The Representation of Emotional Experience through Structural Metaphors in Taylor Swift’s The Fate of Ophelia

Abstract

Beyond its role as stylistic ornamentation, metaphor in song lyrics serves as a cognitive mechanism through which abstract emotional experiences are conceptualized and communicated. This research examines how structural metaphors represent emotional experiences in Taylor Swift’s The Fate of Ophelia, with particular attention to the conceptual mappings between source and target domains. Employing a qualitative descriptive approach, this research applies Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory to analyze metaphorical expressions identified through close reading of the lyrics. The data collected through document analysis and close textual reading. The collected data were analyzed by identifying metaphorical expressions, determining their source and target domains, mapping the conceptual correspondences between domains and interpreting how these mappings construct representation of emotional experiences. The findings demonstrate that structural metaphors in the song do not operate in isolation but form a coherent metaphorical network in which love is simultaneously conceptualized as rescue, entrapment, light, and fire, a semantic ambivalence grounded in the Shakespearean intertextual frame of Ophelia’s fate. These findings contribute to the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory in the analysis of literary and musical discourse by showing how interconnected structural metaphors represent emotional complexity within a single song. The study also provides insights into the relationship between conceptual metaphor and literary intertextuality in contemporary popular music.