180 Chapter 4 ‘I am well on my way’ in English, ‘ik ben goed op weg’ in Dutch, ‘ich bin auf dem richtigen Weg’ in German or ‘sono sulla buona strada’ in Italian. These examples illustrate the crosslinguistic appearance of the metaphor: they all reflect the idea that reaching a goal involves a journey (purposes are destinations).604 On the other hand, changes and variations of conceptual metaphors between languages and across time may indicate culturally specific understandings of abstract concepts (and possibly culturally specific embodied perceptions of the world).605 In the analysis below, we will identify a variation of the life is a journey metaphor, which may possibly point to a culturally specific conceptual metaphor in medieval Greek language use.606 4.3 Holiness and metaphors of travel A range of metaphors with travel-related terminology can be distinguished in the Life of Gregory. When reading the Life, I listed all the linguistic metaphorical expressions that have mobility either as source or target domain. Some of the examples found in the text reflect conceptual metaphors that already have been identified in other CMT literature for other languages. These concern life is a journey, purposes are destinations,607 making life decisions is choosing a path608 and difficulties are obstacles on the road.609 Other conceptual metaphors I identified myself. These include politeia is a journey, dying is an unknown path,610 virtue is (the destination of) a path, ascesis is a (uneven) path, spiritual progress is running up to a height and being wrong is wandering. The linguistic metaphorical expressions found in the Life of Gregory are listed in appendix 9, grouped according to these conceptual metaphors. The conceptual metaphors purposes are destinations, making life decisions is choosing a path and difficulties are obstacles on the road are more specific conceptual metaphors that belong to the general life is a journey metaphor. This conceptual metaphor was identified by Lakoff and Turner, and as the examples above have illustrated, it is prevalent in multiple languages.611 The endurance of this metaphor may be explained by the recognisability of the source domain and because of close correspondences in the embodied perception between essential aspects of the source and target domain. That 604 For further discussion on the appearance of the same conceptual metaphors in several unrelated languages, such as English, Hungarian, Chinese and Zulu (e.g., the metaphors happiness is up and body heat stands for anger), and for further research, see e.g., Kovecses (2002), pp. 195–214. 605 See e.g., the various contributions in Díaz-Vera (2015) and Gibbs (2011), pp. 538–540. 606 More research should be done to verify or falsify the cultural specificity of this conceptual metaphor. 607 E.g., in Lakoff and Turner (1989), pp. 52–53. 608 Examples discussed in e.g., Trim (2015), p. 107. 609 difficulties are obstacles is identified e.g., in Kövecses (2022), p. 134. See also difficulties are impediments in Kovecses (2002), p. 207. I rendered the conceptual metaphor more specific as difficulties are obstacles on the road. 610 The identification of this metaphor is close to a conceptual metaphor already identified in metaphor research, namely death is the end of life’s journey and death is going to a final destination. See Lakoff and Turner (1989), pp. 7–8. 611 See Lakoff and Turner (1989).
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