The metaphorical potential of space in Hungarian folk songs

Abstract

A special characteristic of numerous Hungarian folk songs is the so called “natural image”, which, in an initial position within the text, generates a certain anticipation about the emotional and conceptual content. However, in several cases the meaning and the conceptual relevance of the natural image is far from obvious. A fundamental element in the world of the text for the representation of the natural scene based on mostly visual perception is that of dynamically construed spatial relationships. The analysis of the metaphorical potential of space representation calls for a model which combines both structural and procedural factors of understanding. This paper aims at outlining all categories which have a significant role in space representation and through this composing a framework of interpretation which, though rests on one particular text type, can later be extended to further types of lyrics. The significance of this paper is two-fold: it presents fundamentally new results on the process of construing works in terms of text types, while it is also an example of the empirical investigation in functional text linguistics. The theoretical basis of the approach
is mostly holistic cognitive linguistics as worked out by R. Langacker, and the methodology used is empirical text analysis.

The structure of the paper is the following: first, the nature of space representation is briefly discussed (1.), followed by an overview of the basic textual characteristics of Hungarian folk songs (2.1.). Subsequently I introduce a model of interpretation focusing on the space-semantic components of folk songs (2.2.) from which I select two components (conceptual construction and deixis) and show how analysis can be carried out in praxis, i.e. on a particular text (2.3.). Finally, a summary of observations is given (3.).