Metaphors about women

This book is the result of research conducted in the field of linguistics at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. Its objective is to analyze metaphors about women from a linguistic and conceptual perspective, seeking to understand the process of interpreting the metaphorical phenomenon. We conducted a linguistic and conceptual analysis of metaphors about women in the Brazilian context, collecting metaphorical sentences from women’s and men’s magazines, women’s websites, jokes, and popular phrases. We sought to find out if there were any regularities; to confirm whether the construction of the meaning of the metaphor is based on the traits of the source domains or on stereotypes formulated by the speech community; and to prove the participation of context in the task of highlighting or erasing traits from the source domains. We concluded that there are four categories of source domains: animals, artifacts and their properties, elements of nature, and fictional elements, and that the features of these categories and the concepts associated with them lead to interpretations linked to physical characteristics, sexual behavior, temperament, and intelligence.