Abstract

This paper investigates love metaphors from the cross-cultural perspective of two typologically unrelated languages—English and Turkish. It categorizes Turkish love metaphors following the conceptual models proposed by CitationLakoff and Johnson (1980, Citation1999) and CitationKövecses (1988, Citation2000). Turkish data provide added support to the claims of conceptual metaphor theory that force and path image schemas are universal, but not always uniform as observed specifically in culturally different realizations of LOVE IS A JOURNEY metaphor in English and Turkish. This study also identifies specific level abstract source domains in Turkish, which do not appear in the English data: “PAIN/SUFFERING,” “INEFFABILITY,” and “DEADLY FORCE.” The sociocultural motivation for these domains is illustrated with reference to medieval Anatolian Sufi philosophy and traditions.