Les métaphores de la colère en dalabon : universalité et particularités

Anger metaphors have been documented and analyzed in many language of the world, and these studies have revealed the remarkable coherence (and even the quasi-universality) of these metaphors across the world. The present study contributes new data on this question and, in the light of observations from the Dalabon language (Northern Territory, Australia), articulates new questions about the special cross-linguistic status of anger metaphors. The article shows that Dalabon anger metaphors differ, on the one hand, from other emotional metaphors in the same language, and on theother hand, from anger metaphors found in other languages of the world. Dalabon emotional metaphors have the particularity that they remain systematically anchored in body representations, as most of them are inspired by somatic responses to emotions. Therefore, in Dalabon, emotions are always represented metonymically as physical states of the person, and are never depicted linguistically as entities independent of the persons things, persons, forces etc. However, anger is an exception in two respects. Firstly, it allows precisely this type of representations: it metaphorically presented as something that can be found. Secondly, anger metaphors are not inspired by somatic responses, but inspired by the negative moral connotations of anger. Anger is thus compared to an uncontrollable living entity, to a disease, to putrefaction or to a poison.