CONCEPT OF FEAR IN SERBIAN PHRASEOLOGY

Abstract

This paper describes a research concerning emotion conceptualization in phraseolo­gisms found in Standard Serbian language. The corpus contains 62 phraseologisms of different lexical structure with the target domain of fear. The method most frequently used is the method of conceptual analysis, in the form and amount most appropriate and pos­sible. The phraseologisms were sorted on the basis of whether their meaning is formed by the means of conceptual metaphor or conceptual metonymy. What was also taken into account in the analysisis the cultural heritage, i.e. the Serbian cultural environment in which the expressions have developed. The cultural environment has affected the expres­sions with its values, attitudes and the way of understanding reality. The basic ways of emotion conceptualization are universal because emotions, their physical sensations, the body itself, the human being and the commonsensical cognition of the basic natural phe­nomena are identical in all the environments they appear. However, the effect of our lin­guistic and cultural environment is manifested in various cases, which can give rise to specific metaphors understandable only in the given cultural context.