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The present paper, adopting some of the tools offered by Cognitive Linguistics, namely the mechanisms of conceptual metaphor and metonymy, is a qualitative study of a sociolinguistic nature. Its overall purpose is an attempt at exhibiting a paradigm shift in the representation of women in Anglo-American proverbs. Combining the potential of the cross-fertilisation between Cognitive Linguistics and paremiological studies, the study appertains to the sense-threads embedded in the figurative language of proverbs, with the main focus on a cognitive semantic analysis of selected Anglo-American paremias directed towards women and animals. The main goal of the research is the juxtaposition of the meaning coded in two proverbs of traditional status, as representatives of a larger group of paremiological units (i.e. A woman, a cat, and a chimney should never leave the house; A whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to no good end), reflecting the deep-rooted gender-biased ideology in patriarchal Anglo-American society, with the content of the selected anti-proverb (i.e. The early bird gets up to serve his wife breakfast in bed) and a contemporary proverb (i.e. A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle), serving as sample evidence of the heralds of a paradigm shift in the issue of gender stereotyping stored in paremiological wisdom. The paper shows that the motivation behind the use of the analysed proverbs is to be accounted for by reference to the mechanism of metaphor-metonymy interaction, while the rise of new gender-related proverbs can be regarded as a sign of socio-cultural changes. Specifically, through the medium of modern paremiology, asymmetrical representation of male and female gender, coupled with traditional masculine and feminine characteristics as well as social roles, appears if not endangered then, at least, to be taking a promising path.

The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of English animal-related terms used figuratively with reference to types of parenting. To be more precise, we make an attempt to investigate the scope of the conceptual metaphor PARENTS ARE ANIMALS. What ignited our interest was the ubiquity of linguistic metaphors featuring animal terms employed with reference to types of parenting present in everyday language, thus we have decided to delve into what types of animals are typical source domains in metaphors of this type. The methodology adopted is the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, originally proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and further developed in numerous subsequent publications, especially those by Kövecses (2003, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2017a, 2017b). Our results are supported by evidence from the online Corpus of Contemporary American English and News on the Web Corpus, which may be said to corroborate not only the conceptual nature of metaphors as such, but also their impact on social cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse various animal-specific complex lexical units together with patterns that can be held responsible for their underlying conceptual structure. Many examples of the data investigated in the paper seem to represent compounds as they are traditionally understood in the literature of the subject (see, among others, Bauer 2003; Katamba and Stonham 2006; Lieber and Štekauer 2009; Fàbregas and Scalise 2012; Bauer et al. 2013); however, others do not meet the basic criteria for compoundhood as postulated by, for example, Altakhaineh (2016). In my research I use the term animal-specific complex lexical units with reference to all animal-related composite expressions being the result of the working of metaphor- metonymy interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper an attempt will be made to analyse a number of surnames either directly derived from animal names or variously associated with representatives of the animal world which may be said to embody and provide a variation on the general conceptual metaphor HUMAN BEING IS ANIMAL and/or the ANIMAL NAME FOR PERSON ASSOCIATED WITH THAT NAME metonymy. Animal-related surnames represent a fragment of the English lexicon where morphology and (broadly understood) semantics meet and exert mutual influence on each other. It seems that in animal-based nomination language users employ such morphological mechanisms as, for example, affixation or compounding which, in turn, seem to be conceptually motivated by metaphor and metonymy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Chain of Being is known as a model of the organization and perception of the surrounding reality which is deeply rooted in the European tradition and which relies on the fact that all the material/physical and spiritual entities create a hierarchy ranked from the lowest entities/beings to those occupying the highest level of the hierarchy. The Great Chain of Being and the processes it involves play an important role in the analysis of semantic change. For example, such cognitive mechanisms as anthropomorphisation and zoomorphisation understood as ascribing human or animal features to entities from the levels below and above humans or animals, are held responsible for the mechanism of zoosemy. Zoosemy is defined in the literature of the subject as a type of animal metaphor which is universally linked to evaluative changes in meaning, especially meaning pejoration. In this paper an attempt will be made to shed some light on one of the sub-types of zoosemy interpreted as an interface between a metaphorical schema and a metonymic mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one may reasonably expect, sexuality broadly understood seems to play an important role in the formation of zoosemes targeted at the conceptual category human being. The conceptual domain sexuality is not only closely related to the conceptual category human being but, more importantly, it may be simultaneously regarded as one of the conceptual dimensions by means of which the conceptual category domesticated animals is related to the conceptual category human being. Thus the aim of the present paper is to provide a historical account of selected aspects of English zoosemy; that is, the process of semantic alteration whereby animal names come to be employed to designate human characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]