Conceptual Metaphor of Happiness/Joy in Lithuanian Comics

Abstract

This article analyses happiness in Lithuanian Comics albums. This will yield, enrich, and qualify Forceville’s (2005a), Earden’s (2009) earlier findings on the visual representation of the Idealized Cognitive Model of anger in the Asterix album La Zizanie, Bart Eerden’s finding in anger investigations in “Anger in Asterix: The metaphorical representation of anger in comics and animated filmsâ€, as well as insights made by Kazuko Shihara and Yoshihiro Matsunaka in “Pictorial metaphors of emotion in Japanese comicsâ€. On the other hand we also try to extend Forceville’s view to other types of emotion, such as happiness. To attain this goal, we examine pictorial manifestations of emotion in Lithuanian comics. The source of this type of the manifestation is visual or pictorial metaphor, where meanings are conveyed via pictorial or visual signs. The target is emotion, which belongs to a more abstract domain of psychological experience. In this kind of metaphor, the picture can be interpreted as representing emotion of happiness. Data are taken from Lithuanian comic books and Internet sites, where comics have been presented. The data and the analysis we are providing in this article aims to reveal that there are pictorial metaphors that manifest conceptual metaphors that are also expressed verbally and that methodological framework constructed for the analysis in the papers by Forceville at all is applicable to other emotions and culture specific pictorial manifestations.