is one of the most studied examples cross-linguistically, especially in relation to the concept of ANGER (Kovecses, 2010). We were also interested in studying the metaphor EMOTIONS ARE BOUNDED SPACES because of previous work showing that it is extremely frequent in Spanish, at least in the case of some negative emotions (Reali et al., 2013). Lakoff (1987) described these two conceptual metaphors in an analysis of the case study ANGER. He proposed that the metaphor ANGER IS THE HEAT OF A FLUID IN A CONTAINER emerges from the combination of two embodied metaphors: ANGER IS HEAT, and THE BODY IS A CONTAINER FOR THE EMOTIONS (Lakoff, 1987:383). In the same work he proposes that the metaphor EMOTIONS ARE BOUNDED SPACES is a general metaphor that applies to anger as well as to other emotions (Lakoff, 1987: 396-397). Figure 1 depicts a possible sketch of conceptual schemas associated to these metaphors. How commonly are emotions described in terms of bounded spaces or fluids filling containers in Spanish? The first goal of this study is to compare the patterns and frequency of use of these metaphorical expressions in