Thinking with the Head: Cultural Prototypes in English and Moroccan Arabic Idioms

This study explores idioms related to the body part "head" in English and Moroccan Arabic through the lens of Prototype Theory (Rosch, 1975; Lakoff, 1987). Idioms such as "use your head" or "ras kbir" are examined as culturally grounded cognitive artifacts. We are going to analyze a few examples of idioms in the two languages in an attempt to determine how conceptual metaphors and cultural values influence meaning. We find that although idioms are based on a common bodily conception of the head as the locus of intellect and control (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980), and the semantic extension of idioms is a measure of sociocultural difference (Sharifian, 2017). The discussion highlights how prototypes help organize figurative language, which gives an insight into how idioms can have both universal cognition and cultural particularity (Gibbs, 1994).