Embodied soul Conceptualizations in Metonymies and Metaphors in Selkup

This chapter deals with embodied soul conceptualizations in Selkup and their conceptualization by metonymies and metaphors. Selkup is a Samoyedic language, spoken today by 1,000 people between the rivers Ob and Yenisei. This small group of people differs greatly in respect for their language and culture. The soul conceptualizations in Selkup are complex and manifold: there are ten different words meaning ‘soul’, which are dialectally scattered. In ethnographic works, the conceptualizations of the different souls are not well described and a lack of a consistent terminology can be stated. All this leads to the assessment that the structure of the concept of soul in Selkup is complex and manifold and that a variety of metonymies and metaphors based on embodied soul conceptualizations are to be expected. The structure of the article is as follows: after a short description of the Selkup soul conceptualizations, whose pluralistic character is opposed to the general dualistic soul conceptualizations of other members of the Uralic language family, follows an analysis of soul denotations in Selkup with regard to their semantic structure. This analysis emphasizes the fact that the breath and some internal organs play an important role in the motivation for nomination. Afterward I focus on two embodied soul conceptualizations, which are present in all Selkup dialects, and their metonymic and metaphorical use. The aim of this chapter is to shed light on a special part of cultural cognition—soul conceptualizations—and the realization of cognitive processes in language. Such cognitive processes connected with soul conceptualizations are rooted in ancient times and give us a glimpse into traditional thinking, which can be seen in metonymical and metaphorical language use.