The experiential basis of the concept of morality in German and Hungarian

Abstract

The concept of morality is deeply rooted in the consciousness of a people, yet it is difficult for ordinary people to grasp. We rarely talk openly about morality, yet our concept of morality is reflected in our language. In this study, the mentioned concept is approached from the theorems of cognitive linguistics. I would like to highlight a segment of my multilevel research in German and Hungarian language corpora, the empirical basis of the moral concept. The experiential basis of our moral conception can be said to be potentially universal, however, potentially universal conceptualization can take specific forms due to the sociocultural characteristics of the context. The study is intended to present the characteristic features of this process in the Hungarian and German cultural context. The research was conducted on two corpora, each containing 3,000 statements. The Hungarian language sample was compiled from the Hungarian National Corpus (hereinafter HNC) operated by the Institute of Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. To compile the German sample, the National Corpus of Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (DWDS) was used. The identified metaphorical linguistic expressions were subjected to qualitative and quantitative analysis. The results highlighted that there are shifts in emphasis in the two languages regarding conceptual metaphors, but no significant differences can be detected. Keywords: cognitive linguistics, metaphorical conceptualization, cultural context, morality, experiential basis.