Exploring the Metaphors of Loyalty, Courage and Friendship in Harry Potter Novels and their Turkish Translations

Abstract

In studies on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the Metaphor Master List scholars have come up with over the years, the metaphors (target domains) of loyalty, courage and friendship figure among very important ones. In this study, we undertake to explore these three metaphors in the Harry Potter series, as these three conceptual domains also happen to constitute three underlying themes in these novels. Cross-linguistic work in this regard is in its infancy and would benefit from ongoing research, because our knowledge of metaphors is only useful insofar as we can determine if a domain is universally and cross-linguistically also used to conceptualize a given target concept similarly in another language, or if it is found to be subject to some variation between the two languages being compared. We look at how these three generic-level concepts are conceptualized in English and their translations into Turkish, and if the cross-domain mappings are similar/different in the two languages, offering further insights into how far cognitive reality and its metaphorical realization differ between English and Turkish from a Cognitive Linguistics vantage point.