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The subject of this dissertation is the metaphor of fire in the conceptualisation of love in Russian and Polish linguistic and cultural circles. The dissertation's topic aligns with the current focus of contemporary linguistic research on conceptual metaphors and emotions in language.
Metaphor is a specific linguistic unit, so it was necessary to use different methods and research tools. In the analysis of metaphorical utterances, both lexical-semantic as well as functional-syntactic characteristics of the units studied. The research is confrontational in nature. The comparative method made it possible to reveal similarities and differences in the metaphorical expression of love using lexemes semantically related to fire. The conceptual apparatus of cognitive linguistics was also used when discussing the empirical material. Metaphors were interpreted as a tool for conceptualisation and cognition of the human mind. In addition to the descriptive method and confrontational analysis, a frequency analysis was also carried out.
The research material consists of original prose texts extracted from the National Corpus of the Russian Language (Национальный корпус русского языка – Корпус Основной) and the National Corpus of the Polish Language (Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego – wyszukiwarka PELCRA). Analysed were 1320 Russian and 880 Polish fragments containing the noun name of love and lexemes semantically related to the element of fire, as well as temperature. First of all, common, i.e. colloquial, metaphors were selected for description (Borek 2012; Wróblewski 1998). An additional criterion for the selection of material was the semantics of the lexeme любовь/miłość: love as a feeling or an interpersonal relationship (the subject/object of love is a person or God).