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Description
Contemporary English song lyrics provide rich linguistic evidence of how emotional experience is cognitively structured through embodied figurative meaning. Drawing on Cognitive Linguistics, particularly Image Schema Theory, this study investigates how love and loss are conceptualized through three recurrent embodied schemas: PATH, CONTAINER, and FORCE. Previous studies on figurative language in popular music have largely focused on metaphor as a stylistic or thematic device, while less attention has been given to the image-schematic structures that organize emotional meaning at a deeper cognitive level. To address this gap, the present study examines a selected dataset of contemporary English song lyrics containing figurative expressions related to romantic attachment, heartbreak, memory, separation, emotional pain, and self-reconstruction. Using qualitative cognitive-semantic analysis, the study identifies and interprets recurring linguistic patterns associated with movement and return, containment and escape, bodily damage, emotional pressure, confinement, and resistance. The findings reveal that love is frequently structured through the PATH schema, where romantic experience is represented as movement, return, departure, falling, circling, and escape. Heartbreak is strongly shaped by the CONTAINER schema, in which the heart, mind, dreams, memories, relationships, and inner worlds function as bounded emotional spaces. Emotional suffering is further organized through the FORCE schema, where love and loss are represented as impact, damage, compulsion, destruction, and resistance. Importantly, these schemas do not operate separately; rather, they interact to construct love and loss as embodied experiences of moving through, being trapped within, and being acted upon by emotional forces. The study contributes to cognitive linguistic research by showing that contemporary song lyrics do not merely express emotion, but cognitively organize emotional experience through recurring spatial and force-dynamic structures.
Keywords: image schemas, Cognitive Linguistics, PATH schema, CONTAINER schema, FORCE schema, love, heartbreak, contemporary English song lyrics.
Biography
Dr. Huynh Ngoc Mai Kha is Vice Rector of the University of Foreign Language Studies, The University of Danang, Vietnam. She holds a PhD in Contrastive Linguistics from the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences and a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership from the University of Queensland, Australia. Her research interests include cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor theory, English language education, teacher professional development, technology-enhanced language teaching, multilingualism, and language education policy. She has led and participated in several university- and ministry-level research projects and has published widely on cognitive metaphor, English language teaching, ICT integration, multilingual education, and teacher training for English education reform.
Ms. Ho Le Hoang Ha holds a Master’s degree in English Language from University of Foreign Language Studies, The University of Danang, Vietnam. She is currently working at the Department of Research and International Cooperation at the same institution.
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