Conceptualization of Emotions based on Image Schemas in the Novel The Cranes Nightly Travels in the Carnelian Towns

Emotions are among the significant abstract concepts in cognitive semantics analyses. Human language, speech or written, is a representation which relatively reveals the complexities relevant to the conceptualizations of abstract concepts, including emotional ones. Image schemas, which are based on the idea of embodied cognition and experience, are the main mechanism in these meaning constructions. Thus, an analysis of image schema in a literary text can lead us to some aspects of the emotional system governing the literary and narrative text. This research aimed at describing and analyzing the emotion image schema in the novel The Cranes Nightly Travels in the Carnelian Towns (العقیق مدن فی الغرانیق مسری (by Amima al-Khamis (Saudi author), based on the Image Schema Theory of Lakoff and Johnson (1987). The objective of this research is identifying the author's subjectivity, mentality, and thought through linguistic devices which refer to emotions in the novel. The questions are: what emotion image schemas are in the text? How these schemas contribute to the emotion conceptualization in the mind of readers?, and what is their relation to the theme of the story? To find answer to these questions, the relevant schemas are extracted from the text through purposive sampling, and then explained on the basis of Image Schema Theory. The results show that the author could embody his ideas and thoughts through meaning constructing devices (linguistic forms in the text). These forms are based on image schemas including container, quantity, movement, path, orientation, near/far, and force schemas. These schemas project emotional meanings on the text and evoke them in the readers' mind, mostly metaphorically. Besides, these image-based conceptualizations are aligned with the narrator/author's rational subjectivity and philosophy.