A large number of expressions allude to destruction, as illustrated with kuntu yartarrinthi in Kaurna (South Australia), which literally means ‘chest breaks itself’ and is used to describe people suffering great anxiety. Such evocations of destruction occur with most body parts, especially abdominal body parts. They are also found, albeit in smaller numbers, in reference to the head and facial body parts like the forehead, nose and eyes. They are quite rare with the throat.

 Contrary to patterns observed in resistance metaphors, which tend to be ambivalent between positive and negative emotions, destruction metaphors are practically always negative. They sometimes represent the body part as plainly broken (as we saw with the Kaurna expressions above). Though more frequently, destruction implies division: the body part is cut, split, cracked, torn and so on. For example, in Dalabon (Arnhem Land), kangu-barrh(mu), literally ‘belly cracks’ means ‘surprised, shocked, especially when hearing that someone has died’. With the belly and most other abdominal parts, destruction maps onto shock, grief, or both. On the other hand, with the heart – where fear connotations are dominant –, destruction metaphors relate to fear too: in Ngalakgan (Arnhem Land), ngerh-barrh ‘heart cracks’ means ‘frightened’.

 Another, perhaps conceptually related, image concerns the alteration of body parts, i.e. when they are depicted as ‘different’ or ‘other’ (than themselves). This is always negative. As an example, consider Walmajarri (Western Desert) ngaru kanarlanyjarrinyu, literally ‘belly becomes different’, which is used to mean ‘worried, upset’. Sometimes such metaphors have intellectual connotations rather than purely emotional ones, as in Warlpiri (Central Australia) langa-kari-langa-kari-jarri-mi, where langa means ‘ear’, kari means ‘other’ and the whole expression means ‘think, ponder, wonder, worry about’. These metaphors are less frequent than destruction or resistance metaphors, for instance. They occur mostly with abdominal body parts and seem concentrated around Central Australia and the Western Desert.

 References

Amery, Rob. Emotion Metaphors in an Awakening Language: Kaurna the language of the Adelaide Plains. Paper presented at the 2017 Australian Linguistics Society Conference, Sydney, Australia, 2017.

Laughren, Mary and Warlpiri lexicography group. Warlpiri-English encyclopaedic dictionary. Electronic draft, October 2017, 2007.

Merlan, Francesca. Ngalakan grammar, texts and vocabulary. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 1983.

Ponsonnet, Maïa. The language of emotions: The case of Dalabon (Australia). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2014.

Richards, Eirlys and Joyce Hudson. Walmajarri-English dictionary. Berrimah, N. T: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1990.