The metaphor of body parts in oil terminology in the CPLP space

Angola, Brazil and Portugal in focus

Abstract

This study aims to analyze body part linguistic metaphors in petroleum terminology within the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), specifically in Angola, Brazil, and Portugal. The theoretical framework is based on the Sociocognitive Theory of Terminology (SCT) by Temmerman (2000) and the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) by Lakoff & Johnson (1980). As a methodology, the primary data source is the only terminographic work on oil in Portuguese, titled Dicionário do petróleo em língua portuguesa: exploração e produção de petróleo e gás (Dictionary of Petroleum in Portuguese: Exploration and Production of Oil and Gas), organized by Eloi Fernández y Fernández, Oswaldo A. Pedrosa Junior, and Ántonio Correia Pinho, which is the result of a collaboration between Angola, Brazil, and Portugal, the three main oil-producing countries within the CPLP. The analysis revealed that metaphors are highly prevalent in the petroleum domain, with many of these metaphors associated with semantic fields related to human-world relationships, such as body parts, animals, clothing, family relationships, and colors. For this study, the semantic field body parts, focusing on the terms head, mouth, umbilical, arm, tonsil, leg, throat, neck, finger and eye.