Abstract:
Although the Afrikaans word beker carries strong religious and other connotations, among them
references to the Eucharist cup, the contribution of this article is to highlight, within a cognitive
semantics framework, the role that cognitive mechanisms such as metaphor and metonymy
played in the creation of this symbol. The article aims to illustrate the following: that the two
signs of the Christian Eucharist, the bread and the wine, are grounded in conceptual metaphors
of eating and drinking; that two conceptual drink metaphors are present when the symbol of the
cup is analysed; that a related concept, that of metonymy, acts as a cognitive trigger, thus enabling
the realisation of the symbol; and that other factors such as culture and religious symbolism
played a significant role in the whole process. A corpus linguistics methodology is used to
identify expressions containing the word beker. In analysing the expressions, Conceptual
Metaphor Theory is used as a theoretical framework. It is found that conceptual metaphors such
as nourishment is drinking and suffering is drinking underlie metaphoric expressions with beker.
The metonymy container [the cup] for contained [the wine or blood] plays an important role in
enabling the metaphors. In the images of the Eucharist cup and the broken bread, powerful
metaphors arising from our bodily experience, denoting suffering and death on the one hand,
and joy, nourishment and life on the other hand, are united to form the symbol.
