Some languages contain linguistic expressions such as “white forehead”, “dark forehead” which mean respectively ‘happy’ and ‘unhappy’. How do you categorize such expressions? On the one hand, here the forehead stands for emotion. Therefore, the metonym BODILY FOR EMOTIONAL might be present here. On the other hand, the forehead is characterized as being white and dark. However, whiteness and darkness here have nothing to do with the actual color of the foreheads of particular people. They are used metaphorically. Therefore, my question is this: are these expressions the linguistic manifestations of a metonymy based metaphor? Or there is another explanation for this?
Metonymy-based metaphor?
Some languages contain linguistic expressions such as “white forehead”, “dark forehead” which mean respectively ‘happy’ and ‘unhappy’. How do you categorize such expressions? On the one hand, here the forehead stands for emotion. Therefore, the metonym BODILY FOR EMOTIONAL might be present here. On the other hand, the forehead is characterized as being white and dark. However, whiteness and darkness here have nothing to do with the actual color of the foreheads of particular people. They are used metaphorically.