Universality and cultural variation in the conceptualisation of love via metaphors, metonymies and cultural scripts: the case of Montenegrin

. This paper studies the conceptualisation of love by the Montenegrin student population, via conceptual metaphors, metonymies and related concepts, as well as through the lenses of cultural scripts. The corpus with the conceptual instantiations was collected using a sentence-completion elicitation questionnaire, which was administered to Montenegrin university students. The aim was to identify the cognitive model of love of the targeted population, and to determine the level of universality and cultural variation of the conceptualisations identified. The results suggest that the level of universality and culture-specificity depends on how generally we define the conceptualisation – the superordinate-level, i.e. more general and abstract metaphors displayed more universality, whereas more cultural specificity was likely to be found in the basic-level metaphors, i.e. narrower metaphors.


Introduction
This study explores the metaphors and metonymies used to conceptualise love, as well as the related concepts which form part of the cognitive model of this emotion, in the language and culture of Montenegrin university students. Theoretically, it is rooted in the work by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), who established the theory of conceptual metaphor, as well as the work authored by Kövecses (2010), who has greatly contributed to the study of metaphor and culture, and especially metaphors and emotion. Additionally, we apply the concepts of superordinate and basic-level metaphors (Lakoff 1987: 406), to account for the level of generality conveyed by the metaphor, and the concept of cultural scripts (Goddard & Wierzbicka 2004) to develop a prototypical definition of love as shared by our respondents. The basic premise which the paper rests on is that the analysis will result in identifying the conceptualisation of love which is mostly universal, i.e. shared with other cultures, but also, to an extent, culturally specific, taking into account the social context which has shaped it over time.

Theoretical background
In the theoretical section of the paper, we shall first briefly present the conceptual metaphor and metonymy theory. In the more concrete terms, we shall present the relation between conceptual metaphors and metonymies, on the one hand, and culture, on the other hand, as perceived in the literature, and then provide an overview of the previous research related to the conceptualisation of love.

Conceptualisation -metaphor, metonymy and the related concepts
The arrival of conceptual metaphor followed the realisation that metaphor was more than just a rhetorical ornament or figure of speech and that, indeed, it was part of our conceptualisation system, our thinking basically, which turned out to be quite metaphorical in its nature. This idea underlies the seminal work -Metaphors we Live by, authored by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), which lay the foundations for the cognitive study of metaphor. In other words, in this line of theory and research, metaphor is thought to be facilitating our understanding of the world and thus exceeding the level of just linguistic expression; rather, it is understood as a mental mapping in our brain which is reflected in the language (Lakoff 1987;Langacker 1987;Fauconnier 1994Fauconnier , 1997Gibbs 1994;Taylor 2002;Kövecses 2005). As such, metaphor is omnipresent and it is used to various discourse and pragmatic purposes (Martin 2010;Jackson 2012).
The rationale behind the metaphorical mechanism is that one domain is mapped onto another domain, i.e. A is B, or we think of A as B. Let us explain the mechanism by using a common metaphor time is money. In this metaphor, money is the domain which is more concrete as it is based in our daily experience with banknotes, coins etc. On the other hand, time is an abstract notion. Using the metaphorical analogy, we map the more concrete domain, the source domain of money, onto the more abstract domain, the target domain of time. As a result, we think of time in terms of money, or of time as money. It is a mental process which is reflected in various linguistic expressions such as to spend, waste, cost or invest time, inter alia.
The relation between the source and the target domain is such that one particular source domain can be mapped onto various target domains or vice versa -for instance, time can also be thought of as a moving object (e.g. Time flew by), container (e.g. We did it in three minutes), or water (e.g. the great river of time). The choice of the domains to be mapped depends on various conditions, among which various human experiential aspects prevail (Kövecses 2010: 85), but also the culturally specific factors play an important role. Thus, the moving objects and containers are experience-based, whereas the latter metaphor (time is water) is culturally specific -it is rather infrequent in English, but it abounds, for example, in Chinese, where water is one of the basic elements in the Chinese culture (Hongxiao & Wilcox 2015). We shall say more about the relationship between metaphor and culture in the next section.
"In case of metonymy, conceptual projection takes place within the same domain, unlike metaphor, where one domain is conceived in terms of another" (Lakoff & Johnson 1980). Common metonymic patterns include part for the whole (e.g. I see some new faces today > face for the person), object used for user (e.g. The piano has the flu today > piano for the piano player), producer for the product (e.g. She loves Dalí > dalí for dalí's paintings), place for the event (e.g. The U.S. administration doesn't want another Pearl Harbour > pearl harbour for the historical event of bombing pearl harbour), etc. As in the case of metaphors, metonymies are also marked by universality and cultural specificity (Zhang 2013) -in the examples above, the metonymy face for the person is probably universal, whereas the metonymy pearl harbour for the historical event of bombing pearl harbour displays specificity. Both metaphors and metonymies allow for and facilitate understanding; metonymy, however, also has a referential function (Lakoff & Johnson 1980).
What we attempt at in this paper is extrapolating a cognitive model (i.e. a prototypical mental representation) of love, as shared amongst the Montenegrin student population. This model, according to Kövecses (2008b), comprises both conceptual metaphors and conceptual metonymies, as well as the related concepts. The author defines the related concepts as those which form a part of the network of concepts associated with the concept in question -"romantic love, for example, seems to have a very large and elaborate network of concepts, including friendship, respect, intimacy, affection, sexual desire, enthusiasm, and others" (Kövecses 1990: 41). These can be ordered on a periphery-to-centrality scale -liking and affection would be more central, as they are inherent to love, whereas the others are just loosely associated with love and thus more peripheral (e.g. friendship and respect) (see Rosch 1978;Kövecses 2008a).
This comprehensive model is quite useful for studies working with authentic data, which apply the bottom-up approach, as is the case with our study of the conceptualisation of love.
In addition, we apply the terms superordinate (or constitutive) and basic-level (or principal) metaphors, developed by Lakoff (1987: 406). The former use source domains such which are more abstract and general, whereas the others convey basic-level concepts, more rooted in the experience, which are "information-rich and rich in conventional mental imagery" (Ibid). Lakoff uses the example of the metaphors conceptualising anger to differentiate between the two metaphor types -the superordinate ones contain the source domains such as entity, intensity, limit, force and control, whereas those basic-level ones contain source domains such as hot fluid, insanity, fire, burden, struggle (Ibid). Kövecses (2010: 204) notes that conceptualisations occur under a simultaneous impact of two factors, or pressures, as he puts it -that of the universal body experience and that of the context determined by a specific culture. Thus, on the one hand, "since bodily experience is pretty much alike across the globe, image schemas are likely to be universal, and their associated conceptual metaphors will probably be shared by many different cultures" (Boers 1999: 48). On the other hand, however, cognition stems from the interaction of the body with the cultural world (Gibbs 1999: 162). Thus, some metaphors and metonymies tend to be more universal, whereas others are largely shaped by the context and the culture they originate from (Lakoff & Johnson 1980;Grady 1997;Hines 1999;Goatly 1998;I-wen Su 2002;Perović 2009Perović , 2011Kövecses 2010;Koller 2011;Zhang 2013). Further, cultures and languages themselves are not monolithic but instead comprise much diversity arising from social, regional, ethnic, subcultural, diachronic and individual differences, all of which can be factors specifically shaping our conceptualisations.

Conceptualisation and culture
The ratio of what is universal and what is culturally specific is still a matter of debate, although some researchers have pointed out that too much emphasis has been given to the universality of the conceptual structures, which has, in turn, resulted in neglecting the many cases of conceptualisations which are not universal (Fernandez 1991;Kövecses 2005Kövecses , 2010. We might say that metaphors and metonymies can provide an insightful snapshot of the beliefs and values of the culture and language they are part of. As Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 22) argue, "the most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts in the culture". Thus, the metaphors we use to understand the intangibles such as time, inner life, moral values, emotions, social institutions, are vital to the way we experience them in a culture (Kövecses 2005: 2). In other words, the cultural patterns shape the way we conceptualise our reality and this mostly occurs via conceptual metaphors (Kövecses 2006: 109-110;Dragićević 2008: 83).
We have already noted that the linguistic analysis of conceptual metaphor and metonymy goes deeply into cognition. The relation of cognition, language and culture has been the focal point of another theory relevant to our paper -that of cultural scripts, as proposed by Wierzbicka (2006) and Goddard and Wierzbicka (2004). This theory has been largely influential in the studies of the interface between language and culture, and may thus provide another framework for our study.
As speech communities vary in the way they speak and how people think about social interaction, the term script has been developed to account for these differences, to represent the common assumptions that underly the community's discourse conventions.
We shall illustrate the concept of scripts using the one relevant for our paper -that for love, as understood in the Western world, developed by Wierzbicka (1992: 145): love (X loves person Y) (a) X knows Y (b) X feels something good towards Y (c) X wants to be with Y (d) X wants to do good things for Y The script assumes that love means wanting to be with another person and to do good things for him/her. In addition, Goddard developed a similar, somewhat broader definition (2003: 121): X loves person-Y = X thinks good things about Y X wants to do good things for Y X wants good things to happen to Y X often thinks about Y when X thinks about Y, X often feels something good The script can be broken down into three components: X thinks about Y -the rational component; X feels good toward Y -the sensual component; and X wants to do only good things for Y -the component of will (Rubtcova & Pavenkov 2015: 9).
Although these two are Western scripts of love, we assume that there is some universality in them. Still, Wierzbicka (1992: 147) notes that "it is an illusion to think that it is a universal, 'natural', or 'basic' human concept". Gareis and Wilkins (2011: 225) suggest that "the term love is an outcome of sociocultural forces... culture and love are symbiotic".
It will be interesting to see how the Montenegrin student script for love fits into the Western ones presented above. The concept of cultural scripts might provide a framework for our model, reconstructed by generalising the metaphors at the superordinate level, especially in the domain of intracultural variation (Kövecses 2010), i.e. the communication and contact between the various historical points of within a single culture. The diachronic awareness might allow us to explain any cultural residues.

Conceptualisation of love
Love belongs to the general field of emotions and the language of emotions seems to be very figurative. Generally, emotions as the abstract domain are most often conceptualised in terms of matter (Klikovac 2000: 191-203) -more specifically, liquid, man, animal, plant, fire, storm, mechanism and load (Dragićević 2006: 99-100). The conceptual metaphors for emotions are derived from the primary metaphors, which can be hierarchically organised (Grady 1999).
On the top of the hierarchy of the conceptual metaphors for emotions, we naturally find the most generic or superordinate ones: causes are forces (Talmy 1988;Kövecses 2008a) and emotions are forces. As forces can be either natural or physical, somewhat narrower metaphors are emotions are physical forces and emotions are natural forces. Love is one of the emotions, which allows for still narrower metaphors: love is a physical force and love is a natural force (Kövecses 2010: 111). The bottom end of the hierarchy is occupied by the more concrete metaphors, i.e. basic-level metaphors, such as love is fire, instantiated by the metaphorical expressions such as to burn with love, keep the flame alive, rekindle romance, etc.
Commenting on variation in conceptual metaphor, Kövecses (2005) notes that love as the abstract domain is understood differently across cultures. Thus, "love is conceptualised as a journey, unity, hunting, and so forth, in many cultures, including English, Hungarian, and Chinese, but in Chinese love is flying a kite" (Kövecses 2005: 3). In this quote, we see that some of the conceptualisations may be largely universal, whereas others are culturally specific (the kite analogy).
It would be difficult to try to list of all conceptual metaphors for love identified in the cognitive literature, but we shall name some of the most well-known ones: love is a journey / unity / madness / magic (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), trap / container / economic exchange / game / food / fire (Kövecses 2005), fluid / opponent / captive animal / war / social superior / rapture (Kövecses 2008a), hunt (Lopez Maestre 2015), etc. However, not many papers have been devoted to the study of the conceptualisation of love in the cultures of small nations, such as the Montenegrin. Such studies could suggest how many of the said metaphors are cross-cultural, as well as reveal some culturally specific ones, to add to the array. Using Kövecses' work as a starting point, Tissari (2003) devotes special attention to the conceptualisation of love in English, being the first to offer a diachronic perspective to the issue. This is a most in-depth study of the matter and, in addition, it is corpus-based, unlike most of the other studies.
Thus far, metaphors of love have been understudied in Montenegrin and in the related languages of the Western Balkans as well. Two authors have dealt with the topic -Stanojević studies the metaphor love is war in Croatian (1999), whereas Perović (2017) studies how woman, man, marriage and love are conceptualised in Montenegrin.
The metonymic representations of love have been studied much less, but this can also be said for the study of metonymy in general. Sometimes, metonymy is reduced to just a subtype of metaphor but even when granted separate existence, its studies are usually subordinate to that of metaphor (Truszczyńska 2003: 221). Another issue is that "whether we apply a more or less traditional account of metonymy, it constantly intertwines with metaphor in the data" (Tissari 2003: 416), as the line between the two is often not a clear-cut one. Among the rare authors to deal with this issue (although this interest was also subordinate to that of studying metaphors), is Kövecses, who identifies a number of conceptual metonymies for love: intimate sexual behaviour stands for love, body heat stands for love (1990), increase in heart rate stands for love, blushing stands for love, dizziness stands for love, physical weakness stands for love, sweaty palms stand for love, inability to breathe stands for love, interference with accurate perception stands for love, inability to think stands for love, preoccupation with another stands for love, physical closeness stands for love, sex stands for love (2000), etc.
Our empirical data should determine the percentage of the conceptual metaphor and the conceptual metonymy used for conceptualising love amongst our respondents and we shall devote our attention to the study of both accordingly, so as to avoid the trap of any bias towards metonymy as a "minor" conceptualisation mechanism.
The perception of love is largely shaped by the social and historical factors, which yield many different conceptualisations. Let us, for example, briefly consider how romantic love and its conceptualisations have evolved over time. Giddens (1995: 8) notes that love comes from the universal human feelings and emotions, where, sociologically, love expresses the mutual physical and personal attraction between two individuals. We often too readily believe that such an idea of romantic love has always been the norm, but the notion has become generally accepted only as of late and only in some parts of the world; such view of love was not part of many cultures for most of the human history. Romantic love is not (necessarily) a natural part of human life -it is actually shaped by the socio-historical influences; however, the developed world today views emotional communication or intimacy as the foundation of a good relationship (Giddens 2009: 330). Thus, the conceptualisation of this kind of love has varied from that of the necessary weakness or even a kind of disease (Monter 1977: 123), to that of the holy unity (in the Christian context, in particular), or the contemporary Western views including sport, gamble, etc. Still, in her diachronic cognitive study, Tissari (2003: 367) finds that romantic or sexual love is the most prominent category in both the Early Modern and Present-Day English.
Additionally, it is useful to note that the Montenegrin culture could historically be denoted as patriarchal and that this might have an influence on how some key phenomena are conceptualised. Thus, in their study on how women are conceptualised in the Montenegrin culture, Bratić and Vuković-Stamatović (2017) note that, apart from the universal ones, some very culturally specific metaphors of women may be found in the still rather patriarchal Montenegro -such as the conceptualisation of females as males. Thus, daughters are addressed by "sine moj", which directly translates to "my son", especially by their mothers, to express a special love for them (historically and, unfortunately, very commonly to this day, having sons is preferred to having daughters by a considerable number of Montenegrins); in addition; strong, capable and resourceful women are often referred to as "čoek-žena" (short from čovjek-žena), where the literal translation would be "man-woman" or "he-woman"). However, as is the case with much of the world, Montenegro has been exposed to the globalisation of values, inter alia, including the contemporary Western conceptualisations of love (see, for instance, Pešić 1986; Baković 1997). The mix of the "old-fashioned" and modern views of love are to be expected everywhere, even the West, but we hypothesise that this will be much more evident amongst our respondents -the Montenegrin young population.
Montenegrins, both individually and as a society, are quick to express love, though only formally, in various kinds of their mutual relations, notes the sociologist Božović (2014: 9). This does not go for the romantic type of love, which many Montenegrins (and other Balkan Slavs) prefer to convey through actions rather than words, judging by the research done by Zavašnik and Šestić (2014: 250). This may be typical of rather patriarchal societies, as the rise of romantic love is more of a recent, modern phenomenon, and is actually associated with the wane of patriarchal power (Giddens 1992: 41-42).

Corpus and method
The corpus analysed in this paper are the responses of 250 students from two Montenegrin universities (the University of Montenegro and the Mediterranean University) to the question of what love is, administered in the spring term 2015. The gender ratio was approximately 1:1 (123 males and 127 females), and the age group was 19-20. They were asked to complete the sentence: Love is (like)... The students were instructed to provide a brief response in a few words, in as little time as possible, to complete the said utterance. They were not given any further instructions.
The simile presented before the students (which, under the conceptual metaphor theory, is a conceptual metaphor) is basically the wording used for defining a conceptual metaphor (love is x), with love as the target domain. Thus, the responses were per se largely metaphorical or metonymical, in the sense that all the expressions used by the students had meanings different from those basic ones in the dictionary entries -which is why the use of the procedures such as MIPVU (Steen et al. 2010) for the identification of metaphorical expressions was not necessary, as the two domains (the target one of love and the source domain provided by the students) contrasted by default, which is the condition for the identification of metaphor according to MIPVU. Some of the expressions were identified as related concepts, concepts associated with love that form part of the cognitive model of love (see the theoretical section), although it turned out that these could be easily rephrased into metaphors as well, which we did (see the Anaysis).
We applied the filter of repetitiveness to the expressions provided by the respondents and included in the analysis only those with at least three linguistic realisations (Hines 1999: 149;Bratić and Vuković Stamatović 2017), as one of our aims was to find a link between the manners of conceptualisating love, on the one hand, and culture, on the other hand, and thus the more common expressions were believed to be more representative of the latter. The next step in the procedure was to associate the recurrent metaphorical and metonymic expressions used by the students, with their underlying conceptual metaphors and conceptual metonymies. For the most part, we relied on the conceptual metaphors and metonymies recognised in the literature (see the section on the previous research), whereas those metaphors and metonymies still unidentified were defined by applying the analogy with those recognised ones.
For the conceptual metaphors which were most frequent, we reconstructed the mappings, so as to account for the cognitive and semantic structures used as the basis for the analogy.
When studying conceptualisations with a specific target domain, researchers usually resort to dictionary entries or anecdotal evidence to illustrate their points. Collecting them from authentic discourse would be an exceedingly difficult task, as, for instance, one would need to go over enormous stretches of text to come across a single metaphorical expression which would be an instantiation of the metaphor sought. Some authors resort to seeking metaphorical realisations by searching through the corpus using the words from either the source or the target domain, or both, but this typically involves bias as the researchers look for what they expect to find. Still, we felt that there was a need to work with authentic data, which was why the elicitation method via a questionnaire was used in this study.
Our basic assumption is that the analogies provided by the students will reflect their entrenched conceptualisations of this domain. Another assumption is that the results will be indicative of how young Montenegrin population thinks about love. We grant that probably different results would be obtained for other age groups from the same culture, which is why we do not seek to present the results as absolutely valid for the Montenegrin language and culture in general. Table 1 provides an overview of all the conceptual metaphors, conceptual metonymies and related concepts used to conceptualise love by the Montenegrin students surveyed. The linguistic instantiations found are given in the Appendix. The following analysis shall first cover the metaphors instantiated at least three times in our corpus. We shall additionally provide comments regarding their universality or cultural specificity, and the related mappings for the most frequent ones. We shall then also comment on the metonymies and the related concepts identified, which account for further 3.49% and 19.65% of the responses belonging to the conceptualisations instantiated by at least three linguistic realisations. The assumption is that the most frequent metaphors, metonymies and related concepts, can provide an outline of the prototypical cognitive model of love, as conceptualised by the students surveyed. In the end, we shall try to arrive at more general conclusions by grouping the major conceptualisations into more superordinate metaphors.

Analysis
The domain of love was conceptualised through 23 different conceptual metaphors which had three or more linguistic realisations in our corpus. Most of them could be related to the dictionary definitions of love, which invariably suggest affection, closeness and attraction, but they extended much further and involved the domains such as insanity, flower and science, among others, which one cannot typically come across in dictionary entries. It appears that the conceptualisation of love is more composite and complex than one might think at a first glance.
The most frequently instantiated conceptual metaphor was that of love is a bond (33 linguistic realisations; see the Appendix). This metaphor seems to be universal -for instance, the studies of the English metaphors for the target domain of love have already pointed to the metaphor love is a bond (e.g. There is a strong bond between them) or love is unity (e.g. She is my better half) (Kövecses 2010: 74). The unity metaphor, according to Kövecses, is actually "perhaps central", as the metaphor suggests harmony, a perfect fit, the kind of complementing which mirrors the biological unity and symbiosis, as well as an inter-dependence of the two elements (1986: 62-3). Among the linguistic realisations instantiating the metaphor, we find expressions such as yin and yang, man and wife, complementing, couple, connection, belonging, relation, togetherness, two people, etc. (Mne. jin i jang, muškarac i žena, dopunjavanje, par, povezanost, pripadnost, odnos, zajedništvo, dvoje). Love is prevailingly seen as a bond and relation between two people, as in a man and a woman, the thing connecting a man and a woman, when two people are in love (Mne. muškarac i žena, stvar koja spaja muškarca i ženu, kada se dvoje vole). Our findings corroborate those of Kövecses (2010: 74), who argues that "the notion of love seems to be based on such image-schematic properties as link, unity, and closeness which give rise to the source domains of bond, unity, and closeness" and that of Tissari (2003: 418), who also suggests that this metaphor is among the central metaphors of love. As the reasoning behind such a conceptualisation is experiential, i.e. it is biologically grounded, such a perception probably tends to be cross-cultural. The instantiations of the metaphor also included two instantiations of love for the team and another two instantiations of the thing connecting the family (Mne. ljubav prema timu and stvar koja spaja porodicu). The unity is here expanded into family -such a conceptualisation may be said to be more culturally specific. It goes beyond the prototypical, romantic connection between a man and a woman, to encompass all family members. The said conception and perception of love could be reflective of the Montenegrin conservative society, which cherishes family as the centrepiece of love connections.
love is physical suffering/illness was as present as the previous metaphor (19 instantiations). It stands opposite the metaphor commented above (which suggested positivity) and foregrounds the negative experience of love. The physical and bodily inadequacy are transposed as the emotional inadequacy. The instantiations included: suffering, illness, pain, blind, killing, surgery without anaesthetics, contagion, epidemics, weakness, nausea, etc. (Mne. patnja, bolest, bol, slijepa, ubija, operacija bez anestetika, zaraza, epidemija, slabost, muka). The tragedy of love has been the topic of many literary works, across basically all cultures, and such conceptualisations, therefore, also seem to be universal -it is another omnipresent metaphor, experientially grounded (Kövecses 2000;Tissari 2006). What is interesting is the subset of metaphors which directly draws from the medical source domain (for instance, contagion, epidemics, surgery without anaesthetics, nausea (Mne. zaraza, epidemija, operacija bez anestetika, muka)) -this narrower subset could be put as love is a medical condition. The English lovesick, which stems from the same metaphor, is not directly translatable into Montenegrin, however, the metaphor exists in Montenegrin, as corroborated by our results. As in the previous case, a greater degree of cultural specificity may be detected in the basic-level metaphors -such as in the metaphor love is nausea. Nausea (muka in Montenegrin) is used in various metaphorical conceptualisations in Montenegrin in the very frequent phrase muka mi je… (the closest English translation is make someone nauseated, as the English sick would be much semantically broader) -negative aspects of situations and events are oftentimes likened to those of experiencing physical nausea and this seems to be more specific of the Montenegrin culture.
The next conceptual metaphor in Table 1 is that of love is food, instantiated 14 times. The physical pleasure of eating is likened to the physical pleasure arising out of a connection between two people. The linguistic realisations of the conceptual metaphor include warm pudding, conserve of wild strawberries, chocolate, honey, candy, or just food, most frequently (Mne. topao puding, slatko od divljih jagoda, čokolada, med, bombon, hrana). It is interesting to note that the qualities of warm and especially sweet were most frequently associated with the domain of food. To be more precise, most of the data point to a narrower metaphor love is sweet food (with the exclusion of wine and simply food); were we to include wine as well, we could derive the metaphor love is appetising food. As in the case of the previous metaphors, the mapping is experientially motivated. Many studies have revealed the same conceptual metaphor in various languages (for instance, Spanish (Barcelona 2000), Chinese - (Du 2015), Persian (Mashak et al. 2012), etc.), which points to its universality. However, cultural specificity may be seen in the basic-level metaphors love is a conserve of wild strawberries, for example, instantiated two times. Conserve, which is made of cooked fruit and has a thick texture, is a dessert specialty in the Balkans and historically was the first thing to serve a guest visiting your home, together with a glass of water to wash it down with. Although past its heyday, the very sweet dessert is still a household name in Montenegro, which explains why it still finds its way into the conceptualisation of love amongst the Montenegrin young population. This could be an example of an intercultural variation (Kövecses 2010), of the diachronic type, i.e. the communication and contact between the various historical points within a single culture.
The metaphor love is an element of nature was instantiated 13 times, in the linguistic realisations such as air, fire, water, flame, heat (Mne. vazduh, vatra, voda, plamen, toplota). Here we refer to the classical, ancient view of the four elements (air, fire, water, earth) as the essential building blocks of all matter and life. The only element missing from our realisations is that of earth. The elements are seen as vital and basic to existence, and love is thus bestowed with the same quality. The narrower metaphor love is fire was instantiated 7 times and, in our opinion, it is most reflective of the romantic or sexual kind of love. Among the elements, fire was chosen as most reflective of love -as with food, warm is one of the qualities selected to describe love, as inducing positive and comfortable feelings. Ahrens (2002: 289), who identifies the same metaphor in Mandarin Chinese, explains the mapping as follows: "love is understood as fire because fire involves burning with physical light and warmth and love involves giving emotional light and warmth". It seems that the intensity of fire is likened to the intensity of love, in the positive sense. The conceptualisations involving the basic natural elements are common to all languages, as these make a large part of human experience in general. We did not encounter any potential cultural specificities within the realisations of this metaphor.
The toxicity of love is implied in the metaphor love is a drug (10 cases). The instantiations include drugs (7 times), state of drunkenness, being drunk (Mne. droga, stanje opijenosti, pijano stanje). The drunkenness and ebriety suggested by the metaphor point to a lack of control but also ecstasy. For all its negative effects, alcohol is also considered to have pleasurable effects as well. Such a perception of love seems to be a common cross-cultural representation of romantic love, as evidenced in the literary genres, inter alia. Intensity seems to be foregrounded once again, only this time it is an overpowering intensity, which one cannot keep in check, hence -in the negative sense. Apart from the lack of control, another salient property of the metaphor is that of addiction (Roncero & Almeida 2014). This metaphor is experientially grounded and universal as well.
love is up was instantiated 9 times. This orientational metaphor included the instantiations such as sky, star in the sky, star, sun, heaven, God (Mne. nebo, zvijezda na nebu, zvijezda, sunce, raj, Bog). The vertical image scheme behind the metaphor is based on the up-down spatial orientation, with the good qualities being endowed on the upper end of the scale and vice versa. This metaphor, too, is experientially based and found universally (for instance, see Du 2015;Štremlj 2014). The rationale is that love provides supreme elevation, which can be either physical (sky, star, sun) or spirituallove is spiritual/religious elevation (heaven, God). Again, it is parallel with the property of ecstasy of the previous metaphor and, perhaps, even with intensity, as the property of the above metaphors.
The metaphor love is a flower (9 cases), with the instantiations such as a flower, flowers on the meadow, bud, rose (Mne. cvijeće, cvijeće na livadi, pupoljak, ruža), is reflective of the perception of love as a decoration, of love seen as weak and unprotected, as flowers have the connotations of beauty, delicacy and vulnerability. The metaphor, although rarer than the previous ones, also seems to be cross-cultural -for instance, Tri Endarto (2014) finds it in both English and Indonesian. The choice of the basic-level metaphors, such as love is a meadow flower, seems to be largely culturally inspired -wild meadow flowers are esteemed in the Montenegrin society, which glorifies nature.
Positive universal metaphors seem to prevail -the following metaphor is one of such conceptualisations. It is the metaphor love is closeness, instantiated 8 times in the corpus. The metaphor is related to our most frequent metaphor in this study -that of love is a bond. The two metaphors share the same experiential basis which comes from the physical connection and proximity of two people, but this one is less physical and implies an intimate, psychological bond. The instantiations include support, trust, giving, respect etc. (Mne. podrška, povjerenje, davanje, poštovanje).
love is light was instantiated 7 times in the corpus (light, illumination, sparkle, dawn -Mne. svijetlo, svjetlost, iskra, zora). It is another positive universal metaphorical conceptualisation (experientially grounded) -light is seen as positive and energy giving. It is related to the metaphor life is fire and the mapping is similar.
The next metaphor in our table was instantiated 6 times -it is another experientially based metaphor, love is a dream, with just one linguistic realisation, repeated as many as six times (dream, Mne. san). We take it to be another positive metaphor, as dream typically has positive connotations in Montenegrin. As in love is a drug, it implies a lack of control and, as in the metaphor love is a spiritual elevation, it points to an other-worldly character of the experience. We have not found it identified in the literature, but the more general metaphor, life is a dream, is almost cross-culturally proverbial, which is why we believe this metaphor is universal. It is significant that six students have used the same word to finish the sentence, which suggests a high rate of agreement.
Equal frequency was documented in the case of the metaphor love is a disaster/horror, with those two realisations (disaster, horror -Mne. propast, užas), which also has the potential of universality, as it is experientially grounded. It is related to the metaphor love is physical suffering/illness and it belongs to the negative conceptualisations of love.
The negative streak is continued by the metaphor which is also related to the metaphor love is physical suffering/ illness, although this time the illness is mental and it might refer to a temporary state of mind. It is the metaphor love is insanity, realised 5 times in the corpus (madness, a major mental disorder, being crazy, euphoria -Mne. ludilo, dobar mentalni poremećaj, ludost, euforija). It is also related to the metaphor love is a drug, as it implies mental incapacity and being overpowered.
The remaining metaphors in Table 1 were instantiated either four or three times. They are primarily positive (love is everything / fortress / precious thing / cure / life / human being), foregrounding various positive qualities (completeness, safety, preciousness, healing, life). The last metaphor, love is a human being, also has metonymic qualities, as the object of love stands for love itself. The negative metaphors are rarer (love is confinement / evil) -the former being a container metaphor suggesting the inability to escape and being overpowered, and the latter going to the extremes when it comes to the negative portrayal of love. The remaining metaphors contain both positive and negative aspects -for instance, love is a weather phenomenon is realised as a rainbow (Mne. duga), with connotations of beauty and delicacy, but also volatility, and as a striking of a thunder (Mne. udar groma), which inspires fire and can inflict physical harm, but also points to suddenness and intensity. love is a science has two realisations (chemistry and quantum physics, Mne. hemija and kvantna fizika), with the former suggesting attraction (actually chemistry as a science metonymically stands for the chemical bonding/attraction) and the latter probably pointing to the complexity and physical nature of love -without further context, we shall mark this metaphor as neutral when it comes the positivity-negativity scale.
The general mappings for the ten most frequently instantiated conceptual metaphors are given in Table 2: Our findings suggest that amongst the Montenegrin student population the perception of love is complex -this is in line with the previous studies which point to the versatile and composite conceptualisation of this target domain (for more see: Kövecses 2010: 100-101;Klikovac 2004: 13-14). All metaphors identified display universality. However, the narrower the metaphor was, i.e. the more basic-level it was, the more likely we were to find more cultural specificity in the way love was conceptualised. This finding goes hand in hand with the finding of Tissari (2003: 347) regarding the diachronic comparison of the conceptualisation of love in Early Modern English and Present-Day English -she finds stability over time at the general level, as "people keep fetching their metaphors from the spatial, temporal and sensory domains" (Ibid).
If we were to group the similar metaphors together, we might get the following clusters of metaphors: -the superordinate metaphor love is unity would comprise the two related metaphors love is bond and love is closeness (41 instantiations or 23.69% of the instantiations used in metaphors). The centrality of this metaphor is in line with previous research, as indicated above. The properties of love foregrounded by this metaphor include complementing and close; -the superordinate metaphor love is harm could comprise the metaphors love is physical suffering / disaster/ horror / evil (28 instantiations or 16.18%). The negative experience of love is emphasised, and the property which the metaphor puts focus on is that love is harmful; love is nature would comprise the metaphors love is an element of nature / light / weather phenomenon / science (26 instantiations or 15.02%). Light is basically another element of nature; we also included science as the two instantiations covered by this metaphor include chemistry and physics (Mne. hemija, fizika), where we assume that students refer to the idea that love is somehow a physical, bodily phenomenon, guided by the laws of nature. What the metaphor foregrounds is that love is natural; love is special state of mind could be the umbrella metaphor for the metaphors love is a drug / insanity / a dream (21 instantiations or 12.14%). The metaphors foreground the properties of out of control, crazy, ecstatic; -We did not group the metaphor love is food with any other metaphor, for lack of similar properties foregrounded by the metaphor (the metaphor had 14 instantiations or 8.09%). The metaphor suggests that we need love as we need food, i.e. the need for love is a basic human need. The users of the metaphor assume that love is nutricious; love is a living being is a superordinate metaphor comprising the metaphors love is a flower / a human being / life (12 instantions or 6.93%). The metaphor foregrounds the property of love as being alive; -the metaphor love is ownership could be said to subsume the metaphors love is business / a precious possession / everything (11 instantiations or 6.35%). The latter (love is everything) cannot be safely classified into this category -however, we base our judgement on the Montenegrin phrase ti si mi sve (you are my everything), which we think is the source of this analogy. The implication is you are all I have, and thus implicitly, possession can be assumed. The property foregrounded by the metaphor is that the object loved is possessed; -the orientational metaphor love is up stands alone (9 instantiations or 5.2%). Elevated is the property foregrounded; love is containment is present in the metaphors love is confinement and love is a fortress (8 instantiations or 4.62%). Although the properties foregrounded are different (the former metaphor foregrounds containment as negative, whereas the latter views the containment as positive, as a defence from the outside elements), containment is obviously present in both and love acts as a barrier, in both; love is a cure bears similarities to the metaphors suggesting suffering and pain, however, love is here the reliever not the inflictor of the pain, which is why this metaphor, suggesting healing properties, stands alone (3 instantiations or 1.73%).
Conceptual metonymies were found in just 2.6% of the responses, which is why we shall only briefly comment on them. The metonymies identified could be largely accommodated within the two general types of metonymies for the target entity emotion, identified by Kövecses (2010: 108), cause of emotion for the emotion and effect of emotion for the emotion. Some of them probably tend to universality, such as heart for love and even the much more creative one such as cardioid for love -cardioid is basically a heart-shaped curve. Most other metonymies proved to be very creative, for instance: quivering of a leaf in the wind for love and dancing in the rain for love, etc. At a first glance, one could put down these creative metonymies to the individual ingenuity of the students surveyed. However, at least to some degree, many of these are also culturally or geographically specific -for instance, in the metonymies above, deciduous trees and rain, and the already noted Montenegrin glorification of nature, have driven the conceptualisations involved, at least to an extent.
As explained in the theoretical section, related concepts refer to the "emotions or attitudes that the subject of emotion has in relation to the object or cause of emotion" (Kövecses 2010: 109). In our study, for example, such would be the finding that friendship is a notion inherent to the notion of romantic love.
The related concepts we found in the corpus were numerous -they can be said to be very related to the conceptual metaphors and may even be said to be conceptual metaphors themselves. However, applying the Kövecses's cognitive model and terminology, as elaborated in the theoretical section, we shall adhere to the term related concepts -we should also here note that the manner of classifying the conceptualisations does not affect the phenomena we are analysing (the matter of universality and the composition of the cognitive model of love). Thus, instead of saying that the students used the metaphor love is happiness, we shall say that the related concept of love in our study was the (feeling of) happiness (instantiated by joy, joy of life, bliss -Mne. radost, radost života, milina). The same can be said of all the other related concepts listed in Table 1: -(experience of) beauty, which could be termed as the metaphor love is beauty (the linguistic realisations include: the most beautiful feeling, something most beautiful, something wonderful (Mne. najljepše osjećenje, nešto najljepše, nešto divno)); -(experience of) purpose -metaphor love is purpose (the linguistic realisation is: purpose of life (Mne. smisao života); -(feeling/experience of) inspiration/motivation -metaphor love is inspiration-motivation (the linguistic realisations are: inspiration, motivation (Mne. inspiracija, motivacija)); -(experience of) immortality -metaphor love is immortality (the linguistic realisations are: eternity, immortality, infinity (Mne. vječnost, besmrtnost, beskraj); -(feeling of) freedom -metaphor love is freedom (the linguistic realisation is: freedom (Mne. sloboda)).
Unlike the conceptual metaphors covered in the first part of the analysis, these are less experientially grounded and the source domain is typically abstract (purpose, inspiration/motivation, immortality, freedom; even beauty, as it does not refer to physical beauty but to beauty in a more abstract sense (beauty of love)). We would say that these are universal and we did not detect any cultural specificity worth additional comments here. All related concepts seemed to depict love positively.
We also noticed that the metaphors and related concepts could be easily polarised -we can roughly divide them into those negative and positive ones, broadly belonging to the hierarchically superordinate metaphors love is good and love is bad. Although the metaphors were largely universal, their combination and the ratio of the good vs. bad conceptualisations of love is probably typical and authentic to the Montenegrin student population, i.e. it is culturally specific. The positive pole contains metaphors such as love is bond / food / up / flower / closeness / dream / light / everything / fortress / precious possession / cure / human being / life. Additionally, as noted above, all the related concepts identified seemed to convey positivity. In aggregate, they account for 65.94% of the conceptualisations represented in Table 1. On the other hand, the metaphor love is bad encompasses the metaphors love is physical suffering/illness / drug / disaster/horror / insanity / business / confinement / evil. These make up 22.28% of the conceptualisations presented in Table 1.
Thus, the scenario of love for the Montenegrin students from our study includes the following: they believe that lovers complement each other and are close; that love is harmful, natural and alive, and that it acts as a barrier, which could be both a prison or a defence wall, and that it has healing and nutricious properties; that love makes the lover out of control, crazy, ecstatic and elevated, and that the object of love is seen as possessed.
In the fact love makes the lover ecstatic and elevated we find the rational components of the script suggested by Goddard (2003) -"X often thinks about Y" and "when X thinks about Y, X often feels something good". The sensual component (X feels good towards Y) is perhaps indirectly present in the fact that lovers are close and complement each other. It seems that the script of Montenegrin students is more focused on X than on Y. The component of will (X wants to do good things for Y) seems to be absent from our metaphors and this could also be a cultural specificity.
The Montenegrin student script would contain the following components: X wants to be with Y (as lovers complement each other and are close); X worries about losing Y -if X loses Y, X feels something bad (as love is seen harmful, evil, suffering...), because of this, X also feels entrapped (love is seen as a prison); X often thinks about Y -when X thinks about Y, X often feels something good (as the lover feels ecstatic, elevated...); X possesses Y (the object of love is seen as a possession). This script largely fits into the one of the Western world, but perhaps the concern about losing the lover, possessing the lover and feeling entrapped by love are more pronounced in the Montenegrin society, which is currently transforming from a strictly patriarchal one into a modern one.

Conclusion
All conceptualisations identified in our paper are, we believe, universal, as they are largely driven by the human experience of the world, mostly the physical one, and as most of them have already been recorded in the literature. More cultural specificity was encountered within the basic-level metaphors embodied in the linguistic realisations which featured lower frequencies, but which were also driven by experience -that which was specific to the Montenegrin culture. Thus, the more basic the metaphor, the more likely it was that one might encounter cultural variation and, vice versa, the more superordinate, i.e. the more abstract and general the metaphor, the more universal it tended to be. The most general ones may probably even be said to be absolutely universal. For instance, the broad metaphor, love is a flower, is cross-cultural, whereas the basic-level metaphor, love is a meadow flower, may be said to be culturally specific in the Montenegrin context, as nature is an important element in the Montenegrin culture. The even more general metaphors, such as love is a plant and love is a living being, would display even more universality. Similarly, the Montenegrin student script for love is pretty similar to that of the Western one, with the difference that an important place in this script is also occupied by the negative aspects of love -the concern about losing the lover, possessing the lover and feeling entrapped by love. These components exist in the Western world as well, but are perhaps not that prototypical of love as in Montenegro.
At a more general level, we identified the metaphors love is good and love is bad, which could account for most of the conceptualisations. The former accounted for about two thirds of the responses, whereas the latter made up less than a quarter of the conceptualisations. Love was thus prevailingly seen as positive amongst the Montenegrin student population and perhaps this finding is likely universal as well. The polarised view of love could be another universality.
We shall also briefly comment on the level of conventionality and novelty displayed by the conceptualisations. The observation of prevailing universality does not point to much creativeness and novelty. As expected, more novelty was encountered in the items with lower frequencies (usually with just one instantiation). Even that creativeness, at the level of superordinate metaphor belongs to conventionality, which is associated with universality.
The composition of the cognitive model of love existing amongst the Montenegrin student population, though resembling the findings for other languages in that it contained universal metaphors, also displayed some cultural specificity. Namely, the metaphor love is a journey, which frequently cited in the literature as one of the central love metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980;Ahrens 2002, etc.), for instance, was completely absent from our corpus. Thus, the Montenegrin students conceptualised love statically and hermetically, not as something which changes, grows or transforms. To their mind, love simply exists in its never-changing form. This could be specific to the targeted age group but would need to be confirmed via further studies. Another recommendation for a further study is exploring how the conceptualisation of love potentially differed according to the gender of the respondent. For lack of space, the present study did not encompass this aspect although our preliminary findings did suggest some differences between the sexes in this respect. Namely, we noticed a tendency for more diversity in the metaphors used by the female students, as well as their being more inclined to foreground the positive aspects of love.
Despite not being able to record metaphorical realisations in their context, the metaphor elicitation method conducted via a sentence-completion questionnaire offers a chance to systematically study metaphors with specific domains. Studies using this methodology could be quite simply replicated in other cultures or subcultures, for love or other universal phenomena, which could provide us with insightful results regarding the universality and cultural specificity of such conceptualisations.