Cognitive Approaches to Specialist Languages

Semantic and Conceptual Aspects of Volcano Verbs 345

(19) The column of lava, now at a high level in the throat of the volcano, is

under great pressure and is gas-saturated. Accompanied by earthquakes

and strong explosions, the cone splits, frequently from the crater rim to the

base. (Volcanic Activity and Human Ecology, 2013)

(20) Then, a deep rumble occurs within the belly of the earth and volcanoes

belch tons of ejecta into the atmosphere.

Context (19) was extracted from a special-subject book on volcanology
and ecology. This means that the word throat is a metaphorical term, that
is, a lexicalized unit carrying specialized meaning and systematically used
by specialists and scholars in the volcanology field of expertise. In
contrast, belly is not a term (no occurrences of this word were found in our
scientific text corpus), but a metaphor commonly used in general language
contexts and in science popularizing texts to refer to a volcano’s magma
chamber. Despite not being terminological, this metaphorical expression
complements the specialized metaphorical units (terms) belch, mouth, and
throat, identified in our scientific text corpus.
At a conceptual and cognitive level, metaphorical thought in
Conceptual Metaphor Theory (e.g. Lakoff 1993, Lakoff and Johnson 1980,
1999) is visually represented as mappings between materials from two
distinct conceptual domains, the source and the target. In this case,
concepts from the source domain HUMAN BODY PARTS AND FLUIDS are
mapped onto the target domain VOLCANO PARTS AND FLUIDS. Figure 6
shows the cross-domain mappings arising between these two domains of
experience, taking the verb belch as a reference.

mouth mouth

throat throat

belly belly

stomach gases flames/magma/gases/ash

Source domain HUMAN BODY PARTS Target domain VOLCANO PARTS
AND FLUIDS AND FLUIDS

Figure 6. Metaphorical cross-domain mappings between HUMAN BODY PARTS AND
FLUIDS and VOLCANO PARTS AND FLUIDS for belch.