Malleability of Meaning and Metaphorical Extension: The Case of HEAD and FACE in Thai and Korean

Abstract

Recent comparative research on HEAD (Rhee et al., 2025) and FACE (Khammee & Rhee, 2022) in Thai and Korean has shown that even the lexemes denoting body-parts of perceptual salience and functional indispensability may have both commonalities and theoretically significant differences across languages. It has been argued that the differences have derived from the idiosyncratic disparities in conceptualization of the body-parts in the course of metaphorical extension of their meanings, as well as the differences in lexicalization strategies. Previous studies were largely based on semantic designations provided by dictionaries. However, a delay exists between dictionary designations and emergent word meanings created by speech communities, in accordance with the well-known fact that words change in meaning over time as language users innovate new meanings and cease using words for certain meanings. In light of this phenomenon, the present study investigates such gaps in terms of innovation and obsolescence, based on an extensive picture-based survey on Thai and Korean monolinguals. The findings show that new meanings are created based on specific metaphorical strategies favored by the language. More importantly, there are many instances where the dictionary meanings are overridden by the survey participants’ recognition patterns.