Metaphors of Body Parts Words in Burmese

Abstract

               A strategy of comparing things for greater understandings through concrete physical experience is called “Metaphor”, that is, one thing is thought while another is mentioned. This is considered the process of conveying the meanings under the cognition system. The purpose of this research was to study the meanings of metaphorical terms regarding body parts words in Burmese. The meanings were compared to analyze the metaphorical concepts based on the Cognitive Semantics (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999). The results of this research indicated that there were 18 body parts words used for comparison, namely: buttocks ဖင္ bones အရိုး , necks လည္ heart စိတ္ ,ႏွလံုး eyes မ်က္ liver အသည္း feet ေျခ stomach ဝမ္း mouth ပါးစပ္, ႏႈတ္ teeth သြား hands လက္ tongue လွ်ာ gut အူ brain ဦးေႏွာက္ ears  နား face မ်က္ႏွာ  and chest ရင္.Six metaphor types were found in metaphorical body parts words in Burmese : metaphor related to 1. Action, 2 feeing, 3 trait, 4. Condition, and 5. Living things. The findings would be beneficial for studying conceptual metaphor in Burmese.