Lakoff & Johnson (1980) give metaphor and metonymy an important
role in conceptualization and in linguistic meaning. Lakoff (1985) claims
that psychological states or processes like the emotions are conceptualized
primarily via metaphor and metonymy, which he demonstrates
convincingly in his study of the linguistic expressions of the concept of
anger in American English. In the following essay, a characterization of the
concept of depression in American English is attempted along the following
lines: first, the relevant metaphors are isolated and briefly analysed, then
the metonymies motivating them are discussed, and finally an approximate
formal cognitive model of the concept is proposed on the basis of these
data.
