Hines: A Metaphorical Analysis

Hines’s work mainly focuses on metaphorical expressions applying to women to be found in the English language, but previous research has shown that the semantic derogation of women is attested in French (see Guiraud 1986 [1967], Yaguello 1978, Michard 2002) and Italian (see Sabatini 1987, Delmay 1990), too.

By these examples of animal metaphors Hines has demonstrated that people very often talk and reason about an entity or event in terms of another. People compare a phenomenon they are more familiar. She further suggests that the use of lexico-grammatical means that discriminate against women

Nazar Lagi Raja Tore Bangle Par

Main jo hoti raja ban ki koyalia

Kuhuk rahti raja tore bangle par

II. Koyal Bin Bagiya Na Sobhe (Bhojpuri folk song)

On the other hand, the existence of such metaphorical expressions does not necessarily mean that comparable ones are not available for men when these are regarded as objects of sexual desire. On the basis of the above observations, we propose to address two main issues:

(I) To check the cross-linguistic applicability of the English metaphors identified by Hines concerning the view of women as objects of sexual desire in Hindi-Urdu.

(II) To check whether women who are viewed as objects of desire, are trivialised and discriminated in these South Asian languages as they are in English?

(III) To assess the ideological import of the metaphors that apply to women by comparing them to derogatory or trivialising metaphors.

(IV) To measure whether these sexually considered metaphors (a) equally applying to both women and men.

(V) Are the cross domain mappings that allow one to metaphoricise desired women as small or immature animals (consider, e.g., kitty, filly) also available to talk to or about desired

Therefore the woman considered being the sub-human in the great chain of being, has to be compared to an animal to be insulted and disrespected. Finally, the data reported in the present study show that the same or very similar animal terms used to refer to female are also used also as invectives and insults to women.

Bakri “goat” -(fem/sing)”

Gae “Cow” -(fem/sing)”

Faxta “dove” -(fem/sing)”

Lomri “ fox” -(fem/sing)” On the other hand animal metaphors used for men are generally used as commendations and compliments

Sher “lion” -(masc/sing)”

Chita “tiger” -(masc/sing)” “dove” -(masc/sing)”

Lomri “ fox” -(fem/sing)”

The data seem to suggest that although the language system makes available to language users tools for talking about women and men in the same way, language usage tends to unfavourably depict women more often than men. Indeed, recent studies on street discourse (Koller 2002) indicate the possibility for women to be conceptualised as animals (more specifically, as sexualised animals) twice as often as men. In addition, our data suggest that the ideological significance of a metaphor can be better assessed when compared to and contrasted with metaphors used in complementary domains of experience; more generally, this may indicate a need not to dismiss the social and cultural history of the language under examination. Metaphorical animal terms for humans, often