METAPHORICAL CONCEPTUALIZATION OF IDEA IN SERBIAN LANGUAGE

By taking a cognitive-linguistic approach to metaphor, in this paper we deal with the abstract concept IDEA and the way it is understood and experienced in contemporary Serbian language. The research is aimed at determining some of the possible source domains that allow us to conceptualize the aforementioned concept. The corpus consists of sentences, found in Serbian daily papers Politika and Blic, which illustrate the identified metaphors. The analysis shows that this target domain can be understood in terms of various different source domains. We have decided to confine our attention to seven conceptual metaphors that allow us to comprehend different aspects of the concept IDEA. Namely, the results of the research show that ideas can be structured by the following metaphors: IDEAS ARE LIVING BEINGS, IDEAS ARE TOYS, IDEAS ARE FOOD, IDEAS ARE FORCE, IDEAS ARE RESOURCES, IDEAS ARE VALUABLE COMMODITIES and IDEAS ARE WEAPONS. We shall begin by identifying the linguistic expressions so as to explain the underlying similarities between the domains present in the metaphors stated above.Publishe