In some languages, a word that denotes a body part can also denote the emotion at the same time, as in Pintupi (Central Australia), where yunytju means both ‘throat’ and ‘love’, or Yolngu Matha (Arnhem Land), where ŋoy means both ‘stomach’ and ‘innermost feeling(s)’. It is not uncommon for such words to lose their body-part sense, and in the end just refer uniquely to the emotion. In this metonymic pattern, the body part simply ‘stands for’ the emotion, so to speak .

 Apart from these straightforward cases where body-part words also have emotional senses, body parts can also ‘stand for’ emotions in slightly more complex expressions. Many expressions meaning literally ‘become body part’ can describe an emotional experience, as in Pitjantjatjara (Central Australia), where unytjuringanyi, literally ‘become throat’, means ‘like, want, desire’. Another type of expression equates being ‘without the body part’ with ‘not experiencing an emotion’. This is illustrated in Pitjantjatjara too, with tjuni wiya ‘stomach without’, which means ‘not liking, not wanting’, where ‘belly’ thus stands for the feeling of want.

 Generally, body parts ‘stand’ linguistically for the emotions they are strongly associated with in other expressions. For instance, the heart stands for love and occasionally for fear, the head stands for shame, and so on. But there is variation: the belly, for instance, which is most strongly associated with anger, tends to stand for feelings of desire, motivation and life energy. There is also variation in how often different body parts display this figurative profile. Overall, it is not overwhelmingly frequent: with most body parts, we found one expression where the body part stands for the emotion out of ten or twenty on average, and much less with some body parts. However, such expressions are notably more frequent with the throat, where more than half of the expressions we collected equate the throat with desire or with love.

References

Bowern, Claire and David Zorc. Yolngu Matha dictionary. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, AILEC 0778, n. d.

Goddard, Cliff. Pitjantjatjarra/Yankunytjatjara to English dictionary (2nd edition). Alice Springs: IAD Press, 1992.

Hansen, Kenneth Carl and Lesley Ellen Hansen. Pintupi dictionary. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1974.