written by Khouloud Benassar (Hassan II University of Casablanca, khouloud.benassar-etu@etu.univh2c.ma), recipient of a travel and fieldwork bursary from the Philological Society

With support from the Philological Society’s Travel Bursary, I attended the 52^nd Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics (CALL 2023), which took place at Leiden University, Netherlands, from 28^th–30^th August 2023. The colloquium had sixty-three presentations, studied various African Languages, and covered broad topics in linguistics, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics.

As part of the Wednesday morning session of the colloquium, I gave a 20-minute presentation entitled ‘Sensory Metaphors in Moroccan Arabic: A Cognitive Approach’, followed by 10 minutes of discussion. In this presentation, I investigated how our senses—vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste—give rise to abstract concepts in Moroccan Arabic, leading to what is called sensory or perception metaphors, such as KNOWING IS SEEING, which have previously been studied by cognitive linguists such as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980, 1999), Eve E. Sweetser (1990) and Christopher Johnson (1999). 

The presentation also discussed whether sensory metaphors are universal, since they are based on our biological propensities, or if there is a place for cross-linguistic and cross-cultural variation and diversity. Based on data analysis, I argued that Moroccan Arabic shares many sensory metaphors with other languages, supporting the universality hypothesis. However, a comparison of sensory metaphors in Moroccan Arabic with those in other languages, as studied by various scholars, reveals significant variation. Therefore, it is important to consider both cognitive and cultural dimensions when studying sensory metaphors.

My participation in the colloquium enabled me to get valuable feedback on my research from various researchers in the field including Professor Maarten Mous and Professor Maarten Kossmann. Other researchers additionally mentioned that some metaphors discussed in Moroccan Arabic are also used in other languages; for example, the OBEYING IS HEARING metaphor is also used in German.

I am grateful to the Philological Society for supporting my PhD research with a travel bursary to participate in person in the 52^nd Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics. This opportunity has allowed me to meet and be inspired by a community of linguists from outside my home country.

More information on the colloquium can be found on the website: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/2023/08/52th-colloquium-on-african-languages-and-linguistics

References

Johnson, Christopher. 1999. ‘Metaphor vs. conflation in the acquisition of polysemy: the case of see’. In Cultural, Psychological and Typological Issues in Cognitive Linguistics, edited by Masako K. Hiraga, Chris Sinha, and Sherman Wilcox. Vol. 152. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, IV. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.

Sweetser, Eve E. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.