What’s love? American linguist George Lakoff would most certainly reply with the commentary that “love is a journey.” That is what is understood in linguistics as a conceptual metaphor, as it describes an enjoy this is concrete – like shuttle – to speak about every other extra summary and intangible one – love.
Those metaphors are manifested in language via expressions. When a pair says that their individuals “have gone their separate ways,” the conceptual framework for explaining that they have got separated is that of 2 vacationers who’ve shared a part of the adventure and at the moment are opting for new locations. This is, the elemental metaphor is that love is conceptualized as a adventure.
After we speak about love, it’s attention-grabbing to consider how this concept arises. Particularly the best of romantic love that mates components equivalent to dominance and jealousy with relationships. Beneath this sort of development of affection are metaphors equivalent to: ‘love is destruction’, ‘love is ownership’ or ‘love is struggling’. Those conceptualizations are a part of deep tradition and are manifested in expressions like “whoever loves you well will make you suffer.”
Language is carefully intertwined with the best way we perceive relationships. Everton Villa/Unsplash
To deconstruct this cultural part, it’s price making an allowance for the Sapir-Whorf speculation, or the linguistic relativity speculation, which claims that language impacts the best way we expect. In its robust model, it proposes that language determines concept, whilst in its vulnerable model, it proposes that it merely stipulations it. And after we speak about language, we essentially discuss with the language-culture degree as a result of they’re inseparable realities, two aspects of the similar coin.
On this sense, song is a key part of tradition. There are artists, like Rosalia, who’ve an outstanding command of languages, sounds and cultures. Because of this, the Catalan singer – along with her crew – manages to articulate other semiotic components with the precision of a pentagram surgeon, growing meanings that serve as as a replicate for society and act as a surprise.
That is how she laid the principles of LUKS, her new album, an instance of multilingualism and interculturality that also is impressed via the female mystique via connecting ladies with languages and cultures (for instance: Joan of Arc in French or Solar Bu’er in Chinese language). Their first unmarried “Berghain” is a commentary of intent for what may also be heard within the complete frame.
However how is love conceptualized in “Bergain”? Let’s communicate in regards to the linguistics of affection in Rosalia.
‘El amor es comunion’: His blood is my blood
The poem in German starts with the parallels of the development “Seine (Ks) ist meine (Ks)” (“His (Ks) is my (Ks)”) through which the religious measurement of the paintings is obviously manifested via your entire id of the fans.
Identities merge the place the lyrical voice takes at the id of the beloved one, making their fears, their anger, their manner of loving, or even biologically, their blood, their very own. Those linguistic manifestations have as their fundamental part the conceptual metaphor ‘love is union’, however making an allowance for the religious and bodily nature with which it’s formulated, it might most certainly be maximum correct to reexamine the metaphor as ‘love is union’.
Masterfully, Rosalie interrupts this conceptualization of romantic love with an overly robust metaphor within the line “Vie ein Blei-Teddibar…, Deglig ist mein Herz so schver”, making a distinction with the “teddy bear” and “lead bear” with which she identifies to substantiate that the entirety is in her middle.
On this manner, a brand new metaphor is activated (“emotions are a physical burden”) that interacts with the former one, deconstructing the best of romantic love. Working out love as a group can develop into, satirically, a burden for the frame and soul.
‘Love is transmutation’: I am only a sugar dice
After the liturgy comes the confession, for which Rosalia makes use of Spanish. Those verses soak up the former metaphor and there are linguistic manifestations which might be a part of the metaphors related to the body that “love is fellowship” generates. Within the verse “I know the heat is melting me”, the elemental metaphor is “love is a transformation”; The heat that love offers transforms, however on this case the transformation is framed in adverse frames: melting, this is, the lack of one’s personal id.
Additionally, when he claims that he’s “just a sugar cube”, it’s identified as a result of love may also be sweetness but in addition fragility on the identical time. This is, the poetic self studies transmutation via love; toxic love that burdens and destroys.

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‘Love is ownership’: I will fuck you till you’re keen on me
The English language breaks with liturgy and divinity. The road “I’ll fuck you until you love me” is one of the complicated in the entire music as it embodies a contradiction that breaks with the metaphor “love is togetherness”.
Even if love is the union of soul and frame, right here each are separated since the feeling is conceptualized because the dominance of the soul over the frame. This obviously alludes to relationships through which we have a tendency to generate an emotional dependence on intercourse, this is, it’s in reality a deconstruction of the “love is domination” metaphor. The word does now not have a sexual nature, however seeks to dismantle romantic love.
Thus, the verse acts as a speech act this is useless because of its personal contradiction. The aim and the medium are by contrast, reactivating the spiritual framework in which the poem passes. The “diabolical” isn’t to be present in using the vulgar sign up, however within the perversion of the best of affection: the affection that guarantees salvation finally ends up, satirically, as earthly condemnation.
