Semantics of Eating in Afrikaans, Northern Sotho and Georgian: Cross-linguistic Variation in Metaphor

The study of conceptual metaphor is of particular importance in the theory of cognitive semantics (Geeraerts 2010: 203-222). Building on the theory of Lakoff and Johnson (1980), metaphor is viewed not merely as a linguistic feature but as a conceptual and culturally grounded phenomenon. Following the work of Taljard and Bosman (2014) on Afrikaans and Northern Sotho, this research investigates metaphors related to the semantics of eating in Georgian and compares the findings cross-linguistically. The study is corpus-based and draws on data from the Georgian National Corpus, the English-Georgian Parallel Corpus, and Araneum Georgianum. Keywords associated with eating (e.g., “eat,” “swallow,” “digest”) were used to identify metaphorical expressions, which were then categorised into agent-oriented, patient-oriented, and mixed groups. The analysis shows that Georgian shares 12 of the metaphorical categories previously identified in Afrikaans and Northern Sotho. Additionally, Georgian demonstrates four unique metaphorical extensions only depicted in the Georgian context. The findings support the idea that conceptual metaphors are largely universal, grounded in shared human experience, while still allowing for language-specific variations. This study highlights both cross-linguistic convergence and cultural nuance in metaphorical systems.