When Metaphors Cross Cultures

The focus in this paper is on the kind of metaphors that is pervasive in everyday life and more specifically in everyday literal language the kind of metaphor that is referred to as “conceptual automatic”. In this paper, I explain reasons for having different and similar metaphors across languages by taking the comparison between the Arabic spoken in the western area of the Arabian (WS Arabic) and English as an exle. This paper concludes that metaphor similarities or differences between languages could be a result of differences in one or more of the metaphor shaping factors which are: extent of different cultures, geographic environments, speaker’s values and personality, thinking modes, mental concepts, views of the world, feelings, and human relationships. In this paper, I emphasize that to arrive at more accurate conclusions when finding out conceptual metaphor similarities and differences, we should not neglect the indirect effect of mainstream languages on nonmainstream ones.