Metaphorical landscapes of happiness: A cognitive semantic analysis in Hindi and Bangla

While extensive research exists on cognitive metaphors of happiness in Western, Middle Eastern, and East Asian languages, South Asian languages remain largely underexplored. This gap limits our understanding of how diverse cultural and philosophical traditions shape emotional conceptualization in non-Western contexts. Addressing this research problem, the study explores how Hindi and Bangla speakers conceptualize happiness through metaphorical patterns rooted in their linguistic and cultural frameworks. This study investigates similarities and differences in the conceptualization of happiness in Hindi and Bangla, identifying the socio-cultural, religious, and philosophical factors shaping emotional meaning. The dataset consists of 100 idiomatic and proverbial expressions (50 from each language) collected from digital and print sources and analysed using Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff Johnson 1980) and Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Kövecses 2020). The findings reveal shared embodied metaphors-such as light, elevation, fluidity and growth-alongside language-specific patterns: Hindi foregrounds sweetness, journey, illumination and moral-philosophical schemas, while Bangla emphasizes water-based and vulnerability-oriented metaphors. The study contributes to cross-cultural metaphor analysis and highlights the role of cultural and philosophical traditions in shaping emotion metaphors. The findings provide insights into the interplay of language, culture, and cognition.